The Guardian covered a new research paper co-authored by Stuart Jenkins, Margriet Kuijper, Hugh Helferty, Cécile Girardin, and Myles Allen, models the application of Extended Producer Responsibility (EPR) to fossil fuels. Published in Environmental Research Letters, the paper concludes that compelling fossil fuel producers to pay for carbon cleanup could end these fuels’ contribution to global warming without pitting climate action against meeting society’s energy needs—at a relatively affordable cost.

From the article:

The principle that the producer of pollution should pay for its clean-up is established around the world, but has never been applied to the climate crisis.

Yet technology to capture and store carbon dioxide underground is advancing, and is now technically feasible, according to Myles Allen, a professor of geosystems science at the University of Oxford.

“The technology exists – what has always been lacking is effective policy,” he said. “The failure has been policy, not technology – we know how to do this.”

The companies that profit from extracting fossil fuels – oil, gas and coal producers around the world – should be paying for an equivalent quantity of carbon dioxide to be stored geologically as a condition of being allowed to operate, he argued.

The full article can be accessed here.

To access the paper and learn more about the research, click here.