With the ongoing climate emergency, there’s a heightened need to significantly reduce greenhouse gas emissions through whatever means possible.
Despite this, carbon capture technologies have been labelled as a distraction from supporting renewable energies and as extending the life of the oil and gas industry. But this is a technology we cannot ignore.
It concentrates carbon dioxide from various streams, including combustion stacks, industrial processes and air, and either makes use of the carbon dioxide or stores it away. I research the technical development of carbon capture and previously oversaw Carbon Management Canada, and have come to understand these technologies.
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Mitigation — finding ways to avoid the worst effects of the climate emergency — is a hugely complex problem. The problem itself is multi-faceted, value laden and carries uncertainty. There is no silver bullet.
In order to deal with complex problems, we need to apply non-linear thinking and be adaptive and learn. Given the urgent need to decarbonize, we need renewable energy sources to replace fossil fuels to produce electricity. But this will take time, and it is here, through this transition period, that we can look to this technical solution.
We also need CCUS to decarbonize heavy industries such as cement and steel, which account for about 10 per cent of greenhouse gas emissions in Canada. Using renewable energy won’t affect their emissions much because carbon dioxide is released during the process, and not through combustion.
Time matters in the race to decarbonization. Fortunately, CCUS technologies are no longer a curiosity or experimental.
Canada has successfully demonstrated this at Boundary Dam, a coal-fired power station near Estevan, Sask. The technology is based on a liquid that absorbs carbon dioxide from emissions and lets the other gases through, and then releases pure carbon dioxide into another stream, allowing it to be captured and stored.
Over the past seven years, this demonstration project — the world’s first — has provided much information about capturing carbon dioxide from a coal-powered plant, and has become a benchmark for technology developers. Researchers like myself learned that a liquid sorbent (the substance that absorbs the carbon dioxide molecules) requires large amounts of energy for regeneration (compared to solid sorbents) and degrades over time, releasing toxic chemicals.
Identifying challenges like these — and proposing solutions — is how technological breakthroughs evolve. This project also demonstrated how carbon dioxide can be safely stored and monitored in geological formations.
The small CCUS steps taken almost a decade ago are now being followed by a flurry of innovative technologies whose commercial deployment can be measured in months or in a few years.
The cost of carbon capture reflects the capital cost of building the system, concentrating the incoming carbon dioxide stream and providing the energy required to purify the carbon dioxide stream. As technologies develop and more versions are adopted, the cost of carbon dioxide capture and conversion will decrease.
However, they will remain costly even with the best of scenarios. If we want to add value to carbon dioxide, thermodynamics tell us that it will inevitably require energy — and energy has a cost.
Just as we, as a society, have come to accept paying for the proper handling of our solid wastes, industry must accept paying for the proper handling of its carbon dioxide emissions. Clearly, we can no longer expect to limit the global temperature rise to 1.5 C without considerable commitment of funds and political will.
Critics may say that we are gambling with unproven technologies, but many of these technologies are far from unproven. Yes, many are being challenged through their scale-up, but this is typical of any new technology in any industry.
We have now entered the all-hands-on-deck phase to quickly mitigate the devastating effects of the climate emergency.
Let’s shift the narrative on CCUS and reduce carbon emissions with all the available tools.
Naoko Ellis is a professor in chemical engineering, University of British Columbia.
