Competition underway to develop carbon-capture centres in Alberta

Kyle Bakx 

Carbon pricing and the pressure to reduce global warming is sparking competition in Alberta to secure space underground to stash away harmful greenhouse gas emissions generated by oil and gas operations, agriculture and other industries.

Enthusiasm for carbon capture and storage (CCS) facilities has returned to the province more than a dozen years after former Premier Ed Stelmach committed $2 billion to kickstart the nascent industry. To this day, the number of CCS facilities can be counted on one hand, but that could soon change.

The provincial government has begun accepting proposals to set up CCS hubs throughout Alberta. The hub operator will be chosen tolook after injecting carbon emissions underground, in what could be described as underground carbon landfills, and ensure the gases are safely deposited.

At the same time, the federal government is developing an investment tax credit to incentivize more CCS construction to help reduce the country's emissions.

Several companies like Shell Canada and Enbridgeare already publicly announcing their interest in developing large-scale CCS projects in Alberta as they compete to secure the rights to pore space between rock, usually a few kilometres underground.

It's a technology that has its critics, both in terms of how realistically it can be scaled and whether it makes financial sense for governments and industry to pursue. Last year, the International Energy Agency noted CCS "has not lived up to its promise" yet as its been slow to develop, but there was growing investment worldwide

With most plans to reach net-zero by 2050, including Canada's, counting on some sort of CCS, many in Alberta are keen to take part

.

© Kyle Bakx/CBC Quest is located at Shell's Scotford complex northeast of Edmonton. After the emissions are captured using a product called amine, the CO2 is pressurized into a liquid and transported 65 kilometres by pipeline, then injected underground.

Competition underway

As companies announce their own targets for net-zero emissions by 2050, most include plans to reduce emissions with efficiencies and new technology, but also, almost always, a mention of carbon sequestration.

Shell Canada has operated the Quest CCS project near Fort Saskatchewan, northeast of Edmonton, for more than six years and is one of the players vying for pore space from the Alberta government.

"This is going to be a really important part ... of ensuring that within the country, Canada, we can meet the obligations and commitments to net-zero by 2050. And of course, avoid climate change of more than 1.5 Celsius," said Mark Pattenden, a senior vice-president with Shell and leader of its Scotford complex, which includes an oilsands refinery, chemical facilities and the Quest project.

Shell is proposing a new CCS project called Polaris, which could be built adjacent to Quest.

© Kyle Bakx/CBC The Quest project is monitored at a control centre located at the Scotford site.

Whoever is chosen as an operator of a CCS hub facility will not only be allowed to sequester its own emissions, but must also accept CO2 captured from other nearby facilities and inject them underground. The operator would charge a fee for transportation and access to the system.

The provincial government wants to create a hub with a single operator, compared to allowing several companies to drill injection wells in the same area, to improve safety and monitoring, while keeping costs low.

"Industry players must uphold those highest standards to give the public confidence because if there is a, God forbid, a rogue player in there, that's not going to inspire confidence in anyone, even if we've been doing it for many years," said Pattenden.
Plenty of bids expected

Suncor, ATCO, TC Energy, Pembina Pipeline, Capital Power and Enbridge are among the companies involved in proposing CCS projects in the province.

Some companies, including a consortium of oilsands producers, want government support to construct the facilities because they say CCS is a cost, rather than a money-making venture. Others, including Shell, say the projects could be built without public money based on the current and projected price of the carbon tax and the Clean Fuel Standard.

The federal carbon tax is set to rise to $170 a tonne by 2030 from the current $40, making it more expensive to pollute and making carbon sequestration more economically competitive. Shell's Quest cost about $80 per tonne to construct and operate and the company had said any future facilities would be more efficient.

© Kyle Bakx/CBC The injection well at Enhance Energy's Clive project 

is used to send CO2 emissions underground.

The Alberta government declined an interview request and wouldn't say how many hubs it plans to create or how many proposals it has received. Government officials say the first successful hub operator will be located in the industrial heartland area near Edmonton and will be announced by March 2022. Applications for other parts of the province will be accepted beginning in the spring.

"What you don't want is a proliferation of small projects, I think, because we want very technically sophisticated people operating these injection facilities," said Nigel Bankes, a professor emeritus of law at the University of Calgary, who has studied the liabilities and regulations of the CCS industry for almost a decade.

Meanwhile, the federal government has a goal of reducing emissions by at least 15 megatonnes of CO2 annually with its proposed investment credit for CCS projects. Canada produces about 700 megatonnes of CO2 annually.

Alberta and Saskatchewan could store an estimated 190,000 to 640,000 megatonnes of CO2, according to the Canada Energy Regulator.

Fertilizer producers, natural-gas fired power plants, and oilpatch companies are among the variety of firms wanting to invest in CCS. The City of Medicine Hat is also applying to secure pore space to store the emissions from its power plants as well as carbon dioxide from heavy industries in the city.

Already, some companies are putting carbon to use in the province and are ready to expand.

"Our geology is second to none in the world for doing this," said Candice Paton, with Calgary-based Enhance Energy, which operates a CCS facility north of Red Deer. (That facility uses a process called enhanced oil recovery or EOR, where captured CO2 is used to help extract more crude from underground. EOR is excluded from the new provincial hub system.)

"This is the opportunity of a generation for Alberta, to allow industry to find value in making sure their emissions are being permanently sequestered," said Paton.

© Mark Matulis/CBC It's an exciting time in Alberta, says Enhance Energy's Candice Paton, as the CCS industry grows to include more large emitters from different industries across the province.

Environmental impact

There is a growing consensus among experts that CCS has a role to play in tackling climate change, said Sara Hastings-Simon, a University of Calgary assistant professor who focuses on sustainable energy development.

Still, it's important that industry find ways to reduce its emissions, before using carbon capture techniques.

"You're basically just paying to remove carbon," Hastings-Simon, who describes CCS as neither good nor bad, but a nuanced issue.

"You have a set of people who are legitimately pursuing a technology that is going to be a part of a net-zero future and then you have another set of people that are using it as a sort of justification for continuing to operate in the way that they have been," she said.

Some companies have said they would still like to construct CCS projects in Alberta outside of the proposed hub system, especially in remote areas where it could be expensive to build pipelines to transport carbon emissions to an injection facility.

AND CLOSER TO DRIED OUT OIL WELLS WHERE THE CO2 IS USED TO FRACK THEM

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© CBC

Carbon Capture and Storage
In victory for Bellona, Norway’s parliament approves funding for first complete carbon capture and storage project

The Norwegian parliament formally approved on December 15th the budget proposal for 2021 from the conservative coalition government, which includes funding for the Longship – or in Norwegian: ‘Langskip’ – project, which promises to be the world’s first complete CO2 capture, transport and storage (CCS) system based on emissions from industry, storing the captured CO2 in offshore deep geologic formations.

Published on December 23, 2020 by Todd Allyn Flach

The Norwegian Parliament Building, or Stortinget.Credit: Øyvind Holmstad

The Norwegian parliament formally approved on December 15th the budget proposal for 2021 from the conservative coalition government, which includes funding for the Longship – or in Norwegian: ‘Langskip’ – project, which promises to be the world’s first complete CO2 capture, transport and storage (CCS) system based on emissions from industry, storing the captured CO2 in offshore deep geologic formations.

Project developers announced contract awards already the following days to several major suppliers of system components and integrated facilities.

While the Longship funding approval is a breakthrough for industrial CCS, it is the result of a process that began as a specific environmental campaign by Bellona over 20 years ago, which has evolved and grown to today.

Bellona’s first public advocacy campaign for CCS started in 1996. At that time, it was relevant for Norwegian policy. The question was whether or not to build new natural gas power plants on the western coast of Norway. Many rejected the concept outright because it would significantly increase CO2 emissions.

Bellona’s position was that if the power plant installed CCS from the start, then emissions would be small and tolerable. Unfortunately, this option was not subject to a proper public debate. The project developer rejected CCS due to its perceived technical immaturity and high cost. The center-right government resigned in March 2000 due to their general opposition to natural gas power plants.

The plans for natural gas power plants on land in Norway were later cancelled. But Bellona did not drop its campaign for CCS, instead it pivoted to focusing on how CCS can be applied to non-power plant industries with hard to abate emissions. The most prominent examples are cement, steel and steam reforming of natural gas. These will be needed even if all electric power production comes from renewable energy sources. Bellona’s experts in Brussels explain this in their analysis from 2018.

And Bellona’s vision for climate action grew. Being the first NGO to actively advocate for aggressive CCS deployment was just the start. The urgency of the climate crisis, for those who have carefully examined it, calls out for removal of excess CO2 from the atmosphere. Bellona published its first appeal for action to achieve net negative emissions in 2008.

This pivot also inspired Bellona to expand its CCS advocacy in Brussels by adding resources to reach out to a broad range of European stakeholders aiming to reduce their CO2 emissions, as well as building a dialogue to convince technology sceptics of the necessity of CCS.

One of hardest nuts to crack has been finding capital and funding for CCS projects. Bellona’s active contribution to the first attempt at the EU level culminated in the EU ETS funding mechanism called NER300. This process established the first formal mechanism of linking revenues from CO2 cap-and-trade auctions to supporting climate action projects. The number and types of project proposals to the first call for the NER300 were impressive. Although this first attempt to kick-start full-scale CCS projects with funding support from the EU ETS did not result in new full-scale projects, it provided valuable lessons for its follow-up, the EU Innovation Fund (EU IF).

The first call for full-scale projects received proposals for 311 projects across all technology categories. We estimate that more than 150 proposals of the 311 were for various types of CCS and CCU projects. The total amount of emissions reductions estimated by all 311 proposals was 1.2 Gigatonnes CO2 over their 10-year support periods. The total amount of funding applied for from the EU IF was 21.7 billion Euros. This is 21.7 times the total framework for this call, and 2.17 times larger than the anticipated framework for the 10-year support program as it currently stands for the EU IF.

So while the Longship project may be first of its kind in operation, it will be swiftly followed by a wave of similar projects. Already it has been hinted that the Northern Lights CO2 transport and storage infrastructure (sub-project within the Longship project) has confirmed 11 separate CO2 capture projects that have applied for EU IF funding plan to store CO2 on the Norwegian continental shelf. So the overall success criteria laid down by the Norwegian government that the Longship project would not be the first and the last of its king, appears to be just about guaranteed.

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'MAYBE' TECH CCS THE NEW TINA
What Is Carbon Capture and Storage (CCS)? The Vacuum the Climate May Depend On



The most recent report by the worlds top climate scientists was alarmingly clear: If we are to avoid the most calamitous consequences of warming our planet, we must get as good at taking carbon dioxide out of the atmosphere as weve been at putting it in. Even if solar panels and wind turbines sprout like mushrooms, reaching net-zero is going to require capturing large amounts of emissions from activities that are hard to decarbonize, like making cement. Holding temperatures down will also require vacuuming huge amounts of carbon out of the air. The challenge is that current technology for both these tasks is a long, long way from being able to reach these goals.

1. How big is the problem?

In a projection by the

International Energy Agency (IEA) of a pathway to net-zero emissions by 2050, about 7.6 billion metric tons (or gigatons) would still need to be eliminated annually, a figure equal to about a fifth of current emissions. And depending on how quickly net-zero is reached, limiting warming to 1.5 degrees Celsius (2.7 degrees Fahrenheit) above mid-19th century levels could mean removing anywhere between 100 billion tons of carbon and 1 trillion tons by 2100. That last figure would mean sucking up all the carbon that has been emitted this century, and then some.

2. Couldnt we just plant a gazillion trees?

Everyone likes the idea of planting trees to pull carbon from the air through photosynthesis. Reforestation and other such natural climate solutions

could produce 37% of the cuts needed by 2030 to put the world on track to meet the goals of the 2015 Paris Agreement, according to a 2017 estimate. But that much tree-planting would likely

require high-quality land three times the size of India. And meanwhile, we cant seem to

protect the forests we already have, in the

Amazon and elsewhere.

3. What are the main options?

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Oct. 2021 increase in global temperature vs. 1900s average

Lahore, PakistanMost polluted air today, in sensor range

Carbon-free net power in Germany, most recent data

Two methods, known as carbon capture and storage (CCS), and direct air capture (DAC). Capture-and-storage has gotten most of the attention so far, largely because its been promoted by the fossil fuel industry as the thing that will solve its emissions problems. If you remember hearing the phrase clean coal, it was likely a reference to a CCS plant or, more likely, an idea of one rather than something that actually existed.

4. How does CCS work?

Think of a vacuum cleaner set on top of a smokestack. That is, CCS involves collecting CO as its being emitted by a big source of pollution by generators burning fossil fuel to make electricity or by factories or other industrial facilities then sending it for use elsewhere or for storage deep underground. The technology dates back to the 1970s, when oil companies in the U.S. realized that pushing carbon dioxide into aging oil wells would allow them to squeeze out a bit of extra oil. As a side effect, the carbon remained trapped in the surrounding rock. Then in the 1990s, as climate became more of a public concern, Norwegian oil giant

Equinor ASA began sinking CO in saline reservoirs so it could avoid paying a carbon tax. Ever since, CCS has been discussed as a way to limit the damage caused by fossil fuels without having to abandon them.

5. Whats the challenge for CCS?

The cost. Since 2010, dozens of projects have been shelved because the technology was too expensive. After nearly 50 years of commercial use, there are only about two dozen large-scale facilities that have CCS; altogether, they capture roughly 40 million tons of carbon annually, or about 0.1% of global emissions. CCS is also opposed by many climate activists. They say energy companies are using the prospect of CCS to slow the transition to an all-renewables economy.

6. Whats the case for CCS?

Some stark climate math. Since some crucial industries such as steel and cement production rely on carbon-based chemical processes or temperatures that are hard to reach except by burning carbon, climate scientists and many governments, businesses and investors have come to assume that CCS will be an inevitable part of getting to zero.

7. What is the private sector doing?

Betting on that inevitability: Since the start of 2020, governments and industry have committed more than $25 billion for CCS projects, according to the IEA. U.S. energy and chemical companies led by

Exxon Mobil Corp. have proposed building a $100 billion CCS hub to capture emissions from the cluster of refineries in and around Houston. They say the project could capture store 50 million tons of carbon a year by 2030 and double that amount by 2040, an amount equal to 22 million cars driven for a year but only, they say, if the government provides sufficient subsidies. Even that is a drop in the bucket of what might eventually be built. In a 2018 report,

Royal Dutch Shell Plc suggested that wed need 10,000 large-scale CCS facilities by 2070 to meet the 2C goal.

8. What are governments doing?

An infrastructure bill signed by President Joe Biden includes $3.5 billion to expand CCS programs. A tax credit for carbon capture was recently expanded from $20 a ton to $50 a ton to make such projects more financially rewarding. Bidens proposed Build Back Better legislation would raise that to $85 per ton for projects that capture 75% of their carbon emissions, a provision that some environmentalists complain could steer billions of dollars to coal plants. In the U.K., the Netherlands and Norway, national governments plan to spend about $5.6 billion to support large-scale projects to capture carbon emissions from industrial sites and store the gas under the North Sea. Rapidly rising carbon prices in Europe are also making the technology increasingly attractive. China is counting on CCS to help meet its 2060 net-zero goal, but currently the country has only a few small-scale pilot projects.

9. What is direct air capture?

If CCS is a vacuum cleaner on a smokestack, DAC is one set out in the open air. Cleaning up carbon this way is a much harder task: While nearly one-fifth of the gas going up a coal-burning plants smokestack is carbon dioxide, the atmosphere is only about 0.04% carbon.

10. How does it work?

Research labs and startups are developing competing methods to capture carbon through a variety of chemical reactions. (One of carbons notable characteristics is the ease with which it binds to other materials.) In some cases, the product is recycled for commercial purposes into such products as industrial chemicals or plastics. In others its stored beneath the ground, as with CCS.

11. What are its prospects?

This is an industry thats barely into infancy. The worlds largest functioning direct air capture plant, which will take 4,000 tons annually from the air and store it geologically, just

came online in Iceland in September. That just about doubled the worlds previous DAC capacity. Its also equal only to the annual emissions of 250 average U.S. citizens. And right now DAC is prohibitively expensive: Sucking up carbon at the Iceland plant costs about $600 per ton compared with a late November price of 75 euros ($85) on the EUs market for a permit to emit a ton of carbon. For it to be a useful climate remedy rather than a pipe dream, costs either have to come way down or the world has to decide its willing to spend trillions of dollars adjusting the atmosphere.

12. What are governments doing?

What on Earth?The Bloomberg Green newsletter is your guide to the latest in climate news, zero-emission tech and green finance.

The new U.S. infrastructure law includes $3.5 billion for carbon removal projects. The Biden administration also announced a

moonshot program to speed innovation in DAC with a goal of getting costs below $100 a ton. The EU in November set a goal of removing 5 million tons of carbon from the atmosphere annually by 2030. It was an early backer of Swiss startup

Climeworks AG, which built the Iceland plant. The U.K. government is spending 100 million pounds ($135 million) to support early-stage direct air capture technologies. It expects the technology will need to be scaled up in the late 2020s and early 2030s to help hit the countrys target of reaching net-zero emissions by 2050. Elon Musk and his foundation have put up $100 million for an

XPrize carbon capture award, and Bill Gates, working with the EU, has raised hundreds of millions of dollars to support four young industries, including carbon capture.

13. Are there other alternatives?

Yes, though none of them have yet been shown to be more practical than CCS or DAC, and some come with greater risks or unknowns.

Bioenergy with carbon capture and storage (BECCS): First, plants are grown that absorb carbon. Then that biomass is burned to generate power. Those emissions are captured and buried, making for a carbon-negative power system. As with reforestation, massive amounts of high-quality land would be needed.

Soil carbon sequestration: Making changes to agricultural practices, including increased use of cover crops and restoration of grasslands, could increase the amount of carbon thats stored in the ground.

Enhanced weathering: Silicate minerals, such as basalt, absorb carbon when exposed to air. Some scientists have proposed that grinding such stones to powder and spreading it over large areas could speed that process. Crushing and spreading the stone may involve large outlays of energy, but increased crop yields could be one benefit.

Ocean fertilization: In theory, adding iron to ocean waters could promote the growth of plants that can absorb carbon and store it on the seabed. In practice, there have been worries about side effects and whether it would even work.

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World can likely capture and store enough carbon dioxide to meet climate targets

IMPERIAL COLLEGE LONDON

The capture and storage of carbon dioxide (CO2) underground is one of the key components of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change's (IPCC) reports on how to keep global warming to less than 2°C above pre-industrial levels by 2100.

Carbon capture and storage (CCS) would be used alongside other interventions such as renewable energy, energy efficiency, and electrification of the transportation sector.

The IPCC used models to create around 1,200 technology scenarios whereby climate change targets are met using a mix of these interventions, most of which require the use of CCS.

Now a new analysis from Imperial College London, published today in Energy & Environmental Science, suggests that no more than 2,700 Gigatonnes (Gt) of carbon dioxide (CO2) would be sufficient to meet the IPCC's global warming targets. This is far less than leading estimates by academic and industry groups of what is available, which suggest there is more than 10,000 Gt of CO2 storage space globally.

It also found that that the current rate of growth in the installed capacity of CCS is on track to meet some of the targets identified in IPCC reports, but that research and commercial efforts should focus on maintaining this growth while identifying enough underground space to store this much CO2.

CCS involves trapping CO2 at its emission source, such as fossil-fuel power stations, and storing it underground to keep it from entering the atmosphere. Together with other climate change mitigation strategies, CCS could help the world reach the climate change mitigation goals set out by the IPCC.

However, until now the amount of storage needed has not been specifically quantified.

The study has shown for the first time that the maximum storage space needed is only around 2,700 Gt, but that this amount will grow if CCS deployment is delayed. The researchers worked this out by combining data on the past 20 years of growth in CCS, information on historical rates of growth in energy infrastructure, and models commonly used to monitor the depletion of natural resources.

The research team, led by Dr Christopher Zahasky at Imperial's Department of Earth Science and Engineering, found that worldwide, there has been 8.6 per cent growth in CCS capacity over the past 20 years, putting us on a trajectory to meet many climate change mitigation scenarios that include CCS as part of the mix.

Dr Zahasky, who is now an assistant professor at the University of Wisconsin-Madison but conducted the work at Imperial, said: "Nearly all IPCC pathways to limit warming to 2°C require tens of gigatons of CO2 stored per year by mid-century. However, until now, we didn't know if these targets were achievable given historic data, or how these targets related to subsurface storage space requirements.

"We found that even the most ambitious scenarios are unlikely to need more than 2,700 Gt of CO2 storage resource globally, much less than the 10,000 Gt of storage resource that leading reports suggest is possible.?Our study shows that if climate change targets are not met by 2100, it won't be for a lack of carbon capture and storage space."

Study co-author Dr Samuel Krevor, also from the Department of Earth Science and Engineering, said: "Rather than focus our attention on looking at how much storage space is available, we decided for the first time to evaluate how much subsurface storage resource is actually needed, and how quickly it must be developed, to meet climate change mitigation targets."

The researchers say that the rate at which CO2 is stored is important in its success in climate change mitigation. The faster CO2 is stored, the less total subsurface storage resource is needed to meet storage targets. This is because it becomes harder to find new reservoirs or make further use of existing reservoirs as they become full.

They found that storing faster and sooner than current deployment might be needed to help governments meet the most ambitious climate change mitigation scenarios identified by the IPCC.

The study also demonstrates how using growth models, a common tool in resource assessment, can help industry and governments to monitor short-term CCS deployment progress and long-term resource requirements.

However, the researchers point out that meeting CCS storage requirements will not be sufficient on its own to meet the IPCC climate change mitigation targets.

Dr Krevor said: "Our analysis shows good news for CCS if we keep up with this trajectory - but there are many other factors in mitigating climate change and its catastrophic effects, like using cleaner energy and transport as well as significantly increasing the efficiency of energy use."

###

Funding for this work was provided by ACT ELEGANCY, Project No 271498, has received funding from DETEC (CH), BMWi (DE), RVO (NL), Gassnova (NO), BEIS (UK), Gassco, Equinor and Total, and is cofunded by the European Commission under the Horizon 2020 programme, ACT Grant Agreement No 691712. Funding was also provided by the UK CCS Research Centre 2017 EPSRC Grant EP/P026214/1'

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Occidental Petroleum Is Making Strides to Capture This $5 Trillion Opportunity

SO WHY ARE WE SUBSIDIZING  CCS

By Matthew DiLallo - Jun 11, 2022 -Motley Fool 

KEY POINTS

Occidental sees an upwards of $5 trillion future opportunity in carbon capture and storage.

The oil giant is taking several steps to capitalize on that market.

These early moves could pay off down the road.

The oil giant has signed several deals this year, positioning it to capitalize on the enormous opportunity it sees for carbon capture and storage.

Occidental Petroleum (OXY -5.76%) sees tremendous potential for carbon capture and storage (CCS). The process that extracts carbon dioxide from the air and stores it underground could help significantly reduce climate-impacting carbon emissions in the future. CCS is not only good for the environment, but it also represents a potentially lucrative market opportunity.

Occidental believes that CCS could become a $3 trillion to $5 trillion global market in the future. Because of that, the oil company estimates that it could eventually generate as much in earnings and cash flow from its CCS business as it currently makes by producing oil and gas. That's leading the company to take several steps to capture this massive opportunity.


Leveraging its expertise in carbon dioxide

Occidental Petroleum has a long history of utilizing carbon dioxide to produce more oil through a process known as enhanced oil recovery (EOR).

As oil wells pump crude out of a reservoir, the pressure falls, causing the production rate to decline. Oil companies have found that if they inject carbon dioxide into oil wells, they can increase the production rate. Occidental is a leader in EOR. It operates carbon dioxide production fields, transportation pipelines, and injection wells, primarily in the Permian Basin.

The company wants to leverage its expertise in transporting and injecting carbon dioxide to capitalize on the enormous need for CCS. It formed a new subsidiary, Oxy Low Carbon Ventures, to pursue commercial opportunities in this emerging sector. In 2020, the company partnered with a private equity firm to form 1PointFive to finance and deploy large-scale direct air capture (DAC) technology. These systems can pull carbon dioxide out of the air so it can be used or stored underground.

The company is building its first DAC facility in the Permian Basin. It will be able to capture up to 1 million metric tons of atmospheric carbon dioxide annually. Occidental will inject this carbon dioxide into its oil fields to sequester it and increase the oil output from those wells.

Working to develop a leading platform

That plant is only the beginning of Occidental Petroleum's CCS vision. The company has signed a slew of deals this year, positioning it to capitalize on the growing demand for CCS services by large carbon emitters.

One aspect of Occidental Petroleum's strategy is securing access to infrastructure and land to support future CCS development. For example, in March, Occidental signed a lease with timberland-focused real estate investment trust (REIT) Weyerhaeuser (WY -5.04%) to develop and operate a carbon sequestration hub on more than 30,000 acres of subsurface pore space controlled by the timberland REIT in Louisiana.

Occidental Petroleum also signed deals with two midstream companies to provide infrastructure to transport captured carbon to sequestration hubs. In April, it signed an agreement with Enterprise Products Partners (EPD -5.14%) to support a potential transportation and sequestration solution for the Texas Gulf Coast. Enterprise Products Partners would develop the carbon dioxide aggregation and transportation network using new and existing pipelines. Meanwhile, 1PointFive would develop the DAC facilities to capture the carbon that would move through pipelines to a sequestration hub. Occidental signed a similar deal with EnLink Midstream (ENLC -6.96%) to provide carbon dioxide transportation services along the Mississippi River corridor. EnLink's extensive pipeline infrastructure in the region would help transport captured carbon to a sequestration hub on Weyerhaeuser's land.

Occidental is also starting to line up customers to support its CCS ambitions. Airbus (EADSY -2.46%) purchased 400,000 tons of carbon removal credits from Occidental's DAC facility in the Permian Basin. Meanwhile, SK Trading International agreed to purchase up to 200,000 barrels of net-zero oil annually for five years. Occidental will create that net-zero oil by removing carbon dioxide from the atmosphere at its DAC facility in the Permian Basin. Occidental will capture and store 100,000 tons of atmospheric carbon per year, equal to the expected emissions produced during the lifecycle of that oil. These deals are the first steps toward monetizing the company's bold CCS investments.

Positioning to capture a potentially massive opportunity

Occidental Petroleum has long used carbon dioxide to produce more oil. It's using that expertise to its advantage by taking steps to capitalize on the enormous market opportunity it sees ahead for CCS. That bold strategy could pay off for Occidental in the coming years if the CCS market develops as it envisions.

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Corporate Media Fed COP 28 Carbon Capture Confusion

Corporate Media Fed COP 28 Carbon Capture Confusion

By Olivia Riggio

January 5, 2024

Source: FAIR

The COP 28 UN climate conference concluded with countries agreeing to a plan to transition away from fossil fuels, using language that fell short of calling for an explicit phaseout. In the debates over whether countries need to phase fossil fuels “out” or merely “down,” carbon capture and storage (CCS), a form of so-called fossil fuel “abatement,” played a central role.

Rather than exposing CCS as the greenwashing ploy it essentially is, some reporting placed disproportionate significance on the technology, adding to the confusion and misunderstandings about climate change that fossil fuel companies have been funding for decades.

An excuse to not eliminate

“Don’t be fooled,” writes Jonathan Foley in Scientific American (12/4/23): Carbon capture is “mostly a distraction from what we really need to do right now: phase out fossil fuels and deploy more effective climate solutions.”

Before COP 28 even began, climate activists were not hopeful. The conference, held in Dubai, capital of the oil-dependent United Arab Emirates, reeked of almost comedic irony. The conference’s president, Sultan Al Jaber, is the head of the petrostate’s national oil company.

During a November livestream event, Al Jaber falsely claimed there was “no science” indicating a phaseout of fossil fuels was necessary to keep warming levels below the 1.5°C threshold set by the Paris Agreement. He added that phasing out fossil fuels would “take the world back to the caves” (Guardian, 12/3/23).

CCS technology—which involves capturing carbon from sources like power plants and steel mills, and storing it underground—has become a key part of the fossil fuel industry’s arguments against the elimination of its environmentally devastating product. Instead of rapidly ending the extraction and burning of fossil fuels, the claim goes, we can simply “abate” the emissions with CCS.

The reality is that even optimistic estimates see CCS (also known as carbon capture and sequestration) as playing only a limited role in mitigating emissions from difficult-to-decarbonize sectors. But polluters aggrandize its potential contributions in order to keep expanding fossil fuel extraction while at the same time claiming to take action on climate (Scientific American, 12/4/23). In fact, most successful CCS projects are actually used to force more oil out from underground, in a process called “enhanced oil recovery” (Washington Post, 10/25/23).

Given the chokehold the fossil fuel industry had on this COP and subsequent conversations about climate change mitigation, journalists must be clear and realistic in their reporting about the capabilities of carbon capture, and its role in both climate crisis solutions and fossil fuel industry greenwashing.

‘A valuable role’

To back up the idea that carbon capture is a “valuable tool,” the New York Times (12/6/23) links to a study whose headline calls it “Too Little, Too Late, Too Slow.”

The New York Times’ headline, “Can Carbon Capture Live Up to the Hype?” (12/6/23), could have been most easily and accurately answered by a short “no.” Instead, the subheading misled about CCS’s plausibility as a climate change solution, claiming that “experts say it could play a valuable role.”

But what’s the evidence on offer? The article mostly described the failures of expensive carbon capture projects to even get off the ground. The only reference to that supposedly “valuable role” linked to three studies or reports. The titles of two were “[Carbon Capture]—Too Little, Too Late, Too Slow—It’s No Panacea” (S&P Global, 10/18/23) and “Heavy Dependence on Carbon Capture and Storage ‘Highly Economically Damaging,’ Says Oxford Report” (SSEE, 12/4/23).

A third, seemingly more optimistic, report came from the International Energy Agency (11/27/23). But that agency’s latest report actually offered the opposite message, its executive director explained (Toronto Star, 11/23/23): Oil companies’ plan to achieve “net zero”—removing as much carbon from the atmosphere as they emit—by capturing emissions while increasing production is an “illusion” based on “implausibly large amounts of carbon capture.” Lucky for those companies, New York Times headline writers are here to keep up that illusion.

The Times article itself even noted that “total fossil fuel use will have to fall sharply no matter what to keep global warming at relatively low levels,” and that carbon capture is “no silver bullet.” It cited the IEA’s roadmap to lowering carbon emissions to net zero by mid-century, noting that even in this ideal plan, CCS would account for just 8% of the world’s total emissions cuts, and that “the vast majority of reductions would come from countries shifting away from fossil fuels entirely.”

While CCS could play a part in mitigating emissions from industries like cement, steel and fertilizers, the benefit can only be realized if the technology’s logistical and financial limitations are addressed, explained Jonathan Foley in a piece for Scientific American (12/4/23). Food and Water Watch (7/20/21) characterizes CCS as an “expensive failure” that’s energy intensive and actually increases emissions.

Even while outlining CCS’s “limitations,” the Times managed to both-sides the issue:

One big dispute is over how big a role this technology, known as carbon capture and storage, should play in the fight against global warming. Some oil and gas producers say it should be central in planning for the future. Others, including many activists and world leaders, dismiss carbon capture as too unproven and too risky.

In a “dispute” about how to cut carbon emissions, oil and gas producers’ arguments should certainly not be taken at face value. And, while “activists and world leaders” are among those who “dismiss carbon capture,”crucially,  so are scientists.

The Times piece played down the many economic and logistical failures of CCS as “limitations.” While removing carbon will likely play a necessary—albeit small—role in meeting climate goals, CCS’s  success hinges on our abilities to phase out fossil fuels. The tone of the piece’s headline is overly optimistic, offering a false sense of hope—and “hype”—for a technology that’s used more as a fossil fuel fig leaf than a climate change solution.

‘Vital…but falling short’

Bloomberg (12/6/23) notes without rebuttal that “CCS has been discussed as a way to limit the damage caused by fossil fuels without having to abandon them.”

An explanatory Bloomberg piece (12/6/23) about carbon capture, headlined, “Why Carbon Capture Is Seen as Vital in Climate Fight but Falling Short,” used similarly weak language.

In addition to CCS, the piece highlighted direct air capture (DAC), another carbon capture technology that removes carbon that is already in the atmosphere, rather than at the site of emission, and also performs at a tiny fraction of the scale that would be necessary for it to be an actual solution. According to the article, the largest DAC hub in the world, found in Iceland, only removes the equivalent of the annual emissions of 250 average US citizens.

For more context, the Regional Direct Air Capture Hubs that Biden’s Department of Energy is supporting are anticipated to suck only about 1 million metric tons of CO2 from the atmosphere annually. In 2022, global emissions of CO2 were 40.5 billion metric tons (Scientific American, 12/4/23)–adding more than 40,000 times as much carbon as the hubs are supposed to take out.

To say these technologies are “falling short” is quite the understatement.

To say they’re “vital” requires context. The Bloomberg piece explained:

Even if solar and wind energy largely supplant fossil fuels, holding temperatures down will require capturing large amounts of emissions produced by activities that are hard to decarbonize, such as making cement.

That much is true. However, it leaves out the most important part: Carbon capture can only make a difference in a world that drastically cuts emissions. Without that priority being met, its impacts are marginal at best—and, at worst, a distraction that permits fossil fuel companies to increase emissions and worsen the crisis.

In a press briefing with Covering Climate Now (11/9/23) regarding CCS and carbon dioxide removal, David King, former chief science adviser to the British government, emphasized that reducing greenhouse gas emissions was still the No. 1 priority, as human activity continues to emit the equivalent of about 50 billion tons of carbon dioxide into the atmosphere each year.

‘Some environmentalists’

Washington Post (12/11/23) attributes the idea that carbon capture is a “false climate solution” to “some environmentalists.”

A Washington Post report (12/11/23), leading with the tearful remarks of Mona Ainuu, a climate activist from Niue, a small island nation, described the ultimate, disappointing outcome of the COP: The draft agreement to come out of the conference called not for the phaseout of fossil fuels, but for the mealy-mouthed “reducing both consumption and production of fossil fuels, in a just, orderly and equitable manner.”

The agreement also called for the rapid phase-down of “unabated coal.” The Post explained carbon capture and sequestration:

Some environmentalists view CCS as a false climate solution, saying it could prolong the life of polluting facilities for decades to come. They note that the International Energy Agency has warned that humanity cannot build any new fossil fuel infrastructure if it hopes to limit warming to 1.5°C.

Like the Times report, the Post framing failed to give readers the unvarnished truth they need, that CCS is only seen as a key climate solution by industries whose profitability depends upon the further burning of fossil fuels. No further information on the IEA report was given, or any information about the other litany of scientific studies, reports and information on the failures of CCS, allowing the specific concerns of “some environmentalists” to go unmentioned.

All of these pieces fail to mention why the fossil fuel industry is so gung ho about this dubious technology: While oil companies’ greenwashed PR campaigns tout CCS, corporations and governments continue to ramp up extraction.

Carbon capture and removal will likely play a small role in avoiding the most devastating effects of climate change, but it’s spitting in the ocean without a fossil fuel phaseout. It is journalists’ job to explain this accurately, while reminding audiences to not forget the No. 1 priority: eliminating fossil fuels.