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Carbon capture, storage, and utilization (CCUS) is widely
recognized as one of the technologies that will contribute towards
reducing global carbon emissions, if the world's economies are to
reach the Paris Agreement goal of net zero by 2050. Proposals for
CCUS have emerged with greater frequency in 2021 than ever before,
and governments and private industry appear poised to spend
unprecedented sums to bring large-scale projects into service.
In this Q&A, Net-Zero Business Daily speaks with
Ruth Herbert, chief executive of the Carbon Capture and Storage Association, which
has offices in London and Brussels. The UK's Climate Change
Committee's Sixth Carbon Budget "makes clear that CCUS is a
necessity, not an option, for reaching net-zero GHG emissions, and
that the evidence base is clear that UK deployment of CCUS is
required to unlock the greatest opportunities for cost reduction,"
Herbert says.
Given that conclusion, Herbert discusses the "lessons learned"
in the UK's development of CCUS, and shares ideas for how success
can be achieved in the next decade.
Net-Zero Business Daily: What does development of CCUS
in the UK look like today?
Herbert: The UK government's Net Zero Strategy has set out
clearly the role that CCUS will play in reducing the UK's
emissions—storing up to 30 million metric tons (mt) per annum
by 2030, rising to 50 million mt per annum by 2035. These are
serious targets that require a concerted effort from the public and
private sectors.
The approach to CCUS deployment in the UK has changed
significantly [since its introduction in 2015]. The focus is now on
developing the CO2 transport and storage infrastructure that will
lay the foundations for CCUS clusters, rather than the
previous approach of developing individual CCUS point-to-point
projects.
CCUS in the UK will therefore be focused around the coastal
industrial regions, known as the "Industrial Clusters." The UK
currently has six clusters looking to move ahead and operate in the
2020s. These are located in Merseyside, the Humber (two sites),
Teesside, South Wales, and St. Fergus in Scotland. The location of
these clusters also facilitates the development of non-pipeline
transportation options, where CO2 can be captured overseas and
transported by ship to be stored offshore in the UK subsurface.
The development of CCUS clusters with shared infrastructure, in
the UK's industrial heartlands where most of our emissions are
concentrated, enables multiple emitters to significantly reduce
their emissions—delivering significant economies of scale. We
anticipate that over time, providing this infrastructure is
accessible, it will drive inward investment into these regions from
heavy industries seeking to decarbonize their products.
Net-Zero Business Daily: What lessons have been learned
from other projects around the world?
Herbert: CCUS is not new technology, and there
are many decades of experience in capturing, transporting, and
storing CO2 in a variety of industries. There have been several
projects that have advanced our understanding of how CO2 behaves in
the subsurface. For example, the Equinor Sleipner CCS facility in
Norway has been safely and permanently storing approximately 1
million mt of CO2 per year since 1996 deep under the North Sea.
This project has provided significant learnings with regard to
subsurface movement of CO2 [and because] all data [are] publicly
available [it is] enabling other storage projects to benefit from
this experience.
Challenges faced by past projects have also provided important
lessons for project design and operation. The Gorgon project in
Australia faced problems with its injection facilities. As an
isolated site with no alternative storage, this meant less CO2 was
stored than intended. This highlights why developing multiple
storage sites in parallel and enabling shipping of CO2 to
alternative stores is important.
Gorgon is always cited in discussions about the reliability of
CCUS, which indicates how much of an impact projects that don't go
well have on the credibility of the industry as a whole. So, it's
really important that all projects, whether public or privately
funded, focus on due diligence and communicate effectively. It's
also key that early projects share information about things that
went wrong so lessons are learned and not repeated in other
projects. The Carbon Capture and Storage Association plays a key
role in enabling industry to share information about projects past
and present.
Net-Zero Business Daily: What problems
are most important to solve—cost, speed, integration of carbon
emissions with the capture technology, etc.?
Herbert: The main challenges facing CCUS at the
moment are related to regulation and incentives.
The UK government has a stated ambition for CCUS to deploy at
least two clusters by the mid-2020s, with a further two clusters
operational by 2030 to achieve its Net Zero Strategy target. The
selection of projects is progressing through the Cluster Sequencing
process, with the Track 1 Transport & Storage
clusters announced in October last year. The announcement on
projects which will connect to these clusters is expected in the
next few months.
The UK is fortunate to have advanced CCUS cluster proposals in
key industrial regions. If the UK is to achieve its net-zero
target, it is vital that all these clusters progress as soon as
possible, and it is therefore crucial that the government provides
clarity on the timeline for Track 2 and subsequent industrial
clusters and the associated funding rounds to enable project
deployment. CCSA is working with the industry and the government to
establish a clear delivery plan to support the deployment of a
sector capable of capturing and storing 50 million mt of CO2 per
year by 2035.
Net-Zero Business Daily: What are the next steps in the
development of the government's program?
Herbert: The UK government is in the process of
defining the business models for CCUS and the funding envelope to
support these. It is crucial that these are urgently advanced and
are investable, to enable industry to make investment decisions in
line with the government's CCUS and climate goals.
The Department for Business, Energy
& Industrial Strategy's most recent update, published on 6
January, makes good progress on the development of the CO2
transport and storage regulated model, but there is a lot more
detail to iron out around network development and operation, and in
particular the role of non-pipeline transport. Further effort is
also required on low-carbon hydrogen production business models and
provision of an investable business model for greenhouse gas
removal, including bioenergy with CCS and direct air capture with
storage.
Another challenge, which affects all low-carbon technologies, is
the question of building a supply chain and the associated skills
required. The Engineering Construction Industry
Training Board has noted that the number of skilled workers in
oil and natural gas—those who are likely to make the move into
energy transition projects—is declining as the world moves away
from traditional energy sources. There is therefore a need for
better alignment of the required skills needed for CCUS to ensure
we have the workforce to develop and grow this crucial
technology.
Net-Zero Business Daily: New
technologies are emerging for the "capture" aspect of CCS. Can you
comment on their potential for reducing costs?
Herbert: Achieving cost reduction in carbon
capture is important in relation to deployment of technologies in
the sector. Both the development of new processes, and the
advancement of existing systems through the various stages of
commercial deployment, are important elements in allowing cost
reductions to be achieved.
There have been many developments in research related to
enhancing capture technologies. A capture rate of 95% or more is
now achievable. There are many developments in R&D focused on
enhancing capture technologies, such as ALIGN-CCUS and LAUNCH.
Continued and growing collaboration between universities,
research institutions, and industry are driving this innovation.
The CCSA represents members developing a variety of diverse capture
technologies, often spin-outs from research projects, and some of
these are at a critical stage of trying to scale up from a pilot
facility to a demonstration-scale facility. The challenge is they
often fall through the cracks between research and innovation
funding and the kind of deployment funding that is on offer in the
UK cluster program.
Net-Zero Business Daily: It seems like
there are bigger partnerships on projects now and a goal of moving
from bespoke projects to more standard projects. This is similar to
oil and producers using gathering lines.
Herbert: As mentioned earlier, the development
of CCUS clusters—where multiple emitters from a variety of
industries—to share CO2 transport and storage infrastructure,
represents the most cost-effective way to achieve significant
emissions reductions and economies of scale. In the future, the UK
will have CCUS clusters all over the country, each one transporting
captured CO2 offshore for permanent storage deep under the sea.
Going forward, the UK will also be crucially placed to receive CO2
from countries which do not have storage capabilities and work with
future developing European CCUS clusters.
Each of these clusters will require the construction of pipeline
and capture assets, some newbuild and others retrofitted onto
existing industrial assets. Alongside the development of CO2
networks, many industries will be looking to switch to hydrogen as
a fuel, in many cases using hydrogen produced with CCS (blue
hydrogen). These industries likewise will need the construction of
new hydrogen production facilities, and distribution and storage
assets—again, these are expected to be sited in the industrial
clusters.
Net-Zero Business Daily: What would be
a mark or two of success in the next five years in CCS
installations that would tell us this technology will truly have a
significant contribution to solving the carbon emissions
problem?
Herbert: In five years' time we will have at
least two clusters operational in the UK, with a further two
clusters on the way to operation before the end of the decade. We
will be halfway towards the ambition to capture up to 30 million mt
of CO2/year by 2030. We will also be producing low-carbon hydrogen
using CCUS, with the aim of 5 GW of hydrogen production capacity by
2030. In addition, we will have a strong pipeline of projects from
other industrial regions and more dispersed sites looking to access
the CO2 infrastructure.
This means that plans will be underway for UK network expansion.
Ongoing exploration and appraisal activity will be critical to
ensuring sufficient storage capacity can be brought forward to
achieve 2035 and 2040 targets.
We are already starting to see industry's choices about where to
invest being based on a region's ability and commitment to capture
and store their carbon in the near future. The availability of
net-zero clusters from the mid-2020s onwards is going to make a
huge impact on inward investment in UK regions. In summary, we will
have a world-leading low-carbon industry operating in the UK, as
part of an exciting and fast moving global CCUS sector, which will
be expanding at pace.
Posted 11 January 2022 by Kevin Adler, Chief Editor
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