🌟Are Carbon Sequestration and Capture the miracle solution we are all waiting for to achieve the Net Zero goal by 2050 ?
Carbon Capture and Sequestration are being put in the spotlight as one of the best solutions to achieve Net Zero by 2050 without giving up totally and immediately our current living habits, especially for the consumption of fossil fuel .
In practice, CCS allows us to prevent greenhouse gas emissions in the atmosphere by recovering carbon directly from the emitting sources (power plants, factories,...) and then stocking or valorizing it through several processes and technologies.
These techniques could help tackle GHG emissions swiftly and reach Zero Net carbon especially in the fields of heavy industry and electricity production ⚡. These two sectors are respectively responsible for 18% and 41% of global GHG emissions. However this solution is taking time and is having difficulty to be implemented.
Let’s find out why ! 🔎
What are the differences between carbon storage and carbon sequestration ?
Carbon storage is the rise in the stock of carbon over time. In other words, carbon storage refers to the quantity of carbon stored in a reservoir.
Carbon sequestration is the process of capture and long-term storage of atmospheric carbon dioxide. It aims to either mitigate or defer global warming and avoid dangerous climate change. It has been proposed as a way to slow the atmospheric and marine accumulation of greenhouse gasses which are released by burning fossil fuels.
How is carbon captured ?
Capturing carbon means to separate carbon dioxide from other gasses while being emitted at the exit of a factory chimney or by modifying industrial processes in the way they only emit pure carbon. The complicated factor in this step is that carbon is mixed with other gasses. The challenge is to only keep pure carbone. There are three technologies existing to make that happen :
💥Postcombustion : carbon dioxide is separated from other gasses and recovered directly from the exhaust fumes. it is possible to retrofit existing installations without major modification.
🏭 Oxycombustion : the plant is modified so that the combustion of fossil fuels is carried out in pure oxygen and thus produces only water vapor and carbon dioxide
✨ Precombustion : This process consists of extracting the carbon before combustion.
How can we store or value carbon ?
Carbon storage consists in storing carbon for a long period recovered in a way that it doesn’t get released into the atmosphere. To do so, the most common solution is storing carbon deep in the ground. CO2 is injected in empty oil or gas deposits, in unmineable coal seams or deep saline aquifers beneath the ocean floor. However, these processes cost money and are only able to generate revenue through the emission and sale of carbon credits in voluntary markets... It is possible to value the carbon with three ways :
Injecting CO2 into a hydrocarbon reservoir during production allows to improve oil extraction efficiency
Using CO2 as a raw material in chemical, industrial or food processes, for example as a solvent, refrigerant or dissolved in fizzy drinks.
Using energy to convert CO2 into liquid or gaseous fuel through photosynthesis (e.g. by producing microalgae which are then used for biomass production) or biomass production) or through methanation.
Source : The basics of carbon capture and storage | General | farmweeknow.com
Types of carbon sequestration :
🌱 Carbon storage in soils
Soils represent an important stock of terrestrial organic carbon and play both as a buffer against atmospheric CO2 increase and as a potential sink for additional carbon. Managing soil organic carbon through sustainable agricultural and land use practices has become a well-known strategy to fight against land degradation and desertification. Solutions such as Net zero turns agricultural residues into biochar, a very stable form of carbon. This biochar is then reused as a fertilizer in agricultural soils.
🌳 Carbon storage in forests
On the earth’s surface, forests are one of the principal carbon sinks. Reforestation represents an important way to fight against global warming. To offset human carbon emissions, it would require to plant 50 millions hectares each year. A few startups have launched in the reforestation and afforestation sector such as Wildsense. It’s a company which uses satellite imagery and ground data to verify reforestation projects and certify credit carbon.
🌊 Carbon storage in the ocean
Oceans are the principal place where natural carbon is stored. They have been storing 500 Gt of the 1 300 Gt of CO2 rejected in the atmosphere by human activities during the 200 last years. Most of the carbon is stored in the upper layer of the ocean, in the form of phytoplankton. Some solutions offer to inject the carbon in aquifere in order to dissolve it. A recent project called running tide is putting carbon back by growing biomass and sinking it in the deep ocean.
Source : The Ocean, a carbon sink - Ocean & Climate Platform
How can these solutions contribute to the Net Zero objective ?
Carbon capture and sequestration technologies will play a key-role in meeting Net Zero targets in terms of carbon emissions, including as one of few solutions to tackle emissions from heavy industry and to remove carbon from the atmosphere.
CCS is one the solutions to gradually get rid of fossil fuels by creating flexible energy systems that can adapt to cleaner renewable alternatives, and easing the process of exiting non-renewable resources.
It has already proven to be effective in mitigating the impact of emissions-intensive sources of power generation. Some of CCS technologies are able to capture carbon at scale which is a real challenge to meet in order to reach net zero by 2050. However, those technologies are still relatively new and they are facing economic, institutional, environmental and socio-cultural barriers that prevent them from becoming more widespread.
Our thoughts at AFI 🌍
The success of carbon storage and sequestration is relying on its capacity to scale up and to be viable economically. Today, solutions are facing heavy infrastructure costs which make a ton of CO2 expensive to capture. Companies are however often helped financially through grants and public aid with a few backed by VC money but it’s hard for them to be financed in the long term.
In current carbon markets, the price of one carbon credit can vary from a few cents per metric ton of CO2 emissions to $15/mtCO2e or even $20/mtCO2e for afforestation or reforestation projects to $100 or even $300/mtCO2e for tech-based removal projects such as CCS. Yet it is not high enough today for these companies to be profitable in the long term.. Furthermore, additional costs are often associated with carbon transport, carbon compression and injection.
We currently think the future of carbon storage and sequestration relies on 2 factors :
Ultra-local solutions which won’t need compression and transport avoiding extra-costs in the process.
Cost depreciation by valorizing and monetizing the carbon captured. Several coproducts can be created in the process such as electricity production, algae or fertilizers.
Today, a few young companies are trying to tackle the issue of carbon capture and sequestration with an extra-step, at AFI we’ve mapped some of them right here 👇
