If there is any hope of reducing the concentration of CO2 in the atmosphere and limiting additional emissions, CCS and CCUS will be “a critical component of any decarbonization strategy.”
That is according to George Koperna Jr., vice president of Advanced Resources International, Inc.
To clarify, the difference between carbon capture and storage and carbon capture, utilization and storage is that the former is primarily concerned with the trapping of the carbon dioxide and sequestering it – typically deep underground, while the latter deals with how the sequestered carbon can be used in other, more productive applications.
The capture and sequestration industry in the United States has been around since 1972, and more than 50 years later, according to the Global CCS Institute, some 21 million tons of carbon – about 0.34 percent of the nation’s emissions – have been removed and stored. Most of it has been transported on the approximate 5,000 miles of CO2 pipeline throughout the country. Estimates, though, are that more than 1 billion tons of CO2 need to be sequestered here in the United States to get to a net-zero emissions goal. Internationally, according to Statista, a global data and business intelligence platform, the amount of CO2 captured accounts for only 0.12 percent of annual global emissions.
Koperna, who is also an expert in both carbon storage and enhanced oil recovery, understands the enormity of the undertaking.
“The challenges are diverse,” he said.
How CCS and CCUS proceed and who will lead the way – who will do the heavy sequestering, if you will – depends on the ability and interest of the oil and gas industry, according to the Office of Fossil Energy and Carbon Management within the U.S. Department of Energy.
And that’s where all the moving parts involved need to work together.
According to the DOE, “While significant progress is being made, the industry needs to see a strong business case for CCUS. In addition to developing policies that promote investment in CCUS, DOE is investigating new ways to extract an economic benefit or additional value from captured CO2. At the end of the day, deploying CCUS commercially requires continued public/private collaboration.”
The ABCs of CCUS
The very acronym – “CCUS” – is where the understanding of the process should begin, said Koperna.
He means that literally.
“Let’s start with the C,” he said.
Koperna believes the carbon captured from low-purity sources like cement and power generation is the “holy grail.”
“If you drive the costs down for this activity, we would be flush with CO2 to store and use in products, as the low-purity sources (fossil fuel-based flue gases, for instance) tend to be higher-volume CO2 emitters,” he said.
(High purity CO2 sources involve ethanol, ammonia, hydrogen, ethylene, and gasification production.)
The captured CO2 is then compressed and transported by pipeline, ship, rail or truck to be used in other applications that can use the trapped gas.
If only it were that easy.
Both CCS and CCUS share the same three challenges:
First, the physical challenge: The source-sink link. How far is the distance between the source and the sink? The greater the distance, the more extensive the operation.
This leads to the second challenge: economics. The bulk of the cost structure is in the capture, the expense of which is based on a function of concentration.
Here’s where CCS and CCUS differ most significantly. CCS has only costs (taking CO2 off an industrial point source and sequestering), but without revenue opportunity other than, say, regulatory incentives, it isn’t always cost-effective. CCUS, however, provides that value. The more sophisticated the technology, the more utilization can occur.
Regulation is the third challenge. Pipeline construction is difficult enough, having to traverse around a regulatory maze, but adding CO2 injection and storage, which requires even more monitoring, verification and reporting adds even more challenging layers to the process.
Koperna knows the costs have to come down for any of this to succeed. He said the next hurdle in the CCUS chain is transportation of the carbon – the “T” in the CCUS paradigm.
There is no “T,” obviously, in the acronym, but there should be.
“Costs are high here, too,” he said of transportation, “but it’s the non-technical issues that tend to be overwhelming. Storage tends to be the lowest on a cost per kilogram basis, so the CCS package needs to be cost effective under the incentive structure to make it go.”
Koperna, who has more than 20 years of experience in evaluating subsurface reservoirs, explained that if the cost of supply-chain issues (compressors, steel tubulars for pipelines and wells, chrome tubulars for wells) on top of items that are already high cost, there are going to be significant challenges. These challenges are mitigated if you don’t have to move the carbon.
“Where capture can be situated over storage, the cost component disappears (a good thing!) and there is no need to move the CO2 via pipeline,” he said.
That scenario doesn’t always present itself, however.
Cutting through the Red Tape
He said it is in the non-traditional oil and gas areas, which align with where many of the ethanol producers are in the United States, that make CCUS the “lightening rod to the public.”
More immediately, he said, “Regulatory efforts need to cut the time down for the industry.”
To wit, at the present time, it is now taking states four years to garner primacy from the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency. This would allow them to permit the wells rather than wait for federal approval. Specifically, with a Class VI UIC permits, states themselves could regulate injection of carbon dioxide for geologic sequestration purposes on their own. Currently, North Dakota has shown it can, with primacy, turn the permits around in about a year.
“So, state primacy may be the pathway to streamline the process,” Koperna said.
“As more states get involved in CCUS, the regulatory process should ‘streamline itself’ and the timeframe will come down,” he added.
The North Dakota success notwithstanding, he hopes it can be reduced to 18 to 24 months.
This CCUS landscape, all phases of it, will be discussed at this year’s CCUS 2024 Houston, specifically in a session entitled “Challenges Across the CCUS Value Chain.” Joining Koperna will be Fred Majkut, SLB; Rob Cordray, Rystad Energy; and David Mannon, IPT Well Solutions.
At the moment the pace of progress is picking up. Currently, according to the Congressional Budget Office, 15 CCS facilities are currently operational with an additional 121 facilities under construction or in development.