December 18 ------ Carbon capture and storage (CCS) is seen as a bridge to help the world wean off carbon fuels. With that in mind, this developing technology is not going to be temporary and is definitely going to happen on a large scale. To reach that as quickly as possible, we need regulations, licensing, a supply chain, as well as trust from society, the CCS: Completing the climate change menu session at Offshore Energy Exhibition & Conference concluded, highlighting the need for more projects to enable better understanding of what is working and what not.
Berte Simons, Business Unit Director of CO2 Storage & Transport Systems at Energie Beheer Nederland (EBN), Alistair Macfarlane, Manager UK Carbon Transport & Storage at North Sea Transition Authority (NSTA), Martin van Onna, CEO at Dutch thermoplastic composite pipe (TCP) technology player Strohm, and Flaviu Barsan, Energy Transition Manager at Dutch exploration and production firm ONE-Dyas, participated in the session, moderated by Paul de Leeuw, Director Energy Transition Institute at Robert Gordon University (RGU).
According to Simons, the Netherlands aims to develop quite a large CCS infrastructure, seen as a very important part of the energy transition. At the moment, the country is in the concept select phase of scaling up the CCS infrastructure, which means that after 2030, with the Aramis infrastructure and many storage sites offshore, ten times of what is being done now can be done.
Due to being a developing and capital-intensive industry, certain key challenges require collaboration across the industry with operators, suppliers, and government to come up with the right policies and legislation. “A lot of things are needed for standardization and we have quite some challenges to overcome on how we are going to share risk in scaling infrastructure where we have an emitter-base, an industrial base in Europe, which is under pressure, not only because of the energy transition, but because of many other legislations as well,” Simons said. “At the same time, we are still producing gas. We need to basically manage that in an orderly manner so we can optimize the economic value that we currently have in still supplying energy and then in the future using these assets for other purposes.”
Simons notes that CCS is definitely going to happen on a large scale and that the Netherlands is incredibly well positioned, especially taking into consideration that Belgium and Germany have very limited storage sites: “The ones who are moving first with large-scale industry will be able to capture the markets and will be able to share risk and derisk each other’s projects. That will definitely happen.”
A lot of commercial and economic risks and challenges lie ahead to make this market work, but those who are able to build the CCS offering or capture and/or are decarbonizing their portfolio are the ones who are going to push the scaling of the market as they are already connected. They are the ones who are going to be the first movers, where the largest volume of trade contracts is happening first, and they will be the first to access subsidies because they put in risk.
CCS is not going to be temporary, which changed the views on reusing already existing infrastructure. Simons claims that as the technology will be staying, facilities need to be built to last not only 15 years but a lot longer. Scaling up also requires to be “in the money”, Simons notes, claiming that otherwise it is not going to happen: “You need to have cash, knowledge of the subsurface and assets in order to make this transition. We need to keep the industry here. People need to be employed here. They need to want to live in the Netherlands and work in the Netherlands. That is very critical and it is actually at risk at the moment when you look at cash and how we look at the business case.”
Macfarlane shares the confidence that the scaling up is going to take place. However, he believes that the pace needs to pick up hugely as at this speed the targets that have been set will not be achieved, and having one North Sea target would bring a much better result than each country acting on its own. More projects are needed as the more we have the better we know what is going on and what is going to work and what not, Simons further notes, adding that, besides that, working with neighboring countries, as well as private companies, is the way to go, sharing all research results to help investors quickly assess what they have to do.
Strohm’s Van Onna claims that proven, mature technology is needed for the energy transition: “We started looking at hydrogen and CO2 at the same time. Originally we put more of our resources into the hydrogen camp and the only thing that we saw was delay and delay. It is an interesting comparison because in the hydrogen area, we saw that the technology challenges were so large that it was very difficult to increase the technology readiness level quickly enough to come to scale, and if you make that comparison to CO2, technology-wise it is a big difference, the technology is there.”
This might not be the case commercially, but in terms of regulations, large steps have been taken, resulting in more concrete inquiries and more concrete projects, thus showing that CO2 in terms of business is overtaking hydrogen. In the past people would only talk about what is the cost of infrastructure and installation, while now there are real concerns on corrosion, lifecycle cost, picking the infrastructure back up at the end of the lifetime, and maintenance, Van Onna says.
The UK has 78 gigatons of storage, up there with Norway in terms of capacity, and all the emissions that the UK has emitted since the Industrial Revolution could be captured in this storage, Macfarlane notes. This solely represents a lot of opportunity, but given the proximity and the amount of infrastructure that is there already from oil & gas production, there is an opportunity for repurposing as well. The UK currently has two Track 1 projects, one of which is Northern Endurance Partnership (NEP), which is an aquifer, and the other is Liverpool Bay, which is a depleted gas field. Furthermore, there are two Track 2 projects, announced in July 2023.
Source: offshore-energy.biz
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