Emmanuel Macron has announced his desire to increase the use of CO2 capture and storage within French industry. If some sites have existed in the world for several years, this solution must scale to be effective.
On November 8, Emmanuel Macron presented France’s strategy to decarbonise its industry after meeting with representatives of the 50 sites that emit the most greenhouse gases in the country. The President of the Republic indicated that this national strategy would be guided by “planning through technology” by naming the three main systems that could be put in place.
The first technology is notorious and is rapidly growing in France as it is the carbon-free hydrogen sector in which France aims to become a leader. The second is the exploitation of the biomass within the framework of uses that offer no alternatives. The latter is carbon capture and sequestration and then its industrial reuse, which remains relatively unknown.
“It is essential to prepare a large-scale deployment of this technology, because it is the only one that allows this decarbonization for certain platforms,” the head of state stressed, citing the example of the Dunkirk site.
Multiple capture processes and the same number of geological contexts for storage
As the name suggests, the CCS (Editor’s Note: for Carbon extraction and storage) consists of capturing CO2 in the vapors emitted from factories and other industrial sites and isolating it from the atmosphere by storing it in underground geological formations. Three different capture processes exist for this.
First of all, post-combustion, which aims to scrub the vapors that come into contact with a solvent that absorbs the gas, then heat them in a regeneration tower to separate the CO2: the Dunkirk platform uses this model. Further upstream, pre-combustion has a more limited application and makes it possible to recover CO2 from fuels such as oil or coal. Finally, oxycombustion has the advantage of facilitating carbon uptake by favoring oxygen to produce a more concentrated smoke than with ambient air.
As for the main families of the geological context that can store carbon, there are three: ultrabasic rock, reservoirs devoid of hydrocarbons, and saline aquifers.
“The former are numerous in Iceland, but rare in France due to the volcanic context, explains Thomas Le Guénan, research engineer specialized in CO2 storage. On the other hand, we find reservoirs depleted of hydrocarbons in the Pau region. They are a priori favorable to storage because they already contain gas or oil.
These are rocks with porosities that are up to 3 kilometers deep and that are accessible through drilling so that the gas flows into them. Saline acuifers are abundant in the Paris Basin and are close to depleted reservoirs with the only difference being that they have never contained hydrocarbons. “They are therefore more favorable in the long term and CO2 replaces brine,” the expert from the Geological and Mining Research Bureau (BRGM) specifies.
A history at the end of the last century
While this technology has recently benefited from increasing prominence in France, it has been used elsewhere since the late 20th century. It was Norway that pioneered this by introducing a tax for every tonne of CO2 emissions in the 1990s and launching the first-ever offshore CCS project in 1996 to capture and store 1 million tonnes annually. to hit. “The Americans even injected CO2 into the ground in the 1970s, but that was to extract more oil and not for climatic purposes,” Thomas Le Guénan adds. Yet today the United States has an important ecosystem of start-ups multiplying CCS projects.
“The US government is also counting on the financial incentive with the introduction of a tax credit system to encourage initiatives, knowing that another also exists for the production of hydrocarbons,” emphasizes Florence Delprat-Jannaud, responsible for carbon capture and storage programs within IFP Energies. Nouvelles.
A France that lags behind, but is focused on geographical areas
The CCS splits Europe in two. The North Sea has been used for years to extract oil and is now a natural storage place where countries other than Norway, such as the United Kingdom and the Netherlands, are also positioning themselves. “They are aware of the issue of CCS at a high political level,” confirms Thomas Le Guénan. Germany has long banned carbon storage under pressure from a segment of the population that is skeptical of the real estate implications of this technology.
“Historically, France has been more attached to this ‘southern Europe’, but Emmanuel Macron’s recent statements are a positive signal to put this technology on the political agenda,” continues the BRGM engineer.
In France, five zones are actively considering the development of CCS. There is of course Dunkirk where the capture projects are already very concrete and provide for the export of CO2 to storage sites in the North Sea. The reflection is also started on the Le Havre side with an export of the captured carbon there as well. The BRGM works extensively in the Paris sedimentary basin, and more specifically in the Grandpuits (Seine-et-Marne) area, although it mainly contains small CO2 emitters. To the southwest, the area of Lacq, a town near Pau, is targeted because of its past in gas production. A cross-border project with Spain could also see the light of day. Finally, the Rhone Valley is the last space, from Lyon to Marseille, with a view of storage in the Mediterranean, but the scenarios here are less mature.
A necessary change of scale in the coming years
Currently, about thirty large-scale installations worldwide capture and store 40 million tons per year: a drop of water compared to the 40 gigatons of CO2 emitted each year. A recent report from the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) gives hope by estimating the storage capacity of CO2 at 1000 gigatons.
“If we look at the carbon neutrality scenarios, it will still be necessary to have 100 times more carbon captured by 2035,” remembers Florence Delprat-Jannaud.
To illustrate the essential acceleration on CCS, the expert from IFP Energies Nouvelles cites the example of Dunkirk. The case of the ArcelorMittal site is still in the experimental phase and should make it possible to capture up to half a ton of CO2 per hour when the industrial scale requires it by multiplying this figure by 200 or even 300. With this in mind, Thomas Le Guénan advocates the mobilization of major industrialists who have the ability to connect to carbon storage hubs, or create their own. Proof of this is the colossal Northern Lights project, led by Equinor, TotalEnergies and Shell, the first phase of which will end in a year and a half. From mid-2024, various countries will be able to store the CO2 they have captured there, up to a limit of 1.5 million tons per year.
The increase in the carbon quota is a profitable lever for the CCS
While the recent adoption of the EU carbon border tax is a new factor to consider for industrialists considering CCS, the fall in the value of carbon credits traded within the European community is a real boon. Its particularly low level in the 2010s has slowed down many projects, but rising again to about €90 per tonne currently, it now plays a more stimulatory role vis-à-vis major manufacturers. The cost price of CCS technology varies between 50 and 180 euros per tonne of CO2. “This strong variation is explained by the degree of carbon concentration that varies according to the industry and thus the degree of facility to capture this CO2,” specifies Florence Delprat-Jannaud.
“Industrialists are more confident in the profitability of CCS, but the fluctuation of carbon is still a problem because this “market” dimension is an obstacle to projection,” laments Thomas Le Guenan.
A technology for small and large transmitters
The costs of an infrastructure can vary from a few tens to several hundreds of millions of euros (760 million dollars in the case of Northern Lights, for example). The strategic choice to purchase such an infrastructure is influenced by various factors such as the composition of the flue gases or even the obligation to carry out work on the installation or not. However, it is suitable for most major industrial emitters, especially manufacturing companies, coal-fired power stations that produce electricity, but also the steel, cement and chemical industries.
“In France we have a very carbon-free energy with renewables, but in China there are a number of coal-fired power stations that we cannot imagine would suddenly be replaced by renewables,” says Florence Delprat-Jannaud. therefore necessary to go through the capture and storage of CO2.”
And the smallest emitters are also given a place in the process by evolving towards mutualisation in capture, but also the transport of CO2 to storage sites in order to reduce the impact of the investment cost. “A solution for them could also be to combine carbon storage with geothermal energy to generate heat at the same time,” exclaims Thomas Le Guénan.
A ‘CCS plan’ to be presented by the government before the summer
In another part of the ecosystem, start-ups and philanthropic funds are investing in capturing the atmosphere, which the IPCC also encourages in the logic of deploying all solution portfolios in the face of the climate crisis. This technology is more expensive than conventional CCS and involves capturing CO2 directly from the atmosphere, which could offset very diffuse carbon emissions. In just under a year, the state of Wyoming will open a large site specializing in atmospheric trapping with an annual target of 5 million tons caught by 2030.
As European states continue to consider financing methods and mechanisms to create infrastructure and launch the sector, Emmanuel Macron has already announced that the government will present a “CCS plan” before the summer. Likewise, this technology will be allocated part of the €200 million envelope planned to accelerate research into decarbonisation solutions.
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