Thread by @emi_eaton

Carbon Capture Utilization and Storage #CCUS #canpoli 🧵

There is only one reason that CCS exists: to prop up an industry that is under existential threat because of the need to transition from fossil fuel energy.

Every major report from the IPCC to the International Energy Association shows that in order to avert catastrophic warming of the climate we need to rapidly phase out fossil fuels

CCUS gives fossil fuel industry a claim (a far off promise based on unproven technology) that it can continue to operate in a world that is working towards net zero. Without CCUS, the fossil fuel industry has no social license, no way to continue profiting off of extraction.

All climate policy should be evaluated in terms of it’s ability to rapidly phase out fossil fuels, all the best science tells us that is what we need to do.

CCUS locks into a future of fossil fuel production, it diverts resources away from transitioning off of fossil fuels, and puts them into new infrastructures that will lock in fossil fuel production well into the future.

CCUS claims to net zero compatibility rely on hiding the full life cycle emissions of their applications.

Let’s start with the use of the captured carbon: The primary use thus far has been in enhanced oil recovery - a truly abysmal use that means captured carbon is directly responsible for pushing more oil out of old oil fields and producing more GhGs

Now lets talk about capture rates: Despite promises of capture rates of 90%, there are no projects to my knowledge that have demonstrated this capture rate over any significant period of time. Many other projects are performing well under 80%, Boundary Dam is at 50% or lower

Even if we could get to 90% capture rates, we know that we need to get to zero emissions - 10% emissions on fossil energy is too much when we have clean alternatives

Now lets talk about the emissions associated with running the technology: If we factor in the use of fossil energy to fuel the CCS units - estimates put this at around 20-25% extra energy needed to fuel the units - then we don’t have the required emissions reductions for net zero

A recent paper investigated the emissions associated with blue hydrogen and found that while co2 emissions are lower than for gray hydrogen (about 9-12%), fugitive methane emissions are high bc of an increased use of natural gas to power the carbon capture.

In the end the authors conclude that emissions-wise, it makes more sense to simply burn the natural gas for its required purpose, and not transform it into hydrogen at all. actu-environnement.com/media/pdf/news…

Finally, there's scope three emissions, which account for as much as 85-95% of the lifecycle emissions of FF. To the extent that we are still using CCUS on natural gas processing, for egs, we neglect the very significant emissions associated with using that natural gas as a fuel.

By now you might be thinking that I see zero role for CCUS in our future. And here I want to make a qualification:
I think there is no justifiable place for CCUS in the production of energy, since we need to transition our energy to green sources.

There may be a place for CCUS in non-energy producing industries like cement and steel. There may be a place for direct air capture. In these cases, the capture tech must be fuelled with green sources of energy and it must be limited to industries where there are no alternatives.

In this cases where TINA it can not serve as a carbon credit that allows for fossil fuel production to continue elsewhere. Fin