Mid-March saw the director of the US’s National Energy Technology Lab present a high-level overview of the organisation’s work on carbon capture and storage to date to an audience at Massachusetts Institute of Technology. More than 180 second-generation projects have so far been undertaken (some presumably still in progress), which has led to carbon capture costs falling by almost 50%, and energy consumption of capture technologies by nearly 20%. Computer simulations have screened more than one million mixed matrix membranes, identifying promising technologies for post-combustion capture. The Lab hopes that research will help to reduce the cost of carbon capture by an additional US$15/tonne CO₂ (€13.7/tonne). Further to this, NETL sees it work as not only being applicable to the fossil fuel industry, but more widely to other industries as well – biomass and waste combustion immediately spring to mind. Storage and utilisation research is also being carried out by the Lab, as well as work on materials engineering, computation, and fabrication. Industry will welcome the fruit of all of this research.