Communicating your Technological Readiness Level - Can we Really Halt Climate Change Without Using Pilots?

CCS facilities are communicated by engineers and scientists as being “ready and safe”. However, “ready and safe” may seem obtuse to most common observers. In engineering, including NASA, US DoE and at the latest Horizon2020 calls, the Technology Readiness Levels are used to indicate how mature a technology is. These ranges from Basic Science (TRL 0) via feasibility studies (TRL 3), testing of components (TRL 5), small pilots (TRL 6), big pilots (TRL 7), actual bespoke working systems (TRL 8) and actual application of technology in its final form (TRL 9). In this paper we apply this system to CCS Facilities in Europe. We will argue the degree of readiness using Technology Readiness Levels, indicating how far we are from “rolling out” the techniques is, is a more sustainable method to get CCS implemented to stop climate change effects from the green-house gas carbon-dioxide. As the TRL-system is a visualization of the way progressing technologies can go from invention to commercial product, there is no way around implementing pilots to bridge the knowledge gap from TRL 4-5 to pilots in TRL 6 and 7 as fast as possible to learn how we can reach TRL 8 and 9.