The CO2 Economy – Mineral Carbonation Technology Overview

The term ‘Carbon Capture and Storage’ (CCS) has been too narrowly focused on capturing CO2 emissions from coal power and building large transport and storage networks for deep geologic storage. In fact, CCS covers a suite of technologies for capturing CO₂ emissions, and its most important use may be for capturing industrial process emissions.

Equally, whilst deep geologic storage (for instance in old oil fields in the North Sea) is likely to capture the bulk of emissions, an important portion of emissions, especially from small distributed sources, could be captured through Mineral Carbonation: turning CO₂ into minerals. This briefing looks at the possibilities for that technology, and serves as a reminder that if we are to successfully tackle climate change, there is a need for a great variation of technologies.