CCS
INTRODUCTION
In the times of drastic need to reduce CO2 emissions, there have been many new ideas on the rise. Planting trees, use of a building material capable of absorbing CO2 from the atmosphere through chemical reactions, covering beaches with olivine (a group of green silicates that absorb CO2 through the progression of waves), etc. There has been one feasible technology amongst all of these, known as Carbon Capture and Storage (CCS) which is what we will be learning about in this course.
Carbon capture and storage (CCS) is the process of capturing and storing carbon dioxide (CO2) before it is released into the atmosphere. The technology can capture up to 90% of CO2 released by burning fossil fuels in electricity generation and industrial processes such as cement production.
At the moment, CCS is the only technology that can help reduce emissions from large industrial installations. It could be an essential technology for tackling global climate change. When combined with bioenergy technologies for power generation (so-called BECCS – bioenergy with carbon capture and storage), CCS has the potential to generate ‘negative emissions’, removing CO2 from the atmosphere. Many scientists and policymakers argue that this is crucial if the world is to limit temperature rise to under 2°C, the goal of the Paris Agreement. The International Energy Agency states that a tenfold increase in capacity is needed by 2025 to be on track for meeting that target and the Global CCS Institute estimates that 2,500 CCS facilities would need to be in operation by 2040 worldwide, each capturing around 1.5 million tonnes of CO2 per year.
Overall, the capture process is expensive due to high deployment and energy costs. A plant with CCS uses more fuel than one without, to extract, pump and compress the CO2. The cost of CCS varies significantly between processes: where CO2 is already produced separately in concentrated streams, for example in fertiliser manufacturing, the cost is lower, but for processes that don’t do this, such as cement production and power generation, the cost is much higher.