CCS (carbon capture and sequestration) and CCUS (Carbon capture, utilization, and storage) technologies are essentially “after thought” to fix the CO2 emission by 2050. It also indirectly encourages continuity of fossil fuel usage for a foreseeable future to help those industries who have invested billions of dollars in creating their infrastructures including “fracking”. Fracking generates hundreds of cubic meters of toxic effluent whose salinity is more than ten times that of the salinity of seawater. It is an environmental nightmare. Are these technologies practicable? Will they pay $100 or more for a ton of CO2 to capture and then transport hundreds of km distance to find a suitable site; and even if they pay what will be the cost implications? Certainly, their cost of production will sharply increase, which will be necessarily passed on to the consumers whether it is a power industry or oil and gas industry. Why some of the CCS projects are dormant in many parts of the world? They claim injecting CO2 into existing oil field will increase oil production. Only US companies and US governments support such schemes by way of carbon credit at the rate of $ 35/Mt to please local companies and local population. There is hardly any evidence to substantiate their “Carbon negative” claims. How many such oil fields exist in Australia, for example? The same question should be raised for all the countries around the world especially those oil importing countries like India. IEA should lead the world in energy matters by publishing necessary data to back up claims that CCS and CCUS will lead to zero emission by 2050 instead of simply following American companies claims. In the absence of such data and hard evidence and the cost and economic analysis these projections will lead us nowhere. Without imposing Carbon tax as a financial incentive (not as a penalty) will these industries embark upon such a venture? The Carbon tax cannot be less than $250/Mt (because Carbon capture from air, for example, cost more than $150 to 200/Mt depending upon the maturity of technology). Now they want to utilize capture Carbon to produce synthetic fuel with green Hydrogen. Green hydrogen is awfully expensive, renewable energy is costly and storing them is prohibitively costly and converting them to Hydrogen by electrolysis is even more expensive. Despite all these expensive measures can zero emission be achieved by 2050? The cost of green fuel will be at least 10 times more than fossil fuels currently used. Will consumers afford to pay for such high fuel cost? Many questions remain unanswered. The word “Carbon capture” implies continuity of fossil fuel. It is like tobacco industry. At least in cigarette packs there is a warning ” smoking is injuries to health” but there is no such warnings in CCS or CCUS because the “captured CO2 will be released back into atmosphere slowly at the point of usage in the near future , for example, Urea made out of captured CO2 will slowly release CO2 back into atmosphere by soil enzymes. Conversion to “concrete” or “Nano Carbon” are claimed to be potential products but only future can tell. We are talking about “billions of tons of CO2”. Only carbon recycling and circular economy will be the answer and not CCS or CCUS.
#CCS #CCUS # Carbon emission and Carbon capture # Net Zero emission.
ahilanraman
Clean Energy and Water Technologies 