Why CCUS Cannot be the Answer Now

  Carbon Capture, Utilization and Storage (CCUS) - The only post-reduction technique

The Tesla CEO recently made headlines for offering a $100 million donation to a team that could develop a technology that can collect one gigaton of carbon at a carbon collection technology contest. Carbon Capture, Utilization and Storage (CCUS) is a technology that is gaining attention in the midst of mounting climate change impacts. In contrast to renewable energy, which blocks all greenhouse gas emissions entirely, CCUS is the only "post-reduction technology" available at the moment. The idea is that while allowing the production of carbon dioxide, it should be collected and processed before being released into the atmosphere and heating up the Earth. It used to be known as Carbon Capture and Storage (CCS) to denote capturing and burying carbon in the ground. As of a few years ago, a "U" for “Utilization” was added, rendering it "CCUS," indicating that marketability should be given to the carbon dioxide collected.

 Currently, the "point capture" method of capturing carbon dioxide emitted from thermal power plant chimneys is common. In spite of its technical difficulties, however, a method called "Direct Air Capture" is also being studied steadily to capture carbon dioxide in the atmosphere. There is disagreement among experts about the viability of CCUS on a large scale. Even so, countries and companies that have recently declared 2050 net zero have a strong reliance on the CCUS, whether in large or small scale. With the current infrastructure, it is nearly impossible to reduce total emissions to zero within decades, so CCUS is often used to offset what cannot be reduced.

Limitations of CCUS: Why it has not been commercialized yet

In the early stages of this technology, which is decades ago, many people predicted that by 2020 there would be technologies capturing a significant portion of carbon emissions. As of 2019, however, the amount of carbon dioxide collected globally was only 40 million metric tons. This figure is insignificant when considering that the United States alone emits over 5 billion tons annually. In order to understand why we remain at this stage, it is necessary to examine each of the three stages of collection (C), storage (S), and utilization (U).

This first part of the collection comes at an overwhelmingly high price. Since molecules have to be collected before carbon dioxide is released into the atmosphere, it may be necessary to install a collecting facility in every power plant chimney, which would be far from being cost-effective. Although the cost of collecting carbon dioxide per ton varies depending on the source of emissions, it is currently around $60. In recent data from the U.S. Department of Energy, capture equipment which can be installed on a commercial scale costs between $400 million and $500 million.

Separating carbon dioxide is still a technique used in oil fields and natural gas reserves, but because it is tailored to a small scale, the funds required to scale it up to a coal-fired power plant is very high. In addition to being costly, a large-scale collection facility is too large that it may require a space as large as the power plant itself at times. In some studies, it has been demonstrated that such large-scale collection does not only increase the burden of land size and operation, but it also reduces the efficiency of the power plant due to the high amount of energy used by the equipment. In 2010, the Southern Company Project attempted a large-scale project at the Mississippi coal-fired power plant with a budget of $2.4 billion, but it was halted due to a lack of funds despite spending up to $7.5 billion.

Even if the collection is successful, burying it in the ground could be problematic. For a long time, civil engineering has buried various structures in the ground, so technology and monitoring systems have been developed. These existing technologies would be used to find a suitable place to store the collected carbon, then the embedding process would be carried out considering the configuration of the surrounding ground. Typically, collected carbon must be stored underground at least 800 meters (2,600 feet) below the surface, where the temperature and pressure would create a stable condition to store carbon dioxide.

However, storing the carbon collected is more complicated than simply burying a structure. In addition to safety concerns associated with natural disasters such as earthquakes, there is also a lack of experience with long-term storage spanning hundreds to thousands of years. Aside from technical aspects, site selection also presents a challenge. In the original state, the ground is not filled only with soil, but there is an aquifer and empty space left from the development of buried oil and gas. According to experts, those spaces would provide sufficient storage space. Apparently, the amount of carbon dioxide emitted every year is 24 gigatons, and the amount of storage space related to oil, gas, and coal development alone is 800 gigatons. Unfortunately, in countries such as South Korea, the land is small and storage spaces like those are scarce, so there are many issues to be addressed, such as where to bury the carbon, how to convince the public, and how to deal with carbon leaks.

There is also talk of collecting carbon and exporting it overseas, but the infrastructure needed makes this an arduous task. Large-scale transportation will eventually require pipelines rather than ships. However, the construction of pipelines solely for carbon dioxide transportation is neither realistic nor economically feasible. Even American experts advocating for CCUS are suggesting that existing infrastructure like gas pipelines be used instead of building new ones.

Lastly, the amount of carbon that can be utilized is limited. Using even part of the collected carbon dioxide is definitely better than burying it. It may be especially useful if processes themselves require carbon dioxide. For example, fuel, chemical products, construction materials, etc. are produced by chemical conversion, or used as industrial raw materials, food and beverage, or agricultural materials without being converted. Cement industry, which generates a lot of carbon dioxide emissions, also came up with the idea of recycling carbon collected in power plants or cement manufacturing facilities to produce de-carbon cement. Nevertheless, this is still a theoretical option, and even if used this way it will merely contribute to a 10% reduction in emissions.

In conclusion, it is evident at this point that the limitations of CCUS are obvious, regardless of which stage is examined. Vaclav Smil, EU's historian of energy, diagnosed the current situation as follows.

EU energy historian Vaclav Smil diagnosed the current situation with the following words. "To remove only one-fifth of today's carbon dioxide emissions, we should develop new industries worldwide in absorption, collection, compression, transportation, and storage that have annual throughputs roughly seventy percent greater than the annual volume covered by the world’s crude oil industry today. Moreover, it will take several generations to build such a huge infrastructure involving facilities for collecting, transporting, compressing, and storing."

Domestic and International CCUS Cases

Global CCS Organization estimates that the CCUS facility will need to process 5.6 gigatons annually to achieve carbon neutrality by 2050. However, as of last year, there were only 26 CCUS facilities operating, with a storage capacity of around 40 million tons. Even if all of the projects currently in development are completed, only 75 million tons of carbon dioxide will be removed by 2030.

Currently, the world's largest CCS project is Norway's Northern Lights project, approved last year, which aims to collect and separate 1.5 million tons of carbon dioxide annually and bury it under the sea at depths of 2,600 meters in the North Sea. Meanwhile, the largest Direct Air Capture (DAC) facility in the world was launched just a few days ago in Iceland, which is much smaller in size, since it handles about 4,000 tons annually. As compared with the United States and Europe, Korea’s collection is at the level of demonstration projects. Korea intends to promote a large-scale gas capture demonstration project using the Donghae Gas Field, which will cease production by 2022, but it is hard to expect immediate results.

Recent trends indicate that "utilization" is gaining momentum. Europe already produces foam mattresses and construction materials using collected carbon, and Korean companies such as Hyundai Oilbank and Lotte Chemical are using carbon dioxide to manufacture calcium carbonate, dry ice, and cleaning solutions for semiconductors. Nevertheless, it only constitutes 2% of the commercial process, so it remains at the pilot stage.

What are the conditions for the success of CCUS?

As such, CCUS has been tried in various ways both domestically and internationally, but it still faces many obstacles in terms of size and commercialization, barriers that prevent it from playing a significant role in addressing climate change. Thus, it is important to examine whether CCUS, which is part of every Net-Zero proposal, will be able to meet the expectations and the conditions for success.

To begin with, the capture category must prove economically feasible. As of now, the related industry is aiming to lower the collection costs to $30 per ton, from $60 per ton. According to MIT, adding carbon capture facilities to the power generation process will increase power costs by 3-4 cents per kWh, and current technology will increase power costs by about 60%. Through technological development, this figure could possibly be lowered to 30%. A number of startups and research centers are also exploring alternative approaches to lower costs, including the integrated gasification combined cycle with built-in carbon dioxide capture facilities or constructing small-scale prefabricated facilities that can expand. In Canada, for example, the Boundary Dam project, which started in 2014, is expected to lower costs by installing a more cost-effective cooling system.

In the categories of transport and storage, a logical and objective assessment should be made to determine if there are feasible and stable storage techniques. Unless the risks of leakage and stability of the underground rock layer are addressed, CCUS technology cannot be a long-term solution to climate change. As an alternative, carbon dioxide can be stored in deep sea gravitational storage, and it will remain stable for hundreds of years because it is heavier than water. However, it should be noted that unlike oil-producing countries like the United States, Norway, and the Middle East that have large salt domes and saline aquifers, which guarantee a high storage potential that can be harnessed for commercial interests, Korea does not possess such features.

Lastly, there must be suitable policy support. In a world where releasing carbon dioxide into the atmosphere without capturing it or even considering other actions is the cheapest option, CCUS would only become more attractive once measures such as increasing taxes on carbon emissions are implemented. It is also important to develop specific support measures for CCUS. In the case of the United States, seven regions were selected to promote regional accessibility and to establish carbon storage partnerships, with many funds invested in complexes at commercial scale. In Korea, the CCUS roadmap was released in June of this year, and 50 private companies are participating in the K-CCUS promotion group. As discussed so far, CC"S" and CC"U" represent strictly different matters, but in the case of Korea, storage is particularly problematic, so it is necessary to develop policies applying a deeper understanding to such issues.

Conclusion

For now, it would be inaccurate to state that CCUS plays a major role in reducing greenhouse gas emissions. It is, in fact, a technology that is expensive, complex, and in its infancy. Still, most authoritative organizations mention CCUS in connection with their greenhouse gas reduction efforts.

It is a technology that is expensive, difficult, and in its infancy.  As an example, the International Energy Agency (IEA) stated that Net-Zero might not be possible without CCUS, and suggested that CCUS' contribution might be 15% by 2070.

Why is there such a big gap between plan and reality? Perhaps this is because we are at a time when we must mobilize all means (no matter how infeasible) to prevent climate catastrophes. However, without any specific measures for success, referring to CCUS unconditionally just because it is the "only way to offset once greenhouse gases are released" should be avoided. That is, there are still too many limitations of this technology to sneak it into parts of the plan where reduction is not as effective despite using various controls after setting a reduction goal. Unless specific figures and methodologies on the amount of reduction, policy implementation measures, and public reactions are considered from multiple angles, reduction plans are nothing more than false hope.

There is no doubt that continuous research, investment, and pilot projects should be conducted. A leading expert on CCUS research, Professor Michael Celia, stated as follows. "This technology will undoubtedly play a key role at some point in the future. As a researcher, I need to be ready for that time." To put it differently, while working diligently to fully prepare and invest, the priority still must be objectively evaluating the present status of the technology.