Nation switches on to carbon capture

Carbon capture and storage projects in Australia are switching on as the nation looks to cut emissions and meet international climate change commitments.

The Noble Tom Prosser 150m drilling rig off Gippsland, Victoria, is part of a major carbon capture and storage project

Carbon capture and storage (CCS) projects in Australia are switching on, as the nation looks to the technology to cut its emissions and meet international climate change commitments.

Having operated around the world for more than four decades, a suite of carbon capture, use and storage projects are in development across Australia’s coal, gas, and energy industries.

Industry hopes are high that the Australian government’s recent announcement to prioritise five technologies through the Technology Investment Roadmap’s Low Emissions Technology Statement — including carbon capture and storage — will reduce the current funding challenges for more projects.

Global CCS Institute general manager – commercial Alex Zapantis says CCS is a proven, safe and achievable way to achieve significant emissions reductions from energy and industry.

“It is one part of the answer,” he says. “There are many circumstances where CCS is the best option. There are many circumstances where CCS is effectively the only option. And of course there are circumstances where it makes no sense. It’s part of a toolkit.”

Australia has significant carbon capture projects under way, including one component of Australia’s largest single resource project, the $50bn Gorgon LNG project; the Victorian government-led CarbonNet CCS network for future industry and clean hydrogen; and Glencore’s Carbon Transport and Storage Company to create a storage hub in southern Queensland. The government’s Low Emissions Technology Statement wants to encourage its use in power generation, oil and gas extraction, natural gas processing, hydrogen production, and has also flagged its potential use in methanol and cement.

Carbon capture use and storage technology extracts CO2 before it enters the atmosphere, and compresses it into a “supercritical” liquid form.

From there it is transported through an underground pipeline to its storage site. It is then injected, generally more than 1km deep into an underground or undersea storage site, where it can remain safely in place, like natural deposits of a gas or oil.

In the US the technique has been used since 1972 to offset emissions from gas and spur oil extraction at the Terrell Natural Gas Processing Plant in Texas.

Alex Zapantis, general manager – commercial, Global Carbon Capture and Storage Institute. Picture: Stuart McEvoy

A CCS system focused on emissions reduction has been in place since 1996 at Norwegian government majority-owned Equinor’s Sleipner West project in the North Sea, storing more than one million tonnes of CO2 each year.

Global CCS Institute’s Zapantis says there are now more than 20 facilities around the world with a total capacity of 40 million tonnes a year of CO2 storage.

“This is not new, nor is it experimental, nor is it controversial in a technical sense,” he says.

“There’s no technology or resource constraint issue here, that’s not what is holding CCS back. It’s the business case for people to invest in it. And that comes out through climate change policy.”

Zapantis says there is an erroneous association of CCS with coal only, but there are many applications where it can be beneficial.

“It doesn’t have very many friends but I’m happy to say that is changing,” he says.

“Whenever anyone credible has done the rigorous analysis, realistic analysis, they always come up with the same answer,” he says.

“That is, you need absolutely everything to achieve [emissions reductions] and CCS is one of those things that you need, along with everything else.”

Minerals Council of Australia chief executive Tania Constable says the right financial incentives need to be in place for all low-emissions technologies, including CCS: “We’d like to see government and industries, including our industry, investing in technology that removes emissions,” she says.

Constable believes the Australian government’s proposed funding changes within the Technology Investment Roadmap’s Low Emissions Technology Statement should be legislated as soon as possible, access to carbon units finalised quickly and new storage sites in NSW and Western Australia identified.

and services] field. They’re going to benefit immediately from carbon capture and storage.”

‘There are now more than 20 facilities around the world with a total capture capacity of 40 million tonnes a year of CO2 storage’

— Alex Zapantis, general manager Global CCS Institute

“If the economy is going to decarbonise — globally not just Australia — we need all technologies rolled out. CCS is going to be essential for the gas industry, coal industry, industrial applications, the METS [mining equipment, technology The International Energy Agency has indicated Australia is well placed to demonstrate the technology at scale, and has urged the Australian government to increase support for its commercialisation.

The global energy organisation said the technology’s take-up currently will not be enough to achieve international sustainability agreements.

“Despite recent project start-ups and a series of projects under development, CCUS in industry and fuel transformation is not on track to reach the Sustainable Development Scenario (SDS) level of 450 Mtpa by 2030 (290 Mtpa in industrial applications and 160 Mtpa in fuel transformation),” its CCUS in Industry and Transformation report said.

Australia’s major operations — and one of the major global projects — is the Gorgon CO2 injection facility off Western Australia, which last August started capturing and storing CO2 from its natural gas processing plant.

In September it revealed it had injected 3 million tonnes of CO2 This came after delays in the project that started producing LNG in 2016. Over the life of the project, it forecast storage of about 100 million tonnes of CO2.

In Queensland, Glencore’s Carbon Transport and Storage Company (CTSCo) is Australia’s most advanced demonstration project for coal-based CCS. It seeks to capture carbon from the Millmerran coal-fired power station and store it more than 2km underground in the Surat Basin.

Source: Global CCS Institute

CTSCo project manager Darren Greer says feasibility studies to test the suitability of the underground storage are proving successful.

“The outcome was excellent,” he says. “We’ve got a geological result that was much better than we expected. It’s proven we’ve got a viable storage location for CO2.”

He says the capture plant would be based on existing technology that has been operational in China for more than a decade, and a final investment decision for the $230m project will be made before June next year.

Its potential is significant. Once environmental and financial hurdles are cleared, the CCUS project could inject 110,000 tonnes of CO2 annually. However, the project is also seeking to shore up the basin’s storage potential, which is estimated to have a capacity to store millions of tonnes each year. “It’s the foundation for a CO2 storage hub,” Greer says.

“It’s at a location where it’s close to the three youngest power stations in Australia. It’s also close to other industry as well. You’re in the area where you can link to that site by pipeline to places such as Gladstone. It’s near other potential hydrogen projects or coal-to-hydrogen projects. All these uses will ultimately need somewhere to store CO2.”

He says Australia has the natural resources to implement CCS, and has the opportunity to become a world leader in the field.

“We’re also a major producer of fossil fuel, of coal, so it’s important we take a leadership position in having a solution on carbon,” Greer says.

“If we advance the technology in Australia, it’s something others can share. We have to start doing it now if we want to use it at scale in the future.”