Carbon capture faces its technological and economic limits

The future con­tri­bu­tion of CCS (Car­bon Cap­ture and Stor­age) and CCU (Car­bon Cap­ture and Util­i­sa­tion) tech­nol­o­gy in decar­bon­i­sa­tion has become almost indis­putable. The ques­tion now being: what is the right strat­e­gy if we are to achieve the cap­ture of 450 mil­lion tonnes of CO2 by 2050?
 
“The path for the deploy­ment of CCS (stor­age) and CCU (util­i­sa­tion) is not set in stone, but it is imper­a­tive that States adopt a long-term vision,” says Paula Coussy, project man­ag­er for CO₂ Exter­nal­i­ties, Mar­kets and Car­bon Cer­ti­fi­ca­tion at IFP Ener­gies nou­velles (IFPEN¹), empha­sis­ing the impor­tance of Nation­al­ly Deter­mined Con­tri­bu­tions (NDCs). Key ele­ments of a plau­si­ble sce­nario include:

1. cap­ture tech­nolo­gies must pri­ori­tise sec­tors with­out oth­er alter­na­tives for reduc­ing CO₂ emissions;
2. the first CCS and CCU val­ue chains must be in place by 2030 at the indus­tri­al sites cov­ered by the car­bon mar­ket (EU ETS²), which are the cement, chem­i­cal, steel and alu­mini­um industries;
3. in line with the phas­ing in France, the cumu­la­tive cap­ture tar­get of 4 to 8 Mt CO₂/year should be reached by 2035 by the indus­tri­al port hubs of Le Havre, Dunkirk, Saint-Nazaire and the Rhône corridor.

The Euro­pean strat­e­gy sets three mile­stones: stor­ing 50 Mt/year of CO₂ by 2030, cap­tur­ing 280 Mt/year by 2040 (includ­ing 60 Mt/year by Direct Air Car­bon Cap­ture [DACC]), and 450 Mt/year (includ­ing 150 Mt/year by DACC) by 2050³. Ambi­tious tar­gets that are achiev­able accord­ing to the experts… under “cer­tain con­di­tions”, first and fore­most of which is a car­bon price (EU ETS) to sup­port CCS and CCU investments.

“In the face of the Euro­pean leg­isla­tive and reg­u­la­to­ry frame­work, we have tools,” says Paula Coussy, point­ing out that from 2026, car­bon quo­tas should grad­u­al­ly dis­ap­pear in favour of the Car­bon Bor­der Adjust­ment Mech­a­nism (CBAM). These tools are those required to com­ply with Euro­pean Com­mis­sion direc­tives.
 
“In the run-up to its deploy­ment, the mar­ket will be dri­ven by reg­u­la­tion,” says Raphaël Huyghe, CO₂ Cap­ture and Stor­age pro­gramme man­ag­er at IFPEN, empha­sis­ing the cost of inac­tion com­pared to the cost of action. For exam­ple, a study by ADEME (2023) esti­mates that cli­mate inac­tion for France would cost between 5 and 7 points of annu­al GDP by 2100, or more than €180bn, result­ing in a 13% reduc­tion in medi­an income by 2050, while the financ­ing cost for the action is esti­mat­ed at €66bn per year by 2030⁴. On a glob­al scale, a study pub­lished by Nature⁵, esti­mates that inac­tion will result in $38tn in dam­ages by 2050, six times more than cli­mate action.

Today, accord­ing to Paula Coussy, the risk is not tech­ni­cal but finan­cial: “There is a gap between the cur­rent invest­ment need and the as-yet unknown car­bon penal­ty in 2050.” While com­mer­cial busi­ness mod­els are being built along the CCS and CCU val­ue chain, the aim is to “clar­i­fy the finan­cial respon­si­bil­i­ty of CO₂” through a frame­work for the cer­ti­fi­ca­tion of avoid­ed or elim­i­nat­ed emissions.

In view of the cost of the CCS and CCU val­ue chain, the car­bon penal­ty on the EU ETS, cur­rent­ly €80/t CO₂, is in fact cur­rent­ly insuf­fi­cient incen­tive for heavy invest­ment, and is expect­ed to rise to €180/t CO₂ in 2035. How­ev­er, “the long-term vision must be to invest in cap­ture” says Paula Coussy, not­ing that the cur­rent major­i­ty posi­tion of man­u­fac­tur­ers is to pre­fer pay­ing for CO₂ emis­sions quo­tas. In their defence, the CCS val­ue chain is new to them (130 to 230 €/t CO₂, depend­ing on the type of CCS val­ue chain), hence the need for emit­ters to join forces to reduce costs and pur­sue innovation. 

To achieve decar­bon­i­sa­tion tar­gets by 2050, the IPCC and the Inter­na­tion­al Ener­gy Agency believe that tech­nolo­gies for the cap­ture, trans­port, stor­age and use of CO₂ are essen­tial. “It is a sequence of tech­no­log­i­cal build­ing blocks aimed at reduc­ing emis­sions of CO₂ (the main cause of cli­mate change) that allow us to inte­grate its cap­ture, trans­port and stor­age,” explains Raphaël Huyghe, empha­sis­ing that the two val­ue chains, CCS and CCU, are com­ple­men­tary, but with dif­fer­ent purposes. 

How­ev­er, these “build­ing blocks” have been mas­tered tech­no­log­i­cal­ly and can be com­bined: we know how to cap­ture CO₂ in indus­tri­al fumes (CO₂ from fos­sil com­bus­tion), from bio­genic sources (CO₂ from bio­mass com­bus­tion) or direct­ly in the atmos­phere using Direct Air Car­bon Cap­ture tech­nol­o­gy (with a low­er lev­el of matu­ri­ty, but which promis­es neg­a­tive emis­sions), we know how to inject it into sealed geo­log­i­cal for­ma­tions for per­ma­nent and safe stor­age and, final­ly, we also know how to use it to man­u­fac­ture prod­ucts and mate­ri­als.
 
While the cir­cu­lar car­bon econ­o­my mod­el using cap­tured CO₂ in e‑fuels and e‑products is par­tic­u­lar­ly promis­ing, with the devel­op­ment of CO₂ in Sus­tain­able Avi­a­tion Fuels (SAF), it is not at all on the scale of the stor­age that will rep­re­sent mil­lions of tonnes and must pro­vide the fastest pos­si­ble response to the cli­mate emergency.

“The tech­nol­o­gy has been devel­oped, is being imple­ment­ed in stages, and the chal­lenge is to roll it out on a large scale, on the one hand by reduc­ing costs through­out the CCUS val­ue chain, in par­tic­u­lar cap­ture, and on the oth­er hand by stim­u­lat­ing invest­ment through nation­al and Euro­pean strate­gies or poli­cies and pub­lic fund­ing com­bined with finan­cial mech­a­nisms (CCfd),” sum­maris­es Raphaël Huyghe. The tech­nol­o­gy must be based on its tech­no-eco­nom­ic via­bil­i­ty to enable large-scale deploy­ment in order to move from 50 Mt of CO₂ cap­tured in 2025 to 1 Gt in 2030 and 6 Gt of CO₂ in 2050⁶), and at the same time it will be nec­es­sary to accel­er­ate the devel­op­ment of stor­age sites and coor­di­nate all the play­ers in the val­ue chain.
 
“We have known how to cap­ture CO₂ for a cen­tu­ry, but today we are chang­ing our objec­tive,” con­firms Flo­rent Guil­lou, CCS project man­ag­er, spec­i­fy­ing that in Europe’s “net zero” in Europe by 2050 (EU Indus­tri­al Car­bon Man­age­ment Strat­e­gy, Feb­ru­ary 2024), it is a ques­tion of com­bin­ing 3 decar­bon­i­sa­tion levers: the reduc­tion of CO₂ emis­sions, the defos­sil­i­sa­tion of uses and the direct elim­i­na­tion of car­bon. Among the four types of CO₂ cap­ture (pre-com­bus­tion, oxy-com­bus­tion, post-com­bus­tion and DACC), two have been test­ed and are now ready for industrialisation:

• DMX^TM tech­nol­o­gy enables sec­ond-gen­er­a­tion post-com­bus­tion CO₂ cap­ture. The indus­tri­al pro­to­type, built and oper­at­ed at the Arcelor­Mit­tal site in Dunkirk as part of the Euro­pean 3D/DinamX project coor­di­nat­ed by IFPEN, has val­i­dat­ed the per­for­mance of the process (11 Euro­pean Union part­ners for 5 years [2019–2024] with a bud­get of €24m).
• CLC tech­nol­o­gy (chem­i­cal loop­ing com­bus­tion of sol­id fossil/biomass charges [1 t/h]) is the result of 7 years of R&D (2017–2024) by 9 part­ners from the Euro­pean Union and Chi­na with an over­all bud­get of €22m⁷.

“These tech­nolo­gies are now ready for com­mer­cial­i­sa­tion among large emit­ters, and our future devel­op­ments will con­sist of inten­si­fy­ing the process­es for more com­pact and more acces­si­ble units, intend­ed for small and medi­um-sized emit­ters,” says Flo­rent Guil­lou.
 
After almost a cen­tu­ry of expe­ri­ence in CO₂ sep­a­ra­tion, the time has come to democ­ra­tise tech­nolo­gies to help meet the chal­lenge of com­bat­ing cli­mate change. While CCUS tech­nol­o­gy is not the one­glob­al solu­tion to decar­bon­i­sa­tion, it can be a major play­er in it!

Nathaly Mermet