What is CCUS?
Carbon Capture, Utilization, and storage (CCUS) is said to have the ability to unlock the full potential of decarbonization and attain carbon neutrality. It involves capturing, transporting, and storing greenhouse gas emissions from fossil fuel power stations, energy intensive industries, and gas fields by injecting the greenhouse gases emitted back into the soil or the ground. There are various use cases in CCUS technologies, but the main focus is on fossil fuel energy infrastructure and reducing the emissions at heavy emitting facilities. Deploying CCUS technologies at an emission heavy facility entails three major steps: capture, transportation, and storage.
How we deal with Carbon Neutral Society and CCUS
As steel and petrochemicals are high-carbon industries, the burden of carbon reduction is the greatest, accounting for a significant portion of Korea's annual carbon emission/ Because of this, the first industrial sectors to jump into technology development are ail refining, chemical and construction (steel, cement).
Process
of capturing, transporting, and storing CO2 in CCUS technology. Source: IEA
● Once the CO2 is captured, it is then compressed into fluid and then transported to a storage site that is appropriated for CO2 storage. This transportation process is usually done via pipelines, trains or ships and occasionally other vehicles are involved as well.
● In the last step, the CO2 is injected into deep, underground geological formations, where it is then stored for a long period of time, rather than being released into the atmosphere. Storage sites for CO2 include former oil and gas reservoirs, deep saline formations, and coal beds.
Scale
Today, CCUS facilities around the world have the capacity to capture more than 40 MtCO2 each year. Some of these facilities have been operating since the 1970s and 1980s, when natural gas processing plants in the Val Verde area of Texas began supplying CO2 to local oil producers for enhanced oil recovery operations.
Since these early projects, CCUS deployment has expanded to more regions and more applications. The first large-scale CO2 capture and injection project with dedicated CO2 storage and monitoring was commissioned at the Sleipner offshore gas facility in Norway in 1996. The project has now stored more than 20 MtCO2 in a deep saline formation located around 1 km under the North Sea.
Stronger investment incentives and climate targets are building new momentum behind CCUS. The pipeline of planned projects is growing. Many of these plans involve the development of industrial “hubs” which capture CO2 from a range of facilities with shared CO2 transport and storage infrastructure. Examples include the Alberta Carbon Trunk Line in Canada, which started operating in 2020, and the planned Longship project in Norway.
CCUS Costs
Many analysis suggests coal-sourced CO2 emissions can be stored in this region at a cost of $52–$60 ton−1, whereas the cost to store emission from natural-gas-fired plants ranges from approximately $80 to $90. Storing emissions offshore increases the lowest total costs of CCS to over $60 per ton of CO2 for coal. Because there apparently is sufficient onshore storage in the northeastern and midwestern United States.
EXAMPLE
SK E&S (Based on SK E&S Sustainability Report 2020)
They aim to reach Net Zero (based on the sum of Scope 1 and 2 emissions) in GHG emissions by 2050. To this end, not only will they preemptively embrace CCUS technology to eliminate GHG also will engage in CDM (Clean Development Mechanism) projects to develop renewable energy in developing countries as part of our efforts to explore diverse solutions to additionally offset their GHG emissions.
