Abstract
The deployment of renewable chemicals and fuels production is directly connected to technical developments, political incentives and investments. The route towards market competitiveness of such chemicals and fuels requires significant cost reduction from state-of-the-art production and operation. In this manuscript, we estimate to what extent the expected technical improvements of the sunlight-powered reverse water gas shift process catalysed by a Au/TiO2 photocatalyst can improve its economic performance. Multiple factors and different scenarios are explored to identify the main dependencies that drive price reductions for this technology. Our projections indicate that the total capital investments required to deploy this green CO production route have the potential to decline from 325 million euros down to 51 million euros for an annual CO production of 100 kton based on the technical improvements. The levelized cost of CO could decrease from around 205 €/GJ CO to 53 €/GJ CO. These results indicate that sunlight-powered chemistry can become competitive when higher carbon taxes are applied to the production of fossil CO (75-200€/ton CO2).
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