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The following article is an extract of the second white paper of the work carried out by CPSE colleagues in the Sustainable Gas Institute, Imperial College London:“Budinis, S., Krevor, S., Mac Dowell, N., Brandon, N. & Hawkes, A.(2016). Can technology unlock ‘unburnable carbon’? The Sustainable Gas Institute (SGI) is a unique academic-industry partnership, and a ground-breaking collaboration between the United Kingdom and Brazil. Its role is to provide thought leadership and drive research into the technology that could underpin a sustainable role for natural gas in the global energy landscape. The aim of the SGI White Paper series is to conduct systematic reviews of literature on topical and controversial issues of relevance to the role of natural gas in future sustainable energy systems. This results in highly accessible and widely circulated reports on the state of knowledge with regard to the issue in question, along with identification of the key areas for future research to resolve shortcomings in understanding, identify key technologies and provide critique of assessment processes. The full paper can be downloaded here.

The concept of ‘unburnable carbon’emerged in 2011, and stems from the observation that if all known fossil fuel reserves are extracted and converted to CO2 (unabated), it would exceed the carbon budget and and have a very significant effect on the climate. Therefore, if global warming is to be limited to the COP21 target, some of the known fossil fuel reserves should remain unburnt.