CCUS initiatives & the issue of storage: once captured, where will the carbon go?                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                    

Recently, an article was released via the site politico.eu that confronted the rising issue of storage in Carbon Capture and Storage initiatives, specifically for poorer EU countries; claiming that, particularly for companies situated in landlocked, developing and low income countries in Europe, sending their captured carbon overseas may simply be too expensive.

But, should this be the problem, what is the solution?

CCUS: are current storage solutions too expensive?

The EU is keen to push hard on new CCUS initiatives and technologies as part of the route to carbon neutrality by 2050; with industries strongly encouraged to capture the carbon they produce to either reuse it, sell it on for further use or store it safely & securely elsewhere.

And, for companies located in countries close to the North Sea such as Denmark and The Netherlands, carbon storage is easily attainable - comparatively affordable compared to their landlocked and low income counterparts who face mounting costs to ship carbon across the continent.

A lack of CCUS infrastructure is to blame for this - whilst, technically, carbon can be shipped anywhere, one of few viable options currently available to EU-based companies is the North Sea which becomes less and less attainable the further into mid and Eastern Europe one travels.

And, whilst shipping carbon across the continent for storage may be an acceptable short term option for landlocked and low income EU-based companies keen to make a significant contribution to the fight against climate change, it is just that - a short term option - where the long term investment is simply too much for these companies to shoulder on their own, especially as new EU incentives and rules meant to create more storage across the bloc may not be available until 2030.

What happens if EU initiatives fail?

However, that’s not the only issue at play here.

Many of these companies are skeptical of these coming initiatives and wonder if CCUS will even work (for the EU counties in question); some business owners already questioning the practicalities of CCUS and the EU’s planned near-future initiatives, whilst claiming that, if these EU initiatives fail, these companies will be left making investments now that never pay off, which would potentially take down traditional manufacturing plants with them, further the EU’s economic divide. Quite the risk!

The cost of transportation

Alongside this is the issue of transportation - transporting carbon to a suitable storage solution all the way across Europe, sometimes from one side to the other! - will bear its own cost, not only in monetary terms but also in environmental terms, as the pollution created in transporting the carbon would surely have a significant impact on emissions?

The solution could be…

It seems fairly clear that the 2 main issues of the EU’s CCUS plans are:

• A lack of infrastructure

• A lack of trust in the [coming] solution

So, what is the solution or solutions?

Like so many emerging projects and initiatives, adequate investment sits within the very foundations of success - investment holding the key to successfully moving projects & initiatives along, to increasing confidence and, indeed, to attracting further investment.

If the EU are to make CCUS initiatives possible, attainable and accessible to their most landlocked and low income companies, they need to invest sizably in creating the necessary infrastructure further afield than the North Sea; into the Mediterranean, Black and Baltic Seas where there are more and more willing CCUS participants emerging.

But what if we all capture carbon?

Another possible outcome is that CCUS initiatives work ‘a little too well (!)’ and all businesses - including those in the UK - start capturing and storing carbon, at which point will there not be a hefty surplus of carbon that we simply can’t or don’t know how to use?

If so this would serve, then, to overwhelm the market and drive down the price paid for carbon, making CCUS inefficient and uneconomical.

As such, to avoid this happening, the EU would need to very carefully monitor and control all CCUS initiatives and incentives, maintaining a healthy balancing act between accessibility & availability to those who need it, and setting a realistic storage ‘limit’ in order to minimise the risk of over-storage!