Employees work next to the gas lines of the Mississippi Power Co. carbon capture power plant in DeKalb, Mississippi.transition is picking up pace but not at the scale needed to rein in the expected growth in global emissions. Despite this truth, discussion has been mired by irrationalactivists who ignore the reality that the fossil fuel industry will play an indispensable role in avoiding and reducing emissions worldwide.
Unsurprisingly, the calls to end fossil fuel production also do not align with the latest forecasts of fossil fuel consumption, which point to substantial demand for the foreseeable future. This enduring role will be most acutely felt in hard-to-abate sectors, such as transportation and manufacturing, and in emerging economies that often lack access to affordable, reliable, and secure energy to power their daily lives and economic development.
Already, these companies have been investing significantly in low-carbon and emissions-removal technologies. Building out these solutions is no mean feat, and the oil and gas industry is one of few that have the technical expertise and the capital required to deploy carbon reducing and capturing technologies at speed and at scale.
If the world is truly serious about reducing and removing emissions from our atmosphere, without severely destabilizing global energy security, then technologies such as carbon capture and storage are imperative. Most long-term energy outlooks note that a rapid expansion of these technologies is essential to reduce emissions. The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, for example, views the deployment of carbon dioxide removal technologies as"unavoidable" to reach net zero.