Among the mitigation pathways proposed by the Intergovernmental Panel for Climate Change (IPCC), the P2 pathway can be considered the IPCC’s best-case scenario among those committed to limiting the global temperature increase to +1.5 °C. We outline here an alternative pathway (labeled Q), that employs carbon capture, utilization, and storage technologies, with deployment and greenhouse gas removal driven by techno-economic value. Although Q is comparable to P2, the overall carbon cost of Q can be up to 34.8% lower than IPCC P2 and the Q yearly cost does not exceed 1% of the global GDP. Accordingly to Q, massive deployment of CCS technologies applied to the energy sector should start no later than 2025. At the same time, basic research is called to play a pivotal role in improving further the economic sustainability of the mitigation pathway, firstly in achieving a five-fold decrease in air capture cost before 2050. Moreover, the large cost associated with CO2 separation significantly decreases the profit margin associated with CO2 utilization. The possibility to avoid separation in carbon utilization requires the design of catalysts that react selectively with CO2 even at low CO2 purity. These last points are discussed along with a proof of concept showing how nanosizing MgO in a protonic zeolite facilitates its selective reaction with CO2 at ambient temperature and at CO2 concentrations as low as 7 vol% with the formation of (bi)carbonates-like species, that are intermediates in several CO2 utilization reactions.

Carbon capture, utilization, and storage for an optimized-cost 1.5 °C-committed pathway: The implementation at the global and the atomistic scale

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