No more gaslighting: Let’s get real about carbon capture and storage

It would be one thing if the CCS implementations are happening today at the success rate and scale they need, but like you point out it's 'wishful thinking' which is causing more emissions to be poured out each day while delaying closure of fossil fuel plants. Thanks for the great insights, Sebastian!

Sebastian, one of the biggest flaws of CCS/CCUS is verification.

Until we're certain fossil companies are actually pumping x tonnes of CO2 down to bedrock, and it will stay there forever, we're fooling ourselves.

Is certainty a possibility? Otherwise, any approach that doesn't ultimately end extraction is doomed.

It's easy to speak of the slow adoption of CCS as if it reflected problems with an "immature" technology. Easy but misleading. The factors responsible for the slow adoption are much more political and economic than technical.

There are two sides to CCS: capture on one side and sequestration on the other. Carbon sequestration has been going on successfully for 40 years, with nary a hint of measurable leakage from the reservoirs where CO2 was being sequestered. Of course, sequestration of CO2 wasn't the intent, just a happy side-effect. The purpose was enhanced oil recovery from mature fields. So that 40 years of history is only with one of the three main types of reservoirs proposed for use in carbon sequestration: depleted or partially depleted oil fields. The other two are deep saline aquifers and capped sedimentary formations that don't happen to be oil and gas reservoirs. History with those is more recent and more limited. But there are good theoretical reasons, backed by limited field studies, to believe that deep saline aquifers would be even more robust against leakage of CO2 or contamination of groundwater than depleted oil fields.

It's on the carbon capture side where it makes sense to talk about the state of technology falling short of what's needed for commercial feasibility. But even there it's not straightforward. Technology adequate for capturing and removing CO2 from natural gas wellhead streams is as old as the natural gas industry itself. Removal of high levels of CO2 from raw natural gas is a basic requirement of the industry. But technology that is adequate for treating natural gas does not scale well to the much larger challenge of removing CO2 from the flue gases of coal-fired power plants. It works, but it's too expensive, both in capital and parasitic energy costs, for economic use. And nobody wants to invest the resources needed to bring better technology to the market when coal is already on its way out.

What that bleak view of carbon capture misses is that there are other applications that emit waste streams of CO2 where capture is easy to manage, if not totally free. The largest and potentially most important of those is production of "blue" hydrogen from natural gas. There are new and more efficient variations on traditional steam methane reforming (SMR) whose outputs are a hydrogen product stream and a nearly pure CO2 waste stream. For production of blue hydrogen by those methods, the problem shifts back to the sequestration side.

In the absence of a price on carbon emissions that would create a strong financial incentive for sequestration, the only paying game in town for carbon sequestration is for enhanced oil recovery. That's actually a very positive long term game for transitioning away from fossil fuels, but few people see it. In a world where production of oil is demand-limited, EOR does not lead to higher net oil production. It only affects the sources from which remaining demand will be served. It cuts in favor of incumbent production from mature oil fields, and against new drilling.

That's a good thing. it helps oil majors to cut their losses and avoid the cost of E&D that would just bury them deeper in assets destined to become stranded. But a wave of blue hydrogen would definitely diminsh the bonanza that has manufactures of electrolysis equipment and variable renewables salivating over green hydrogen. Expect blue hydrogen and CCS to face continuing opposition from that sector -- regardless of what's actually best for the planet.

Sebastian's underlying assumption is CO2 is a clear and present danger to the planet. That assumption is conjecture. Do we have a problem? Maybe, but there is no reason to panic.

Should we be injecting millions of tons of CO2 into the ground based on conjecture? No, the cure is worse than the assumed disease.

Zero CO2 emissions is an extreme position. A more rationale approach lies with using a mix of technologies that efficiently produce energy while providing reasonably clean and reasonably affordable energy. That mix depends on the resources at hand in a particular region.

Thanks for making some key points Sebastian. I think your numbers are a little pessimistic, but I can hardly argue with them.

"The full-cycle cost of CCS is estimated at between USD 100 and USD 235 per tonne of captured CO2. Even the European Union, a pioneer in carbon trading, is many years away from such a price being deemed politically acceptable."

I think it is possible that the EU can "force" the numbers without too much effort. But there has to be a firmer commitment than exists today. And, obviously, the consumer will really get the bill.

And, as you say, there is a long history of CCS that indicates that the CO2 will stay where it is put, at least for a good long while.  With many formations,  the rock types and temperature and pressure conditions downhole would make it very, very difficult to get out, even if one tried.  It is not, as some people suggest, analogous to dissolving CO2 in a liquid and then containing the pressure.

It is also true that methane leakage estimates of 2-3% are on the low side for production, treatment, transport and regasification activities.   For some methane production which goes from wellhead, liquefied onto a ship, moved half way around the world, transfered and bunkered, regasified to a network and then sent to a user, the number might be 6% leakage or more. Neither the US nor EU have put much effort into really getting at those numbers.  They can certainly be reduced if they are properly detected, quantified and charged for as part of a cap and trade system.  Even then, methane is still likely to be a bit less ghg intensive than coal, but not nearly as much as it might be without the leakage, at least according to some operators´ models.

Worst of all, I think you are quite right about the "gaslighting" of CCS with respect to net zero goals by 2050, at least as the technology stands today.  The only good news I see is that, as you say, the Norwegians are persisting in their efforts with Project Northern Lights. 

From your article:

Carbon capture and storage (CCS) presents the alluring promise that coal, oil and gas production can continue to expand while the world economy gradually decarbonises.

I dunno. Some may have seen it that way, but I never have. I am and have always been a strong advocate for CCS, but the scale of anthropogenic CO2 emissions is too vast to permit "keep on with BAU, but use CCS to offset the emissions". That just wouldn't be practical.

In my view, 95% of emissions reduction will have to come from changes in how we do things. Migration away from fossil fuels in favor of zero carbon alternatives for power generation, electrification of transport and heating, smarter building design to reduce heating and cooling loads -- the full gamut of clean energy alternatives. But to DRIVE those changes at the pace we need to mitigate rapid climate change, we MUST have a price on carbon emissions that makes the changes economically advantageous.

And as I see it, we can't have a price on carbon emissions if we don't allow matching credit for CCS. It's that simple. We need to maintain a level playing field. If a fossil fuel company chooses to go into the CCS business, then every ton of CO2 they're able to sequester must be allowed to offset one ton of emissions elsewhere in the world. That's only fair. True, it creates a need for verification, and there will be social overhead for that function. But with smart technology and sensible design, the verification overhead can be kept to a minimum. It can probably even be integrated with better systems for law enforcement and anti-corruption.

But that's another topic.

Sebastion, before I pile on with yet another dissenting comment, I should take the time to say I like your article. It's well written, well balanced, and full of good meat. Now, that said ...

.. investment in blue hydrogen risks locking in the methane emissions footprint of natural gas in supposedly clean hydrogen, thereby undermining the ‘clean’ credentials of blue H2.

That's debatable. I believe the major sources of fugative methane emissions are abandoned, inadequately plugged gas wells; improper (unlit) flaring from woking oil wells; and operations associated with exports of LNG. Neither of the first two have anything to do with blue hydrogen and the third has a negative correlation. (More blue hydrogen means less LNG for export).

Perhaps more significant is the increased demand for electricity that goes with green hydrogen relative to blue. When green hydrogen is used for long term energy storage, its round trip energy efficiency is only about 40%. It takes 2.5 kWh of energy in for every kWh out. Unless the grid has already been 100% decarbonized, the energy that goes into production of green hydrogen carries a methane cost. The cost is the same as what the grid incurs for backup generation when renewables are underproducing. Green hydrogen can't duck responsibility for that cost even if it draws all its power from dedicated renewable resources. The generation capacity that it uses was extra capacity that had to be built, and was subsequently not available to displace fossil-fueled generation on the grid.

The methane cost for green hydrogen can be considered an "opportunity cost", but it still a real cost. Until the grid has been about 80% decarbonized, the extra energy needed to produce green hydrogen will increase the consumption of natural gas relative to production of an equivalent amount of blue hydrogen. And 100% of the carbon from the natural gas associated with green hydrogen will be released to the atmosphere. 100%, or close to 100%, of the carbon from the smaller amlount of natural gas associated with blue hydrogen will be sequestered.

Green hydrogen is not the cleaner alternative.

Roger,

Looks to me like your approach is essentially a scheme to line the pockets of the government, utilities, and Wall Street at the expense of the poor and middle class. Your entire approach is based on an overreaction to man made CO2 emissions. The impact (both good and bad) of such emissions is well beyond our capability to predict with any level of precision. 
 

Concentrate on providing folks with reasonably clean and reasonably affordable energy. That approach inherently reduces emissions of all types because the free market profit incentive drives innovation. The U.S. provides a clear example, with emissions dropping as a direct result of low-emission gas turbines being more economically competitive and cleaner than alternatives such as coal power plants. Meanwhile, Europe's heavily government controlled power markets yield exorbitant energy prices with marginal environmental benefits.