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