From the UK Energy Research Centre
Carbon capture and storage — new research from UKERC shows tough road ahead to realize potential
Research highlights key challenges for the government’s new CCS strategy
Government plans to develop carbon capture and storage (CCS) technologies to reduce carbon emissions received a cautious welcome today. A new report concluded that most of the uncertainties facing these technologies can – in principle – be resolved.
Carbon capture and storage: realising the potential? is the culmination of a two-year project funded by the UK Energy Research Centre (UKERC). The report assesses the technical, economic, financial and social uncertainties facing CCS technologies, and analyses the role they could play in achieving UK energy policy goals. Its publication today follows the announcement earlier this month of a new long-term strategy for CCS by the Department of Energy and Climate Change, including the re-launch of the UK’s £1 billion competition to develop commercial scale CCS projects.
The report’s lead author, Professor Jim Watson, Director of the Sussex Energy Group at the University of Sussex says:
‘We still don’t know when CCS technologies will be technically proven at full scale, and whether their costs will be competitive with other low-carbon options. So it is vital that the Government’s commitment to these technologies leads to several full scale CCS projects as soon as possible. Only through such learning by doing will we know whether CCS is a serious option for the future, and how the technical, economic and legal uncertainties currently facing investors can be overcome’
The report draws lessons from history, and concludes that previous technologies have faced similar challenges to those affecting CCS technologies today. In the past, such uncertainties have been resolved sufficiently for these technologies to succeed. While care is needed when learning from history, the findings offer some optimism that, given the right actions by government and industry, the uncertainties surrounding CCS can also be dealt with.
But even if rapid progress is made with the UK’s re-launched demonstration programme, which aims to have CCS plants operational later this decade, difficult choices will remain for government and other decision makers, say the authors. The report identifies four key areas where such choices need to be made:
- Deciding whether to keep options open, or close them down. The French government focused on one technological variety early on for its nuclear programme. Doing this for CCS may help speed up development, but there is a risk of picking inferior technology. The authors caution that it is too early for government and industry to close down on a particular variant of CCS technology. They welcome the plans for several substantial demonstration projects which will help to identify which variants of CCS technology can be scaled up successfully.
- Designing financial support for effective CCS demonstration and deployment. A regulatory approach that makes CCS compulsory for all fossil plants will only work if the technology is more advanced, and the additional costs can be passed onto consumers. CCS technologies are not yet at this stage. In the mean time, the government should ensure that industry maximises efficiency and minimises costs of new CCS plants. History shows that not all demonstrations will perform as expected, and government should ensure that lessons are learned from successes and failures.
- CCS deployment is a marathon, not a sprint. Developing new energy technologies can take a long time, and the process is often far from smooth. The report shows that costs do not necessarily fall in the way supporters hope – and can rise for several years before they come down, as technologies are scaled up. This requires patience. Government also needs to ensure it has an independent capability to assess costs to inform future decisions about whether to continue with public funding for CCS or to divert resources to other low carbon options.
- Dealing with storage liabilities. The report shows highlights lessons from UK nuclear waste management policy to show how complex liability arrangements for CO2 storage could be. For CCS, a balance needs to be struck between limiting liabilities for investors and protecting the interests of future taxpayers. Agreements will be needed on where this balance should lie, and what arrangements are needed to fund and insure against potential liabilities.
Professor Watson comments:
‘It will be vital to keep options open in the government’s CCS commercialisation programme. Whilst it is welcome that the government has learned from the mistakes of the past, and now plans to support a number of CCS technologies, there is a long way to go before CCS is a reality at full scale. Complex negotiations with industry lie ahead. As the National Audit Office argued recently, such negotiations require substantial capacity and skills within government to bring such negotiations to a successful conclusion.’
Copies of the report (strictly embargoed until 00.01 am on Thursday 19 April) are available for download at http://www.ukerc.ac.uk/support/tiki-index.php?page=ES_RP_SystemsCCS. The working papers, relating to the historical case studies referred to in the final report, are already available for download on this page, as is a UKERC Policy Insight Paper on carbon capture and storage, offering a summary of the key issues around the technology.
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Simple. Build dry ice plants. Build hydrolosis plants by the dry ice plants. Build nuke power plant next to them and simply recycle the CO2 into pure gasoline. Give a discount to Sierra Club members and for anyone owning, running or having stock in the soon to be banned windmill bird-o-chop-o-matic.
Oh, and can make methane and diesel and other hydros as well.
And let the Sierra Club and all the greenies pay for at by using the “Mann Rule” of taxing any greenie at 99%. Somehow the math just works out so nicely.
The report draws lessons from history, and concludes that previous technologies have faced similar challenges to those affecting CCS technologies today. In the past, such uncertainties have been resolved sufficiently for these technologies to succeed.
Unfortunately, their review of historical analogues failed to consider the defining characteristic of CCS of adding a gross inefficiency to a process. Kinda like always driving your car with a trailer containing 2 tons of rocks.
Can anyone name a ‘technology’ that ‘succeeded’ by making a process grossly inefficient?
Professor Jim watson, the floor is yours …
I like the caption of the diagram – “clean CO2”. Also, the enviromentalists are opposed to fracking but all in favor of stuffing a useful gas underground. What’s the diff?
John F. Hultquist says:
April 18, 2012 at 9:04 pm
But it demonstrates how deeply they care! Oh, the HUMANITY!!!
Correct me if i’m wrong, but is it not true that soda pop and soda water give off the CO2 when the can is opened? The pop goes flat because the CO2 is back in the atmosphere.
Coca-Cola and Pepsi should set up plants near the Carbon emission offenders, and make pop. Then store this pop in warehouses. After nature has proven that CO2 has not caused global warming/climate change, and the Alarmists have finally been shut up, Coke and Pepsi can be distrubted to everyone. I care about my grandchildren — free pop. /sarc off
If CCS were wanted (n.b. it is pointless and costly) then the cheapest method is to process flue gas as follows.
1.
freeze the CO2 to become blocks of ‘dry ice’ (this would fractionate the CO2 from the N2),
2.
transport the solid ‘dry ice’ to the sea
3.
drop the ‘dry ice’ into the deep ocean (Marianas Trench?)
The ‘dry ice’ would sink to the bottom, melt to liquid CO2 (yes, liquid at that pressure), then remain as a pool of liquid on the ocean floor for millenia.
Some CO2 would be lost from the blocks of ‘dry ice’ during transportation and while sinking to ocean bottom. We tested this by putting blocks of ‘dry ice’ in an open tank of water. An insulating layer of water ice formed over the blocks and they lasted for weeks.
Richard
Just as in golf, there’s something else that goes into that hole in the ground besides the ball (or CO2 in this case)…it’s your money.
Something in there about ‘learning from history…’
Ah – that would be the lessons learnt from our ancestors abandoning wind power to grind corn and drain fens – because its – er – intermittent….
Oh – wind is different now..? Who knew..??
If CCS had a chance of turning a good quid, industry would have developed it by now. Government agencies seldom develop anything except a thirst for funds ander the excuse of the misnomered Precautionary Principle. Put it in private enterprise and watch the profit motive work the same magic it has for centuries.
“The French government focused on one technological variety early on for its nuclear programme.” Pourquoi? Do French reactors produce CO2?
There’s a much easier way of sequestering carbon–simply bury old newpapers in landfills, where they will keep almost indefinitely since newspaper doesn’t decompose (digging into old landfills finds newspapers 100+ years old that are still easily readable).
An average yearly newspaper subscription received every day produces about 550 pounds of waste paper every year. (The average New York Times Sunday edition produces 8 million pounds of waster paper on each and every Sunday!)
It doesn’t take fancy or expensive equipment to sequester all that carbon that’s headed for the landfill anyway. (Although as a CO2 aficionado, I’d rather see it burned to replenish and enhance the CO2 levels in the atmosphere, but then I’m just some weird biosphere-loving human, whereas these people apparently are not.)
Any energy we obtain by producing CO2 is solar by origin – stored in complicated carbon structures by ancient organisms. To safely store CO2 produced, our only option is to use solar energy yet again – either by feeding that CO2 to photosynthesizing bacteria or plants, or by technical methods based on similar principle. Any other approach is futile because to store CO2 safely we need more energy than how much we obtained by producing it.
There’s an extremely simple solution to this problem. One only needs an unlimited supply of soda lime. Oh, wait.
“We still don’t know when CCS technologies will be technically proven at full scale, and whether their costs will be competitive with other low-carbon options.”
Watson should rest easy. Undoubtedly, CCS will be equally effective in flushing money down the loo as are other “low-carbon options” to fixing a non-problem.
Coke, Pepsi and my personal favorites Diet 7-up and Diet Dr. Pepper contain a lot of CO2. I can see a new super bowl ad (in 2020) by the carbonated beverage association. “Drink more soda, the carbonation in your refreshment is sourced from your local power plant.”
I think I will just adapt, thank you. Now…can I have my money back?
If they are not using some chemical process to change the CO2 into something else there is the unfortunate problem that at any time a lethal CO2 geyser may spout at the containment site killing everything in the immediate area. Creating very large concentrations of CO2 in an area where there are things that can’t live in high CO2 concentrations can be dangerous. They think that if they pump it into the ground it will stay there? Residents around several deep lakes with CO2 pools at the bottom might be able to show the results of the CO2 overturning and killing – except no one survives when it happens except those lucky enough to not be in the area at the time, of course they return home to the sad task of burying their loved ones!
Of course if the abiotic oil theory has any merit, they may be producing future Oil or Natural Gas pockets for future generations. (If they don’t kill everyone in the area first!)
And so the UK is moving closer to the edge…..
The world worried about the wrong currency to fail?
I strongly support research into CCS and especially DCCS, but not commercialization at this stage because:
1) Obviously, we don’t know yet if we will ever need to actually do it on a large scale. CO2 may not cause much climate change and does help plant growth.
2) If we do need to actually do it, the cost equation should not compare DCCS with reducing CO2 emissions from current levels by 20% – that might be relatively cheap. The comparision should be made with the cost of reducing from 40% of current levels (following a 60% reduction) to 17% of current levels (going from 60% to 83% reduction). That’s going to be really expensive – so that’s when we would be really, really interested in DCCS, even at a high cost.
I don’t believe DCCS is cost effective now, and we may never need it. But if humanity does decide to stabilize atmospheric CO2 levels, the arguments reverse themselves – DCCS will be absolutely essential, and the cheaper and more scalable the better.
Consequently, I don’t see why ANYONE would oppose a large R+D program to get good at DCCS.
Nothing disturbs me as much as such talk. Extremely dangerous engineering descibed as a viable and desirable project. And what specific condition exists in the world, that woud justify such reckless engineering? What events are happening, which would cause an insane world to percieve an emergency, so great that we would roll such dice? Where is the emergency?? GK
I don’t see why ANYONE would want to pay for it….
As long as tax payers are not forced to pay for it through government handouts/programs then I don’t care what you do. Simply find PRIVATE investors willing to cough up large sums of cash to develop the idea in case we need it ~someday~. Although there don’t seem to be many investors interested in carbon credits perhaps you will have better luck convincing them of the future pay-off for CCS?
(Advice – Don’t disclose that earth is currently back to the same temperature it was 30 years ago or they might think like me and hang on to their wallets.)
CCS has got to be one of the stupidest ideas ever proposed by smart people, in public.
CO2 is the life blood of the biosphere. Hmmm, if the planet is running a “fever”, let’s bleed it out. It worked well for George Washington didn’t it?
A 200 year old throwback to the Four Humours of disease theory….. Forward into the past.
Are these greenie weenies aware that the nicely frozen veggies they harvest at their local WalMart were frozen using CO2 as an “expendable” refrigerant? Also poultry, pork chops, etc., etc. Or is that “clean and green CO2”?
P.S. Please don’;t call it “fracking”. That term, although having come from within the gas industry, has been jumped on by the Leftie wackos because of nearly sounding like the other “f” word. Hydraulic fracturing has a much nicer (and technically correct) sound!
The LNG industry is *already* implementing CCS on a commercial scale. It seems to have gone generally unnoticed, probably because it doesn’t involve government funding or coal-fired power plants. But the technology is actually pretty mature.
“We still don’t know when CCS technologies will be technically proven at full scale”
Howzabout NEVER?