Efforts to rapidly scale up carbon capture and storage (CCS) technology will be significantly hindered by a global lack of underground storage, an Imperial College London (ICL) study has found.

Current international scenarios for limiting global warming to less than 1.5°C by the end of the century rely on technologies that remove carbon dioxide (CO2) from the Earth’s atmosphere faster than humans release it.

The most aggressive emissions reduction projections from the UN Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) will require the removal of between six and 10 billion tons of CO2 per year by 2050 to stick to the 1.5˚C warming pathway.

But the new findings suggest that existing CCS projections are unlikely to be feasible at the current rate of growth.

The study found that while it might be possible to store up to 16 gigatonnes of CO2 underground each year by 2050, reaching this target would require a huge increase in storage capacity and scaling over the coming decades, which is not...