“CCS must be deployed to make deep cuts in CO2 emissions," International Energy Agency
Carbon Capture and Storage (CCS) is an evolving technology that can capture 90% of the CO2 emissions released from the use of fossil fuels in power generation and industrial processes, thereby preventing CO2 from entering the atmosphere.
Because fossil fuels are and will remain so integral to the world's enormous and still growing energy complex, coal, oil, and natural gas are ingrained in the very production, transport, and use of renewables themselves, CCS is an essential technology that must be deployed. Regardless of what you keep hearing from some Westerners that retain all the energy that they need, global energy demand will only increase because the vast majority of the world is still poor. Life-shortened and most tragically forgotten, the undeveloped world's 6.2 billion humans will rise to over 8.2 billion by 2050.
Additionally, installing the "utilization" in "CCS" to make it "CCUS," CO2 will increasingly be used as a product for CO2-EOR, a tertiary oil recovery operation, where injected CO2 helps lower the viscosity of incremental oil, that will lower the costs of carbon capture and can yield 100%+ “carbon free" petroleum. Most Americans don't realize that 66% of the crude in a reservoir frequently remains "stranded" after primary and secondary operations because it's too expensive or difficult to extract.
The U.S. has hundreds of billions of barrels primed for CO2-EOR, and the global stranded resource stands at 2.2 trillion barrels, compared to 1.7 trillion barrels for total proven conventional reserves. The U.S. CO2-EOR business now produces about 415,000 b/d of crude oil, with a potential industry of 3.7 million b/d by 2030, centered in Texas' low cost Permian Basin. The U.S. Geological Survey estimates that the U.S. has the capacity to store 3,000 billion metric tons of CO2, or ample space to store 100% of our current CO2 emissions for 600 years or so.
As for safety, the very reason petroleum accumulates in reservoirs in the first place is because they are nearly perfect traps for buoyant fluids - CO2 can be maintained as a supercritical fluid in reservoirs greater than 800 meters. According to the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, properly managed geological formations are likely to retain more than 99% of the injected CO2 for over 1,000 years. CO2 becomes much less mobile overtime, and the U.S. CO2-EOR business has had a stellar safety record since its inception in the early-1970s.
Coal, Oil, and Natural Gas Continue to Dominate...NO MATTER WHAT
Source: IEA
Without CCS, Reducing CO2 in a 2°C World is Highly Unlikely in Industry and Far More Expensive in Power Generation
Source: Global CCS Institute
It's not just far more practical from an energy demand perspective (again, don't be fooled: coal, oil, and natural gas will continue to dominate), but also far more affordable to include CCS as a mainstay in the mitigation portfolio than to exclude it. Without CCS, the International Energy Agency finds that for power generation alone CO2 mitigation costs would increase $2 trillion by 2050.
And the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change concludes that the absence of CCS would surge carbon mitigation costs by 138% from 2015-2100, by far the highest increase from any of the technologies analyzed. Globally, there are some 15 large-scale CCS projects in operation, with a further 8-10 under construction. Around $3.6 trillion needs to be invested in CCS for 2,000-3,000 projects to be operational by 2050.
% Increase in Total CO2 Mitigation Costs, 2015-2100
Perhaps our biggest energy/environment problem is the wishing away of the physical and economical limitations of renewable energy technologies. We have to be honest with ourselves and cannot be led by those that stand to profit off of our ignorance.
Even under the best policy future, which is virtually an impossibility in the greatly energy deprived world where 6 in every 7 humans struggle in undeveloped nations that we find ourselves (i.e., poor governments know that they'll need access to the same energy options that made the rich countries rich), wind and solar will respectively still supply just 14% and 9% of global electricity in 2040.....just 10% of all energy.
Because fossil fuels are so ingrained in pretty much everything that we do, more wind power, for instance, ACTUALLY INCREASES the need for more coal, oil, and natural gas. To illustrate, there are about 150 tonnes of coal in an onshore wind turbine via steel (and 250 tonnes for offshore turbines), it's oil that moves the trucks that transport wind turbines, and it's natural gas that is the required backup for those more common times when "the wind doesn't blow."
As such, if true to their word, those so concerned with promoting wind and solar power to cut emissions must also be promoting CCS. In fact, much of the environmental movement's push against CCS, which again is an evolving technology that is widely regarded as essential to significant emission reductions, proves how the intentions of some are much more about promoting their favored industries than they are about reducing emissions and improving the environment.
And the environmental push against nuclear power (a non-carbon baseload source of power) and hydro-electricity (a crucial renewable baseload source of power, especially in poor, drastically energy deprived Africa) offers further proof of this dangerous unrealism and nepotism that is actually hindering the global goal to cut emissions, improve sustainability, offer reliable and affordable energy to poor people, and expand the economy.
I implore you: don't be so easily tricked.
Even in Best-Case, Wind and Solar DON'T Dominate
Source IEA
