Navigating the Carbon Landscape: The Economic and Environmental Footprint of Carbon Capture and Sequestration

Abstract

Carbon capture and storage (CCS) plays a critical role in reducing CO₂ emissions from industry and the atmosphere, but conventional cost and environmental assessments often overlook impacts across the full life cycle, including capture, transportation, and sequestration. This review provides a comprehensive evaluation of CCS by integrating technical feasibility, environmental performance, and economic factors, including storage scenarios in both onshore and offshore contexts. This study highlights key metrics such as global warming potential (GWP) and energy return on investment (EROI), along with cost estimates to assess overall effectiveness. The study finds that while some carbon capture technologies are already mature and widely deployed, carbon storage remains at earlier stages of development, indicating the need for further advancement to fully utilize CCS’s potential. Gas hydrate-based carbon capture (HBCC) offers advantages in terms of lower cost, reduced energy consumption, and lower carbon footprint (global warming potential, GWP) compared to other capture technologies. However, its widespread adoption is currently limited by lower technological maturity and challenges associated with continuous, large-scale implementation. Integrating HBCC with sequestration and combining multimodal transport systems with circular economy principles can significantly improve the efficiency of the CCS network and, eventually, its economic feasibility. By integrating life-cycle assessment with techno-economic and circular approaches, methane production from natural gas hydrates (NGHs) using hydrate-based carbon sequestration (HBCS) can reduce overall costs while minimizing waste and enhancing resource efficiency. With advancements in sustainable CO₂ separation, improved process efficiency, and increased technological maturity, HBCS is becoming more competitive and can enable methane production from NGHs at economically viable costs.