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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Spend the £billion on glass houses and pump the CO2 into them, should solve the food shortage problem.
PeterGeorge says: April 19, 2012 at 8:22 am
Consequently, I don’t see why ANYONE would oppose a large R+D program to get good at DCCS.
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1) Because the alternatives are cheaper. A typical coal fired power plant produces 20,000 tons/day CO2. Sequestering that amount is a huge engineering project for EACH power plant. Nuke power plants emit no CO2. Build them instead of fossil burners.
2) Because the unintended consequences may be catastrophic. Hiding 20,000 tons/day at hundreds of locations is asking for a “Denver is Missing” disaster.
3) Because that research money can be better spent on things that are actually desirable. Or useful. Or help fight actual pollution.
I also have a point of clarification. CO2 sequestration does not include CO2 concentration from the atmosphere. It deals with capturing CO2 at the sites where it is released (power plants). Adding concentration facilities would add another large factor to the cost. A CO2 scrubber/stripper as used in a nuke submarine is neither cheap to build nor operate.
You are not asking the magic question. For any CCS system, what is it’s Energy Returned On Energy Invested? If it is <1, then it is unsustainable (ie: more CO2 emissions will be generated designing, erecting, operating, maintaining, and decommisioning the CSS than the CO2 emissions it is supposed to be imprisioning).
CCS, like solar and wind alternative energies, is a joke! They are unsustainable!
Setting aside the obvious question of wither CO2 emissions should be regulated at all, the report does provide a fairly balanced and candid picture of the challenges facing those tasked with developing CCS. Generally, a far more professional job than typically produced by the DOE and other U.S. agencies.
One of the few areas where I think the authors under-emphasized the financial risks involved was a too common assumption that power-plant-derived carbon dioxide can successfully be injected into the vast array of “potential” storage formations identified and/or injected in the amounts needed per well to be commercially viable.
To date, most attempts to inject power-derived CO2 into major U.S. brine formations have failed. The story has been same across these non-oil bearing formations… well pluggage within a short time of injection. I suspect issues with oxygen content (suspected of inducing biological activity down-hole), trace chemical side reactions, and particulate issues; but, that’s a story for another day.
Limited success has been achieved in existing/abandoned oil formations; where both formation porosity and permeability are high and where residual oil soaks up CO2. However most folks don’t know that many of these are Enhanced Oil Recovery (EOR) “huff-and-puff” projects. Meaning CO2 is injected, held for roughly two weeks, and then released with the oil back-flow. While some of the CO2 is stored it’s certainly not 100% and data indicating how much CO2 is retained is scarce and not well advertised/documented.
Usually you see an assumption of approximately 0.26 tons of CO2 stored per barrel of oil recovered with no accompanied indication of how much CO2 was injected in the first place. A good rule of thumb is you can expect to have to recycle 80% of the CO2 injected from a formation. The remaining 20% is “lost”; but I have not seen any estimates of how much of this is “loss” to the atmosphere (via equipment losses/leakage) verses how much is actually ends up “stored” in the formations. But…. I’m getting way off message.
The short version is that to PAY for CCS; the report proposes the British Government should: 1) subside “low carbon” via the EMR package (i.e., subsidize “preferred” electrical production methods), 2) re-write the Climate Change Levy to set a floor price of CO2 allowances to 15.70 pounds per ton starting in 2013 (rising again in 2020 and 2030), 3) set an emissions limit of 450 gCO2/KWh on all new fossil plants (A level that allowing natural gas units to emit scot-free – no pun intended), and 4) subsidize R&D for CCS and renewables. See pages 9-10 of the report.
Regards,
Kforestcat
Andi Cockroft says:
April 18, 2012 at 9:18 pm
. The only way to sequest Carbon from CO2 to produce any stable and storable product is to create pure carbon
And if you take that one step further to the crystalline form of carbon then you can sell it on the open market – put De Boers out of business, make a lot of women happy and get your money back in no time. Simples!
If the want to get rid of CO2 pipe it into green houses not underground.
Alberta (home of the tar sands) is going to the polls Monday, April 23 and the leader who just might upset the ruling conservatives has this to say about carbon capture:
“Wildrose Leader Danielle Smith put a bull’s-eye on the province’s controversial carbon capture and storage program Tuesday, suggesting she’s prepared tear up nearly $1.6 billion in related contracts with industry.”
Read more: http://www.calgaryherald.com/news/politics/Smith+would+turf+carbon+capture+pacts/6476523/story.html#ixzz1sXMSpaur
A billion dollars for 1/10,000 of a degree?
I did some number crunching on this issue since in Alberta, Canada, they still want to spend about a billion dollars on one carbon capture project. At the present time, humans emit about 90 million tons of greenhouse gases into the atmosphere every DAY. I DO NOT believe this to be the case, however let us assume there will be the IPCC average number of 3.000 degrees C increase in temperature due to our emissions if we do nothing. So if a billion dollars is spent to capture 1 million tons a YEAR, this amounts to a fraction of 1 in 32,850. So if nothing is done, let us assume the temperature will presumably go up 3.0000 degrees C, but if a billion dollars is spent, the temperature would go up by 2.9999 degrees. Or to put in another way, if we take the temperature of 10,000 cities now and then again in 100 years from now, 9,999 cities will have the same temperature and one city will be 1 degree C colder if a billion dollars is spent.
Power station manufacturers are all very happy indeed to build in a CCS. I’ve seen their pamphlets.
They don’t give a damn whether its useful, successful, or cost effective. These guys are the quintessential tailors.
When the dangers of global cooling are understood, will they call for carbon release?
Unattorney;
Negative carbon credits; that’s the ticket! Subsidize CO2 production and liberation.
See, the flora are attempting to commit suicide by famine from eating all the CO2, and we have to fight back. Unfortunately, this will result in more flora-proliferation, but it’s a neverending battle …
“■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.”
Wow, in their “liabilities” they are worried only about how to make the costs equitable and are ignoring the probability of creating a major physical disaster – leakage to the surface of CO2 under high pressure. Even fresh granite has a permeability, albeit low (0.1% to 1% of that of limestone) and old granite greater because of fractures. We already had some farm animals killed in a Saskatchewan experiment:
http://bing.search.sympatico.ca/?q=Carbon%20dioxide%20leakage%20kills%20animals%20in%20saskatchewan&mkt=en-ca&setLang=en-CA
Carbonated water from the experiment bubbling out of the ground caused CO2 (a heavy gas) to collect in the low ground of a quarry, suffocating farm animals. This idea in Scotland must’ve have been planned by Highlanders!
Do they not teach basic chemistry in the UK??? Can anyone that seriously considers this poissible have any scientific knowledge at all?
Coal is mostly Carbon (atomic weight 12), CO2 is one carbon atom (Atomic weight 12) and two Oxygen atoms (Atomic weight 16) for a combined molecular weight of 44. If you live near a coal plant watch and count the train loads of coal going into the plant, usually about one a day with 75 to 100 cars. Look at the side of the railcars for the “Net” weight, usually about 100 tons. The average plant will burn about one trainload a day. Do the math, 75 X 100 times 3 ( you need to multiply by three because the CO2 will weigh 3 times as much as the Coal burnt, actual it is 3.667 but lets assume the coal has impurities that do not get burnt and are left as ash.)
That means there will be three trains of railcars, considering weight only, hauling “captured” CO2 out of the plant – EVERY DAY. I will leave it to the astute readers to calculate how much volume this CO2 will take up. I would guess, that at the present technology, that it would be impossible to compress the CO2 to a high enough pressure to reduce the volume to less than ten times that of the original Carbon – Coal. Now throw in all of the added CO2 generated to do all of the work to do all of this. In other words this idea is well beyond being absurd, it borders on impossible.
And this only assumes that you capture the CO2 as a gas. Some of these stupid ideas want to capture it with other minerals and compounds – dumber yet, as there are that many more things to haul! These may work on a small scale in the laboratory, but will never work in the real world. Or is this where all of those GREEN JOBS I hear about are coming from?