SPECIAL REPORT: Carbon capture tech: More funding needed for innovation

Great brick chimneys belch smoke into the grey sky as a cheerful smelter briefly pauses in tireless work, wiping an upturned flat cap across a soot-blackened but smiling face.

The pounding of metal on metal rings out of the mill, across the town and into the countryside.

It is the tableau around which the Industrial Revolution was staged, and the basis for the rampant economic growth that came with it. But in the UK in 2017, it is an exaggerated image which can no longer be held up and celebrated: the national income must still grow, says the government’s recent Clean Growth Strategy, but it needs to happen with a simultaneous cut in greenhouse gas emissions.

“This government is determined to leave our natural environment in a better condition than we found it,” writes Prime Minister Theresa May in the strategy introduction. “Clean growth is not an option, but a duty we owe to the next generation, and economic growth has to go hand-in-hand with greater protection for our forests and beaches, clean air and places of outstanding natural beauty.”

The Department for Business, Energy & Industrial Strategy (BEIS) report outlines achievements made to date. Since 1990, UK greenhouse gas emissions have fallen by 42% while the economy grew by two-thirds, the fastest cut by any G7 nation with the most national income growth. In 2016, 47% of electricity came from low-carbon sources; the UK has the largest offshore wind capacity in the world, totalling 5,100MW last year.

However, with a global target of restricting the average temperature rise to less than 2C and worrying reports highlighting the vast scale of CO2 emissions seemingly every week, more action must be taken. According to BEIS, business and industry were responsible for 25% of total UK emissions in 2015 – the biggest portion, more than transport at 24% and power at 21%.

Balancing act: Growing the economy while keeping pollution down (Credit: iStock)

Low-hanging fruit

Streamlining and a shift to cleaner fuels have almost halved business and industry emissions since 1990, but more approaches are needed to meet a potential – but non-committal – further reduction of 30% by 2032. The strategy outlines a multi-pronged approach including new energy-efficiency standards, a “strategic approach” to greenhouse gas removal technologies, heat recycling and investment in lower-carbon fuels.

Wider roll-out of automation systems could also help to meet targets, says Brad Deane, senior climate and environment policy adviser at manufacturers’ organisation the EEF. However, Deane adds that the “low-hanging fruits have been picked”: so radical approaches are needed.

One potential route for significant emissions cuts could be carbon capture usage and storage (CCUS), a catch-all name for several technologies preventing CO2 from reaching the atmosphere, by extracting it from emissions or otherwise trapping and reusing it. The new strategy announces up to £100m investment in “leading-edge CCUS and industrial innovation to drive down costs,” as well as a “CCUS Council” to hasten the technology’s widespread deployment.

Useful CO2

So, can companies rush out today and quickly install a standard carbon capture kit in their facilities? Unfortunately not. “There is no ‘one-size-fits-all’ answer,” says Mathieu Lucquiaud, energy systems expert at the University of Edinburgh’s school of engineering.

Solvent-based capture is one promising option for manufacturers, says Lucquiaud. The process treats flue gas after combustion, absorbing CO2 with liquid solvents. The technique is relatively simple to implement in existing facilities, making it applicable to energy-intensive industries such as steel, cement production and oil refining.

Once captured, the CO2 is potentially useful. One trial in the Netherlands is testing recycling steel industry flue gas back into blast furnaces, while another experiment is using the gas as a substitute binder for water in concrete production. Other applications include oil recovery, pharmaceutical processes and even coffee decaffeination. In future, it might be used for underground methane recovery or algae cultivation.

New ways are being discovered of reusing carbon emissions in heavy industry (Credit: iStock)

However, say Deane, Lucquiaud and the IMechE’s head of energy and environment Jenifer Baxter, significant research and development is required across the CCUS spectrum before the technology can make a dent in UK emissions. Despite the amount of work needed, the investment proposed in the Clean Growth Strategy is a mere tenth of a £1bn government innovation competition that was cancelled in 2015.

“Anybody who’s built anything large and very new knows that you don’t get much for a few million, you don’t get much for £50m... so £100m across multiple potentially large projects is actually not very much money,” says Baxter. A delay in government CCUS policy means companies may have abandoned promising projects, she adds.

Duty to collaborate

Others agree that the proposed investment is “better than zero” but not enough. “It is useful, it might come to demonstration projects in the UK,” says Lucquiaud. “But if you are seriously looking at rolling out carbon capture and storage in the 2020s, you need investment in the order of billions of pounds… it is a stepping stone.”

The thoughts chime with wider criticisms of the Clean Growth Strategy. Green Party co-leader Caroline Lucas has accused the government of being too vague. “They don’t go far enough to shift this UK to a zero-carbon future,” she adds in an online post.

So, while the government says it has a “duty” to banish sooty, polluted industry to the history books and ensure that the forests and beaches, air and wider environment become less polluted during economic growth, perhaps more must be done to support carbon capture innovators.

One thing is clear, says Baxter: for efficient carbon capture and widespread use of recycled CO2, companies across heavy industry and the energy supply sector should start collaborating closer in a “more joined-up kind of industrial symbiotic relationship”. For now, business will have to take the helm. The investment “will encourage innovation… we’ve just got to see who comes out and says ‘We’ll have a go at this’.”