Decarbonisation Technology - May 2024 Issue

Could carbon capture be the key to decarbonising heavy industry? Carbon capture is an important option for reducing CO 2 emissions and could be the linchpin for decarbonising hard-to-abate industries in the near term

Suzanne Ferguson Wood

E xperts agree that the world is falling short of the climate goals set out by the Paris Climate Agreement in 2015. This is partly attributed to heavy industries, such as cement, steel, and chemicals, which account for 30% of global CO₂ emissions (WEF, 2020). Despite the perceived complexity and cost, carbon capture is the biggest opportunity we have to decarbonise these hard-to-abate sectors, particularly in the near term. The industrial world is still largely fuelled by hydrocarbons. This is not because we lack technological solutions to decarbonise but because these solutions carry a higher abatement cost than decarbonising other sectors, such as the power sector, in many geographies. Although reducing the fossil carbon emissions from these sectors will be key in accelerating efforts to meet net zero, companies operating within these industries are often unclear on how to proceed in identifying and then implementing the sustainable decarbonisation strategies that could work best for them. While it may be tempting to write off these hard-to-abate industries as not feasible to decarbonise, our climate goals will not be met without them. Industry is often considered ‘hard to abate’ if it includes processes that require large quantities of very high-temperature heating, or if it includes non-heating-related fossil CO₂ generation inherent to its process chemistry. These conditions mean that the current process cannot be decarbonised in the near term simply by switching to renewable electrical power. Some industries, such as existing steel and cement plants and some chemical industry

processes, meet one or both of these conditions. Fuel switching to low-carbon hydrogen, such as blue hydrogen (fossil-fed hydrogen generation with carbon capture) or direct application of post-combustion carbon capture, can allow all these existing hard-to-abate industries a feasible, near-term route to decarbonisation. It is with this reasoning that business owners across the globe are being encouraged to deploy and integrate carbon capture technology into their operations. Despite having been around for decades, the technology is widely misunderstood, one of the main barriers to “ Fuel switching to low-carbon hydrogen, such as blue hydrogen or direct application of post-combustion carbon capture, can allow all existing hard-to-abate industries a feasible, near-term route to decarbonisation ” allowing it to scale up to its full potential. Understanding how to navigate this evolving technology, where hundreds of potential processes are in development, can often be overwhelming, resulting in some carbon capture and storage (CCS) and carbon capture utilisation (CCU) projects succumbing to pitfalls and bottlenecks due to not selecting a robust or optimised configuration early on. In 2023, there were approximately 395 CCS projects in the pipeline worldwide; however, only 43 were operational, while almost 190 were in early development (Global CCS Institute, 2024). With the vast majority of carbon capture initiatives still in the front-end engineering