As the climate shifts and attention increasingly focuses on carbon emissions, experts around the world are looking for solutions. Carbon capture and storage (CCS) has been eyed as a remedy for years, and hopes for its success have been high. In a 2023 report, McKinsey said the market for carbon removal could reach as high as 1. 2 trillion by 2050. The puzzle, however, is complex, and identifying all the pieces, much less fitting them together, is a monumental challenge. The 2026 SPE/AAPG/SEG Carbon Capture, Utilization, and Storage Conference brought together experts in policy and technology to pool their knowledge and work toward putting together the puzzle that, while slowly coming together, has so far remained incomplete. The conference was held in April in The Woodlands, Texas—near Houston, the hydrocarbon capital—to pull experts from the major oil and gas companies that are deeply involved in the carbon industry. Packed with university professors and professionals from giants such as ExxonMobil and Baker Hughes, the conference sorted through the puzzle pieces, matching problems with ideas to form a complete picture of the carbon capture, use, and storage (CCUS) puzzle. Clearly, several pieces are still missing. CCUS hasn’t caught on like proponents had hoped. The technology is difficult to scale in a way that makes it profitable, and the funding to develop the technology to scale it can be elusive. This conundrum hampering the growth of CCUS is what Allyson Anderson Book called a “chicken and egg problem. ” Book is chief sustainability officer at Baker Hughes and gave a keynote presentation at the conference. During her presentation, she gave an optimistic view of the future of the CCUS chicken and egg problem. “What we’re going to see globally is going to change that, ” she said. She pointed out that what is seen on the surface is not always all of what’s happening, relaying an anecdote about a European company that announced it was decreasing its investments in energy-transition technologies. “But, ” she asked, “did they stop investing in carbon capture and storage? Actually, no. But that didn’t make headlines. ” “We’ve got to be careful, ” Book said, “about how we read about the framing of things and whether or not how it’s reported is about the company’s spend on novel technologies versus what they’re doing behind the scenes. … These are two different things. ” A cause for this discrepancy is what Book called “greenhushing, ” where companies are reluctant to trumpet their work on the energy transition, including CCUS, because it has become politically unpopular. “I think policy can be a solution, but, also, we’re in a political climate where policies can become a weapon. ” “It’s almost like a competition, ” she said, “to see who can outperform the other company and not talk about it. … That’s a reality where we’re at. ”
Adam Wilson (Fri,) studied this question.