Abstract
Research to date has identified cost and lack of support from stakeholders as two key barriers to the development of a carbon dioxide capture and storage (CCS) industry that is capable of effectively mitigating climate change. This paper responds to these challenges through systematic evaluation of the research and development process for the Acorn CCS project, a project designed to develop a scalable, full-chain CCS project on the north-east coast of the UK. Through assessment of Acorn's publicly-available outputs, we identify strategies which may help to enhance the viability of early-stage CCS projects. Initial capital costs can be minimised by infrastructure re-use, particularly pipelines, and by re-use of data describing the subsurface acquired during oil and gas exploration activity. Also, development of the project in separate stages of activity (e.g. different phases of infrastructure re-use and investment into new infrastructure) enables cost reduction for future build-out phases. Additionally, engagement of regional-level policy makers may help to build stakeholder support by situating CCS within regional decarbonisation narratives. We argue that these insights may be translated to general objectives for any CCS project sharing similar characteristics such as legacy infrastructure, industrial clusters and an involved stakeholder-base that is engaged with the fossil fuel industry.
Highlights
The 2015 Paris Agreement urged the world to reduce anthropogenic CO2 emissions to hold the global mean temperature riseJ
We identify and assess four broad areas that have helped Acorn to progress towards deployment despite a challenging global context: infrastructure re-use; storage development plan design; lowcarbon build-out; and the framing of carbon dioxide capture and storage (CCS) within a just transition
We have here assessed Acorn as a CCS project that has the potential to overcome these hindrances by focussing on seven key elements identified during the development of the project described in this paper
Summary
The 2015 Paris Agreement urged the world to reduce anthropogenic CO2 emissions to hold the global mean temperature riseJ. Given the urgency with which climate mitigation action is required and the risk of ‘overshooting’ the targets set under international agreements, there is an argument that continued CCS research and development is necessary in addition to rapid deployment of renewable energy technologies (Mabon and Shackley, 2015). Investments into dedicated CO2 storage projects are economically challenging (Wennersten et al, 2015; Bui et al, 2018; IPCC, 2018), especially if upfront and operational costs cannot be mitigated with revenues from enhanced hydrocarbon production in the way they are for CO2-EOR projects (Alvarado and Manrique, 2010). Significant here is the lack of support from political and societal opinion-shapers such as environmental NGOs, who may view CCS as being associated with (and perpetuating) the negative social and environmental effects of the fossil fuel industry (Mabon and Littlecott, 2016)
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