Next-Day Air
Four CCS projects on the horizon that promise to capture large annual amounts of carbon dioxide once commissioned:
1 Port of Rotterdam CCUS Backbone Initiative
Various industrial facilities in the port area would transport carbon dioxide via a 30-kilometer (18.6-mile) pipeline to an empty natural gas field underneath the North Sea.
Location: Rotterdam, the Netherlands
Status: Scheduled to be completed 2023
Annual capture: 2 to 5 million metric tons
2 Lake Charles Methanol
CCS is just a part of the US$4.4 billion megaproject. Sponsor Lake Charles Methanol LLC will deliver a facility that produces methanol, hydrogen, carbon dioxide and other chemicals. The company plans to sell captured carbon dioxide to oil field exploration companies.
Location: Lake Charles, Louisiana, USA
Status: Scheduled to be completed 2024
Annual capture: 4.2 million metric tons
3 Acorn CCS and Acorn Hydrogen
Sponsor Pale Blue Dot Energy aims to capture and store carbon dioxide at the St. Fergus gas terminal on Scotland’s coast.
Location: Scotland
Status: Scheduled to be completed by 2024
Annual capture: 3 to 4 million metric tons
4 Project Tundra
The Minnkota Power Cooperative is retrofitting a coal-fired power station with a carbon dioxide capture plant.
Location: North Dakota, USA
Status: Scheduled to be completed by 2026
Annual capture: 3.1 to 3.6 million metric tons
PROMISE AND PERIL
The Gorgon carbon dioxide injection project in northwest Australia—the largest greenhouse gas abatement project completed to date—illustrates the opportunities and risks CCS teams encounter.
*Large-scale facilities are capable of capturing at least 400,000 metric tons per year of carbon dioxide emissions.
Sources: Global Status of CCS 2019, Global CCS Institute, 2019; Sustainable Development Scenario, International Energy Agency, November 2019