There's more to 'Buried trouble' than whether carbon dioxide should be injected under urban areas or offshore (Nature 463, 871–873; 2010). Some barriers to carbon-sequestration measures are less immediately noticeable than public opinion.

For example, the technology should be incorporated into developing energy systems. In most scenarios produced by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), much larger volumes of CO2 will be captured in China and India by 2050 than in developed countries. But the scale and pace of energy-systems development, and the necessary carbon capture and storage (CCS) technology transfers, are daunting.

People optimistic about CCS technology transfer to developing countries should remember that transferring even cost-saving technologies (transgenic seeds, for example) has been difficult. We should develop transfer incentives by recognizing CCS investments within the Clean Development Mechanism of the Kyoto Protocol. We must also limit uncertainties surrounding CCS investments in developing countries, particularly in protecting intellectual property in capture technologies.

Another barrier to CCS is that countries with a weak manufacturing capability are not in a strong position to develop lucrative carbon capture technologies. The Australian government, for example, has committed Aus$2.4 billion (US$2.2 billion) to its CCS Flagships Programme. But two of the projects rely on capture technologies from Japan (Mitsubishi in the ZeroGen Project) and the United States (GE in the Wandoan Power Project). Governments need to balance their desire to support emerging domestic CCS technologies against importing potentially better technologies from abroad.

CCS solutions are also subject to the vested interests of national politics. In the coal-heavy economies of Canada, the United States and Australia, for example, governments promote CCS in their emissions-reduction promises, but they have been reluctant to mandate the technology.

The real barrier to CCS is that, even in enthusiastic countries, the focus is on selling CCS solutions rather than on mandatory CCS deployment. Advocates should commit to a firm timeline for mandatory CCS on all new and retrofitted large emitters.