The low cost of geological assessment for underground CO2 storage: Policy and economic implications

Friedmann, S. Julio; Dooley, James J.; Held, Hermann; Edenhofer, Ottmar

doi:10.1016/j.enconman.2005.09.006

Cited by 34 publications

(8 citation statements)

References 20 publications

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“…If these data were to reveal different capacity patterns within the aquifers due to for example new formations and/ or changes in porosity, the locations of the high-quality, low-cost regions within the aquifers could shift with respect to the locations of major CO 2 point sources in the U.S. This in turn could have a significant impact on CCS transport costs if the revised data indicates these sources are located farther away from viable storage sites (McCoy and Rubin, 2009;Gresham et al 2010), reinforcing conclusions that the acquisition of more accurate geological data is a valuable investment (Friedmann et al, 2006). …”

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 94%

The impact of geologic variability on capacity and cost estimates for storing CO2 in deep-saline aquifers

et al. 2012

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While numerous studies find that deep-saline sandstone aquifers in the United States could store many decades worth of the nation's current annual CO 2 emissions, the likely cost of this storage (i.e. the cost of storage only and not capture and transport costs) has been harder to constrain. We use publicly available data of key reservoir properties to produce geo-referenced rasters of estimated storage capacity and cost for regions within 15 deep-saline sandstone aquifers in the United States. The rasters reveal the reservoir quality of these aquifers to be so variable that the cost estimates for storage span three orders of magnitude and average > $100/tonne CO 2 . However, when the cost and corresponding capacity estimates in the rasters are assembled into a marginal abatement cost curve (MACC), we find that~75% of the estimated storage capacity could be available for b $2/tonne. Furthermore,~80% of the total estimated storage capacity in the rasters is concentrated within just two of the aquifers-the Frio Formation along the Texas Gulf Coast, and the Mt. Simon Formation in the Michigan Basin, which together make up only~20% of the areas analyzed. While our assessment is not comprehensive, the results suggest there should be an abundance of low-cost storage for CO 2 in deep-saline aquifers, but a majority of this storage is likely to be concentrated within specific regions of a smaller number of these aquifers.

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Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 94%

The impact of geologic variability on capacity and cost estimates for storing CO2 in deep-saline aquifers

et al. 2012

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“…The successful large-scale deployment of CCS will require, for example, detailed exploration for site selection (26) and comprehensive policy to establish safety and monitoring regulations and drive adoption. Absence of comprehensive policy, in particular, has been identified as the key barrier to the deployment of CCS (27).…”

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Lifetime of carbon capture and storage as a climate-change mitigation technology

Szulczewski

MacMinn²,

Herzog³

et al. 2012

Proc. Natl. Acad. Sci. U.S.A.

436

314

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In carbon capture and storage (CCS), CO 2 is captured at power plants and then injected underground into reservoirs like deep saline aquifers for long-term storage. While CCS may be critical for the continued use of fossil fuels in a carbon-constrained world, the deployment of CCS has been hindered by uncertainty in geologic storage capacities and sustainable injection rates, which has contributed to the absence of concerted government policy. Here, we clarify the potential of CCS to mitigate emissions in the United States by developing a storage-capacity supply curve that, unlike current large-scale capacity estimates, is derived from the fluid mechanics of CO 2 injection and trapping and incorporates injection-rate constraints. We show that storage supply is a dynamic quantity that grows with the duration of CCS, and we interpret the lifetime of CCS as the time for which the storage supply curve exceeds the storage demand curve from CO 2 production. We show that in the United States, if CO 2 production from power generation continues to rise at recent rates, then CCS can store enough CO 2 to stabilize emissions at current levels for at least 100 y. This result suggests that the large-scale implementation of CCS is a geologically viable climate-change mitigation option in the United States over the next century.carbon sequestration | pressure dissipation | residual trapping | solubility trapping C arbon dioxide is a well-documented greenhouse gas, and a growing body of evidence indicates that anthropogenic CO 2 emissions are a major contributor to climate change (1). One promising technology to mitigate CO 2 emissions is carbon capture and storage (CCS) (2-4). In the context of this study, CCS involves capturing CO 2 from the flue gas of power plants, compressing it into a supercritical fluid, and then injecting it into deep saline aquifers for long-term storage (4, 5). Compared with other mitigation technologies such as renewable energy, CCS is important because it may enable the continued use of fossil fuels, which currently supply >80% of the primary power for the planet (6, 7). We focus on CO 2 produced by power plants because electric power generation currently accounts for >40% of worldwide CO 2 emissions (8) and because power plants are large, stationary point sources of emissions where CO 2 capture technology will likely be deployed first (4). We further restrict our analysis to coal-and gas-fired power plants because they emit more CO 2 than any other type of plant: Since 2000, they have emitted ∼97% by mass of the total CO 2 produced by electricitygenerating power plants in the United States (9). We focus on storing this CO 2 in deep saline aquifers because they are geographically widespread and their storage capacity is potentially very large (4, 5).We define the storage capacity of a saline aquifer to be the maximum amount of CO 2 that could be injected and securely stored under geologic constraints, such as the aquifer's size and the integrity of its caprock. Regulatory, legal, and economic factors...

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“…For example, instead of stranding early capital investments in CCS infrastructure at marginal reservoirs due to suboptimal deployment, CCS operators could be encouraged to begin by developing centralized storage systems at large reservoirs. In turn, centralization could focus the tasks of gathering geologic information on the main storage reservoirs, regulating them, and encouraging cooperation in transport services [9,34,35]. In the case of the latter, we find that cooperation in transport would reduce the cost of transport and storage by half compared to individual, small--scale transport networks.…”

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 90%

Recovery Act: 'Carbonsheds' as a Framework for Optimizing United States Carbon Capture and Storage (CCS) Pipeline Transport on a Regional to National Scale

Pratson¹

2012

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Carbonsheds are regions in which the estimated cost of transporting CO 2 from any (plant) location in the region to the storage site it encompasses is cheaper than piping the CO 2 to a storage site outside the region. We use carbonsheds to analyze the cost of transport and storage of CO 2 in deploying CCS on land and offshore of the continental U.S. We find that onshore the average cost of transport and storage within carbonsheds is roughly $10/t when sources cooperate to reduce transport costs, with the costs increasing as storage options are depleted over time. Offshore transport and storage costs by comparison are found to be roughly twice as expensive but t may still be attractive because of easier access to property rights for sub--seafloor storage as well as a simpler regulatory system, and possibly lower MMV requirements, at least in the deep--ocean where pressures and temperatures would keep the CO 2 negatively buoyant. Agent--based modeling of CCS deployment within carbonsheds under various policy scenarios suggests that the most cost--effective strategy at this point in time is to focus detailed geology characterization of storage potential on only the largest onshore reservoirs where the potential for mitigating emissions is greatest and the cost of storage appears that it will be among the cheapest.iii

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The low cost of geological assessment for underground CO2 storage: Policy and economic implications

Cited by 34 publications

References 20 publications

The impact of geologic variability on capacity and cost estimates for storing CO2 in deep-saline aquifers

The impact of geologic variability on capacity and cost estimates for storing CO2 in deep-saline aquifers

Lifetime of carbon capture and storage as a climate-change mitigation technology

Recovery Act: 'Carbonsheds' as a Framework for Optimizing United States Carbon Capture and Storage (CCS) Pipeline Transport on a Regional to National Scale

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