First up: Natural gas, the cleanest-burning fossil fuel, is again becoming unaffordable in many end-user markets. Better get used to it: there’s no easy fix to the perennial problem of gas price spikes and supercycles. And: Net zero won’t happen by 2050, carbon capture won’t decarbonise the fossil fuel industry, and hydrogen will play only a minor role i…

Carbon capture and storage makes most economic sense when deployed in hard-to-abate segments such as heavy industry, but who will stump up the billions required to build such projects? The Dutch government has answered that question by bearing a big slice of the cost burden of the Porthos CCS project in Rotterdam, and thereby handing a big subsidy to tw…

ExxonMobil’s latest strategy to shore up its finances while investing in lower carbon technologies is asking investors to take several giant leaps of faith in the potential future market for carbon capture and hydrogen. It does not acknowledge the risk that these technologies might fail to commercialise, nor does it say whether the company learned anyth…

The marriage of convenience between the Biden administration and the carbon capture industry is blossoming into a genuine love affair. The White House is going out of its way to put CCS at the front of its plan to revitalise communities hurt by the energy transition – but the industry should expect state support to come with strings attached…

Is anybody in the energy sector prepared to contemplate a decarbonised future without technologies that capture and store carbon dioxide emissions? If not, then how exactly are such installations going to be paid for? As wildfires, hurricanes and floods offer early signs of just how devastating runaway climate change could be, these are two question tha…