The cost of curbing even just carbon dioxide (CO) emissions will inflate by billions of dollars if 10,000 carbon capture and storage (CCS) projects are not in place worldwide by 2050, the International Energy Agency (IEA) claims.
And yet there are only four established projects today, one of which is Norway’s Sleipner field, which has more to do with re-injecting CO stripped from produced natural gas prior to export to market than an initiative based on altruism.
The West’s energy watchdog blames sharply rising costs for CCS for delaying new projects that use the technology, so endangering plans to meet emission-reduction targets.
According to IEA research, it will be necessary to create CCS infrastructure sufficient to account for some 20% of the world’s emission-reduction effort to meet a planned 50% cut in all greenhouse gases by 2050.
“We must step up our activities or lose this opportunity,” IEA executive director Nobuo Tanaka said at the launch of the agency’s latest carbon study.
“The technology must be proven within the next decade.”
Even though, this year, the G8 (Group of Eight) industrialised countries have got behind an IEA proposal to begin developing 20 large-scale demonstration CCS projects by 2010, “current spending and activity levels are nowhere near enough to achieve these deployment goals”, the agency warns.
Almost 70% of the world’s CO output and 60% of all greenhouse-gas emissions are linked to energy generation. However, the IEA claims that emissions will more than double by 2050 if nations neglect carbon-reduction measures, leading to an increase of 4-7C in global temperatures.
The numbers are frightening by any standard. The agency has calculated that, just to stabilise carbon emissions, 5.1 gigatons of the gas needs to be captured every year by 2050, at cost of $50 a ton. To cut global carbon emissions in half by 2050, it says 10.4 gigatons must be captured annually at a cost of $200 a ton.
But what needs to be done cannot be achieved so long as there remains a “lack of appropriate long-term policy frameworks and sufficient financial incentives” to trigger the carbon revolution that is now needed.
The IEA report further warns: “Despite important progress, especially in relation to international marine protection treaties, no country has yet developed the comprehensive, detailed legal and regulatory framework that is necessary effectively to govern the use of CCS.
“However, CCS is also poorly understood by the general public and, as a result, there is a widespread lack of public support for this solution as compared to several other GHG mitigation options.”
Focusing on the specifics of establishing sufficient CCS projects to catalyse the carbon revolution, the IEA’s report, CO Capture and Storage, says the next 10 years are critical.
“By 2020, the implementation of at least 20 full-scale CCS projects in a variety of power and industrial-sector settings, including coal-fired power-plant retrofits, will considerably reduce the uncertainties related to the cost and reliability of CCS technologies,” says the report.
“Several industrial-size demonstration CCS projects have been announced in Europe, North America and Australia, along with co-operative programmes in non-OECD countries.
“But many of these projects appear to be making slow progress. If these demonstration projects do not materialise in the near future, it will be impossible for CCS to make a meaningful contribution to GHG mitigation efforts by 2030.”
The IEA calls for development of CCS and clean-coal technologies in tandem. Moreover, as a first priority, R&D should focus on improving fossil plant efficiency, along with research on the integrity of storage methods.
Other key calls include:
Better CO capture technologies need to be developed and to be integrated with power plant designs.
Governments should also ensure that new power plants either include CCS or are CCS-ready (the UK approach), with engineering designs that provide for later carbon-capture retrofit, together with identified routes to CO storage sites.
Demonstration projects should leverage and expand on existing CO-Enhanced Oil Recovery (EOR) activities as they can generate revenues to offset costs.
On the subject of EOR, which is now so essential to the wellbeing of the North Sea, for example, the report says: “Over 200 additional billion barrels of oil can be recovered using enhanced oil recovery.
“This will provide a CO storage potential of 70-100 gigatons at low or even negative cost. However, there is a shrinking window of opportunity for most oilfields to apply CO-EOR, and the oil and gas sectors should co-operate to maximise these opportunities. The development of CO-EOR can also jump-start the transport infrastructure required for full CCS deployment in some regions.”
Nothing can happen without deep pockets, of this the IEA is clear. It warns that investment in CCS will only occur if there are suitable financial incentives and/or regulatory mandates.
It points out that various financial and regulatory options already exist for encouraging CCS. However, it acknowledges that there is no such thing as a one-size-fits-all solution. The most appropriate approach will vary from country to country.
The IEA is also clear that market-based solutions alone will be insufficient to finance critical early demonstration projects. This the UK Government must acknowledge, as Energy believes its market-based approach to energy, let alone CCS, to be a manifest failure.
“Governments must lead by providing sufficient direct financing or financial incentives for CCS demonstration,” says the report.
“Private-sector finance is also critical. In the area of financing CO transport, governments can help to encourage the development of the enabling infrastructure and can help optimise the linkage of major emission nodes and storage sites.
“In addition, the medium and longer-term viability of CCS, particularly in developing nations, will be enhanced by inclusion of CCS in the Kyoto Protocol Clean Development Mechanism.”
It adds that the financial and insurance industry must be engaged to develop tailored products to address long-term liability issues.
The insurance sector has already shown itself to be aware of climate-change issues, as many householders living on flood plains in the UK have come to realise.
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