Carbon Capture and Storage – The Reality

I don't want to take time to respond to this post in detail. It wouldn't be appropriate anyway. It would be much too long for a comment. Just call this a flag for the benefit of any reader who imagines that a strong case has just been made here against CCS. It hasn't. 

That's only my take, of course. I'm an advocate for intelligent use of CCS. No financial interest, just what makes sense to me. Anyone is free to form their own opinion -- hopefully after a bit of research. If I have time, I'll try to get back with some good links.

You may want to look at what is being done in Alberta and Saskatchewan. Look into  Shell Quest, NWR Redwater, Nutrien Redwater Alberta Carbon Trunk Line, Wolf Midstream, Sask Power. The lowest Carbon Foot Print Oil Production in the WORLD is at Clive Alberta using CO2 Miscible Flood for Tertiary recovery. The Shand Plant in Saskatchewan is decades old and was the first industrial scale CO2 capture. I will just leave this here at that.

I´m afraid that I agree with Barry´s pessimistic view of CCS.  There are successful CCS projects in the sense that they can be made to store more CO2 than they generate.  Norway once made CCS a strategic national goal and has had some success.   But, the economics still don´t work unless there is a substantial "bounty" or carbon tax offset offered to make it a going venture.  

But I am also always hopeful that a technological breakthrough can be achieved. So, my interest is always piqued!

I'm afraid this article misses the point.  CO2 is being captured every day.  Oil and gas processing has been capturing CO2 since the 1950s.  Most of it is vented.  The real point is that there is no point in capturing CO2 unless there is someplace to put it.  Some oil fields are amenable to CO2 EOR.  AlkaSeltzer (sodium bicarbonate) is made from captured CO2.  The problem right now is that there are not enough uses for CO2 to soak up all of the CO2 that could be captured.  That has been the basis for interest in capture and storage.  Some of the CO2 that is captured will have to be stored.  The world doesn't use 40 gigatons per year of anything.  Then the question becomes whether or not it would be cheaper to do something else.  The current range of costs for CCS are $60 - $80/ton, perhaps $100/ton at the outside.  There are two power plants in the US that have been capturing and using CO2 since the late 80s and early 90s.  The Gates Foundation is working with a company in Iceland that claims to be able to capture CO2 for $25/ton.  Of course, without a carbon tax or a cap and trade system, nobody will want to pay $60, or $80, or $100 per ton.  They don't have to.  Never the less, some estimates for the cost of CAFE standards are as much as $600 per ton of CO2 reduced. That is just a hidden cost.  Certainly, CCS is cheaper than that. Also, the energy requirements that were cited are bogus.  MEA started out at  28 - 30% of the power plant energy.  Developments since then have reduced that figure down to a range of 17 - 20%, probably still too high.  Technologies under development are looking at a 10% penalty, which would certainly be doable.  There is no silver bullet to this problem.  The likelihood is that 10 - 20% of the overall emissions reductions by 2050 will have to come from CCS.

Thanks Carl. Your point is that there is no benefit to CCS unless there is a place for the CO2. We could make a lot of Alka Seltzer, but that would be expensive. Finding enough reservoirs for the CO2 is also expensive

We both agree that the process of sequestering CO2 is expensive. When these expenses (including a carbon tax) are added to the cost of the energy produced, that energy is therefore more expensive than renewables. As battery costs continue their rapid decline, even using fossil fuels for night time generation will be more expensive.

As a result, I see zero applications for future power generation based on fossil fuels and CCS. Moreover, when we look at the many years it will take to ramp up any form of cost-effective CCS, we would have been much better off by deploying more renewables and storage.