Canada's fossil fuel industry is banking on carbon capture to lower emissions. Is it a viable solution?

Fossil fuel companies in Canada have made carbon capture a key part of their pledges to reduce greenhouse gas emissions.

The idea is to minimize the amount of carbon that ends up in the atmosphere, while continuing to extract more oil and gas.

But is that realistic? And should the federal government be footing the bill, in the form a new multi-billion dollar tax credit and other incentives?

Here is a closer look at the technology, where it is being used in Canada, and how it could play into the pivotal climate talks that begin Thursday in Dubai.

Carbon capture has become something of an umbrella term applying to any technology that captures carbon dioxide (CO2) and injects it underground. That can mean filtering out carbon dioxide at an emissions source — such as a factory, power plant or oilsands facility — through what's known as "carbon capture, utilization and storage" (CCUS), or removing carbon dioxide that's already in the air with a process known as "direct air capture."

So far, most carbon capture projects around the world have used the CCUS model. Carbon dioxide concentrations are much higher coming out of a source like a furnace, making it cheaper and easier to extract.

Often in these cases, the captured carbon is used to extract more oil and gas from the ground — resulting in more emissions — with a process known as enhanced oil recovery (EOR). Carbon capture technology was originally developed by oil and gas companies for this purpose, and EOR remains its primary application worldwide.

In Canada, there are eight commercial carbon capture facilities in operation, all in Alberta or Saskatchewan, according to Natural Resources Canada. That includes five commercial-scale carbon management projects, along with three carbon transport and storage hubs that service multiple capture projects.

Six of those projects use at least some of the captured carbon for EOR.

More than a dozen additional projects are under construction or in the planning stages, including a proposal by the Pathways Alliance, a group representing major oilsands producers.

Pathways' $16.5-billion plan would involve building a massive pipeline to transport carbon from roughly 20 carbon capture facilities at oilsands sites in northern Alberta to an underground hub near Cold Lake, Alta., where it will be pumped into the earth and stored underground.

There are also a number of direct air capture projects in the early stages, including one off the coast of British Columbia that would sequester carbon under the ocean, and another in Quebec that received $25 million in provincial government funding.

Not very. The facilities capture about 0.5 per cent of Canada's total emissions, according to the International Institute for Sustainable Development.

That equates to roughly 2.7 million tonnes of CO2 equivalent per year — less than three per cent of the reductions needed for the oil and gas sector to contribute a fair share to Canada's 2030 target of a 40-45 per cent reduction below 2005 levels, the IISD says.