Recent research conducted by scientists at SINTEF Energy Research in Norway, and Delft University of Technology (TU Delft) in the Netherlands demonstrates that implementing carbon capture and storage (CCS) in industrial facilities can result in significant carbon dioxide reductions at a minimal cost to the general public.
These findings have been published in a paper “Is CCS really so expensive? An analysis of cascading costs and CO2 emission reduction of industrial CCS implementation on the construction of a bridge”, published in the latest edition of the journal Environmental Science and Technology.
The paper, authored by Sai Gokul Subraveti (SINTEF), Elda Rodríguez Angel (TU Delft), Andrea Ramírez (TU Delft), and Simon Roussanaly (SINTEF), examines how carbon capture and storage (CCS) implementation in steel and cement production would have impacted the cost of the Lake Pontchartrain Causeway bridge in Louisiana (LA), the United States (US).
The bridge is currently the world’s longest beam bridge over continuous water and consists of approximately 225 000 m3 of concrete and 24 209 tonnes of steel. This work was performed in connection with the Norwegian CCS Research Centre (NCCS).
NCCS is an international research cooperation on CCS, co-financed by the Research Council of Norway, industry, and research partners.
CCS would only impact part of the total cost
CCS has often been criticized for being too expensive. However, while many studies have already investigated the impact of CCS implementation on industrial plants, they do not examine the impact of CCS implementation on the end user.
This is, according to the authors, a significant gap, as most people do not buy raw materials such as cement or steel, but products that the cement and steel were used to create, such as houses or bridges.
In terms of the Lake Pontchartrain Causeway case study, CCS initially resulted in a significant cost increase of raw materials: 60 percent for cement and 13 percent for hot-rolled coil (HRC) steel.
However, as cement and HRC are only a part of the bridge construction cost, the overall cost increase due to CCS would be approximately 1 percent.
Cement and steel represent, in fact, only a small fraction of the total cost of building a bridge. And therefore, their impact is not as significant as it is perceived to be when you look solely at a cement and steel plant, explained Simon Roussanaly.
A 1 percent increase in cost for a 51 percent reduction in CO2 emissions
For the 1 percent increase in cost, CCS implementation could have reduced carbon dioxide (CO2) emissions associated with the bridge’s construction by 51 percent. This 1 percent increase could be covered by a slight increase in the tolls already paid by the road user to access the bridge.
Not only is this more than reasonable, but the significance of a 51 percent emissions reduction also cannot be ignored – particularly as the cement and steel industries together account for approximately 15 percent of the world’s CO2 emissions.
This case study clearly shows that a holistic approach must be applied to assessing the cost of CCS versus emissions reduction – not only at the component and material level but as a whole. This should encourage infrastructure developers and public purchasers to request low-emission materials in tenders and use this as a baseline for the environmental performance of new builds, said Nils Røkke, EVP for Sustainability at SINTEF.
The results from this case study illustrate how cities and governments could use public procurement of low-carbon materials to achieve their 2030 climate goals under the Paris Agreement at a reasonable cost.
While more research is needed into the impact of CCS implementation on end-user products and services, the authors hope that this is the first step to a better understanding of the cost and benefits of CCS.
Although not considered in this study, it is worth noting that further emission reduction could be achieved by, for example, using low-carbon hydrogen instead of coking coal as a reducing agent.
