Capturing carbon to ship or funnel it offshore for storage in depleted marine oil and gas wells is gaining momentum as a proposed climate solution, even as it faces criticism. Across the globe, plans are afoot to launch multiple projects — such as in the North Sea, the Gulf of Mexico, and Southeast Asia — backed by government funding in many cases. This form of carbon capture and storage, or CCS, involves collecting carbon (often directly from polluting industries such as cement factories or steelworks) and altering it into supercritical form, the highest density of CO2. It’s then moved via ship or pipeline to offshore infrastructure. Once there, the CO2 is pumped into a former well and capped. “These same formations held oil and gas for millions of years before they were extracted — this means we know the CO2 can be stored permanently on the same timescale, and we have detailed data and a strong understanding of their geology and how much they can store,” Chris Consoli, the Global CCS Institute’s principal for storage, told Mongabay in an email. But this proposed climate solution, which aims to piggyback on the fossil fuel industry’s existing infrastructure and workforce, has been slammed by critics as a means to justify continued exploitation of fossil fuels using a method riddled with underperformance and failure. For critics, this simple picture of using the ocean subsurface as a carbon storehouse belies the need for masses of new green infrastructure, energy and finance, while also being…This article was originally published on Mongabay

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