Abby L. Harvey
GHG Monitor
11/6/2015
A total of 22 large-scale carbon capture and storage projects are projected to be operational in worldwide by 2020, exceeding the expectations of the Global CCS Institute, CEO Brad Page told press this week in advance of the launch of the organization’s 2015 Global Status of CCS report. “[In 2011] we were hopeful but not confident that we would reach one of our objectives of having 20 large-scale projects in operation by 2020,” Page said. “It’s now quite clear that we’ll have 22 of them by 2017, and there are more shaping up behind that.”
The 2015 report notes that two more large-scale projects have become operational since the 2014 report. Shell’s Quest CCS project at the company’s Scotford Upgrader near Edmonton, Alberta, comes online this month, and the Uthmaniyah CO2-Enhanced Oil Recovery (EOR) Demonstration Project in Saudi Arabia began operations in July, capturing CO2 from a natural gas liquids recovery plant. The addition of these projects to the CCS portfolio brings the total of large-scale projects operating in 2015 to 15. Large-scale projects included in the GCCSI tally range from demonstration projects to the full-scale Boundary Dam project in Saskatchewan.
“I think the exciting news for us is that there are a further seven projects in various stages of construction at the moment,” Page said. “Four of those are expected to come online in 2016 and the other three in 2017. That will take us during the 2017 year to a total of 22 projects in operation around the world, and those 22 projects are expected to capture and store about 40 million tonnes of CO2 emissions each year.”
Looking forward, three new projects are expected to become operational in the United States alone next year.
The Illinois Industrial CCS Project is expected to start up in early 2016. The project “will be the world’s first large-scale bio-CCS project, capturing around 1.0 Mtpa of CO2 at the Archer Daniel Midlands corn-to-ethanol production facility in Decatur,” the GCSSI report says.
In the first half of the year, the long-delayed Kemper County Energy Facility is expected to reach full operation. The project, operated by Southern Co., will be a new-build coal-fired power plant employing carbon capture and storage. “When operational, the Kemper County Energy Facility in Mississippi will be the largest CCS power project in the world in terms of volume of CO2 captured (approximately 3.0 Mtpa, to be used for EOR),” according to the report.
Finally, NRG Energy’s Petra Nova Carbon Capture Project “will be the world’s largest post-combustion capture project at a power station when it is launched, planned for late 2016. Unit 8 of the W.A. Parish plant near Houston, Texas, is being retrofitted with a post-combustion system capable of capturing 1.4 Mtpa,” the report says.
Additional projects are expected to come online next year in Abu Dhabi, Australia, and Canada.
Policy Parity Key to Advancing CCS, Page Says
While progress toward advancing CCS has been slow but steady, the technology has yet to earn wide recognition as a clean energy opportunity on par with renewable options. Because of this, the GCCSI has called for policy parity with other low- and no-carbon energy options. “That is not preferential treatment,” Page said. “That is that it receives similar sort of treatment to that which renewables and energy efficiency receives. … I think you can see that CCS has not received that sort of treatment when you consider that somewhere around $20 billion [globally] have been invested in CCS projects over the past 20 years and at the same time $2 trillion has gone to renewables.”