CARBON
CAPTURE AND STORAGE - ENVIRONMENT
News:
Can we capture carbon and
store it: Efforts, challenges
What's
in the news?
●
A key tool to stop climate change is
costly and has for decades not worked as well as fossil fuel companies said it
would.
Key
takeaways:
●
Experts say carbon capture and storage — a
way to grab a planet-heating gas and lock it underground — is sorely needed to
cut pollution in sectors where other clean technologies are farther behind.
What
is carbon capture and storage?
●
Carbon capture and storage (CCS) is a way
to catch carbon and trap it beneath the
earth.
●
It is different
to carbon dioxide removal (CDR) — where carbon is sucked out of the
atmosphere — although some of the technologies overlap.
●
The key difference is that CDR brings down
the level of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere, cooling the planet, while CCS in
fossil fuel plants and factories prevents the gas from getting out in the first
place.
How Carbon Capture and storage works?
1) Carbon capture
2) Transportation
3) Storage
●
Carbon
capture either from a specific location of high concentrated
emission or directly from the atmosphere.
●
Transportation
to specific locations like abandoned oil wells for storage.
●
Captured carbon has also been used for
enhanced oil recovery from the used oil well.
●
CO2 captured using Carbon Capture,
Utilization, and Storage (CCUS) technologies is converted into fuel
(methane and methanol), refrigerants and building materials.
●
The captured gas is used directly in fire
extinguishers, pharma, food and beverage industries as well as the agricultural
sector.
Applications
of CCUS:
1.
Mitigating Climate Change:
●
Despite the adoption of alternative energy
sources and energy efficient systems to reduce
the rate of CO2 emissions, the cumulative amount of CO2 in the atmosphere
needs to be reduced to limit the detrimental impacts of climate change.
2.
Agriculture:
●
Capturing CO2 from biogenic sources such
as plants and soil to boost crop growth
in a greenhouse could work.
3.
Industrial Use:
●
Combining
CO2 with steel slag - an industrial byproduct of the steel
manufacturing process — to make construction materials compatible with the
Paris Agreement goals.
4.
Enhanced Oil Recovery:
●
CCU is already making inroads into India.
●
For instance, Oil and Natural Gas
Corporation signed a MoU with Indian Oil Corporation Limited (IOCL) for
Enhanced Oil Recovery (EOR) by injecting CO2.
Concerns
about CCS:
1.
Deviating from the original rationale:
●
CCS also allows companies that want to
continue burning fossil fuels to gain support from policymakers and a social
license to continue their operations.
●
Instead of using carbon capture as a
climate solution, these companies use it to extract more oil by injecting carbon dioxide underground in a
process called enhanced oil recovery.
2.
Delays transition to renewable energy:
●
Critics argue that efforts and funding are
being directed towards an expensive and unproven technology like CCS.
●
This could delay the transition to a
low-carbon future.
3.
Energy consumption:
●
CCS requires a significant amount of
energy to capture, transport, and store carbon dioxide.
●
This energy requirement can reduce the
overall efficiency of power plants and potentially increase their environmental
impact.
4.
Cost ineffectiveness:
●
CCS technology is expensive to develop,
implement, and operate.
5.
Uncertain effectiveness:
●
The technology does not seem to work as advertised.
This is true especially in the case of dirty gas streams.