Boundary Dam
Gorgon
Petra Nova
• Power and EOR • CO 2 captured from flue gases at a coal-fired power plant • C0 2 is then reinjected for enhanced oil recovery
• Natural gas processing • CO 2 captured from raw natural gas, then reinjected underground for geological storage
• Power and EOR • CO 2 captured from flue gases at a coal-fired power plant • C0 2 is then used for EOR
Sector and application
Chevron Australia, ExxonMobil, Shell, Osaka Gas, Tokyo Gas, JERA
NRG Energy, JX Nippon Oil
Companies involved
SaskPower
Plant operation
2014 - present
2019 - present
2017 - 2020
Not specified, but targeted ~2.9 MtC0 2 captured across 2 years
Plant size (MtC0 2 captured)
1 MtC0 2
4 MtC0 2
Target capture (%)
90%
80%
90%
65% between 2014-21 (highest achieved rate of 94.6% throughout 2018) Scale-up challenges with flue gas flow, amine flow, and heat transfer
45% (for 12 months running to July 2021)
Achieved capture rate (%)
92.4% across 3 years
Outages leading to down time, of both the carbon capture and other facilities
Sand blocking successful injection of C0 2 into geological storage site
Main challenges faced
Figure 5 Characteristics of three recent CCUS projects
achieve zero emissions even in the hard-to- abate sectors of the economy. This clarity on the role of CCUS can allow for more targeted CCUS support from governments, and effort from industry, to scale CCUS deployment this decade. Capture rates of around 90% are often treated as a reasonable benchmark of acceptable performance. In practice, actual capture rates have frequently fallen short of this, reflecting either cost-minimising decisions, engineering failures, or an early stage of technological development. The optimal rate of growth of CCUS deployment by sector will reflect both the technological readiness of carbon capture by sector and the economics of alternative decarbonisation pathways, which in turn are a function of uncertain future trends in technology costs. A lack of coordination of asset build-out has left project developers needing to manage ‘cross-chain’ risks across three different types of assets: capture, transport, and storage.
Risks include counterparty default and volume uncertainty leading to under-utilisation of assets. As a result, there is a potential ‘first mover disadvantage’ for investors who invest in one element within the total required system. Additionally, a lack of public acceptance in some regions is based on a perception that promises of future CCUS deployment are used to legitimise continued reliance on fossil fuels. This is compounded by a negative feedback loop where failed or underperforming projects have led to perceptions that the technology doesn’t really work. Scale-up required by 2030 By 2030, CCUS needs to scale about 20x, including at more than 300 facilities (from ~30 today) across carbon removal, cement, blue hydrogen, iron and steel, petrochemicals and fossil fuel processing, power generation, and synthetic jet fuel. Over 100 new CCUS projects
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