CCS deployment is an ‘urgent priority’, engineers warn

Deploying carbon capture and storage is “an urgent priority” if climate change is to be kept in check, the Institution of Chemical Engineers has warned.

The use of the carbon capture and storage (CCS) technology alongside bioenergy will be “vital” to efforts to keep global warming below 2 degrees Celsius, as agreed at the COP21 summit in Paris last year.

“CCS deployment must be progressed as an urgent priority,” the Institution of Chemical Engineers (IChemE) said in a report. “This will require proactive support from governments around the world. We have the ability to deploy CCS technology today, and in so doing, take a major step forwards to the least-cost mitigation of dangerous climate change.” Meeting short-term targets must not come at the expense of longer-term goals.

The report called for carbon dioxide storage to be de-risked to enable the deployment of CCS: “This is more urgent than the development of new capture technologies.” Efforts are “proceeding well” in the UK and the rest of Europe.

The cost of power generation and industrial processes must be decoupled from the capture of carbon dioxide and transport infrastructure. “Initial project costs are significantly inflated relative to the potential for the subsequent cost reduction once infrastructure costs are shared,” it added.  

Research aimed at improving the process will need to focus on reducing capital expenditure. So far it has “almost exclusively” focused on efficiency improvements and reductions to operational expenditure on fuel.

The report also said the use of carbon dioxide for Enhanced Oil Recovery is a “mature” process and could provide a “near-term, market driven pull” for the deployment of transport infrastructure. Although it remains “somewhat controversial because of the perception that it perpetuates the oil and gas industries”, it has the potential to prevent “substantial quantities” of carbon dioxide entering the atmosphere.

There have been growing calls for the government to support the development of CCS, despite its decisions to cancel a £1 billion commercialisation competition in November. Commenting on a National Audit Office report which said the cancellation could add billions to the cost of decarbonisation, chair of the Environmental Audit Committee Mary Creagh urged the government to establish a new strategy for the “crucial technology”.

In a report on the UK’s progress towards emissions targets, the Committee on Climate Change called for a “strategic approach” to the development of CCS, saying the technology is of “critical importance”. CCS strategy manager for the Energy Technologies Institute Den Gammer warned the government not to rely on “global technology advances to reduce costs and risks”.