THE administration of Prabowo Subianto is busy promoting carbon capture and storage (CCS) technology as a way of mitigating climate change. But is this really to prevent a 2-degree-Celsius rise in global temperatures, or simply an excuse to maintain the dominance of industries based on fossil fuels?

CCS works by capturing carbon dioxide (CO2) emissions from industry or power plants before they are released into the atmosphere, then storing them in underground geological formations. The government claims that this technology has been used for 45 years in a number of countries from the United States to the Middle East. However, the long history in other countries is no guarantee that CCS is the most effective solution to mitigate the climate crisis in our nation.

The main criticism of CCS is that the technology does not reduce emissions but simply processes the carbon waste that is produced. This means that industry is still allowed to contaminate the environment as long as they are prepared to pay for carbon storage. This is a way to allow the coal industry to continue operations, despite the Paris Agreement clearly calling for a reduction in the use of fossil fuels of 25 percent by 2030 and of 80 percent by 2050.

Furthermore, the CCS concept is at odds with the principles of climate mitigation drawn up by the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change. Mitigation emphasizes the transition to renewable energy and an increase in the capacity of natural carbon absorbers, such as forests. Ironically, the Prabowo administration has set aside the plan for early retirement for a number of coal-fired power plants previously put forward as part of the climate mitigation strategy.

And the scale of carbon capture by CCS is very small compared to total global emissions. In 2021, this technology only absorbed around 39 CO2 equivalent tons, or around 0.1 percent of the 36 billion tons released into the atmosphere every year. And the initial investment and operational costs of CCS are very high compared to renewable energy technology such as wind or solar power.

Suspicions about the climate promises from the Prabowo administration are not unfounded given the inconsistencies of the policies it has proposed. In December 2024, Prabowo called for the expansion of oil palm plantations, ignoring the threat of deforestation. Meanwhile, the Forestry Ministry policy allocating 20.6 million hectares of land for food, energy and water projects is almost certain to lead to the destruction of more intact forests.

The dominance of economic interests behind climate mitigation policy is also reflected in Presidential Regulation No. 14/2024, which explicitly states that the drawing up of CCS regulations should not only consider the Nationally Determined Contributions in the Paris Agreement, but also the investment potential. In many agreements, the explanation from the government also puts greater emphasis on the US$28 billion investment potential from the 25.5 million ton carbon storage capacity for 2030 than the urgency of reducing emissions.

Given the direction of policy in the first 100 days of the Prabowo administration, the trumpeting of CCS appears to be more representative of business interests packaged as climate change mitigation.