Carbon Capture and Storage: Cure or Con?
Despite global enthusiasm, Carbon Capture struggles to move beyond wishful thinking
Sep 27, 2024
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Dhanistha Baruah
With the end of the world hurtling towards us at striking speed, have we finally woken up to acknowledge the ominous presence looming on the horizon?
The dawn of a climate crisis brings with it a new legion of passionate reformers, and in the wake of a renewed era of climate activism, we witness the genesis of several initiatives. And while they seem to reignite a flicker of hope in dire times, it is essential to examine whether they are born out of genuine concern or if they serve to fulfil selfish motives.
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Introduction
One such venture that is often heralded as the ultimate ‘solution’ to our carbon problem, is Carbon Capture Utilisation and Storage (abbreviated as CCUS hereafter).
CCUS, while not a new concept, has gained more traction in recent years. An ideal solution on paper, it is stated to have the ability to unlock the complete potential of decarbonization and achieve carbon neutrality. CCUS is essentially capturing CO2 from sources such as coal power plants, refineries, and other industrial facilities or directly from the atmosphere. The captured CO2 is then compressed and transported via pipelines, ships, and trucks where it finds use as an input in commercial products and services or is injected into geological structures as a permanent storage option.
The process, simply put, would include capturing CO2 emissions from the atmosphere, recycling it for utilisation and storing it for future use. It claims to be the conclusive solution to carbon pollution, that alternative energy sources and energy-efficient systems have not, and will not deliver.
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The Problem
When things are too good to be true, it’s because they usually are. Though CCUS has been internationally acclaimed, it merely remains a utopian dream for the most part. Why is it so?
Implementation costs
To begin with, the implementation costs for CCUS are immense. You would think investing billions of dollars would yield at least some incremental change, but it’s quite the opposite, with barely any successful endeavours and several underperforming plants.
An intensive IEFEA study assessed 13 flagship projects only to conclude that 10 of the 13 projects either failed or severely underperformed. The Petra Nova coal plant and the San Juan Generating Station (both located in the US), once the pride and joy of the CCUS fanbase, consistently underperformed before being shut down.
In 2021, the US Energy Department announced 12 million in funding for “direct air capture” projects which aimed to remove 100,000 tons of carbon dioxide annually. To put this into perspective, the largest corporate polluter—just one of many—released 119 million tons of CO2 equivalent into the atmosphere in 2018. Plotted on a graph, the Energy Department’s targeted CO2 removal would barely be visible to the naked eye.
The U.S. Department of Energy spent $6.9 billion between 2005 and 2012 in an attempt to prove the practicality of CCUS in coal but was instead met with microscopic results and disappointment.
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More harm than good?
For something that aims to remove CO2 emissions, CCUS often ends up doing the exact opposite of what it stands for. The process of setting up industries is highly energy intensive and actually ends up increasing emissions, nullifying its very goal.
Oil Change International and the US Environmental Protection Agency, reported that “A power plant equipped with a CCS system … would need roughly 10 to 40% more energy than a plant of equivalent output without CCS.” In Canada, while Shell’s Quest plant was capturing 4.81 million tonnes of carbon annually (Mt/yr), it was emitting almost 3 times more (12.47 Mt/yr) in greenhouse gases from supply chain emissions and from the power needed to run the CCS system.
Additionally, the actual process of removing carbon is an extremely demanding affair. To put into perspective, CO2 emissions from industries and fossil fuels amounted to 37.12 billion metric tons in 2021, and removing 1 billion tons of that through direct air capture would demand almost the entire electricity output of the United States.
Risks associated with storing Carbon
Even if we managed to capture carbon efficiently by some god-sent miracle, there are significant risks that come along with storing carbon securely.
The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) stated that: “CO2 storage is not necessarily permanent. Physical leakage from storage reservoirs is possible via (1) gradual and long-term release or (2) sudden release of CO2 caused by disruption of the reservoir.” CO2 can be leaked from storage locations and it can go on to contaminate groundwater and soil, similar to what happened when a CO2 pipeline ruptured in Yazoo County, Mississippi — an incident that ended up compromising residents’ health and the local flora and fauna.
Another high-profile, expensive example is that of the Salah project in Algeria, a carbon capture project with a total cost of US$ 2.7 billion. Carbon injection began in 2004 but was immediately terminated in 2011 owing to ‘concerns about the integrity of the seal’ and the worrying movement of the captured CO2 under the ground.
Capture Carbon? Nah, Capture Cash
With how adamant many Big Oil corporations are on proving that CCUS is the one-stop solution, you would think they are either super passionate about saving our planet, or they have really bad abandonment issues. Turns out it’s neither.
It’s cash. Plain and simple.
About three-quarters of all the CO2 captured annually is used to serve the fossil fuel industry via EOR. The Institute for Energy Economics and Financial Analysis has estimated that a significant amount of the total captured carbon throughout history found its use in enhanced oil recovery—approximately 80 to 90 percent. EOR increases greenhouse emissions by a considerable chunk and contrary to whatever Big Oil corporations might have to say, enhancing oil production is not an actual climate solution.
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CCUS in India
On 29th November 2022, India’s NITI Aayog released a study report that presented CCUS as the key to ‘ensuring sustainable development and growth in India’ which would lead to an ‘Atmanirbhar Bharat’, but it is yet to become a mainstream concept.
Currently in India, CCUS only finds use in industries where carbon capture is already part of the process (for example, in the manufacturing of urea). Reliance Industries Limited in Jamnagar and JSPL in Angul also capture carbon during the gas conditioning process in their gasifiers, but the majority of the CO2 is not put to use or stored and is instead released into the atmosphere. Storing CO2 remains a critical problem that poses significant risks.
The current geographical data available to identify pore space in India for storing CO2 is quite limited. This is especially true for saline aquifers i.e. porous rocks that hold saline fluid between their pore spaces, and basaltic storage—which involves reactive rocks such as basalt. These rocks react with carbon dioxide, transforming it into a solid mineral form over a long period of time in a process that’s known as mineralization.
India has also had no projects dedicated solely to CCUS. There have been a few small-scale projects to capture carbon like the Tata Steel plant in Jamshedpur, which captures 5 tonnes of CO2 per day from blast furnaces. However, no commercial-scale projects exist for the same.
While the report aims to find scalable and economically sustainable solutions, CCUS is not a satisfactory answer to either of the above. We need to recognize that even with highly developed carbon utilisation technologies, their impact on reducing carbon emissions will be minimal. CCUS also comes with a variety of technical, financial, and safety risks that need to be carefully evaluated before it can be deemed a viable solution for India’s carbon problem.
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Conclusion
The real hazard related to carbon capture is perhaps its popularity. CCUS would allow governments and industries to perceive it as a license to continue emitting greenhouse gases instead of striving to focus on comprehensive emission reduction strategies. Investing in CCUS technology diverts attention, time, and resources from actual solutions that might work in the face of a climate crisis. In the little time we have, we cannot sit idly and be swayed into believing the projects doomed to fail will have a change of heart by some miracle and save us all.
References
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