A new analysis suggests that the “prudent” storage available for carbon dioxide to head off further global warming is more limited than other recent estimates. Accounting for the risks associated with carbon capture and storage (CCS), the study found that stashing carbon underground in suitable locations would likely reduce warming by only about 0.7° Celsius (1.3° Fahrenheit). That figure is far below other estimated potential reductions of 5-6°C (9-11°F), potentially making CCS less promising than believed. The most common form of CCS involves injecting CO2 into underground rock formations, which in theory would lock it away and out of the atmosphere for millennia. Past research suggests there’s space on Earth to store 8,000-55,000 gigatons of CO2, leading some to conclude that the potential for CCS is virtually boundless. However, more recent studies have shown the constraints of this technique. CO2 captured from the atmosphere is injected into the Earth in the carbon capture and storage process. Image courtesy of the Global CCS Institute. This latest research, published Sept. 3 in the journal Nature, finds that many of the potential areas for CCS on Earth may be too risky to use. The paper argues that CCS needs to be used judiciously to deal with CO2 emissions, reserving it for carbon-intensive energy applications that aren’t easy to replace with renewable alternatives, such as agriculture, said Matthew Gidden, the study’s lead author and a senior researcher in the International Institute for Applied Systems Analysis in Austria. Meanwhile, society could save that precious carbon…This article was originally published on Mongabay

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