Carbon capture and storage (CCS) is variously hailed as a ‘silver bullet’ by some in the cement sector and denounced as ‘impossible’ by others. It is neither, argues the Global CCS Institute’s Guloren Turan, and it’s also essential...
Global Cement (GC): Please could you introduce the Global CCS Institute?
Guloren Turan (GT): The Global CCS Institute is an international think-tank backed by governments, businesses and non-profit organisations. It was launched at the G8 Summit in Rome in 2009 by the Australian government. It is a private organisation, headquartered in Melbourne, Australia, that exists to accelerate the deployment of carbon capture and storage (CCS) solutions on a global basis.
GC: What is the institute’s global footprint?
GT: As well as Melbourne, the Global CCS Institute has offices London, Brussels, Washington DC, Tokyo and Beijing with around 40 staff in total. It has around 50 members, including the governments of the US, the UK, China, Japan and, of course Australia, as well as power generators, researchers, technology providers and start-ups. It’s a small organisation but the focus is global. It is the only organisation focused solely on CCS.
GC: What is the most important aspect of your role as General Manager - Advocacy?
GT: My main aim is to get the message out to a wide range of stakeholders, from policy makers to industrial players and the public at large, that CCS is not a ‘silver bullet,’ but rather part of a range of climate mitigation ‘options.’ However, I would go so far as to say that meeting certainly the 1.5°C scenario without CCS is nigh on impossible. It is critical as a methodology and that’s why we must support it.
GC: What have been the institute’s main achievements over its first 10 years?
GT: Over the past decade the Global CCS Institute has become a leading authority on CCS technology worldwide. It is a prolific publisher of insight, information and analysis on the topic. It hosts a comprehensive database of all CCS facilities, both large and small scale. It publishes Global Status Reports every year to coincide with the COP series of conferences, this year the COP 25, now in Madrid. It is just one of many events in which the institute participates, where it reports on policy to help stimulate debate and inform the CCS discussion.
GC: So, how many CCS projects are currently in action around the world?
GT: There are 18 large-scale active CCS projects, plus five large projects under construction. There are a further 20 that are in planning but have not yet begun construction. There are many further pilots and demonstration plants that we list in the Global Status Reports that I can’t go into full detail about here. The institute is mainly interested in meaningful large-scale deployment of CCS. That’s what’s needed to meet challenging climate targets.
Contrary to what many people think, only two of the 18 active plants are in the power sector. The majority of the active systems are used by ‘industrial applications,’ which is quite a broad category. They are predomiantly processes in which the cost of capturing CO2 is relatively low, i.e.: streams in which the CO2 is already fairly highly concentrated, for example fertiliser production, ethanol production, steel and some others. This also includes things like gas processing, where CO2 is removed from natural gas streams before it can be put into the pipeline.
GC: Wait a second... You’re saying that CCS is being used to facilitate fossil fuel production. How does that fit with the Global CCS Institute’s sustainability goals?
GT: Yes, CCS is used to clean natural gas streams, but it’s better than releasing that CO2 to the atmosphere. For me, this highlights the versatility of CCS to a very wide range of industrial processes.
GC: What is the main technology used?
GT: The active large-scale projects use amine-scrubbing technology to capture the CO2 as a soluble carbonate salt, which are stored underground as a solution. It is important to highlight that the Global CCS Institute is totally neutral with regards to the technology used and it may turn out some other chemistry comes to the fore. The institute focuses on the discussions around reducing the cost of establishing such facilities, however that is carried out.
GC: What barriers have to come down to enable greater uptake of CCS?
GT: The technology exists. What we really need is a robust and consistent price for CO2. How that is achieved, again, the institute is ambivalent. Robust prices will enable a stable environment in which companies can commit to projects and carry them to completion. These are multi-year undertakings and they need stability.
The EU has its approach under the ETS, which is sometimes held up as ‘the way’ to lower CO2 emissions. In the US, however, CCS as a solution has been specifically encouraged by way of a tax credit for captured CO2. This gives companies ‘money off’ their tax bill, in a fairly predictable way, if they invest in CCS. This is very appealing to US companies and it works. In the common analogy the EU approach is the ‘stick’ and the US model is the ‘carrot.’ Different approaches can work in different jurisdictions.
GC: Which world region is taking the lead with CCS at the moment?
GT: The US is the leader in this regard. It has 11 of the active 18 projects and a wide range of users. It has innovative and impressive policies. The ‘CCS tax credit’ that I mentioned above is US$35-50/t, one of the highest rates in the world.
GC: Where is the next world region that will develop in terms of CCS projects?
GT: I certainly hope that Europe will pick up the ball with CCS, following something of a stop-start relationship with it to date. There are only two active projects there, but there are nine under development. Six of those are in the UK. There is tremendous help from industry, the EU, NGOs and other stakeholders.
GC: Has Brexit affected these projects in any way?
GT: The development of the six UK projects is not dependent on membership of the EU. I think that the current UK government and any future government will remain committed to them, especially as the UK committed to a net-zero CO2 emissions target for 2050 earlier in 2019. My personal view is that the support will remain in place.
GC: What cement sector projects show the most promise?
GT: There are no operational major CCS projects in the cement sector at the moment. However, there are two major projects with which your readers may already be familiar. The first is the Norcem (HeidelbergCement) plant in Brevik, Norway, which is due for final funding approval in 2020 or 2021. The second is the LEILAC plant in Lixhe, Belgium, another HeidelbergCement facility.
Cement is in something of a unique bind, given that the chemical process itself is such a source of CO2. There appears to be no real altenative to cement and concrete in the short to medium term, which means that CCS is essential to deeply decarbonise the sector. Let’s not forget, cement production emits something like 5 - 8% of global CO2 emissions, depending on who you ask, so this is an important goal.
The dusty nature of cement process gases also poses a big challenge to CCS. Indeed, the lack of cement sector projects shows that cement production is at the higher cost end of the CCS process. This is why the LEILAC project uses Calix’s Direct Separation Reactor (DSR) to keep the process and fuel CO2 streams separate. That process collects the process CO2.
At present costs, full CCS is estimated to add around 70 - 90% to the existing price of cement. It certainly sounds like a problem. However, others claim that the cost of a building would only increase by 1% if CCS were to be used on the cement it uses. Remember that cement is actually a low-cost product for what it does. It is important to look at the entire construction chain, from low-CO2 clinker, lower amounts of clinker in the cement, lower amounts of cement in the concrete and lower amounts of concrete in the building.
GC: Could one say that the cement sector is actually really ‘good’ for CCS, precisely because it cannot be electrified?
GT: There is a misconception that we can electrify our way out of a lot of emissions. This is not the case for cement, which really does need CCS if it is to continue in anything approaching its current form in a carbon-constrained economy. It would make a valid target for CCS equipment manufacturers, especially when we consider the vast quantities of cement and concrete that will be demanded by future urbanisation.
GC: Does the institute look at carbon capture and utilisation (CCU)?
GT: The institute considers CCU to have the potential to be complementary to CCS, provided that the use permanently removes the CO2 from the atmosphere. Therefore, we would support CCU that produced an non-oil-derived plastic, for example, but not one that makes an artificial fuel.
In any case, the sheer quantities of CO2 that have to be captured means that geological storage is the only real option. There may be breakthroughs that allow greater use, which would be fantastic, but we have to work with the realities of the situation as its stands.
GC: What about direct air separation (DAC)?
GT: DAC is becoming more interesting at present, with a lot of investment in start-ups. The costs are on the high side at the moment and we see it as complementary to CCS. We are yet to see how the costs change as it scales up. I am personally hopeful that it can be realised on a commercial scale.
GC: Does the magnitude of the CO2 issue mean that we cannot afford to wait until these things are ‘commercial?’ Should governments instead invest in them, as they do in infrastructure and health?
GT: That’s a good point and some would advocate for that. The Global CCS Institute is, once again, agnostic, but you can’t blame companies for operating in the capitalist system they inhabit. For some industrial players, including many cement multinationals, there is more and more pressure from shareholders to increase transparency in their operations and to make them more sustainable. At the end of the day, consumers drive how companies behave and this will be increasingly true as sustainability moves up the agenda.
GC: What does the Global CCS Institute expect from the next 1 - 5 years?
GT: We will continue to help educate all parties regarding the opportunities of CCS so that we can help shape policies that give rise to increased numbers of projects, across all industrial sectors. We will continue to use all of our reporting methods, knowledge sharing and publicise CCS successes.
In the cement sector, I can’t wait for the Norcem project to come online. This is important for the cement sector, for Europe and for CCS as a whole. My understanding is that, post-2021, there are opportunities, with the support of the Norwegian government, to expand the storage capacity at the Brevik site, as well as others. This could open up opportunites to pipe CO2 from heavy industrial users elsewhere in Europe where storage opportunities are not as good. I hope that Norway makes a good return out of its CCS endeavours, as this would show the way to a future where CO2 storage is a real asset and an important new area, not just for global sustainability, but for the global economy too.
GC: Interesting times ahead. Thank you very much for your time today Guloren.
GT: You are very welcome indeed.