On this day, June 25, across 6 years, we can watch a technology emerge from obscurity (see June 4 for how an issue goes through an arc).
Carbon capture and storage is the proposal to stop carbon dioxide molecules, released when you burn a hydrocarbon (oil, coal or gas), from getting into the atmosphere. I could go on, but I won’t…
On this day in 2002 the UK Department of Trade and Industry (DTI) held an “ Improved Oil Recovery” Research Seminar.
Then, a year later the US, EU, 12 countries agreed to develop carbon capture technologies” – the grandly named “Carbon Sequestration Leadership Forum” became a thing.
Then, five years after that, with CCS very high up the agenda in the UK, a Shell-sponsored CCS supplement turned up in the Guardian containing 14-articles, all focusing on CCS. Page 234 of Mander et al (2013)
Why this matters.
Technologies build up a head of, erm, steam. Or they don’t. It takes time for things to emerge. Then they work, or they don’t, or they do something else.
What happened next?
CCS? It went away. Then it came back, as fantasies do.