While the notion of carbon capture and storage has its detractors (see interview with Eddie O’Connor, pp 10-12), the concept seems to have captured the imagination of politicians in no uncertain terms, as evidenced by the bullish tone of several ministerial gatherings looking ahead to Copenhagen.
The International Energy Agency is also keen. The Agency’s just published CCS road map suggests that “without CCS, overall costs to reduce emissions to 2005 levels by 2050 increase by 70%” and envisions 100 commercial CCS projects globally by 2020 and over 3 000 by 2050.
These are very ambitious timescales indeed, particularly when one considers the hurdles that lie ahead, not least gaining public acceptance and overcoming NUMBY (not under my backyard). Recent surveys of the German public by iz Klima suggest essentially zero awareness and understanding of CCS, with
3 out of 4 believing carbon dioxide to be toxic.
The technology is also immature, with pretty fundamental differences of opinion among the engineering community as to how best to do go about it.
There are concepts out there that are potentially game changing, which urgently need trialling and could lead to much needed step changes in efficiency penalty and costs. Membranes, for example, look promising, both in the capture process itself but also as an alternative to cryogenics for oxygen production in oxyfuel systems and IGCC.
A portfolio of demonstration projects is needed to accelerate the process of learning by doing and it is encouraging that this need is recognised and funding mechanisms are being put in place. The power industry must respond by taking its fair share of the risk in developing CCS technologies.
…and the challenge of China
It is clear that, to have the desired effect, a large number of the CCS projects envisaged in the IEA CCS roadmap will need to be in the developing world, notably China and India. But CCS has been far from a priority in these countries. They have had other things on their minds, such as keeping the lights on. They can also argue that their contribution to current levels of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere is relatively small (although that is going to change dramatically in the not too distant future). It is particularly instructive to look at annual carbon dioxide emissions in per capita terms: Australia, 25.6t; USA, 24.3t; EU, 10.5t; China 3.9t; and India a mere 1.8t.
In the light of these numbers it is entirely appropriate that Australia is taking a leadership role in CCS and, for example, has stumped up the cash to host and fund the Global CCS Institute, has recently approved an immense CO2 storage project in connection with the Gorgon LNG development and has plans for several large CCS demo projects.
It is also understandable that CCS has not been a preoccupation in countries like China and India.
Nevertheless it is moving steadily up the agenda, notably in China. Carbon capture is already being done at pilot scale on a Chinese coal plant, as part of a joint venture with Australia’s CSIRO. There is a proposal to construct, in co-operation with the EU, a CCS demo plant in China. There was a Chinese ministerial delegation at the October meeting of the Carbon Sequestration Leadership Forum (CSLF) – a first. It is in addition worth noting that the coal plants China is now building are advanced supercritical (with higher efficiencies than, say, the UK’s ageing subcritical fleet) and the Chinese are doing some very interesting things in the gasification field – both good bases on which to develop CCS.
It also now turns out that China has good geology for carbon sequestration, at least according to the results of a five year joint study by Pacific Northwest National Laboratory and the Institute of Rock and Soil Mechanics of the Chinese Academy of Sciences. This estimates that there are 1623 large stationary CO2 emitters in China. Some 629 of these are fossil fired power plants, which account for 72% of the total of 3.8 Gt of CO2 emitted per year. Most of the CO2 emitting facilities are relatively close to potential sequestration locations, meaning that the cost of CO2 transport and storage should be relatively low in China. But what about the feasibility and cost of capture itself? Could China’s existing fleet ever be retrofitted? That is a topic that deserves a major study in its own right.
