Many environmental models and forecasts agree that developing carbon capture and storage (CCS) technology is vital for lowering greenhouse gas emissions to the level needed to meet the commitments set out in the 2015 United Nations Climate Change Conference Paris Agreement to limit global warming to well below 2°C relative to pre-industrial levels.

However, there are various political, economic, and technical conditions that must be met in order to commercialise CCS, and these can differ per region and industry.

The IChemE Energy Centre Carbon Capture, Utilisation and Storage Task Group was a subgroup of the Energy Centre, now replaced by the Energy Community of Practice (Energy CoP), formed to explore the technical, commercial and policy situation for CCS globally and identify challenges and opportunities facing chemical engineers playing their part in making the largescale deployment of CCS a commercial reality.

Project objectives

The aim of the project was to develop a resource to explore the current status of CCS technology and the challenges and opportunities for policymakers, investors, and industry on how to overcome current blocks to widespread global commercial deployment of CCS.

Outputs

The outputs of the project were as follows:

1. A report A Chemical Engineering Perspective on the Challenges and Opportunities of Delivering Carbon Capture and Storage (CCS) at Commercial Scale.
2. A webinar, Carbon capture and storage: Making commercialisation a reality, which focused on key themes in the report and answered questions on the commercial viability of the technology.

Project completion

The report was published in April 2018. It suggested that successful widespread commercial deployment is dependent on reducing the overall process costs and more equitable sharing of the risks between potential stakeholders, which will increase investor confidence and lead to new and cheaper sources of funding for CCS. This could be achieved by a combination of three essential elements.

We would like to thank all the volunteers for their contribution to the report.

More information

If you would like to know more about this project, please email energy@icheme.org.