Heavy CCS use may inflate power costs, slow clean energy progress, and threaten the region’s climate targets, says a new report

Asian countries’ growing dependence on carbon capture and storage (CCS) to reduce fossil fuel emissions could add nearly 25 billion tonne of greenhouse gases by 2050, putting the region off course from the Paris Agreement’s 1.5°C target, according to a report by Climate Analytics.

The report finds that a high-CCS pathway across Asia would result in about 22 billion tonne of carbon dioxide and three billion tonne of methane emissions by mid-century. These additional emissions would exceed the lifetime fossil fuel emissions of most Asian countries, except China, India and Japan.

The report cautions that large-scale CCS deployment could delay the clean energy transition by diverting resources from proven renewable and zero-emission solutions. Most existing CCS projects, it notes, capture less than half of their targeted emissions, while much of the captured carbon is reused for enhanced oil and gas recovery prolonging the life of fossil fuels rather than reducing dependence on them.

Countries including Japan, South Korea, Australia and several in Southeast Asia are promoting CCS as a tool for industrial decarbonisation and energy security. However, Climate Analytics warns that these programmes often facilitate fossil fuel expansion rather than genuine emission cuts. China and India, though less reliant on CCS for now, could significantly worsen global climate outcomes if they adopt it as a central mitigation strategy.

Along with environmental concerns the report underlines major economic risks. Power generation from fossil fuels equipped with CCS could cost twice as much as renewable energy supported by storage. Persisting with CCS-heavy plans, it said, would lock countries into costly and inefficient systems, reducing the competitiveness of clean technologies.

The report recommends that Asian governments adopt a ‘deliberate low-CCS’ pathway limiting the technology’s role to last-resort applications while scaling up investment in renewables, electrification and energy efficiency.