EFI, Stanford team release California carbon capture and storage action plan
STANFORD UNIVERSITY
Today, the Energy Futures Initiative (EFI) and Stanford University released “An Action Plan for Carbon Capture and Storage in California: Opportunities, Challenges, and Solutions,” a report providing policymakers with options for near-term actions to deploy carbon capture and storage (CCS) to meet the state’s climate goals.
The study, six months in the making, concludes that CCS offers a clean technology pathway for rapidly reducing emissions from economically vital sectors that have few other options to decarbonize. It can also support clean, firm power, an essential enabler of intermittent renewable generation. The report will be introduced in a virtual briefing led by Ernest J. Moniz, former U.S. Secretary of Energy and founder of EFI and Franklin Orr, Professor Emeritus at Stanford University. They will be joined by the report’s co-leads, EFI’s Melanie Kenderdine and Sally Benson, Professor at the Department of Energy Resources Engineering at Stanford University.
“California has the most ambitious carbon reduction goals in the nation,” said Benson. “Our study outlines the vital role that CCS could play in achieving carbon neutrality by 2045.”
EFI, a nonprofit think tank established by former U.S. Energy Secretary Ernest J. Moniz, previously published “Optionality, Flexibility, and Innovation: Pathways for Deep Decarbonization in California,” which concluded that the targeted use of CCS could be one of the single largest contributors to California’s decarbonization by 2030.
“California has a strong economic base, a skilled workforce, and enviable innovation capacity at its laboratories, universities, and tech companies,” said Kenderdine. “The state is well placed to accelerate its progress on developing the clean energy technologies that will decarbonize industry and the power sector, create jobs, and new industries enabled by CCS, such as a hydrogen economy, and become a global leader in deploying CCS technologies.”
CCS, like all other emission reduction technologies, is not a “silver bullet” technology for decarbonization. Carbon capture paired with permanent geologic storage (i.e. deep saline reservoir) is a viable and important option for reducing emissions from the industrial and electricity sectors that are key contributors to California’s economy and the reliability of its grid.
Technoeconomic analysis done for this study identified 76 existing electricity generation and industrial facilities as candidates for CCS, in total representing nearly 15 percent of the state’s current greenhouse gas emissions.
Successful policy pathways for achieving California’s ambitious emission reduction targets are critical. Additional and accelerated actions are needed to ensure that the state successfully transitions to a carbon neutral economy both economically and equitably. California’s economy would be the fifth largest in the world as a stand-alone entity, so the state’s success in meeting its emissions targets and as a technology leader have significant implications for the global climate solutions.
Some key takeaways from the report:
- California’s economy would see rapid near-term emissions reduction benefits from CCS;
- The state has a strong foundation for supporting CCS projects, and the study has identified 76 facilities suitable for carbon capture;
- California’s geology makes it well suited for safe, permanent CO2 storage; and
- California could prioritize CCS projects that have demonstrable local air quality benefits and local job opportunities in line with the state’s climate and equity goals
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The report will be released today at a virtual event introduced by Ernest J, Moniz where the team will discuss key findings. Watch the event at https://sccs.stanford.edu/2020-ccs-report-launch from 11:30 a.m. – 1:00 p.m. PT, (2:30-4:00 p.m. ET).
You can download the full report and a summary there.
About the Energy Futures Initiative
The Energy Futures Initiative advances technically-grounded solutions to the climate crisis through science-based analysis, thought leadership, and coalition-building. Under the leadership of Ernest J. Moniz, the 13th U.S. Secretary of Energy, EFI conducts rigorous research to accelerate the transition to a low-carbon economy through innovation in technology, policy, and business models. EFI maintains editorial independence from its public and private sponsors. EFI’s reports are available for download at http://www.energyfuturesinitiative.org
About Stanford Precourt Institute for Energy
Through collaborations across campus, Stanford University’s Precourt Institute for Energy fosters and supports the Stanford energy community. The institute and its programs fund research that has the potential to solve today’s toughest energy challenges and help transform the world’s energy systems. Stanford students can discover energy through the institute’s experiential courses, internships, entrepreneurial activities and a one-week orientation for incoming graduate students. The Precourt Institute works with industry leaders, entrepreneurs and policymakers for the broad deployment of solutions. It also engages a wide range of stakeholders at events like the Global Energy Forum. https://energy.stanford.edu/
About the Stanford Center for Carbon Storage
The Stanford Center for Carbon Storage uses a multidisciplinary approach to conduct fundamental and applied research to address critical questions related to CO2 storage in geologic formations. The center also conducts technoeconomic and policy/regulatory assessment of CCS projects.https://sccs.stanford.edu/
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Even then, if I read the report correctly, it would only tackle 15% of emissions. What about the rest?
“a report providing policymakers with options for near-term actions to deploy carbon capture and storage (CCS) to meet the state’s climate goals.” – Why deploy CCS and what can it possibly do for the State’s climate? How much extra energy will be needed to capture, transport and pump the CO2 underground?
“The study, six months in the making,” – What were they doing, obviously not looking at the atmospheric CO2 absorption of photons emitted from the Earth’s surface.
The near-surface atmospheric density is about 2.78 x 10^+19 molecules per cubic centimetre. On 21 October 2020, the CO2 concentration at the Mauna Loa Observatory was 411.78 ppm. Hence the CO2 density would have been about 1.145 x 10^+16 molecules per cubic centimetre. The Earth’s surface at 15 degrees Celsius radiates about 6.929 x 10^+7 photons per cubic centimetre in the four main CO2 absorption bands. That is, there are about 165,200,000 CO2 molecules for every photon in each near-surface cubic centimetre which, in turn, means that all of the photons available for CO2 absorption are absorbed within a few hundred metres of the Earth’s surface. Reducing the CO2 concentration by half will only double the altitude at which complete absorption is achieved. What is that supposed to do to the climate? The same amount of photons are going to be absorbed near the Earth’s surface regardless of whether or not the CO2 concentration is halved or doubled because that is all that is available.
And what does the absorption of those photons achieve? Apparently they do not know that 99.8% of the photons are in the 15 micron band which is the peak of radiation from a source at -80 degrees Celsius. That is not going to warm the surface anywhere other than occasionally at the South Pole. Do they think that this will affect California’s climate ?
So :
fracturing rocks for no reason = good
fracturing rocks to get useful natural gas = bad.
Yes?
Confession – I really couldn’t be bothered to read this ‘research news’ closely, so I may have missed something. But, on scanning, it seems that the entire document is based on the existence of an economically viable CCS technology; IF that technology existed, then all the lovely benefits (yes, that would be sarcasm; can’t be too careful) would follow. So it really is unicorns. Astonishing. Does nobody at seminars and press conferences ever dare ask the question? What has happened to universities, which used to be places where difficult questions were encouraged?
Since we are sequestering 2 parts of O2 for every Carbon, Are we making much gain if any in the percentage? Will we ever need all that sequestered oxygen?
Unless the gas is used to produce more fossil fuels CC is a total waste of energy.
I worked on the mechanical contraption for a Carbon Capture project a few years ago and it seemed as though there were a lot of debates about science and thermodynamics let alone cost.
Unfortunately people like Representative Dan Crenshaw think this is a good idea. He is in favor of it in Texas. Some of our representatives have been carbon captured.
Thanks for calling out Crenshaw. He is a media darling in the John McCain mode.
He wrote an article on the need for a Conservative Climate Change plan for National Review. I responded by suggesting he check the Antarctic ice core data that show temperature change precedes CO2 change before he goes off to write his plan.
I guess there are people with money in Texas who are looking to jump on the “Clean Energy” subsidy wagon. One angle is to get the government to pay them for what they already do: strip the CO2 out of the natural gas and pump it back down into the field to force more gas up. If you call it “carbon sequestration” you win a subsidy.
Pleeease. They ALL are.
It’s 50 shades of John McCain.
Unless you plan on storing the Carbon as some kind of stable rock, trying to store carbon is one of the dumbest and dangerous experiments I can think of. Let’s say you pump hundreds of gigatons of CO2 under the ground in hopes it will slowly turn into carbonate rock. Then let’s say there is a major earthquake leading to higher pressures and new cracks to the surface. Where do you supposed all that high pressure CO2 goes?
Being heavier than air and likely cold to boot, it spreads out killing all air breathing lifeforms in an invisible tsunami. No thanks, I would rather it be left as plant food lightly distributed in the atmosphere.
CCS is a dead horse, a corpse, a fossile, and they insist in riding it. It is perfect plan to stop economic progress. Now it is just to enforce it on the whole globe i.e. Russia, China etc. Is it not so WEF, UN, WHO and your rather your sponsors?
The primary greenhouse gas that is emitted in California is H2O and not CO2. Molecule per molecule, H2O is a stronger absorber of IR radiation then is CO2 and there is on average roughly 50 times more H2O in our atmosphere than is CO2. For those that believe in the radiant greenhouse effect, the contribution of CO2 is trivial. The best place to store CO2 is in the atmosphere where it can be used to feed plant life and where it can be absorbed by cold bodies of water. Of course the reality is that the climate sensitivity of CO2 is zero so in terms of climate, sequestering CO2 will have no effect.
Hey why don’t we all go plant some trees? I think that was where our illustrious site owner started off on his climate journey. Let’s go full circle.
But Stanford! What’s this got to do with néomarxiste тоталiтагуаиisм. They won’t be denied by CCS. This is the biggest carbon tax route of them all but it doesn’t put money in elitist pockets. I’m afraid you haven’t read the grant requirements.
Are people still pumping the CCS scam? Worse, are people still buying it?
The wonderful thing about this idea is that it would reduce CO2 emissions, while allowing particulate and NO2 emissions to continue at present levels, or even rise substantially. It would mean there is no reason to limit cars and mall culture, shopping can continue just as it does. Everything will carry on as before, its just that somewhere out of sight there will be plants extracting the CO2 from the air. Not the particulates and NO2, just the CO2.
So we extract the one exhaust gas that has never been shown to have any local health effects, while allowing the proliferation of exhaust products that make our cities unhealthy and unpleasant.
The current environmental movement has moved through various stages on the way here.
It started out demanding we do things, such as install wind and solar, or turn off standby, that have little or no effect on CO2 emissions.
Some of these things are seriously destructive both to the environment and human welfare. As for instance when we convert corn, which is food, into ethanol, thus raising food prices globally and eliminating agricultural surpluses which can feed people. As when we raze huge areas of tropical forest and habitat to plant palm oil crops, to generate ‘renewable’ energy. None of them actually reduce CO2 emissions.
The next step is to refuse to advocate doing things which would actually reduce emissions. Like, for instance, move populations into dense urban housing served by mass transit. Like, to get China to commit to real tonnage reductions.
Both of these suggest that the real problem to environmentalists is not CO2 emissions. I leave it to readers to figure out what the real problem might be in that case.
And here to help is another piece of the puzzle, which is actually quite logical in view of the underlying approach, its do things which will reduce CO2 while leaving all other pollution and all other lifestyle features exactly the same.
This is not about reducing CO2 emissions. Its not about safeguarding or improving wildlife habitats, ecologically important landscapes or human environments.
So what could it be about?