Deploying versatile carbon capture technologies and storage at scale

We present a vision for an MIT-wide Climate Grand Challenge flagship program dedicated to catalyzing rapid innovation and deployment strategies for CO2 capture and sequestration (CCS). This effort addresses all manner of CO2 emissions — positive and negative, and those from both point and dispersed sources. Our research will address all stages of the technology readiness levels (TRL) pipeline, from new concepts at early TRL stages to those technologically more mature. Our work also determines how multiple gigatons per year (Gt/y) of storage can be deployed in a safe, globally accessible, and socially acceptable way. The climate challenge is a CO2 challenge. Climate targets cannot be met without directly managing CO2. It is no longer sufficient to capture today’s CO2 emissions — we will need to remove past CO2 emissions from our air and oceans. CCS provides the only fail-safe mechanism to directly tackle all manner of emissions and must be a vital aspect of any credible plan to address climate change.