An Alternative Pathway for Stimulating Regional Deployment of Carbon Dioxide Capture and Storage

Carbon dioxide (CO2) capture and storage (CCS) is a key climate mitigation technology that can global CO2 emissions by thousands of megatonnes of CO2 annually. CCS is almost certainly required, along with a wide portfolio of other technologies in an "all of the above" strategy, to achieve the reductions in global CO2 emissions necessary to stabilize atmospheric concentrations of CO2. Despite many high-profile demonstration projects, commercial-scale CCS deployment is still impeded by multiple issues including economic viability, public awareness and acceptance, and regulation and permitting. Developing a large-scale, highly visible and economically feasible CCS network-in addition to existing investment approaches-will be required to overcome these barriers to widespread CCS adoption. We propose a pathway to an integrated CCS network that connects multiple industrial CO2 sources and geologic storage reservoirs using existing CCS technologies. Specifically, we propose that such a network could utilize CO2 emissions from ethylene manufacturing for enhanced oil recovery (EOR) in the U.S. Gulf Coast region, creating a regional ethylene: CO2-EOR network. The ethylene market presents several key advantages for capturing CO2: ethylene is a high-value chemical with a price that can readily absorb capture costs (unlike fossil fuel electricity generation), ethylene sources are both closely clustered and emit a large volume of CO2, and existing capture technology is cost-competitive when coupled with nearby EOR reservoirs. Our analysis describes the techno-economic potential of CO2 capture and EOR, the potential policy implications, and how the ethylene industry could be an ideal first-mover for jumpstarting commercial-scale CCS operations. As part of this analysis we identify the costs and CO2 flows for ethylene production and EOR across the Gulf Coast region. We introduce the concepts of "byproduct CO2" (CO2 as a byproduct or waste stream from an existing industry such as power generation) and "extracted CO2" (naturally-occurring CO2 extracted from subsurface reservoirs for EOR); extracted CO2 cannot decrease the carbon footprint of oil production, unlike byproduct CO2. We also suggest ethylene: CO2-EOR as a blueprint for other regional-scale byproduct CO2-E OR projects such as the Alberta oil sands, Marcellus and other U.S. shale fields, and large-scale coal-to-liquid and coal-to-chemical operations in China. Published by Elsevier Ltd.