When it comes to meeting global Net Zero targets, carbon capture, usage and storage (CCUS) has been called the silver bullet. Not only can the technologies used capture, transport and store carbon dioxide to prevent it reaching the atmosphere, but they can also reuse it.
The potential is huge, and the International Energy Agency predicts projects using these technologies could reduce global carbon emissions by almost 20% and reduce the cost of tackling the climate crisis by some 70% *.
With extreme heat and fires impacting many countries around the world in 2023 and storms and flooding hitting closer to home this autumn, the need to commit to these strategies is becoming more urgent.
CCUS is therefore an essential part of net zero strategies and on the agenda for COP 28 – even though it is still a relatively nascent sector and yet to be proven at scale.
Much of the early development of the technology has focused on the creation of ‘clusters’ or hubs - putting a number of CCUS facilities together to help reduce costs and share infrastructure, so benefiting multiple emitters. The European Commission President, Ursula von der Leyen, has asked the EU’s new climate chief to explore an ambitious, forward-looking strategy for the technology.
A nascent sector
CCUS offers a potential runway for oil and gas companies, and a second use for repurposing pipelines and offshore storage facilities such as depleted oil and gas fields. That said, it can still be a challenge to make projects a reality. The technology is well understood and has been used by the oil and gas industry to pump down depleted oil and gas fields to force out the remaining oil and gas. However, the issue is often with the capital investment and on-going operational costs associated with the equipment, including pipelines.
The clusters mostly benefit power plants or industrial processes, which are generating carbon dioxide as a by-product, sufficiently close to the clusters to make transportation practical. Even where the location is feasible the costs for carbon capture at source are also currently high, and it can be complex to retrofit existing plants with the technology still being developed.
How Gravis invests in carbon capture
One of Gravis’s existing partners, Evero, is an early adopter of CCUS and has started seeking to solve some of these problems with plans to retrofit CCUS on its existing portfolio of assets. Evero is prioritising the plants near the HyNet Cluster (one of the first two CCUS clusters to be supported by the UK government) and was awarded BEIS funding to undertake a feasibility study for a demonstrator project, with the technology provider C-Capture, at its Ince Bio Power plant.
We hope that there will be further opportunities and are exploring optimisations to our existing gas to grid anaerobic digestion plants through the addition of carbon capture for industrial purposes. The capture of CO2 will lower the emissions associated with the biomethane produced on site and has the potential to help drive additional revenue for these projects.
More widely, our net zero strategies focus on opportunities for sequestration of CO2 through natural capital alongside decarbonisation of electricity generation, heat, sustainable food production and the transport sectors.
You can find out more about Gravis’s proposed Net Zero Capital Fund here.
*Source: The Guardian, 30 March 2023: What is carbon capture, usage and storage? | Carbon capture and storage (CCS) | The Guardian
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