#11 Carbon Capture Storage (CCS)

Taking emitted CO2 back underground.

Jan 28, 2023

Read time: 4 minutes

In this week’s issue you will learn about getting atmospheric CO₂ and putting it underground: Carbon Capture Storage

“In the Net Zero Emissions by 2050 Scenario, the vast majority of the captured CO₂ is stored” - International Energy Agency

Top CCS News 🗞️

Massive project in Norway: The world’s first open-source CO₂ transport and storage infrastructure is being built here and will open by 2024. It will offer CCS for industries all across Europe.

US news: An updated compilation of the latest CCS news from the US Office of Fossil Energy and Carbon Management.

World’s first certified CCS metholody: Climeworks and Carbfix have worked together to create the first and only third-party verified CCS methodology.

Let’s dive in 🧠

Even if we move to renewables and decarbonize the whole economy we will still need to take already emitted CO₂ out of the atmosphere.

Source: National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration

We are at 421ppm, we need to get back down to a safe level of around 300ppm.

After removing that CO₂ from the air we can either store it or use it to make stuff. The second option is called Carbon Capture Utilization (CCU) and I already covered it here :)

Let’s focus on CCS now

There are many ways to store CO₂. Trees are the most common one, but they can burn or be cut down. There’s also the ocean, beaches, mountains, etc.

Those are all nature-based solutions and they are awesome.

But when we speak of CCS we usually refer to this:

The process can be simplified into 3 main steps.

Capture the emissions: From a heavy industry facility that releases lots of CO₂. Most carbon capture technologies aim to stop at least 90% of the CO₂ from reaching the atmosphere.
Transform and transport: Extract just the CO₂, liquify it and move it to where it’s going to be stored. By liquifying it, CO₂ takes up much less space when stored underground.
Source: IEA
Store: Keep it a few kms underground where the high temperature and pressure will make it stay in this “supercritical fluid” state (a mix between liquid and gas). These are the main underground formations for geologic carbon storage:
1. Saline formations
2. Basalt formations
3. Unmineable coal deposits
4. Oil and natural gas reservoirs
5. Organic-rich sedimentary rocks

REMEMBER: REDUCING IS THE PRIORITY, but removing is also necessary.

If this sounds so great, how come there are only 30 commercial CCS facilities in operation?

Cons

Misusage: Some companies are using CCS as an excuse to keep polluting instead of investing in fixing the actual source of emissions.

Money: Currently the cost of emitting carbon is lower than the cost of capturing it, so it’s not worth it for companies to do CCS. It depends on the specific case but CCS costs hundreds of euros per tonne and EU carbon permits are trading under 100 euros.

Scaling: CCS is quite complex and requires lots of infrastructure. We are currently capturing and storing an average 40 million tonnes of CO₂ per year and we have to get to around 5600 by 2050!

Top CCS Companies 💰

Here’s a mix of companies from the whole CCS value chain.

Carbfix: They turn CO₂ into stone underground in less than 2 years. They focus on the storage part of CCS and rely on partnering with companies that send them the captured CO₂. They’re from Iceland and they have raised $117 million.

Climeworks: They are by far the largest Direct Air Capture company in the world. After sucking the CO₂ directly from the atmosphere they send it to partners like Carbfix to store it. They’re Swiss and they have raised $800 million.

Aker Carbon Capture: They provide CCS As A Service. Since the CCS value chain is so complex they help companies by taking care of the whole process. They charge per tonne of captured CO₂. They’re from Norway and their market cap is $860 million.

❗Extreme knowledge area❗

Just in case that wasn’t enough here are some additional resources:

Global CCS 2022 report: Lots of interesting graphs, numbers, policies, projects, etc. in this super complete report from the CCS Institute.

How it works in detail: Very detailed explanations of how CCS works with diagrams to understand what happens underground.

That’s it for today, 1 climate tech topic in under 5 minutes.

Next week… Enhanced Weathering! 🤯

If you enjoyed today’s issue, the best compliment you could pay me would be to share it with one person who you think would benefit from it :)