How does carbon capture and storage actually work? | ABC News

the un is calling for drastic cuts to carbon emissions and nations have pledged to make that happen hearing no objections it is so decided taking action on climate change is extremely important for the health of our planet but australia's been accused of dragging the chain and we are not fooled by scott morrison's so-called gasland recovery instead the australian government says the coal and gas industries will have a great future it will be our scientists our technologists our engineers our entrepreneurs enter carbon capture and storage just capture the emissions and bury them putting it down under the ground where it came from in the first place problem is carbon capture and storage has never really worked at the scale needed and when it does it's far too expensive carbon capture and storage is a total scam so could we really just bury our emissions this coal-fired power station near mill marin in southern queensland could determine the future of coal-fired power in australia that's because it's going to be the site of a carbon capture facility the technology the government says will help australia meet its emissions targets the initial plan is to build a facility that could capture 110 000 tonnes of carbon dioxide a year storing the liquid co2 deep underground in a water aquifer in the surat basin in southern queensland here at the mill marine power station an industrial plant will be built to capture up to 90 percent of the co2 produced from this power plant yep so what we do is we take the exhaust gas from the power station and we pass it through a solvent a water-based solvent the the co2 attaches to that solvent and the rest of the gases mainly nitrogen return to the power station we then take that solvent and we heat the solvent up and that and that and that liberates the the carbon dioxide and we take that carbon dioxide and we cool it for transport from there the liquid co2 is transported to a storage well to this property at mooney about a hundred kilometres west of milmerin and this is the well where the liquid co2 will be pumped into at the site for injection we then heat it back up again so we bring it back up to 31 degrees celsius and we increase the pressure and and in that state it's it's liquid-like and compressible and in that form it mixes easily with water the storage well is over two kilometers deep finishing in a formation known as the precipice sandstone aquifer the water there is too salty and unusable to farmers it's a highly porous formation which is 80 meters thick above it is a layer of impermeable silt stone which is 150 meters thick the well itself is sealed by three layers of steel pipe surrounded with concrete the co2 is pumped down the well and mixes with the underground water carbonating it like soda water the process helps hold it in place um there's 65 projects around the world at the moment that are either in development or operations injecting industrial scale co2 and they use the same technology so we have technologies in the world war and we have technologies that surface that look for leakage and then also look to verify where the co2 has gone underground so the government and the coal lobby including the owners of the mill marin project glencore all say that carbon capture and storage is a proven technology we're saying to not only australia but to the world that this technology can reduce our emissions in fact australia has the world's largest carbon capture and storage facility chevron's gorgon project on barrow island off western australia though there have been a few problems in its first five years gorgon was supposed to have captured 80 percent of emissions but so far the company has failed to reach that target which was part of its approval conditions chevron australia acknowledged the shortfall saying it was a pioneering endeavor and would take time to get right [Music] the other problem with carbon capture and storage technology according to greg bourne from the climate council is that it can actually increase emissions so so carbon capture and storage is a is a a methodology which certainly works there are 28 major projects around the world but every single one of them every single one of them is basically tied into what's known as enhanced oil recovery or the production of liquefied natural gas so the amount of gas that is stored underground co2 distorted underground is more than offset by the amount of co2 which is released when you burn the product now let's just take a quick side track here to fill you in on the history of carbon capture and storage [Music] it's been used across a range of industries since the 1970s when co2 was first captured in the valverde area of texas back then they used to pump co2 into the ground to help get more oil out that idea has now morphed into what we know as carbon storage these are a few of the many ways in which oil is now recovered that would otherwise have been lost forever since then more than 200 million tons of co2 has been captured and buried underground and in its latest report the global carbon capture and storage institute says that 71 new facilities were announced in 2021 and as of september there was nearly a 50 increase in co2 capture capacity but that same report also found that to keep global warming to two degrees it would require an enormous investment in carbon capture and storage capacity somewhere between 655 billion us dollars and 1280 billion us dollars ccs is very similar in some respects to offshore wind it's very capital intensive you have to put a lot of cash up front and then you return and then you have a long-lived asset that that will provide you with a return assuming there's a policy environment to reward you for now the climate council says carbon capture and storage remains too expensive and yet when you actually do the numbers basically you you find very very quickly that it's it's just impossible to do to decarbonize the fossil fuel industry in any way shape or form it's enormously costly all the calculations all the evidence shows not a chance not a chance at all false hope so why would the fossil fuel industry keep spending money on it the same reason oil companies in the 70s started injecting co2 into the ground because it helps them recover more of the resource you know the the 28 projects that are going on around the world yes they put money into it but they get money back when they sell the oil or the gas that comes out the moment you actually then have to capture the co2 and put it underground with no offsetting sales process process you're basically asking either for a subsidy or a tax break but the climate council does concede that carbon capture and storage could help reduce emissions from heavy industries like steel and cement making which is actually in line with what the proponents say well i think what you'll find is that to decarbonize those hardtop heavy industry steel cement plastics fertilizers you really will need carbon capture and storage and also carbon capture and storage will also help us set up for new clean industries of the future like hydrogen and ammonia as well but let's look at the cost of producing energy right now wind and solar remain the cheapest batteries are getting cheaper and the price of coal is at record highs won't an additional complex system like carbon capture and storage simply make coal-fired power stations more unviable right if we're talking with power plants if we're talking in the power system carbon capture and storage is horrendously expensive if we're talking a coal fired power station according to the csiro a coal-fired power station in 2030 should cost around 102 dollars a megawatt hour if you add carbon capture and storage it goes up to 186 dollars per megawatt hour now that is three times three times the cost of wind solar and storage uh with associated integration costs so does that cast doubt over the future of a facility like the one that will be built at the mill marin power station look carbon capture and storage on a coal plant simply isn't economic um globally that's been proven in the u.s where a number of these have been tried and failed they've actually failed they've ceased operating the one at petranova kempo recently blew its carbon capture and storage uh plant up literally physically blew it up the technology that is going to come online here later in 2014 will for the first time take the carbon dioxide emissions out of the coal and send them down a pipe and not out into the atmosphere this carbon capture and storage facility at kemper power plant in the u.s had billions spent on it and it was one of the biggest ccs facilities in the country in 2021 it was demolished [Music] iron ore billionaire andrew forrest has also very publicly been saying that carbon capture and storage fails nine times out of ten a trend supported by recent data from the us department of energy in a recent article quoting the data from the department it found that of more than 300 ccs projects globally only about half of them would store the co2 they capture and of those 149 projects more than 100 have been terminated or placed on indefinite hold i think there's a 135 ccs facilities around the world operating or in development right now and 71 added in 2021 alone but these are large-scale complicated projects and like all large-scale complicated projects some don't go all the way some don't get too um to operating phases some are just feasibility studies or investments but the the fact is that tens of millions of tonnes of co2 are being captured right now by these ccs projects and that's going to grow carbon capture and storage is part of the current federal government's plan to reach net zero so that means captured co2 will need to be stored in places like the cts co storage site in queensland ultimately it's essential this project works this will be not just the reference case for our project scaling up but it'll ultimately be the reference case for other people to capture and store co2 and and that's why doing this project properly and doing it responsibly and getting it right is essential today because if we get it wrong it'll be even harder for the next people to do it the world knows it needs to drastically reduce carbon emissions to avoid extreme global warming but how it does that won't be simple or easy the coming decades will be a big test for both technology and humanity you

Channel: ABC News In-depth

Views: 24,182

Keywords: abc news, australian news, abc news indepth, documentaries, long-form journalism, carbon capture, carbon, trap, greenhouse, emissions, reduction, climate change, global warming, warming

Id: Z5I4ZE3GcEQ

Length: 12min 3sec (723 seconds)

Published: Thu Dec 16 2021