‘False solution’ hampering Pakistan’s climate goals
ISLAMABAD: Pakistan’s climate action plan submitted to the United Nations before COP30 in Brazil lists controversial ‘Carbon Capture Utilisation and Storage’ (CCUS) technology as one of the approaches to address climate change and decarbonise in line with the 2015 Paris Agreement.
The climate goals, or the Nationally Determined Contributions (NDCs), are submitted to the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change by all countries, outlining their ambition to decarbonise economies and transition away from fossil fuels.
In their third iteration, Pakistan pledged to ‘phase down’ coal by reducing emissions by 50 per cent, including 33pc funded by international finance, by 2035. For this task, Pakistan “requires $565.7 billion”, the document read.
These climate goals were prepared through a “participatory, open and transparent approach”, according to the government, but they have come under scrutiny for “carbon-intensive steps” and the absence of concrete measures to address the phaseout of fossil fuels – a major driver of climate change.
Islamabad-based think tank Policy Research Institute for Equitable Development (Pried), in an analysis, said the “open and transparent” approach did not reflect in the final NDC document.
“As far as acceptance by civil society and academia is concerned, that remains limited to a few non-governmental organisations closely aligned with the government and some academics working in public sector educational institutions,” it said.
The NDCs paid “only lip service to the elimination of fossil fuels in the energy sector” despite mentioning the “coal phase-down”, the Pried study, available on its website, read.
Though the NDCs proudly celebrate the moratorium on imported coal power plants, local coal remains the cornerstone of Pakistan’s energy policy, and untested and costly technologies, such as CCUS, are an attempt to perpetuate the use of fossil fuels, experts said.
CCUS is a “global distraction effort” whose “efficacy is questionable, and its financial rationale is worse”, according to the Institute for Energy Economics and Financial Analysis (IEEFA).
In a similar vein, it has been described as a false solution and a greenwashing measure promoted by fossil fuel companies, evident by the presence of hundreds of lobbyists at the UN climate conferences.
Maria Rehman, climate policy analyst at Islamabad-based Climate and Weather Services, said the CCUS is an engineering solution and comes under carbon dioxide removal (CDR). “It works by capturing carbon from industrial emissions and storing it in the ground, and requires advanced technology for implementation,” she noted.
The World Resources Institute (WRI) said in an article that this technology aims to reduce carbon dioxide emissions from major sources, such as power plants. Under this process, carbon dioxide is separated from other gases and stored underground or utilised in the production of other materials, such as chemicals and concrete, according to the US-based research institute.
Ammara Aslam, a climate change researcher at Pried, argued that CCUS was featured in the NDCs because the government wanted to “continue using locally sourced coal for power generation in the name of energy security” despite available alternatives in the form of renewables, such as solar and wind power.
Haneea Isaad at the IEEA argued that countries in Southeast Asia, like Japan and Malaysia, were looking at CCUS for prolonging the life of their coal and gas assets.
In the case of Pakistan, it may be “nearly impossible to consider an early phaseout” of Thar coal-based plants, as these plants rank at the top of the economic merit order due to strategic directives”, she said, adding that a phaseout of the imported coal fleet, however, would save billions.
For instance, the early retirement of the Sahiwal power plant could save up to $5 billion in “avoided capacity payments”, she noted.
Dr Muhammad Faheem Khokhar, head of the Environmental Sciences Department at the National University of Science and Technology, also made a similar argument. He told Dawn that Pakistan did not want to phase out coal, but “wants to make it cleaner” to reduce its carbon footprint.
Rehman, however, opined that featuring the carbon capture technology in the NDCs could be linked to its relevance with Article 6 of the Paris Agreement related to achieving emission reduction targets through carbon markets.
She said the technology was not financially viable for Pakistan. “With Pakistan facing dire economic challenges and its industrial sector being in a dismal state, acquiring CCUS is not viable in the near term.”
The IPCC Sixth Assessment Report Working Group III (AR6 WGIII) provides information regarding the potential contribution of currently available mitigation options to net emission reduction by 2030, she said.
“Here it shows that carbon capture with utilisation (CCU) as a mitigation option incurs a higher cost compared to its emission reduction potential,” Rehman said, adding that solar and wind have a greater potential while being economically viable.
“This further strengthens the argument on Pakistan’s economic inability to pursue this pathway.”
Dr Khokhar agreed that the carbon capture technology was “very expensive globally” and “a very tedious job, besides being energy intensive”.
He also pointed out geographical limitations, like depleted oil and gas fields for carbon storage, in deploying this supposed solution.
Speaking about how much capturing one tonne of carbon would cost, Dr Khokhar said costs could range from $20 per tonne to $1000, depending on the nature of the technology being deployed.
“So, it’s roughly $20 per ton, plus additional transport and logistic costs… in a very ideal scenario so far… It does not involve storage,” he said, adding that merely capturing can go up to over $1000 “if you are focusing on just direct air capture”.
Similarly, the IEEFA also mentioned the unfeasibility of the carbon capture projects. “Projects from Algeria to Texas demonstrate the technology’s troubled history of cost overruns and delays. Yet an IEEFA review of 16 projects finds that even though the industry claims a 95 per cent capture rate is achievable, no existing project has consistently captured more than 80pc of carbon,” a note on its website read.
Despite its financial unviability, carbon capture technology is mentioned in the national climate goals because Pakistan is a “power-hungry country”, and a quest for a “rapid solution” has taken the country down this road.
This myopic pursuit of so-called cheap energy will likely end up in “another type of levy”, like the capacity charges being paid by power consumers.
Aslam noted that the CCUS had been proposed as “an implementable mitigative action” to feed this dependence on coal. While appreciating the moratorium on imported coal, she warned about the danger of reliance on locally sourced coal, particularly Thar coal, for its environmental costs.
Scientists agree that fossil fuels are the major driver of global warming, and adaptation efforts will only become costlier if temperatures continue to climb.
“Local coal still holds a 12pc share in annual electricity generated within the country, which is a low-quality lignite coal, causing three times as many emissions as the higher-quality imported coal,” according to Aslam.
Isaad said that Pakistan’s moratorium on imported coal-based power was officially instituted in 2021, but this excluded plants on local coal or those already in the pipeline, such as the Gwadar coal project.
“However, financing challenges with new capacity additions are quite significant in Pakistan, not to mention the surplus situation of the grid, so any new coal development does not seem likely,” she said, adding that the proposed use of CCUS against this backdrop “becomes even more complicated, especially when this technology is not deemed feasible” by experts.
Besides its economic costs, the CCUS has also been described by civil society as a false solution that would harm the environment in the name of climate action. This technology has been routinely promoted by the industry at climate conferences, where the presence of carbon capture lobbyists has attracted flak from civil society groups.
A statement issued by Transparency International during COP30 in 2025 took exception to the presence of 531 Carbon Capture and Storage (CCS) lobbyists in Belém. “These lobbyists are shaping the climate discourse by promoting ‘solutions’ from which they stand to profit, rather than taking responsibility for reducing their own emissions,” the statement quoted Brice Bohmer, climate and environment lead at Transparency International.
Available alternatives
According to the Nust professor, there are “cheap” carbon removal solutions available, which could remove carbon from the air, but he noted that their capacity was limited.
He said his institute at NUST also introduced the idea of a CO₂ arrester to capture carbon dioxide from the air and from tailpipe emissions, besides introducing ‘carbon bins’.
The carbon captured from these technologies can be permanently removed and used in other products, such as glass manufacturing, tannery industries, and pesticides, he told Dawn. “…Under my supervision, we are capturing CO₂, and then we’re converting it into methanol,” he said, proposing another homegrown solution.
Speaking about the carbon bins project, Rehman noted that it was an innovative approach tapping into alternative solutions, but the major concern was the economic feasibility, as this was also a technology-based solution.
“Another concern is its integration into the industry and what impact it may or may not have on the current industrial processes. Such details are crucial in determining the applicability of the available technologies,” she said.
“CDR is necessary as emission reduction delays globally make overshoot inevitable. However, on-ground realities of Pakistan must be considered to determine the feasibility of this tech,” the expert noted. As per the WRI, CCUS is not the same as carbon removal, which involves removing carbon dioxide (CDR) already present in the air.
Rehman favoured nature-based solutions for carbon removal.
All net-zero scenarios compatible with 1.5 °C (agreed under the 2015 Paris accord) use CDR solutions, which include nature-based solution (Nbs), a low-hanging fruit especially in Pakistan’s context.
One such example is mangroves, which provide greater carbon storage as compared to other trees and are native to Pakistan’s southeastern coastline, she said.
“Another alternative was bioenergy with carbon capture and storage (BECCS), engineered carbon removal technology, which captures CO2 from biogenic sources (plants, agriculture residues, etc.) and stores it, with energy production as an additional benefit of this technology. The AFOLU-based mitigation actions in the AR6 report also have a higher potential towards net emission reduction,” the researcher noted.
These solutions, however, may ease the clean energy transition obstacles, according to experts, who added that phasing out fossil fuels is essential to stop global warming. “Investing in this expensive and unreliable technology will lock in fossil fuels and waste precious time and money that we cannot afford,” said Centre for International Environmental Law’s International Carbon Capture Campaigner Rachel Kennerley. “Large-scale CCS transport and storage also come with significant health and safety risks.”
Energy experts proposed a complete coal phaseout, however. “With the implementation of the Carbon Border Adjustment Mechanism (CBAM), and the world shifting away from coal and setting its net-zero targets, our government needs to step up and formally announce a definitive, legally binding national coal phaseout date, which applies to both imported and indigenous coal,” said Aslam.
Isaad, on the other hand, contested the idea of baseload power propagated by the government, saying that it is by “design and strategic preference” and not really a hurdle to phasing out coal.
Aslam further highlighted the importance of decarbonisation measures for a climate-vulnerable country like Pakistan.
“Without these (decarbonisation) measures in place, Pakistan’s positioning for procuring and securing climate finance becomes weakened,” warns Aslam.
Dawn reached out to Climate Change Minister Musadik Malik, the climate ministry’s public relations officer Rabia Habib, and Global Climate Change Impact Studies Centre head Arif Goheer for an official version, but despite repeated reminders, the response on why this costly solution was included in the climate goals was not received.
Header image: Picture showing a coal power plant. For representation only. — Pixabay