In October, the government committed almost £22bn for carbon capture and storage (CCS) projects over 25 years, with sites at Merseyside in the North West and Teesside in the North East.
The East Coast Cluster includes Net Zero Teesside (NZT) from energy companies BP and Equinor, a gas-fired power station with integrated carbon capture that is due to start construction this year after contracts were signed in December. Captured carbon dioxide (CO2) will be stored in aquifers under the North Sea.
The UK’s complex maze of clusters, hubs, partnerships and pipelines (both literal and figurative) also includes HyNet North West from partners including Progressive Energy and Cadent Gas, who aim to produce low-carbon hydrogen and capture industrial emissions, which would be stored in Liverpool Bay.
Despite positive movement for the projects in the last year, it has taken two decades and multiple governments to reach this point, and many other schemes are waiting for certainty. With widespread concerns about continuing fossil fuel use (including an ongoing legal challenge to NZT), it could be a make-or-break few years for the sector.
While the Teesside development is very welcome, the industry is also anxiously waiting for a Final Investment Decision on the HyNet North West CCS cluster, says Professor Jon Gibbins, director of the UK Carbon Capture and Storage Research Centre, who is speaking at an upcoming IMechE event on industrial decarbonisation. “Clearly, until it happens, people are worried,” says the professor of carbon capture and storage at the University of Sheffield.
The most advanced projects will need to be “reasonably successful – more or less on time, more or less on budget, and working more or less as they were planned to work” to give the wider industry confidence, he adds.
Delays so far are due to the complexity of contracts and competing interests between industry and government, says Professor Stuart Haszeldine OBE, director of Scottish Carbon Capture and Storage.
“Developers want complete insulation against revenue shortfall and the government wants complete insulation against cross-party risk. In that context of needing certainty between multiple participants in a complex industrial cluster… it is very difficult to coordinate delivery between projects, capture, transport and storage,” says the professor of carbon capture and storage at the University of Edinburgh.
“That costing price negotiation is particularly difficult where participants such as hydrocarbon companies have shareholders who are accustomed to double-digit profits on investment, but the government has a major focus on low costs as well as high reliability of the investment.”
CCS projects with fewer participants allow easier communication and contact between government and developers, he says, with Denmark providing good examples. This approach could speed up development while limiting costs.
‘Vast support’ needed
Linking up capture, transport and storage is a key issue, says Professor Dawid Hanak from the Net Zero Industry Innovation Centre at Teesside University, who is also appearing at the IMechE event.
“I think the main challenge around decarbonisation is actually finding collaborative partners that are willing to take the risk and invest in the new technologies,” says Hanak. The industry-led, government-supported NZT project provides an example of potential risk being shared.
“I would like to see more of that happening across the portfolio, whether that's carbon capture, hydrogen… they do need vast support from industry, academia and government, so working towards that collaboration is critical.”
It is particularly important because outstanding technical issues need to be solved for systems to be successful and to have the impact the government hopes they will.
“When you have a new technology developed, you design for what could go wrong as well, but only after you implement it can you then amend certain things. Understanding how it performs in real life is crucial,” says Hanak.
While links in the chain – between CO2 capture, transport and storage – can be prone to failure, Hanak says they do not need to be, referring to a visit to a plant in the US where a single company was responsible for capture, transport and storage.
“In the UK, you have a business model for each part of the chain, so you have a business model for capture, for transport and then for storage. So I think what will become critical is the contractual agreements between those three moving parts,” he says.
Local authorities will have a key role to play here, he adds. “I think you need an actor who will actually facilitate that collaboration, who deals with all different aspects of commercial, academic, industrial… all the moving parts. They will try to get people to talk to each other and agree on the future path.”
‘Uncharted territory’
While some questions remain around geological storage, Hanak says the UK’s oil and gas expertise will help integrate the different stages of CCS projects. All three experts who spoke to Professional Engineering believe engineering challenges will be tackled and overcome – “though, of course, there are technical risks and learning is to be expected”, says Haszeldine.
Previous projects show that it will not be easy, however. The world’s first power station to use CCS technology, Boundary Dam in Saskatchewan, Canada, has struggled to meet its target of capturing 90% of generated CO2, according to the Institute for Energy Economics and Financial Analysis, with carbon capture not always available during power generation.
With many elements unproven at scale, CCS projects need to be able to adapt if initial plans do not succeed. Flexibility and resilience should be key targets for amine-based post-combustion capture projects, says Gibbins. “Make sure you can change the solvent,” he says. “If you're able to change to a different solvent if you need to, you'll get it to work one way or another.
“But I'm not certain that everything will go smoothly – in fact, I think you can sort of assume that things won't always happen exactly as planned.”
Challenges could include “very high solvent management costs” for reclaiming and cleaning the chemicals after they have been used to capture CO2, he says. “The other one is that all the low-energy solvents I'm aware of will form nitrosamines, which are quite potent carcinogens… I haven't actually seen anybody come up with a convincing way of destroying the nitrosamine and keeping it at a very low level with low-energy solvents.”
He adds: “When you go into commercial use, you're going into uncharted territory… but if you can change the solvent, you'll be alright.”
Bad news – and good news
Beyond the technical, geological, chemical and financial challenges, the shifting geopolitical landscape is bringing new hurdles for the nascent industry, with government budgets increasingly focused on defence.
“There's plenty of other things to spend money on,” says Gibbins. “I think it would be disappointing and industry would be less ready to trust government commitment in the future – but, nonetheless, there are explanations if it doesn't get funded now. It's unusual times.”
Despite the challenges, he “very definitely” thinks CCS technologies can be made to work as they ought to. “I'm pretty convinced that not every project will work as is being advertised… but then nothing ever does,” he says. “That's why we're trying to get lessons learned from the projects. Because you really do want to know what works and what doesn't work.”
In the meantime, some good news stories are emerging. Haszeldine points to Project Poseidon in the North Sea, where oil and gas firm Perenco recently announced it had successfully tested injection of CO2 into an emptied natural gas reservoir. “This operation proves not only that carbon storage can be a reality for depleted fields of the southern North Sea, but also that it is possible to widely reuse petroleum production infrastructure to unlock cost-effective projects,” the company said.
The collaboration needed to solve remaining challenges and accelerate developments will also be fostered by IMechE’s upcoming event, which will bring together experts from government, industry and academia to identify bottlenecks and establish strategies to overcome them.
Decarbonising the Industrial Clusters 2025: Securing Carbon Capture, Hydrogen Production and Low Carbon Targets will take place at Manchester Metropolitan University on 29 April. Find out more and book on the event page.
The event is part of Decarbonise, Power, Store, with three events on the same day. The other streams are focused on power plant operations and flexibility, and grid-scale energy storage.
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Content published by Professional Engineering does not necessarily represent the views of the Institution of Mechanical Engineers.