Guilt-free fossil fuels? Or 30 years of false promises?

Carbon Capture & Storage

For over 30 years, fossil fuel producers have used the promise of CCS to claim they can be clean. However, despite the $ billions in public subsidies, only two power stations have ever been built with CCS, don't work properly, and aren't economically viable
Photo: Petra Nova power plant by RM VM via WikiMedia

It used to be called EOR: 'Enhanced Oil Recovery', a clever way to get more oil out of failing fields by flooding them with carbon dioxide. But faced with 1990s climate science, the oil industry re-branded it as 'carbon capture and storage', the promise of guilt-free fossil fuels.

Now, despite 30+ years and $billions in public subsidies, carbon capture failed spectacularly to keep that promise. Producers have more than doubled their tally of atmospheric CO₂ to profit from fossil fuels worth over $75 trillion Value of fossil fuels extracted SINCE 1990 (first agreements to cut emissions)
Our quick calculation:
+ 835 billion @ $60 barrels oil
+ 3.1 trillion @ $4.24/BTU gas
+ 181 billion @ $80 per tonne coal
= $78 trillion, worldwide since 1990 , and climate change has started in ernest.

The CCS promise keeps coming whilst fossil fuels accelerate. Why should anyone believe it?

This article will explore some of the serious issues with CCS - that it leaks more carbon than it captures; unsustainable costs paid by the public; it's used to boost oil; it can't touch the majority of emissions (transport and heating) - but the biggest problem is that, in 30 years of promising CCS, the industry has only built two power plants with it, and they leak(ed) 50% of their million tonnes per year targets. It seems unlikely that industry will attempt in the next 30 years to build the 37,000 100% reliable schemes required to capture today's emissions, affordably. And by then, it will be too late to move to plan B.

CCS is a smoke screen for big polluters to carry on business as usual

The most obvious problem of CCUS
(Four other problems are that (2) many schemes fail to capture even 50% of emissions; (3) increased costs; (4) increased fuel consumption; and (5) CCS locks the UK into importing fossil fuels)
Image Copyright: Electric Shock

Misleading claims

Contrary to its image, most CCS doesn't tackle emissions from burning fossil fuels

CCS benefits from the deceptive impression that it deals with the problem of exhaust emissions from burning fossil fuels by burying them safely underground. In reality, it struggles to capture combustion fumes. Instead, CCS today mostly provides a fig leaf for incredibly unsustainable processes with emissions to hide Most of the world's biggest CCS schemes, that we list here, make grand claims about their contribution to reducing global warming without mentioning that their plants often emit more CO2 than they capture, or acknowledgement that their products are also highly polluting. .

The bulk of the world's CCS takes CO2 that was already permanently locked away underground, and buries it again Vast amounts of CO2 from underground: Natural gas processing
Certain gas fields have very high CO2 levels mixed in with natural gas, that needs to be cleaned out before selling it to customers. Often less than 50% of the CO2 is actually buried, and even that is usually for EOR (Enhanced Oil Recovery)

Shute Creek, Century Plant, Lost Cabin, Lula in Brazil, Gorgon in Australia and Sleipner in Norway all fall into this category.

Exxon's Shute Creek alone accounts for 40% of the world's sequestered CO2. It processes gas from the LaBarge field, which contains 65% CO2, 21% methane, 5% hydrogen sulphide, 7% nitrogen and 0.6% helium that all needs separating.

Shute Creek has only captured about 50% of its CO2 during its 35 years of operation. 120 million tonnes of CO2 went into pipelines supplying nearby oilfields for EOR. But when oil prices were low, Exxon simply vented another 120 million tonnes of CO2 that it couldn't sell for EOR ... straight into the atmosphere. , only less safely and reliably. Other CO2 sources include fertiliser production Hydrogen and fertilisers
Fertiliser is made by first making hydrogen from fossil fuels, turning it into ammonia, and then urea fertiliser. The first step generates 10 tonnes of CO2 for every tonne of hydrogen. About a third of the CO2 comes out as a pure gas suitable for selling for EOR. The rest, in burnt exhaust fumes, is too costly to separate.

Fertiliser plants at Coffeyville, Agrium Redwater, Agrium Borger, Koch Enid all sell this CO2, as do hydrogen manufacture plants at Quest and Air Products. 'Captured' emissions typically represent about 35-50% of total CO2 produced at each site. , bioethanol Bioethanol (Archer Daniels, Arkalon, Bonanza)
Fermenting corn to make ethanol fuel sounds clean, but every stage of the process, from agriculture & transport to fermentation and distillation generate vast CO2 emissions. The CCS at Archer Daniels/Decatur only captures CO2 from fermentation, which it sells for EOR. and synfuels Synfuels
Great Plains Synfuels captures about 2-3 million tonnes of CO2 per year from its coal gasification plant, turning brown coal into synthetic gas for the people of North Dakota, whilst also helping the Canada's oil fields. . The CO2 ends up in the dedicated CO2 pipeline network that serves North America's oilfields... to produce more oil Enhanced Oil Recovery (EOR)
Most of the world's CCS schemes are only viable by selling CO2 for oil production.

Notable exceptions include Gorgon and Sleipner/Snohvit gas fields. Both of these contain CO2 that has to be removed before the natural gas can be sold. Tax breaks or license conditions pay for the CO2 to be buried in unused rock formations. .

All of these industries should be obsolescent as low carbon alternatives become widespread – renewable energy, electric vehicles, electrolysis, hydrogen electricity. Developing carbon capture and storage only delays the transition.

CCS not addressing emissions from burning fossil fuels

The main selling point of CCS is to capture emissions from burning fossil fuels, specifically at power plants, but also to clean up the manufacture of iron, steel, concrete and glass. But this isn't happening. To date, only two power stations have ever implemented CCS The US Department of Energy provided 50% funding for five power plants to be fitted with CCS. Only one, Petra Nova, was ever built, costing $1 billion, including $163 million government help. It shut down after less than 4 years. The other four were terminated, losing a further $323 million of tax-payers money in the process.

The only other power station ever built with CCS is Canada's infamous Boundary Dam. at scale: Petra Nova, which closed down after just 3 years and 4 million tonnes of CO₂ captured, and Boundary Dam (5 Mt CO₂ since 2014). Each cost over $1 billion to build, operate at a loss, and failed to capture even half of what they were supposed to.

History of failure

Many of the big CCS schemes have failed spectacularly to live up to their promise. Petra Nova that only captured 7% of the power station's emissions before closing down; Boundary Dam that only captures 50%; Shute Creek capturing 50%; Gorgon, 40%; Then there are power station projects that cost billions but never opened: FutureGen, Kemper County. Factor in up to 100 other power plant CCS schemes cancelled when oil prices collapsed in 2014. US Energy analysts the IEEFA paint a bleak picture of carbon capture and storage.

Despite all this, the energy industry is dominated by fossil fuel giants that continue to lobby for CCS, and once again, governments are falling for the patter, in the US, China, Europe, Middle East, Latin America, Japan.

Implementing CSS is an impossible task

Even the initial cost of CCS is eye-watering, at $1billion to capture 1M tonnes of CO2 per year, plus even more to operate. But could it help solve the problem of climate change? Human-produced CO2 emissions reached 40billion tonnes in 2020. To put that into perspective, the entire oil and gas industry produces only 7 billion tonnes of hydrocarbons each year. The scale of putting even one quarter of that CO2, 10 billion tonnes, into the ground each year would dwarf even the oil and gas industry. Capturing 10 billion tonnes CO2 would be equivalent to 10,000 Boundary Dam $1 billion schemes.

What are the alternatives to CCS?
Power plants with CCS only exist to prolong the use of coal and gas. The alternatives are to build renewables with storage, including Power-to-Hydrogen-to-power. Hydrogen for fertilisers and other processes produces 10 tonnes of CO2 for every tonne of hydrogen, of which CCS can currently capture about 30%. Hydrogen from electrolysis using clean electricity is emission-free. Natural Gas, Biofuels and Synfuels can now be replaced with clean electricity. Iron and Steel might soon be made using hydrogen or electricity, and similarly, progress towards clean concrete and glass is accelerating. The idea that CCS is essential for net-zero is just not true.

CCS for the UK?

UK government plans to miss climate targets with £20 billion CCS investment

In 2023, UK government dismayed environmentalists with its biggest energy policy commitment for decades. Apart from £0.5 billion crumbs shared between nuclear, offshore wind port facilities, and home heat pumps, almost all of the whopping £20 billion funding announcement was to develop CCUS (Carbon Capture, Usage and Storage) in the UK. The government also admitted that it planned to miss its binding climate targets.

6 reasons why Carbon Capture is a terrible idea for the UK

(1) CCS projects typically sequester around 1-2mt of CO2 per year. UK produces 350mt of emissions each year, it's hard to see CCS making much impact.
(2) CCS has an impressive history of expensive failure, mostly at the public's expense
(3) Most projects fail to capture more than 50% of CO2. (Sleipner/Snohvit may be an exception)
(4) Most projects are only viable if they sell the CO2 for EOR. (Sleipner/Snohvit and Gorgon are exceptions)
(5) Capture process uses energy (eg 20% of Boundary Dam's elec)
Last but not least (6)... North Sea Oil & gas is over. CCS locks the UK into imported fossil fuels

The dishonesty of CCS

There are many problems with carbon capture: (a) it doesn't address the big issues that it claims; (b) it increases oil production; (c) it doesn’t work properly; (d) it costs way too much; and (e) it isn’t feasible on the required scale. But the biggest dishonesty is 35 years of promising guilt-free fossil fuels without any progress whatsoever, whilst producers scramble to get the rest of the oil and gas out while they still can.

Delaying tactic

Fossil fuel producers have taken $trillions in revenues and $billions in tax subsidies, denied climate change, schemed, plotted, lobbied governments and raised the temperature of the planet by 1.5 degrees. Promising CCS ‘in the future’ has been one strand of a very successful delaying tactic, so they can continue to extract, pollute and sell as fast as they can. The longer they kick the can down the road, the longer they can distract governments from the task of real decarbonisation of the energy sector that we urgently need.

More information & links

Financial Times video - The FT considers whether Carbon Capture is a help or a hindrance.