A contrarian take on carbon capture

Industry’s slow start actually mirrors that of solar, wind and nuclear.

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Climeworks is partnering with CapturePoint to store CO₂ removed from the atmosphere in its Central Louisiana Regional Carbon Storage Hub. Above, a conceptual rendering for Project Cypress Southwest in Calcasieu Parish, La.

(Mark Hulbert, an author and longtime investment columnist, is the founder of the Hulbert Financial Digest; his Hulbert Ratings audits investment newsletter returns.)

CHAPEL HILL, N.C. (Callaway Climate Insights) — Carbon capture and storage is so unpopular that contrarians have become interested.

Contrarians bet against popular opinion. The late economist Humphrey Neill, widely considered to be the father of contrarian analysis, wrote in his book, The Art of Contrary Thinking, that “when everybody thinks alike, everyone is likely to be wrong."

Carbon capture and storage (CCS) refers to a collection of technologies that hope to capture CO₂ emissions before they make it into the atmosphere, and then permanently sequester the captured CO₂. It’s easy to understand CCS’ unpopularity: Up until now the vast majority of pilot CCS projects have been failures — more than 90% by some reckonings. Even those rare instances in which projects have been considered successes have been on such a small scale that it strains credulity to envision that carbon capture can ever make a serious dent in the greenhouse gas emissions the world continues to spew into the atmosphere.