New technologies and changes in consumer habits could limit the use of controversial carbon capture to fight climate change, new research shows. Efforts to capture carbon from polluting sources or to filter CO2 out of the air have picked up steam as a way for companies to meet their climate goals. But those strategies are still unproven at a large scale and could come with other unintended consequences.
Experts say carbon removal is no substitute for preventing greenhouse gas emissions in the first place. --- The researchers analyzed scenarios in which people deploy those strategies to reduce emissions from hard-to-decarbonize industries and compared the outcomes to a baseline scenario for climate action without such measures. That showed them how much they could reduce the use of one of the most contested carbon removal strategies, called bioenergy with carbon capture and storage .