My early research focused on estimating plant-level carbon emissions from energy-intensive industries, including thermal power, iron and steel, and cement, at the global scale. Working at the level of individual facilities fundamentally changed my understanding of emissions. They were no longer abstract sectoral aggregates, but the direct outcome of specific technologies operating in specific locations. However, this focus on technology choices led me to overlook whether proposed solutions were scalable, timely and economically realistic in practice.
A turning point in my thinking came from Mac Dowell et al. (2017)3, a Perspective article discussing the role of carbon capture and utilization (CCU) in climate mitigation. This insight naturally pushed my research beyond emissions accounting towards a deeper question: how energy-intensive industries can decarbonize in ways that are not only technically feasible, but also scalable, timely and economically realistic in practice.
Rather than focusing on technological readiness, the paper reframed mitigation as a problem of scale and rate. It made clear that a technology’s climate relevance depends on whether it can be deployed rapidly and at volumes comparable to existing energy systems. This insight reshaped how I view CCU: as a stage-dependent option, the prospects of which hinge on whether early deployment can be enabled — most notably through economic incentives such as CO2-enhanced oil recovery.
This Perspective article also prompted me to think more carefully about the spatial dimension of mitigation, as a natural extension of questions about scale and deployment. More specifically, where such options can realistically be deployed at scale. That question was later reinforced by Wei et al. (2021)4. What I took from this study was a clearer understanding that mitigation feasibility is inseparable from where emissions and resources are located. By linking emissions clusters with geological storage basins, the paper highlighted how geology and transport distance act as binding constraints, demonstrating that mitigation pathways are inherently place-dependent.
Together, these papers led me to a broader realization: decarbonization pathways are not simply functions of emissions and abatement costs. They emerge from the interaction of infrastructure scale, spatial configuration, sectoral complementarity and resource endowments. Whether certain technology can contribute meaningfully in the near to medium term depends on whether it can be deployed at sufficient scale, within realistic spatial constraints and under credible economic conditions.
This perspective has since guided my own work on plant-level decarbonization pathways and carbon capture, utilization and storage (CCUS) deployment strategies. More importantly, it has shaped how I think about energy transitions more broadly. Many low-carbon options — geological storage for CO2, wind and solar resources, and hydrogen production potential — are inherently spatial. Designing credible mitigation pathways therefore requires moving beyond technology-centric comparisons, towards approaches that explicitly account for physical, geological and spatial realities. In this sense, these studies shaped not only my view of CCUS, but my broader approach to studying climate mitigation itself.
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