Carbon Capture and Storage

[Paul Rowland]

A couple of weeks ago, I was in Iceland and I got to see the impressive progress they have made over the past few decades in reducing fossil fuel dependence and the attendant pollution. First of all, almost all of their electricity is renewable, the majority from hydro-electric and the remainder from geothermal generation stations. The country has made impressive strides with geothermal dual use plants. I had the good fortune to visit one of the stations that brings hot water from below the surface and generates electricity from the steam that comes with it, then uses the hot water to make more steam to power more turbines and then heats water to send into the capital, Reykjavik. There, 99.8% of the buildings are heated with hot water. That is a shift from the ’60s when coal was the primary heating fuel. Across the country 90% of homes are heated with geothermal, saving huge amounts of emissions.

So, Iceland’s geothermal journey has been inspiring on at least two fronts. It is generating clean electricity and it is heating buildings, which are a huge source of carbon emissions around the world.

One other thing that Iceland is home to are two experimental direct air capture facilities that pull vast amounts of air through giant filters that capture the carbon, liquify it and inject it into Iceland’s unique rock, far under ground. It sound like great technology to be using in this day and age but is it working? Iceland is one of the best places to conduct the trials because if has the clean energy to run the machinery and unique geology to sequester the carbon.

But does it work? I have some thoughts on this but I’d like for others to chime in first.

Best regards,

Paul

 

[Hunter Lovins]

Thanks for this, Paul. What Iceland is interesting, tho I’m much more impressed with its commitment to renewables than carbon capture. Globally mechanical carbon capture and storage (CCS is a non-answer. If it even works—not a given—it is horribly expensive. CCS clocks in at $600 to $1,000 per ton for direct air capture. Proposed geological storage costs an additional $2 to $58 per ton.

As the Guardian put it, it’s a “get out of jail card that does not actually work: https://www.theguardian.com/news/2025/sep/12/carbon-capture-the-get-out-of-jail-free-card-that-does-not-actually-work

More interesting is regenerative agriculture, which enables us to durably sequester enormous amounts of atmospheric carbon dioxide at a profit. For more on this, see my latest article: https://www.climateandcapitalmedia.com/yes-regenerative-agriculture-can-pull-carbon-from-the-atmosphere-and-prevent-catastrophe-at-a-profit/

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