Separating the debate on CO2 utilisation from carbon capture and storage

To address the urging challenge of climate change, the concept of Carbon Capture and Storage (CCS) plays a key role for keeping global warming below 2 °C. Recently, the concept of Carbon Capture and Utilisation (CCU) has been a focus of growing attention with the aim of enabling an industrial utilisation of CO2 as feedstock in the production of materials and fuels. Also in the pursuit of the ambitious targets set by the COP21 Paris agreement, CCU technologies could be discussed as an increasingly relevant means to meet mitigation targets. Often, CCU is commingled with the more prominent CCS and evaluated from the same perspective of climate change mitigation potential. Sometimes, the idea of utilising CO2 as a resource is even used as an argument for investments in CCS. Despite some technological similarities, however, CCU and CCS address significantly different issues within the environmental policy debate. This paper analyses the commonalities and differences between CCU and CCS and recommends how one should be distinguished from the other, particularly in environmental policy fields and the public debate. Particularly, hopes that CCU could represent a promising perspective for contributing to mitigation efforts should not be exaggerated and considerations of CCU in climate politics need to account for the largely varying and technology specific temporary storage times of CO2 and its specific substitution potential. Consequently, we call for accounting mechanisms and legislations for CCU that acknowledge the different storage durations and efficiency gains of CCU technologies.