Government funding welcomed, but issues over strategy and CO2 purity persist
The UK government has confirmed nearly £22 billion investment to kickstart the country’s first carbon seize, delivery and storage (CCS) venture in the UK. The money, to be made available over 25 years, is seen by way of industry as critical to de-risk those early ventures, and bring within the envisioned £8 billion private investment had to construct them.
The investment – at the beginning proposed through the Conservative government in 2023, despite the fact that without any formal plan – will support two clusters, on Teesside and Merseyside. They intention to develop a combined offshore carbon dioxide storage capacity of 8.5 million tons per year, and seize CO2 streams from methane-based totally blue hydrogen manufacturing, gas fired power and energy-from-waste plants.
The UK pursue to keep 20–30 million tons of carbon dioxide by 2030. But none of the projects supported with the aid of the assertion on 4 October has reached a final investment choice, and there’s no lucidity on the pipeline of future ventures that would fill the storage sites. These consist of CCS on cement and lime facilities that commenced negotiations for support with the preceding government.
Olivia Powis, chief executive of the Carbon capture and Storage Association (CCSA) says the objectives are possible. ‘It can still be carried out, but we can’t have a big hiatus now among tune one and the next ventures. They need to move.’
There’s nobody who has a entire evaluate of the whole CO2 supply chain – capture, cleaning, conditioning, shipping after which injection
‘We are hoping that alongside on the next steps, the imminent industrial strategy is going to offer a strong sign in phrases of figuring out industries and their direction to decarbonisation, with dates and closing dates,’ she adds. ‘This is what we’ve been lacking – we haven’t had an industrial strategy that sets out how the government goes to prioritise dealing with those industries.’
The funding will take the shape of revenue guide beneath ‘contracts for difference’ – in which government will undergo some of the additional cost of using CCS. How much support is required will depend, for example, on the difference among the carbon rate in the UK’s Emissions Trading Scheme (ETS) and the rate of CCS. At present the carbon rate is round £36, while Offshore Energies UK estimate the charges of CCS nowadays range from £115 to £165 per ton. Government modelling indicates that gap will close with a carbon rate potentially as excessive as £118 by 2030.
In the EU too, there are questions about the tempo of ventures to acquire its 2030 goal of storing 50 million tons a year by 2030. In September, as an example, it became found out that the venture to construct pipelines to take carbon dioxide from Germany to the Netherlands won’t be operating till 2032 – four years later than aimed. Chris Davies, who heads up CCS Europe and helped develop the bloc’s first CCS rules, bemoans a lack of political leadership from the European Commission: ‘It’s began to provide a variety of technical support, but not political tub-thumping, “we need to do these things, get-on-with-it” leadership. Fundamentally, it comes right down to every individual government putting in location a CCS development strategy, and presenting the financial aid that’s needed to bridge the distance (among the carbon rate and the cost of CCS).’
He notes that, so far this year, no considerableventures have reached a final investment choice. The most latest is Orsted’s Kalundborg CCS hub, which pursuits to seize 430,000 tons of CO2 per year from power plants in Denmark. It will ship carbon dioxide to Norway’s Northern Lights storage reservoir in the northern North Sea. Northern Lights’ first 1.5 million tons a year storage will begin accepting carbon dioxide in 2025. Another shipping and storage venture, Porthos at the port complex of Rotterdam in the Netherlands, is anticipated to start running in 2026.
However, a few heavy industries in Europe are worried that the requirements set for carbon dioxide purity are too onerous to satisfy.
If better quality material is used to resist corrosion, the [capital cost] can be high. But overall, less money will be spent on cleansing the CO2
Both Northern Lights and Porthos say they’ve designed their specifications to ensure process protection and technical integrity of the infrastructure, as they’ll take CO2 from multiple emitters. Work on a pan-European began in September but won’t be posted until mid-2026 at the earliest.
Audun Drageset, senior engineer for CCUS and materials technology at Danish technical services provider DNV, helped develop Northern Lights latest specifications. He factors out that even ‘individual ventures have experience of transporting and storing carbon dioxide in which you have a single source of CO2 and you’ve control [over it], now we’re beginning to look at what happens while we blend different resources.’ One difficulty is solid particles – both from the CO2 source or reactions among impurities – which can doubtlessly block pore spaces in storage reservoirs over the time.
But of precise concern is the formation and subsequent drop-out of acids like sulfuric and nitric acids. ‘By drop-out we refer with the formation of a separate acid section,’ Drageset explains. These acids are produced while hydrogen sulfide, SOx and NOx react in the presence of water and oxygen. Unless the acids stay dissolved in CO2, they will corrode pipelines and other parts of the infrastructure, he adds.
Eric de Coninck, a former venture manager in ArcelorMittal’s technical team, says the steel enterprise is investigating and engineering a means to reduce NOx emissions below 5ppm, however this is still above Northern Lights’ 1.5 ppm limit. ‘There are trade-offs,’ he says. ’If better exceptional quality materials is used for pipework to resist corrosion, the [capital cost] might be higher at the begin of a venture. But overall, much less money might be spent on cleaning the CO2. In the steel industry, the cleansing price may be as high €20–25 a tons.’
Moreover, cleaning and compressing carbon dioxide at only one site earlier than it’s miles transported out to sea ought to deliver economies of scale, and the storage operator would have control of purity stages, he adds.
De Coninck notes that ventures in the Middle East plan to have pre- and post-combustion CO2 separated in different pipelines, at the same time as in India the intention is to dehydrate and compress CO2 for storage directly underground. That changes the economics of CCS in Europe, doubtlessly encouraging the departure of the industry from Europe. Saving on carbon dioxide cleaning cost may want to mitigate the expense of exporting steel to Europe, he suggests.
‘There’s nobody who has a entire overview of the complete CO2 supply chain – capture, cleaning, conditioning, transport by means of ship (or pipeline) and then injection. Everybody is attempting to optimise their a part of the supply chain. Ship transporters want very clean CO2, at high density so that you can take extra CO2 [per trip]. But that will increase the rate for the emitter.’
Today, over 40 commrcial CCS ventures are operating around the world but, notes the Clean Air Task Force, they are particularly focused on better purity emissions from single sources wherein carbon dioxide can be more easily separated. The challenge, it says, is now applying that technology to a numerous set of industries to maximize the climate benefits.
