Carbon capture was spruiked as a way of limiting our emissions – but has Australia been greenwashed?

CO2 tanks at a carbon capture and storage facility in Brevik, Norway. There are 77 such projects globally, but some experts say CCS remains a marginal technology that is ‘nowhere near a climate-relevant scale yet’. Photograph: Ajit Niranjan/The Guardian

The US energy company Chevron describes it as the world’s largest industrial carbon dioxide injection project of its kind. But it has a problem. It still isn’t working as promised and the results are getting worse.

The $3bn Gorgon carbon capture and storage (CCS) development, on Barrow Island off Western Australia’s Pilbara coast, was supposed to start operating in 2016, backed by $60m in federal government funding. Chevron and its partners in the project, including Shell and ExxonMobil, said it would capture up to 4m tonnes of carbon dioxide (CO2) from an underwater gas field each year and inject it in a reservoir more than 2km beneath the island.