CO2 capture: will technology save us?

Cli­mate change is undoubt­ed­ly the most press­ing issue of our time, and we are now at a piv­otal moment. The effects of cli­mate change are unprece­dent­ed in scale, from chang­ing weath­er pat­terns that threat­en food pro­duc­tion to ris­ing sea lev­els that increase the like­li­hood of cat­a­stroph­ic flood­ing. If we do not act now, it will be more dif­fi­cult and cost­ly to adapt to these effects in the future. 

From an eco­nom­ic point of view, we can use mit­i­ga­tion tech­niques, which, by avoid­ing or lim­it­ing the release of green­house gas­es (GHGs) into the atmos­phere, reduce the sever­i­ty of the effects of cli­mate change. The Inter­gov­ern­men­tal Pan­el on Cli­mate Change (IPCC) has empha­sised that to meet the goals of the Paris Agree­ment and lim­it the tem­per­a­ture increase to 1.5°C, we need to use tech­nolo­gies that remove car­bon from the atmos­phere, in addi­tion to step­ping up our efforts to reduce emis­sions. One such tech­nol­o­gy, CCS (Car­bon Cap­ture and Stor­age), could prove cru­cial in the fight against glob­al warming.

The num­ber of CCS projects has increased by 44% since 2021.

As observers at COP27, we were able to talk to var­i­ous rep­re­sen­ta­tives of gov­ern­ments and inter­na­tion­al organ­i­sa­tions, as well as to experts in the sec­tor. The high­light: car­bon cap­ture and stor­age (CCS) tech­nol­o­gy is the tech­no­log­i­cal advance that is receiv­ing the most atten­tion. The shift from ambi­tion to action is unequiv­o­cal, giv­en the data on CCS invest­ments. In 2022, the total capac­i­ty of CCS projects under devel­op­ment was 244 mil­lion tonnes per year of car­bon diox­ide. But how exact­ly does it work?

In essence, CCS involves cap­tur­ing car­bon diox­ide pro­duced by pow­er plants or oth­er indus­tri­al process­es, such as steel or cement pro­duc­tion, trans­port­ing it and then stor­ing it under­ground. Saline aquifers or deplet­ed oil and gas reserves, which are usu­al­ly at least 1 km below the sur­face, are poten­tial stor­age sites for car­bon emis­sions. Along­side CCS is a sim­i­lar idea called CCUS, which stands for Car­bon Cap­ture, Uti­liza­tion and Stor­age. The con­cept is to recy­cle car­bon in indus­tri­al process­es by turn­ing it into plas­tics, con­crete, or bio­fu­el instead of stor­ing it.

In Sep­tem­ber 2022, the Glob­al CCS Insti­tute count­ed a total of 196 CCS projects, of which 30 were already oper­a­tional and 153 were still under devel­op­ment. The num­ber of CCS projects has increased by 44% since 2021, con­tin­u­ing the upward trend in CCS projects under con­struc­tion that began in 2017. The past 20 years of expe­ri­ence have high­light­ed the diver­si­ty of appli­ca­tions for CCS and its key role in man­ag­ing emis­sions from indus­tri­al processes.

Through the CCS net­works, we expect to see an increase in strate­gic alliances and col­lab­o­ra­tion to dri­ve imple­men­ta­tion. With sev­er­al blue hydro­gen projects under devel­op­ment around the world, clean hydro­gen and oth­er low car­bon fuels are also part of the growth of CCS. Direct Air Cap­ture with Car­bon Stor­age (DACCS) has also seen an increase in inter­est and par­tic­i­pa­tion this year, with bil­lions of dol­lars in fund­ing ear­marked for scal­ing up this technology.

Although promis­ing, these tech­nolo­gies remain con­tro­ver­sial, notably for finan­cial and polit­i­cal rea­sons. Indeed, the eco­nom­ic effort deployed for the devel­op­ment of these strate­gies is con­sid­er­able, for results that are cer­tain­ly promis­ing but still uncer­tain. More­over, by con­cen­trat­ing efforts on car­bon seques­tra­tion tech­nolo­gies, it is pos­si­ble that those involved in the eco­log­i­cal tran­si­tion will side­line the issue of emis­sions reduc­tion, so much so that poli­cies geared towards the deploy­ment of CCS are described by their detrac­tors as “levers for cli­mate inaction”. 

The deploy­ment of CCS can­not be achieved with­out gov­ern­ment inter­ven­tion, which makes it a high­ly polit­i­cal issue.

CCS infra­struc­ture is expen­sive, which makes it dif­fi­cult to attract investors, espe­cial­ly as the ben­e­fits are not always evi­dent. For exam­ple, in the Unit­ed States, 11 CCS projects had been under­tak­en by the Depart­ment of Ener­gy by the end of the 2000s, eight of which were in the coal sec­tor at a cost of $684 mil­lion. Of these eight projects, only one was com­plet­ed and oper­a­tional from 2017 to 2020. In Europe, CCS projects are also on the rise, with north­ern Euro­pean coun­tries (Nor­way, the Nether­lands, and the UK) announc­ing more than €5bn to be invest­ed in CCS. 

Accord­ing to an Ifri report, the cost of CO2 cap­ture, trans­port and stor­age is between €40 and €200/tonne with cur­rent­ly avail­able tech­nolo­gies – the high­er end of this range cor­re­spond­ing to par­tic­u­lar­ly pol­lut­ing infra­struc­tures such as pow­er plants and waste incin­er­a­tion plants. This cost, although decreas­ing with the evo­lu­tion of the tech­nol­o­gy, remains high­er than the price of CO2 on the car­bon mar­ket, under­min­ing the incen­tives for pri­vate actors to invest in CCS. 

Deploy­ment of CCS can­not there­fore be achieved with­out gov­ern­ment inter­ven­tion, which makes it an high­ly polit­i­cal issue. The ques­tion of pub­lic invest­ment in CCS says a lot about coun­tries’ or regions’ strate­gies for achiev­ing the 1.5°C tar­get set by the Paris Agree­ment, and about their vision of the eco­log­i­cal transition. 

The lead­ers in CCS today are the states and actors whose economies are based on fos­sil fuels: in Europe, for exam­ple, CCS are main­ly pro­mot­ed by pol­i­cy­mak­ers in coun­tries whose ener­gy mix is main­ly based on oil and gas. In the world, the lead­ing coun­tries for these tech­nolo­gies are Cana­da and the Unit­ed States, which also have a high­ly con­cen­trat­ed ener­gy mix. Dur­ing the COP27 nego­ti­a­tions, the Gulf States, and in par­tic­u­lar the Unit­ed Arab Emi­rates, also showed their enthu­si­asm for CCS, which was pre­sent­ed as one of their main levers of action for achiev­ing the objec­tive of Zero Net Emis­sions by 2030. 

In the pri­vate sec­tor, the main sup­port­ers of CCS devel­op­ment are also oil com­pa­nies: Exxon­Mo­bil and Big Oil in the Unit­ed States, Total­En­er­gies and Tech­nip in France, which are sus­pect­ed of using their invest­ments in CCS as a means of divert­ing pub­lic atten­tion from their oil and gas activ­i­ties to pre­serve them. Indeed, COP27 was strong­ly marked by the pres­ence of oil and gas pro­duc­ers, who were 25% more numer­ous than at the pre­vi­ous COP in Glas­gow. The CCS was at the cen­tre of their dis­course on their strat­e­gy to decar­bonise their activities.

Coun­tries such as Qatar, Kuwait, the Unit­ed Arab Emi­rates (UAE), Bahrain and Sau­di Ara­bia are among the top ten per capi­ta car­bon emit­ters. As a result, the Mid­dle East, and North Africa (MENA) is con­sid­ered one of the most green­house gas inten­sive regions. 

In Sharm, dis­cus­sions of our hopes for tech­nol­o­gy revolve main­ly around CCS. Inter­est­ing­ly, one of the main play­ers on the inter­na­tion­al scene pro­mot­ing this tech­nol­o­gy is the Unit­ed Arab Emi­rates, which will host the Con­fer­ence of the Par­ties in 2023. 

As a tech­nol­o­gy with great poten­tial, CCS is in any case cen­tral to inter­na­tion­al dis­cus­sions on the cli­mate issue, and its devel­op­ment will need to be part of a com­pre­hen­sive tran­si­tion strat­e­gy with clear and con­crete objectives.