On June 26, 2023, the French Government presented its Carbon Capture, Storage and Use (CCUS) strategy, which was subject to public consultation until September 29. The initial text is available at the following address.
As a French observer of the evolution of climate technologies, Zenon Research justifies a scientific, pragmatic and critical look at the potentials of these technologies and the technical, economic, social and regulatory challenges related to their deployment at scale. Zenon is developing a techno-agnostic approach, based on the study of all solutions and their decarbonization potentials, and seeks to transcribe in decision-making circles the necessary (although not sufficient) role that technologies and innovation will play in the response to the climate emergency and the exit from fossil fuels.
In this respect, CCUS technologies are part of the range of solutions to decarbonize our societies, especially the most emissive industries. CCUS is far from being an easy solution, presenting strong technological, societal and economic challenges and conveying potential risks of various kinds. This justifies all the more the need for a strategy that is quantified, based and built in an open way. A strategy that should allow the CCUS sector to be deployed where it is absolutely essential and to be part of a holistic approach, without coming into conflict with other decarbonization tools, with which it must, on the contrary, be linked.
We specify here that the role of Zenon Research is to analyze scientific production and to decipher trends in the field of climate technology in order to inform decision-makers on these topics. Zenon Research is therefore not intended to formulate political or strategic recommendations, but to report on the latest scientific knowledge, and possibly, as is the case here, to put strategic directions into perspective with the data, conclusions and uncertainties of this scientific production. On the other hand, we emphasize the techno-agnostic nature of our approach: we have no particular interests in CCUS or in any other of the technological sectors we study, and analyze or compare these technologies strictly with regard to their decarbonization and deployment potential, their resource needs, their potential impacts, their economic model. It is in this spirit that the answer reproduced here was developed.
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