Periodic Reporting for period 2 - STRATEGY CCUS (STRATEGIC PLANNING OF REGIONS AND TERRITORIES IN EUROPE FOR LOW-CARBON ENERGY AND INDUSTRY THROUGH CCUS)
Reporting period: 2020-11-01 to 2022-07-31
STRATEGY CCUS project elaborated strategic plans for the deployment of CCUS in eight European regions – Paris basin and Rhône valley in France, Ebro basin in Spain, Lusitanian basin in Portugal, Northern Croatia, Galati area in Romania, West Macedonian area in Greece and Upper Silesia in Poland.
A common methodology led local teams in the regional mapping of technical aspects as industrial clusters identification, transport network options, storage resources and CO2 utilization possibilities. This first picture of regional technical aspects provided elements to start discussions about CCUS plans with regional and national stakeholders.
In the eight STRATEGY CCUS regions, a total of 174 industrial and power facilities were mapped that amounted to 121.5 Mt of CO2 emission in 2017. Regional storage resources equated to 8.5 Gt of capacity with ~92% in Deep Saline Aquifers (DSA) and ~8% in Depleted Hydrocarbon Fields (DHF). Although regions presented a high potential of geological storage capacity, these estimations are mostly immature prospects with low confidence.
A common methodology led local teams in the regional mapping of technical aspects as industrial clusters identification, transport network options, storage resources and CO2 utilization possibilities. This first picture of regional technical aspects provided elements to start discussions about CCUS plans with regional and national stakeholders.
In the eight STRATEGY CCUS regions, a total of 174 industrial and power facilities were mapped that amounted to 121.5 Mt of CO2 emission in 2017. Regional storage resources equated to 8.5 Gt of capacity with ~92% in Deep Saline Aquifers (DSA) and ~8% in Depleted Hydrocarbon Fields (DHF). Although regions presented a high potential of geological storage capacity, these estimations are mostly immature prospects with low confidence.
Based on the trend emissions of large emitting industrial facilities, their difficulties in reducing CO2 emissions, and their potential sectoral commitments to CCUS technology, candidate industries were selected to develop regional CCUS scenarios. Of the eight regions evaluated, the top three regions where CCUS is more attractive than EU ETS compliance are (1) Upper Silesia (4 302 M€ of lower costs with CCUS compared to EU ETS costs), followed by (2) Paris Basin (1 411.9 M€), and then Northern Croatia with 1109.5 M€ of financial gap. These results are highly influenced by the EU-ETS scenario price.
The share of CO2 avoided through CCUS in the national greenhouse gas reduction strategy in 2050 varies from 9% for Western Macedonia, the Rhone Valley, and the Paris Basin for the lowest, to 33% for the Ebro Basin region, 43% for the Upper Silesia region, and 66% for the Lusitanian Basin which is the highest.
Across the eight regions, nearly 78% of the CO2 captured is ultimately avoided taking into account the CO2 released to the atmosphere in fast‐moving consumer goods (like e-fuels). The amount of CO2 avoided (357 Mt) is greater than the amount of CO2 stored (343 Mt) due to the long‐term use of CO2 in mineralization (Western Macedonia and Ebro Basin).
In average, OPEX costs contribute 63% of total CCUS costs and are mainly energy consumption. These expenses should be reduced as main priority to reduce the cost of the CCUS chain and CO2 emissions associated. Capture costs generally represent a significant portion of total costs.
The challenge of some scenarios was to match estimated storage capacity with accumulated emissions during the period considered between 2025 and 2050. Upper Silesia (PL) and Rhône Valley (FR) are high emission regions with insufficient local geological storage resources. An attempt of building transnational scenarios showed how it is possible to increase the quantity of CO2 captured through cross-border transport of CO2 to regions with greater storage capacity, thus confirming storage capacity as one of the strong limiting parameters for the development of scenarios.
A case study in Portugal analysed the benefit of disaggregating the CCUS network in sub-systems of minor scale to launch CCUS technology. These sub-systems would connect large infrastructures at national scale in a second period, which alerts us to the need for long-term planning for CCUS infrastructures deployment.
The net drop in greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions of scenarios needs to account for potential indirect environmental effects. Life cycle assessment (LCA) performed in Rhône valley (FR), Lusitanian Basin (PT) and Ebro Basin (ES) demonstrated the impact of capture process (mainly related to energy provision) as the most critical contributor to generated GHG emissions and significantly to Cumulative Energy Demand (CED). The storage of biogenic CO2 occurring in some regions implies negative emissions which are determinant in the global GHG balance. The impacts of CO2 utilization strongly depend on the final use of CO2 and on the transformation process settings (e.g. renewable power consumption for energy needs). In these three regions, Multi-Regional Input-Output analysis (MRIO) assessed socioeconomic benefits of CCS deployment. CCS would create 276,200 full time equivalent (FTE) jobs up to year 2050, both direct and indirect. That is approximately 11,050 permanent jobs. In three regions, the employment retained would be 203,300 FTE jobs (74%), or 8,130 permanent jobs.
The share of CO2 avoided through CCUS in the national greenhouse gas reduction strategy in 2050 varies from 9% for Western Macedonia, the Rhone Valley, and the Paris Basin for the lowest, to 33% for the Ebro Basin region, 43% for the Upper Silesia region, and 66% for the Lusitanian Basin which is the highest.
Across the eight regions, nearly 78% of the CO2 captured is ultimately avoided taking into account the CO2 released to the atmosphere in fast‐moving consumer goods (like e-fuels). The amount of CO2 avoided (357 Mt) is greater than the amount of CO2 stored (343 Mt) due to the long‐term use of CO2 in mineralization (Western Macedonia and Ebro Basin).
In average, OPEX costs contribute 63% of total CCUS costs and are mainly energy consumption. These expenses should be reduced as main priority to reduce the cost of the CCUS chain and CO2 emissions associated. Capture costs generally represent a significant portion of total costs.
The challenge of some scenarios was to match estimated storage capacity with accumulated emissions during the period considered between 2025 and 2050. Upper Silesia (PL) and Rhône Valley (FR) are high emission regions with insufficient local geological storage resources. An attempt of building transnational scenarios showed how it is possible to increase the quantity of CO2 captured through cross-border transport of CO2 to regions with greater storage capacity, thus confirming storage capacity as one of the strong limiting parameters for the development of scenarios.
A case study in Portugal analysed the benefit of disaggregating the CCUS network in sub-systems of minor scale to launch CCUS technology. These sub-systems would connect large infrastructures at national scale in a second period, which alerts us to the need for long-term planning for CCUS infrastructures deployment.
The net drop in greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions of scenarios needs to account for potential indirect environmental effects. Life cycle assessment (LCA) performed in Rhône valley (FR), Lusitanian Basin (PT) and Ebro Basin (ES) demonstrated the impact of capture process (mainly related to energy provision) as the most critical contributor to generated GHG emissions and significantly to Cumulative Energy Demand (CED). The storage of biogenic CO2 occurring in some regions implies negative emissions which are determinant in the global GHG balance. The impacts of CO2 utilization strongly depend on the final use of CO2 and on the transformation process settings (e.g. renewable power consumption for energy needs). In these three regions, Multi-Regional Input-Output analysis (MRIO) assessed socioeconomic benefits of CCS deployment. CCS would create 276,200 full time equivalent (FTE) jobs up to year 2050, both direct and indirect. That is approximately 11,050 permanent jobs. In three regions, the employment retained would be 203,300 FTE jobs (74%), or 8,130 permanent jobs.
A final synthetic analysis of the possibly way forward for CCUS deployment in the 8 regions identified main issues in STRATEGY CCUS regions. The summary divided into three large groups: techno-economic, social and policies, and government factors highlights issues of these key pillars for deploying CCUS. Business model and cost (mainly related to capture system and OPEX), maturity of storage, establishing good social awareness, policies, incentives and working with clarifying the regulations for CO2 storage appear as cornerstone for enabling CCUS value chains across Europe.
On the European level, stakeholders highlighted the importance of business cases and models for CCUS projects and described ideas on key aspects from a rather political point of view. On regional and national level, STRATEGY CCUS made comprehensive and realistic economic evaluation of regional, then national and transnational scenarios of CCUS roll-out.
STRATEGY CCUS launched a regional dynamic on the feasibility of CCUS technology in eight territories of seven EU countries. The connection to key regional stakeholders was built and established in each region joining forces of relevant CCUS players: Industrial players and key categories of local and regional stakeholders (public authorities, industry, regulators, NGOs, local and central government, expert researchers in the field, media etc.), working together in assessing realistic CCUS scenarios to enable new CCUS local opportunities.
STRATEGY CCUS established in each region an overview on the current economic and industrial status of the CCUS deployment. By strengthening the connections between relevant actors in the CCUS chain, the chances for collaborating in future CCUS projects in the promising regions increased, and also the potential for market development and increase of employment.
The acceptance of the general population was studied and survey conducted. It allowed a better understanding of public beliefs and attitudes towards CCU and CCS developments. It has been also an important step in promoting public engagement and familiarity with CCUS technologies. The dissemination through regional events helped to set a valid basis at regional level for increasing CCUS awareness and acceptance in the future.
The PilotSTRATEGY project, sequel to this one, a 5‐year H2020 RIA project and embarking various STRATEGY CCUS project beneficiaries is making an important step in the feasibility of STRATEGY CCUS scenarios. Using results of its sister project, PilotSTRATEGY will increase the maturity of five Deep Saline Aquifers storage resources in Paris basin, Lusitanian basin, Ebro basin, West Macedonia and Upper Silesia. PilotSTRATEGY will keep the local dynamic created by STRATEGY CCUS within stakeholders while enlarging and targeting stakeholder profiles to include general public and municipalities.
On the European level, stakeholders highlighted the importance of business cases and models for CCUS projects and described ideas on key aspects from a rather political point of view. On regional and national level, STRATEGY CCUS made comprehensive and realistic economic evaluation of regional, then national and transnational scenarios of CCUS roll-out.
STRATEGY CCUS launched a regional dynamic on the feasibility of CCUS technology in eight territories of seven EU countries. The connection to key regional stakeholders was built and established in each region joining forces of relevant CCUS players: Industrial players and key categories of local and regional stakeholders (public authorities, industry, regulators, NGOs, local and central government, expert researchers in the field, media etc.), working together in assessing realistic CCUS scenarios to enable new CCUS local opportunities.
STRATEGY CCUS established in each region an overview on the current economic and industrial status of the CCUS deployment. By strengthening the connections between relevant actors in the CCUS chain, the chances for collaborating in future CCUS projects in the promising regions increased, and also the potential for market development and increase of employment.
The acceptance of the general population was studied and survey conducted. It allowed a better understanding of public beliefs and attitudes towards CCU and CCS developments. It has been also an important step in promoting public engagement and familiarity with CCUS technologies. The dissemination through regional events helped to set a valid basis at regional level for increasing CCUS awareness and acceptance in the future.
The PilotSTRATEGY project, sequel to this one, a 5‐year H2020 RIA project and embarking various STRATEGY CCUS project beneficiaries is making an important step in the feasibility of STRATEGY CCUS scenarios. Using results of its sister project, PilotSTRATEGY will increase the maturity of five Deep Saline Aquifers storage resources in Paris basin, Lusitanian basin, Ebro basin, West Macedonia and Upper Silesia. PilotSTRATEGY will keep the local dynamic created by STRATEGY CCUS within stakeholders while enlarging and targeting stakeholder profiles to include general public and municipalities.