Carbon capture and storage

TL;DR

Explanation

Carbon capture and storage

Carbon capture and storage is the magic diet pill of the fossil fuel industry. The idea is as greenhouse gases are created, capture them and then store them somewhere - typically underground.

The problems with this is it is really hard and expensive to capture the carbon in the first place, and the locations where it is generated aren’t always locations where you can store it. If you can’t store it back underground within a reasonable distance then you need to transport it (burning more fossil fuels along the way).

Governments have wasted billions of dollars over the years subsidising research and efforts at CCS with projects like Chevron’s Gorgon project. This carbon capture project was a condition of approval of the gas plant in the first place, but amazingly the failure of it to capture the required volumes of carbon emissions has gone unpunished by Australian governments.

In 2021: In an annual report dated 30 September 2021, Chevron revealed the Gorgon CCS scheme had only injected a total of about 2.26 million tonnes of carbon dioxide over the 12 months to 30 June 2021, well below its targeted 4 million tonne per annum capacity.

From 2023: Chevron expects the performance of its troubled seven-year attempt to bury carbon dioxide from its Gorgon gas export plant to dip in 2023 after a poor year when it only operated at one-third of its design capacity.

In this scenario the CCS is meant to capture carbon emissions from the extraction of fossil gas. The gas being extracted is liquified and exported, and then burnt elsewhere. So even if the CCS facility was working at full capacity it would only be negating the carbon emissions from getting the gas out. Like running a coal mine on solar panels, it’s kind of missing the bigger problem with the product being consumed.

Carbon capture utilisation and storage

The U in CCUS stands for utilisation. This is where the carbon emissions are captured but then used … to extract more fossil fuels. The worst form of recycling, it typically involves pumping gas back underground to extract more oil that wasn’t easily extracted the first time around. This is called Enhanced Oil Recovery (EOR).

Because of the similarity in the acronyms, CCUS is an easy way to dupe people into thinking you’re doing good deeds with CCS (which is questionable in the first place) but really you’re just maximising the fossil fuels you can get out of the ground.

Challenges

Storing gas underground is pretty hard to do well - you need a large area in a geologically stable location to ensure it’s stored permanently. There’s no point storing gas in a cave in a highly earthquake prone location because a rupture may cause the gas to escape.

OK so what about transporting the gas to somewhere else? That could be done with a huge pipeline from the source to the storage. In 2020 a CO2 pipeline in America ruptured near the town of Satartia, Mississippi which messed a lot of people up with 45 hospitalised. CO2 is heavier than air and sinks to the ground which pushed out the oxygen in the town. Emergency vehicles than rushed to the scene just stopped as the engines had no oxygen to combust. It’s a pretty messed up story and not a great idea to have heaps of these kind of pipelines running past humans because eventually all things fail.

Other ideas

There are technologies that can convert the CO2 into solid objects or materials that can be used in construction. MCI Carbon is an example of a company that uses mineral carbonisation. They have accelerated a natural process so we can more rapidly sequester carbon and I hope it scales and has a massive positive impact on reducing emissions. I think this form of carbon capture and utilisation is something to be supported as it’s not directly connected to fossil fuel projects or being used to justify their expansion.

Once again

Don’t make me tap the sign that says “Focus more on reducing emissions in the first place” instead of chasing after them with problematic tech that promises more than it delivers.

Further reading

Gas giant’s $3.2b effort to bury carbon pollution is failing November 2022

Shell’s Massive Carbon Capture Plant Is Emitting More Than It’s Capturing 2022

Water problems plague world’s largest CCS project

Chevron’s information page about the project.

What is CCS?

A review on CO2 capture and sequestration in the construction industry: Emerging approaches and commercialised technologies

The U.S. is expanding CO2 pipelines. One poisoned town wants you to know its story September 2023

Go read the harrowing story of the world’s first CO2 pipeline explosion August 2021

How do you store CO2 and what happens to it when you do? April 2020