Carbon Capture, Usage
and Storage (CCUS)
Inside Out
WITH THE INTENTION OF HAVING THE FIRST CCUS SITE COMMERCIALLY OPERATIONAL BY THE MID 2020S, THE UK
GOVERNMENT HAS RECENTLY PUBLISHED A CCUS ACTION PLAN.
THE PUBLICATION OF THIS ACTION PLAN FOLLOWS THE GOVERNMENT’S INDUSTRIAL STRATEGY COMMITMENT (PUBLISHED IN
LATE 2017) TO EARMARK £200 MILLION FOR SUPPORTING THE DEVELOPMENT OF THE CCUS SECTOR
A few years back, plans were announced by
the coalition government to support carbon
capture. There was talk of a pilot project
at Peterhead in Scotland with a budget of
up to £1bn but, for reasons that were never
entirely clear, the plans were abandoned in
2015 by the Conservative government with
accompanying funding support withdrawn.
In November 2018 a summit entitled
Accelerating Carbon Capture, Use and Storage
was held in Edinburgh. Attended by the Global
Carbon Capture and Storage Institute, a think-
tank backed by governments and businesses,
which highlighted the conclusion of the
International Energy Agency (IEA) that carbon
capture, use and storage was not on track for a
world in which the rise in global temperatures
since pre-industrial times could be kept below
2C.
There is international consensus that
carbon capture usage and storage (CCUS), is
needed in order to meet the ambitions of the
2015 Paris Agreement (COP21), to look at how
net-zero emissions may be achieved in the
second half of the century.
While CCUS has been shown to work, no
solution has yet emerged as to how to deploy
it commercially, while ensuring that consumers
do not pay over the odds; this is a complex but
increasingly urgent task.
According to the IEA, progress on CCUS
remains off-track when measured against
globally agreed climate and energy goals.
Today’s CCUS plants represent less than 4% of
what’s needed by 2030 to be consistent with
the Paris Agreement objectives.
This stark figure shows the scale of the
challenge to meet the global action to tackle
climate change. CCUS has economy-wide
qualities that can deliver clean industrial
growth and provide a route to net zero
emissions. It is also one of few available
options to significantly reduce emissions from
fossil-based power plants, power stations
and carbon heavy industries such as cement,
chemicals, steel and oil refining. These energy-
intensive industries produce approximately
24% of global carbon emissions.
The UK Government Action Plan
The action plan commits the UK to:
• Set out in 2019 how to enable the UK’s
first CCUS facility
• Invest £20 million in supporting
construction of CCUS technologies at
industrial sites across the UK, as part of
£45 million commitment to innovation
• Invest £315 million
in decarbonising industrial sites, including
the potential to use CCUS
• Begin work with the Oil and Gas Authority,
industry and the Crown Estate and Crown
Estate Scotland to identify existing oil
and gas infrastructure which could be
transformed for CCUS projects
The government also announced a
£175,000 investment in Project Acorn in
St Fergus in Scotland to develop ways of
transporting carbon emissions from where
they are captured to storage facilities. This
investment will be matched by the Scottish
government, with the European Commission
also expected to provide funding.
The project will use the unique
combination of legacy circumstances in
north east Scotland to engineer a minimum
viable full chain carbon capture, transport and
offshore storage project to initiate CCUS in the
UK. It will seek to repurpose an existing gas
sweetening plant with established offshore
pipeline infrastructure connected to a well
understood offshore basin, rich in storage
opportunities.
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Repurposing or rebuilding an existing
CO2 capture plant at the coastal St Fergus
gas processing plant
New CO2 gathering, conditioning and
compression
An existing offshore pipeline for CO2
transportation to the central North Sea
selected from a portfolio of existing gas
pipelines awaiting decommissioning
Injection into a subsurface storage site
close to the pipeline corridor using proven
subsea well technology
Five other industrial locations/sites have
been identified
GRANGEMOUTH – chemicals and
the source of the majority of Scottish CO2
emissions
TEESSIDE – chemicals with access to
Southern North Sea storage
HUMBERSIDE – refining, steelmaking
and biomass fired power generation
MERSEYSIDE – refining, chemicals and
fertiliser production with potential for storage
in east Irish Sea
SOUTH WALES – steelmaking and
refining
The plan recognises that while CCUS is
being deployed elsewhere in the world, there
needs to be a significant acceleration in order
to meet global emissions reduction targets.
Looking to play a global leader role the
UK government is keen to work with other
governments and industry to accelerate global
CCUS deployment and achieve global cost
reductions.
The technology around carbon capture
does not stand still
Traditional methods rely on pulling carbon
dioxide out of a smokestack or from close to
the source of emissions in an industrial process.
Direct air capture is a new process which
sucks carbon dioxide from the atmosphere
by using chemicals and fans. Based in British
Columbia, Carbon Engineering is a Bill Gates-
backed start-up company which has instigated
a $60 million fundraising round to enable
it to design and construct commercial scale
plants. The CO2 extracted can then be used to
produce synthetic fuels to substitute for petrol,
Jet A-1 or diesel and be used in the same
engines without modification.
These fuels do produce carbon dioxide
but, having been made using carbon dioxide,
are considered to be low-carbon. This has not
failed to attract the attention of two US oil
companies, Chevron and Occidental, who have
both taken minority stakes in the start-up.
An interesting development to watch
which could take carbon capture to a whole
new level! www.ccsassociation.org
Fuel Oil News | March 2019 19