Countries turn to carbon capture and storage | Vietnam Today

Added: 2026-06-01

[00:00:00]The urgency to reduce greenhouse gas emissions has intensified as countries commit to net zero targets. However, certain sectors are inherently carbon intensive and difficult to decarbonize through renewable energy alone. And that raised the question, how do we reduce emissions from industry that are hard to electrify? So, Mike.

[00:00:17]>> Yes, Michelle. So, to answer that question, one of the solution of this challenge is carbon capture and storage or CCS, which is a technology that prevents carbon dioxide or CO2 from entering the atmosphere by capturing it from large industrial sources or directly from the air and storing it underground. Now, the process involves three main steps. Capturing CO2 at industrial facilities or via direct air capture, transporting it by pipelines, ships, or road tankers, and injecting it into deep a geological formations for long-term storage. And in some cases, captured CO2 can also be reused in products such as synthetic fuels, chemicals, and low-carbon building materials. And now, according to the Global CCS Institute, these are currently 77 commercial CCS facilities in operation worldwide with 47 under construction and more than 700 projects in development. Existing facilities capture around 64 million tons of CO2 annually, while the CO2 RE project database forecasts that global capture capacity could reach 337 million tons per year by the year 2030.

[00:01:32]And now, as carbon capture technologies continue to develop around the world, research are now exploring new ways to remove carbon dioxide from the atmosphere and to better understand where emissions come from. From capturing carbon directly from the atmosphere and the oceans to tracking pollution across cities, countries are testing different approaches in the search for net zero emissions. Multi follow.

[00:01:58]>> In Kenya, a startup company is developing machines that remove carbon dioxide directly from the atmosphere.

[00:02:06]The company says the technology could help make net zero targets more achievable in the future.

[00:02:12]>> So, this machine that you see behind me here, removes as much as much CO2 from the atmosphere as about 100 trees.

[00:02:19]Our more scaled-up versions remove as much as 1,000 trees per year from the atmosphere.

[00:02:25]And you can already see that like to plant 10,000 to plant 1,000 trees, you would need about 10 hectares of land.

[00:02:31]Like this machine and like the machines like it that we build like have a very minimal land footprint basically, which also make it a very scalable solution in addressing climate change.

[00:02:42]>> Elsewhere, researchers in the United Kingdom are testing a system that removes carbon dioxide from seawater.

[00:02:49]Scientists say the approach could help oceans absorb more carbon from the atmosphere while producing concentrated carbon dioxide that can be transported and stored underground.

[00:03:02]>> This step of the process is taking CO2 ultimately from the atmosphere, but via the ocean.

[00:03:08]And getting it to the stage where it's it's pure. And when it's pure, you can compress it, you can transport it, and ultimately you can store it. So, this can join other CO2 that's being used to to decarbonize industrial processes that we don't have other mechanisms to decarbonize, and being piped underground into geological storage.

[00:03:25]>> Meanwhile, Vietnam is also exploring carbon capture and storage as part of its pathway towards net zero emissions by 2050. Various options for transporting and storing carbon dioxide are being assessed as the country prepares for the future deployment of the technology.

[00:03:43]>> I think Vietnam has some similarities with the UK in that you're using offshore storage, and certainly you can look at our experience with repurposing old oil and gas fields and and the natural aquifers around them for carbon capture and storage including using existing pipelines and that's that's quite a useful experience.

[00:04:07]>> As countries search for solutions to the climate crisis, carbon capture and removal technologies are emerging as one possible tool, but they will need to work alongside deeper emissions cuts to make a lasting difference.