Do We Still Need Carbon Capture & Storage? | Ep250: Emmanouil Kakaras

This week on Cleaning Up, Michael Liebreich is joined by Emmanouil Kakaras, engineer, academic, and Senior Advisor at Mitsubishi Heavy Industries EMEA, for a grounded, technical conversation about the intersection of emissions and engineering: gas turbines pushing the limits of thermodynamics, the trade-offs between hydrogen, ammonia, and synthetic fuels, and why carbon capture keeps coming back into the conversation. Kakaras draws on decades in both academia and industry to explain how decisions actually get made inside large engineering companies, and why the energy transition isn’t about picking a single “winner,” but deploying a mix of solutions at scale. Leadership Circle: Cleaning Up is proud to be supported by its Leadership Circle. The members are Actis, Alcazar Energy, Arup, Copenhagen Infrastructure Partners, Cygnum Capital, Davidson Kempner, Ecopragma Capital, EDP, Eurelectric, the Gilardini Foundation, KKR, Mitsubishi Heavy Industries, National Grid, Octopus Energy, Quadrature Climate Foundation, Schneider Electric, SDCL and Wärtsilä. For more information about the Leadership Circle, visit cleaningup.live Links and more: • Mitsubishi Heavy Industries: https://www.mhi.com/ • Iron-Air Man - Ep144: Mateo Jaramillo:    • Iron-Air Man - Ep144: Mateo Jaramillo   • Cracking the Geothermal Code - Ep58: John Redfern:    • Cracking the Geothermal Code - Ep58: John ...   • The Dane who Harnessed the Wind - Ep139: Henrik Stiesdal:    • The Dane who Harnessed the Wind - Ep139: H...   • Ep121: Prof. Rob Miller "Jet-Zero Hero":    • Jet-Zero Hero - Ep121: Prof. Rob Miller   • Padeswood CCS: Decarbonizing cement production in the UK https://padeswoodccs.co.uk • Primetals: A decade of pioneering green steel solutions https://spectra.mhi.com/energy-transi... • Large Heat Pumps and the future of district heating https://spectra.mhi.com/energy-transi... • The geothermal plant behind Europe’s lithium push https://spectra.mhi.com/energy-transi... • What role will ‘new nuclear’ play in the energy transition? https://spectra.mhi.com/energy-transi... Chapters: 00:00 - Coming Up 00:37 - Introduction 04:55 - Mitsubishi Heavy Industries 08:30 - More Than Gas Turbines? 12:00 - Hydrogen 16:00 - Ammonia 20:00 - Energy Economics 24:45 - Carbon Capture 29:00 - Hard To Abate Sectors 36:00 - Green Steel 42:00 - Large-Scale Batteries 46:10 - Heat Pumps 49:00 - Geothermal 54:00 - Nuclear 58:00 - Synthetic Fuels 01:02:30 - Methanol 01:08:45 - Outro