Possible To Abate 400 Mt CO2 Emissions Globally With Carbon Capture: IEA

IEA (International Energy Agency) report on carbon capture and storage identifies challenges in deployment of clean energy technology and in reducing carbon emission. It also compares carbon capture technology, which based on technology for CO2 reduction, with solar PV (Photovoltaic) technology which aim at electricity generation.

The report finds that, the depending on other variables such as, coal prices and availability of renewable resources, the levelized cost of electricity (LCOE) of coal plants equipped with CCUS can be 3-3.5 times higher than that of electricity generated by utility-scale solar PV, and 3-4.5 times higher than onshore wind energy.

Levelised cost of electricity of selected technologies, 2022

In power generation, the report states that, around half of the countries now have a net zero pledge in place (48 out of 93 countries plus the European Union). They have identified CCUS as contributing in some way to the target. Despite this, under 20 countries have CCUS policies on the books that go beyond R&D initiatives. The report finds that the grants and tax credits, and an enabling legal and regulatory framework alone are insufficient to scale up CCUS across applications at the required pace.

It mentions that, today, more than 45 countries have CCUS projects in development. If all announced capture projects are built, around 400 Mt CO2 could be captured every year globally by 2030 – more than eight times current capacity. Currently, around 65% of operating CO2 capture capacity is at natural gas processing plants, one of the lowest-cost CO2 capture applications, but new CCUS developments are increasingly targeting other applications. Based on the current project pipeline, by 2030 annual capture capacity from both new construction and retrofits could amount to around 80 Mt CO2 from hydrogen production, around 80 Mt CO2 from power generation and around 35 Mt CO2 from industrial facilities (e.g. cement and steel production). Planned capacities for CO2 transport and storage have also increased. Based on the current project pipeline, CO2 storage capacity could reach more than 430 Mt CO2 per year by 2030.

In the first half of 2023, three are based in China, 8 while one is based in the United States. 9 The United States also hosts three of the five largest capture facilities, 10 while the largest is in Brazil,11 and the third largest plant 12 in Australia.

Many advanced economies have recently proposed new policies to support CCUS deployment, including the Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act and the Inflation Reduction Act in the United States, the CCUS Investment Tax Credit in Canada, the Net Zero Industry Act in the European Union, the 2023 Spring Budget in the United Kingdom, and the CCS Roadmap in Japan.