Carbon capture faces its technological and economic limits

The future con­tri­bu­tion of CCS (Car­bon Cap­ture and Stor­age) and CCU (Car­bon Cap­ture and Util­isa­tion) tech­no­logy in decar­bon­isa­tion has become almost indis­put­able. The ques­tion now being: what is the right strategy if we are to achieve the cap­ture of 450 mil­lion tonnes of CO2 by 2050?
 
“The path for the deploy­ment of CCS (stor­age) and CCU (util­isa­tion) is not set in stone, but it is imper­at­ive that States adopt a long-term vis­ion,” says Paula Coussy, pro­ject man­ager for CO₂ Extern­al­it­ies, Mar­kets and Car­bon Cer­ti­fic­a­tion at IFP Ener­gies nou­velles (IFPEN¹), emphas­ising the import­ance of Nation­ally Determ­ined Con­tri­bu­tions (NDCs). Key ele­ments of a plaus­ible scen­ario include:

1. cap­ture tech­no­lo­gies must pri­or­it­ise sec­tors without oth­er altern­at­ives for redu­cing CO₂ emissions;
2. the first CCS and CCU value chains must be in place by 2030 at the indus­tri­al sites covered by the car­bon mar­ket (EU ETS²), which are the cement, chem­ic­al, steel and alu­mini­um industries;
3. in line with the phas­ing in France, the cumu­lat­ive cap­ture tar­get of 4 to 8 Mt CO₂/year should be reached by 2035 by the indus­tri­al port hubs of Le Havre, Dunkirk, Saint-Nazaire and the Rhône corridor.

The European strategy sets three mile­stones: stor­ing 50 Mt/year of CO₂ by 2030, cap­tur­ing 280 Mt/year by 2040 (includ­ing 60 Mt/year by Dir­ect Air Car­bon Cap­ture [DACC]), and 450 Mt/year (includ­ing 150 Mt/year by DACC) by 2050³. Ambi­tious tar­gets that are achiev­able accord­ing to the experts… under “cer­tain con­di­tions”, first and fore­most of which is a car­bon price (EU ETS) to sup­port CCS and CCU investments.

“In the face of the European legis­lat­ive and reg­u­lat­ory frame­work, we have tools,” says Paula Coussy, point­ing out that from 2026, car­bon quotas should gradu­ally dis­ap­pear in favour of the Car­bon Bor­der Adjust­ment Mech­an­ism (CBAM). These tools are those required to com­ply with European Com­mis­sion dir­ect­ives.
 
“In the run-up to its deploy­ment, the mar­ket will be driv­en by reg­u­la­tion,” says Raphaël Huyghe, CO₂ Cap­ture and Stor­age pro­gramme man­ager at IFPEN, emphas­ising the cost of inac­tion com­pared to the cost of action. For example, a study by ADEME (2023) estim­ates that cli­mate inac­tion for France would cost between 5 and 7 points of annu­al GDP by 2100, or more than €180bn, res­ult­ing in a 13% reduc­tion in medi­an income by 2050, while the fin­an­cing cost for the action is estim­ated at €66bn per year by 2030⁴. On a glob­al scale, a study pub­lished by Nature⁵, estim­ates that inac­tion will res­ult in $38tn in dam­ages by 2050, six times more than cli­mate action.

Today, accord­ing to Paula Coussy, the risk is not tech­nic­al but fin­an­cial: “There is a gap between the cur­rent invest­ment need and the as-yet unknown car­bon pen­alty in 2050.” While com­mer­cial busi­ness mod­els are being built along the CCS and CCU value chain, the aim is to “cla­ri­fy the fin­an­cial respons­ib­il­ity of CO₂” through a frame­work for the cer­ti­fic­a­tion of avoided or elim­in­ated emissions.

In view of the cost of the CCS and CCU value chain, the car­bon pen­alty on the EU ETS, cur­rently €80/t CO₂, is in fact cur­rently insuf­fi­cient incent­ive for heavy invest­ment, and is expec­ted to rise to €180/t CO₂ in 2035. How­ever, “the long-term vis­ion must be to invest in cap­ture” says Paula Coussy, not­ing that the cur­rent major­ity pos­i­tion of man­u­fac­tur­ers is to prefer pay­ing for CO₂ emis­sions quotas. In their defence, the CCS value chain is new to them (130 to 230 €/t CO₂, depend­ing on the type of CCS value chain), hence the need for emit­ters to join forces to reduce costs and pur­sue innovation. 

To achieve decar­bon­isa­tion tar­gets by 2050, the IPCC and the Inter­na­tion­al Energy Agency believe that tech­no­lo­gies for the cap­ture, trans­port, stor­age and use of CO₂ are essen­tial. “It is a sequence of tech­no­lo­gic­al build­ing blocks aimed at redu­cing emis­sions of CO₂ (the main cause of cli­mate change) that allow us to integ­rate its cap­ture, trans­port and stor­age,” explains Raphaël Huyghe, emphas­ising that the two value chains, CCS and CCU, are com­ple­ment­ary, but with dif­fer­ent purposes. 

How­ever, these “build­ing blocks” have been mastered tech­no­lo­gic­ally and can be com­bined: we know how to cap­ture CO₂ in indus­tri­al fumes (CO₂ from fossil com­bus­tion), from bio­gen­ic sources (CO₂ from bio­mass com­bus­tion) or dir­ectly in the atmo­sphere using Dir­ect Air Car­bon Cap­ture tech­no­logy (with a lower level of matur­ity, but which prom­ises neg­at­ive emis­sions), we know how to inject it into sealed geo­lo­gic­al form­a­tions for per­man­ent and safe stor­age and, finally, we also know how to use it to man­u­fac­ture products and mater­i­als.
 
While the cir­cu­lar car­bon eco­nomy mod­el using cap­tured CO₂ in e‑fuels and e‑products is par­tic­u­larly prom­ising, with the devel­op­ment of CO₂ in Sus­tain­able Avi­ation Fuels (SAF), it is not at all on the scale of the stor­age that will rep­res­ent mil­lions of tonnes and must provide the fast­est pos­sible response to the cli­mate emergency.

“The tech­no­logy has been developed, is being imple­men­ted in stages, and the chal­lenge is to roll it out on a large scale, on the one hand by redu­cing costs through­out the CCUS value chain, in par­tic­u­lar cap­ture, and on the oth­er hand by stim­u­lat­ing invest­ment through nation­al and European strategies or policies and pub­lic fund­ing com­bined with fin­an­cial mech­an­isms (CCfd),” sum­mar­ises Raphaël Huyghe. The tech­no­logy must be based on its techno-eco­nom­ic viab­il­ity to enable large-scale deploy­ment in order to move from 50 Mt of CO₂ cap­tured in 2025 to 1 Gt in 2030 and 6 Gt of CO₂ in 2050⁶), and at the same time it will be neces­sary to accel­er­ate the devel­op­ment of stor­age sites and coordin­ate all the play­ers in the value chain.
 
“We have known how to cap­ture CO₂ for a cen­tury, but today we are chan­ging our object­ive,” con­firms Florent Guil­lou, CCS pro­ject man­ager, spe­cify­ing that in Europe’s “net zero” in Europe by 2050 (EU Indus­tri­al Car­bon Man­age­ment Strategy, Feb­ru­ary 2024), it is a ques­tion of com­bin­ing 3 decar­bon­isa­tion levers: the reduc­tion of CO₂ emis­sions, the defos­sil­isa­tion of uses and the dir­ect elim­in­a­tion of car­bon. Among the four types of CO₂ cap­ture (pre-com­bus­tion, oxy-com­bus­tion, post-com­bus­tion and DACC), two have been tested and are now ready for industrialisation:

• DMX^TM tech­no­logy enables second-gen­er­a­tion post-com­bus­tion CO₂ cap­ture. The indus­tri­al pro­to­type, built and oper­ated at the ArcelorMit­tal site in Dunkirk as part of the European 3D/DinamX pro­ject coordin­ated by IFPEN, has val­id­ated the per­form­ance of the pro­cess (11 European Uni­on part­ners for 5 years [2019–2024] with a budget of €24m).
• CLC tech­no­logy (chem­ic­al loop­ing com­bus­tion of sol­id fossil/biomass charges [1 t/h]) is the res­ult of 7 years of R&D (2017–2024) by 9 part­ners from the European Uni­on and China with an over­all budget of €22m⁷.

“These tech­no­lo­gies are now ready for com­mer­cial­isa­tion among large emit­ters, and our future devel­op­ments will con­sist of intensi­fy­ing the pro­cesses for more com­pact and more access­ible units, inten­ded for small and medi­um-sized emit­ters,” says Florent Guil­lou.
 
After almost a cen­tury of exper­i­ence in CO₂ sep­ar­a­tion, the time has come to demo­crat­ise tech­no­lo­gies to help meet the chal­lenge of com­bat­ing cli­mate change. While CCUS tech­no­logy is not the one­g­lob­al solu­tion to decar­bon­isa­tion, it can be a major play­er in it!

Nathaly Mermet