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The enemy isn’t fossil fuels. It’s not gas. It’s not even coal. The enemy is carbon dioxide. So carbon-capture technologies are the future. We need to get the CO2 out of our industrial and energy processes, and we need to move quickly.
If we don’t, a lot of these facilities are going to be forced to shut down. Keeping these operations working, and keeping workers employed, while reducing GHG (greenhouse gas) emissions, is the win-win story we need.
Carbon-capture works, and its technologies are improving all the time. Indeed, if all proposed carbon-capture projects in Canada go ahead, they could capture 115 million tonnes of emissions — 60% of Canada’s 2030 target.
Risk management is one of the few key policy issues to facilitate carbon capture and storage (CCS) in Class VI storage facilities that has not been the beneficiary of substantial policy revision in the past few years. Stakeholders are interested in the development of policy to effectively manage the safety, performance, and liability risks associated with containment of captured and stored CO2.
In 2019 the National Petroleum Council (NPC) issued at the Secretary of Energy’s request a report entitled “Meeting the Dual Challenge: A Roadmap to At-Scale Deployment of Carbon Capture, Use, and Storage in the United States,” containing a broad range of recommendations. Many view this as the premiere current report on CCS policy issues in the U.S. One recommendation was to “convene an industry and stakeholder forum to develop a risk-based standard to address long-term liability.” No such forum has been convened, but we are aware of interest.
The global pipeline of CCUS facilities more than doubled in 2021 with more than 100 new projects announced since 2020, IEA data shows. The surge can be attributed to net-zero ambitions, interest in low-carbon hydrogen, and an improved investment environment.
“The unprecedented momentum in 2021 provides cause for optimism that CCUS may finally be shrugging off an underwhelming track record to emerge as an important contributor to addressing the climate challenge,” Samantha McCulloch, head of the IEA’s CCUS unit, said. “This is both welcome and necessary. If net zero is to remain within reach, CCUS cannot spend another decade sitting on the sidelines of climate mitigation efforts.”
Carbon capture and storage (CCS) services for large industrial emitters could break even in the next 10 years if emitting a tonne of carbon costs around 100 euros per tonne, Equinor’s (EQNR.OL) CCS chief said at the Reuters Next conference.
Top U.S. oil-producing states are trying to wrest oversight of carbon capture wells from federal regulators, hoping to speed the oil industry’s preferred approach to combating climate warming amid calls for limits on fossil fuel production.
Companies are proposing carbon capture and storage (CCS) hubs to sequester greenhouse gas emissions from refineries, chemical and natural gas plants, a move that could help slow global warming.
The rules governing the carbon-injection wells for most states require federal approval with the first permits taking around six years to win a green light.
Oil states, including Texas and Louisiana, want to take over permit reviews and enforcement authority, also known as primacy, from the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) for carbon dioxide (CO2) and other greenhouse gas storages sites.
Many have bashed CCS technologies for being unproven or nascent, despite their long-standing use in the oil and gas industry as well as other core industries. In fact, CCS has been in commercial use for 50 years, now capturing over 35 million tonnes of CO2 every year. The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change has modeled hundreds of potential scenarios to achieve the climate goals set out in the 2015 Paris climate agreement, aiming for net-zero carbon emissions by the mid-century, and the one that continually came out on top was CCS.
Summit plans to capture the carbon dioxide emissions from ethanol and other industrial agricultural plants before they’re released into the atmosphere and contribute to global warming. The company will compress the emissions into a liquid so it can be transported to North Dakota, where it will be injected in underground rock formations for permanent storage.
Senators Rob Portman and Michael Bennet back in May introduced the bill to help finance carbon capture projects, reduce emissions and boost innovation. Through the act, the duo also hopes to make it easier for power plants and industrial facilities to install carbon capture, utilisation and storage (CCUS) equipment, as well as direct air capture (DAC) technology. It is thought the above can be achieved through the use of private activity bonds.
The cost to release carbon has never been higher in Europe and it’s poised to keep increasing, creating a tipping point where preventing the emissions becomes a viable economic alternative. Capture technology already is used in North America and Australia, and large projects are being developed in the U.K., Netherlands and Norway. Carbon prices could reach 100 euros as soon as 2025, according to Bank of America Corp. At that level, it’s more economical long-term for some sectors using natural gas to capture their emissions rather than paying for permits to release them
Just a single bill—the bipartisan infrastructure legislation that passed the Senate last week and is now headed to the House of Representatives—includes more than $12 billion in direct support for carbon capture, and could unlock billions more through other programs, according to the recent drafts.
Power production enabled with CCS allows us to do away with the overbuild of the solar, wind, and batteries’ complex. Attempting to overcome intermittency with a brute-force, overbuild approach is truly staggering.
The Baker Hughes study estimated that 1.0 million MT per year of CO2 can be sequestered in the saline formations located deep underground at or near the Aemetis Keyes ethanol plant site. The study noted that up to 1.4 million MT per year of CO2 should be injectable at or near the Aemetis Riverbank site due to the favorable permeability of the saline formation and other factors. Each MT of CO2 is planned to generate approximately $200 per MT from the California Low Carbon Fuel Standard and $50 per MT of IRS 45Q tax credit. Legislation is pending in Congress to increase the federal tax credit to $80 per MT of CO2 and to provide billions of dollars of grants and loans to finance CCS projects in the U.S.
Nine projects researching new methods for direct-air carbon capture and storage will receive $24 million in funding from the U.S. Department of Energy. DOE announced the funding for Direct Air Capture (DAC) experimentation and research efforts. Carbon reduction efforts may not be enough to help reach the federal goals of net-zero carbon by 2050.
INEOS Energy, Wintershall Dea, as part of a consortium, signed an agreement to support the next phase of the Greensand pilot project to demonstrate the safe and permanent storage of CO2 in the Danish North Sea.
Pennsylvania is ideally suited to help the nation fight global warming by becoming a leader in the effort to capture and store emissions of carbon dioxide, state officials say. Their quest has just received a jolt of legitimacy from President Joe Biden’s massive climate plan, which calls on a greater nationwide effort to capture, store and re-use carbon dioxide.
A new generation of pipelines could be born out of the bipartisan infrastructure deal making its way through Congress. But instead of hauling oil and gas, the pipelines would carry planet-heating carbon dioxide. The full text of the bill, which senators released on August 1st, recasts the suite of emerging carbon capture and removal technologies as essentially a new type of critical infrastructure. “Carbon dioxide transport and storage infrastructure share similar barriers to deployment previously faced by other types of critical national infrastructure, such as high capital costs and chicken-and-egg challenges, that require Federal and State support, in combination with private investment, to be overcome,” the bill reads.
Valero Energy Corp. and a unit of BlackRock Inc. are teaming up with Navigator Energy Services to develop an industrial-scale pipeline to gather, transport and store carbon dioxide (CO2) emissions from sites in five Midwest states. The newbuild system, which initially would run more than 1,200 miles across Illinois, Iowa, Minnesota, Nebraska and South Dakota.
A campaign, coordinated by Center for International Environmental Law, counters that “at best” CCS prevents some emissions from reaching the atmosphere – provided the captured gases are not later released.At worst, the coalition claims, CCS masks emissions, increases pipeline infrastructure, and prolongs the fossil fuel era.
Proponents of carbon capture technologies believe they can play an important and diverse role in meeting global energy and climate goals. The topic is divisive, however, with climate researchers, campaigners and environmental advocacy groups arguing that carbon capture technology is not a solution.
BayoTech and CarbonFree Chemicals are to develop a pilot hydrogen production site with carbon capture technologies as part of a new partnership.Dubbed SkyCycle™ the carbon capture technology is an on-site solution that mineralizes carbon dioxide (CO2) captured from the generator and creates products for sale or safe storage.
Shell said it plans to build a large-scale carbon capture and storage (CCS) project near Edmonton, Alberta, joining a number of other companies proposing clean energy initiatives in Canada’s main oil-producing province.
Global governments are increasingly realising the role that carbon capture technology can play in meeting sustainability goals, evidenced by the Canadian government’s recent investment of CDN$25 million (US$20 million) in Vancouver-based company Svante. The investment was made through the Strategic Innovation Fund’s Net Zero Accelerator, a state initiative launched in 2020 whose aim is to accelerate the use of clean technologies to help decarbonise the Canadian economy.
Large-scale CCS initiative Acorn now involves most of the big oil and gas groups in the North Sea. The Acorn project aims to join up a cluster of industrial hubs close to the North Sea that account for about 80% of all Scotland’s industrial carbon emissions. Exxon said the Acorn Project :has the potential to provide more than half of the 10M tons per years of CO2 targeted by the UK government
The bid is on behalf of the East Coast Cluster, a collaboration between leading companies from across Teesside and the Humber which aims to advance the government’s world-leading ambition to establish the first ‘net zero’ carbon industrial cluster in the UK by 2040. These two regions account for nearly 50% of all UK industrial cluster emissions.
The most radical, and possibly contentious, proposal would impose tariffs on certain imports from countries with less stringent climate-protection rules. The proposals also include eliminating the sales of new gas- and diesel-powered cars in just 14 years, and raising the price of using fossil fuels. The trade disputes are likely to center on the so-called carbon border-adjustment tax, which the European Union sees as a way to protect its own industries from unfair competition from countries with less stringent and less costly environmental standards; others call the proposed tax protectionist. The plan, at least so far, would include imports on items like steel, cement, fertilizer and aluminum and could impact goods from such countries as China, Russia and the United States.
British chemical firm Ineos and Petroineos have signed a memorandum of understanding (MoU) to join the Acorn CCS Project, Scotland’s first carbon capture and storage (CCS) system. The investment at the Grangemouth site will allow the annual capture and storage of approximately one million tonnes of CO2 by 2027, with the scope for significant additional volumes.
Iowa is a recognized leader in renewable fuel and food production, and this is another opportunity to lead and be innovative, invest in Iowa agriculture and facilitate new sources of revenue for our agriculture and energy sectors.
Carbon capture pipelines can help Iowa ethanol plants “maintain a competitive advantage,” Durham said, as many states and some countries implement low-carbon fuel standards that gives better pricing to lower-carbon fuels.
The paper describes how the existing CO2 infrastructure could be leveraged and expanded to boost carbon storage outside of enhanced oil recovery — with the researchers highlighting the subsurface geology offshore of the Gulf Coast as a suitable spot for permanently storing CO2.
Renewables alone can’t resolve the net zero emissions challenge. We have to think in terms of carbon avoidance and carbon removal. Policy support is a pre-requisite to support the economics, including a minimum carbon price of US$90/tonne for most industrial applications at scale. ‘Coopetition’ is the way forward, joining forces with the competition to identify concentrated clusters of carbon emissions, shared transport infrastructure and basin-wide storage.
The Dutch government has granted a consortium that includes oil majors ExxonMobil and Shell around $2.4 billion in subsidies for what will be one of the largest carbon capture and storage (CCS) projects in the world. The project aims to capture CO2 emitted by factories and refineries in the Port of Rotterdam area and store it in empty Dutch gas fields in the North Sea. It is worth noting that the Dutch Climate Agreement, agreed to some two years ago, already includes CCS and the government believes that its 2030 target can’t be reached without it.
Several bills creating benefits and financing for carbon capture have been introduced in Congress and are seeing movement through bipartisan support. Carbon capture, also known as carbon capture, utilization, and sequestration (CCUS), is the process of gathering carbon dioxide (CO2) emissions, typically from sources such as coal-fired power plants. Once captured, the greenhouse gas is usually stored or reused so it does not enter the atmosphere, where it is harmful to the environment.
To go fast enough and big enough on climate change, we need to unleash innovations in carbon dioxide removal (CDR) and put the power of markets behind scaling them up. The U.S. commitment to cut emissions 50-52 percent by 2030 and get to net-zero economy-wide by 2050, are big, transformative goals. But as special climate envoy John Kerry said, “Even if we get to net-zero by 2050, we still have to suck carbon dioxide out of the atmosphere … That means we need the innovative technologies to do that.”
The Carbon Storage Program’s Wellbore Integrity and Mitigation Technology Component comprises efforts to improve wellbore construction materials to ensure safe and reliable injection operations and long-term containment of carbon dioxide (CO2) in the storage complex. In addition, the Wellbore Integrity and Mitigation Technology Component also addresses the need to prevent and correct any release of CO2 from its intended geologic storage complex.
Storage Complex Efficiency and Security provides improved tools to design effective injection operations, optimize injection rates, manage pressure, make efficient use of reservoir storage space, and ensure the sealing capability of caprocks, both onshore and offshore. Development of these tools relies upon an understanding of carbon dioxide (CO2) plume and brine pressure front movement and stabilization, along with knowledge of the geomechanical and geochemical impacts of CO2 injection on storage complex in diverse geologic settings. The movement of CO2 in the reservoir, and accompanying changes in pressure are affected by many factors, such as the magnitude and distribution of various hydrologic properties of the reservoir rock, reservoir size, structural features such as baffles and fractures, sedimentary variations, the in-situ stress state, and diverse geochemical reactions.
Monitoring, Verification, Accounting (MVA), and Assessment research is focused on three key technologies: subsurface monitoring, atmospheric and near-surface monitoring, and intelligent monitoring. The combination of atmospheric, near-surface, and subsurface monitoring technologies provides a multilevel approach to confirm permanent storage of carbon dioxide (CO2). Intelligent Monitoring Systems (IMSs) that provide real-time, actionable information for operational control of storage projects will reduce the costs associated with carbon storage.
To support the development of regional infrastructure for carbon capture and storage (CCS), the U.S. Department of Energy (DOE) created a network of seven Regional Carbon Sequestration Partnerships (RCSPs).
The RCSP Initiative began in 2003 with characterization of each region’s potential to store carbon dioxide (CO2) in different geologic formations. Characterization activities in the Carbon Storage Program originally started as Phase I of the RCSP Initiative (the “Characterization Phase”) and included cataloging regional CO2 sources, characterizing CCS prospects, and prioritizing opportunities for future CO2 injection field projects. In 2005, validation of the most promising regional storage opportunities was initiated through a series of small-scale field laboratory projects (Validation Phase). The Validation Phase led to the successful completion of 19 small-scale field projects in a variety of storage complexes (8 in oil and gas fields, 5 in un-mineable coal seams, 5 in saline formations, 1 in basalt), providing information on reservoir and seal properties of regionally significant formations, testing, and initial validation of modeling and monitoring technologies. In 2008, the RCSP focus turned to large-scale field laboratories in saline formations and oil and gas fields with a target of injecting at least 1 million metric tons (MMT) per project in the Development Phase of the RCSP Initiative. Numerous applied research technologies have been integrated into these projects and the results have been essential in further technology development of CCS.
Characterization field laboratory projects focus on storage complex that can support the deployment of carbon capture and storage (CCS) technologies in both onshore and offshore settings. A key gap in the critical path toward CCS deployment is the identification and detailed characterization of geologic storage sites for the storage of 50+ million metric tons (MMT) of carbon dioxide (CO2) from industrial sources. The Carbon Storage Assurance Facility Enterprise (CarbonSAFE) Initiative has been deployed to focus on development of geologic storage sites for the storage of 50+ MMT of CO2 from industrial sources.
Fit-for-Purpose projects are focused on developing specific subsurface engineering approaches that address research needs critical for widespread deployment. Data from Fit-for-Purpose field projects will validate National Risk Assessment Partnership (NRAP) tools for reservoir modeling and assessing site-specific risks of leakage and induced seismicity at the 50+ million metric tons (MMT) scale. The research and development (R&D) performed in these projects will have crosscutting benefits to integrated subsurface science, including sharing technology testing data and information, project field sites to test technologies developed, best practices, and modeling and simulation capabilities as part of a network of U.S. Department of Energy (DOE) field test sites for various applications (geothermal, nuclear waste isolation, shale gas, and unconventional oil).
Energy Data eXchange https://edx.netl.doe.gov/
CO2-Screen https://edx.netl.doe.gov/dataset/co2-screen?__no_cache__=True
National Risk Assessment Partnership https://edx.netl.doe.gov/dataset/co2-screen?__no_cache__=True
jbarone@shaledirectories.com
