Toward a common method of cost-review for carbon capture technologies in the industrial sector: cement and iron and steel plants

Abstract

Carbon capture and storage (CCS) remains an important pathway to reach deep cuts in CO2 emissions coming from carbon intensive industries. A sound evaluation and comparison of the costs figures of carbon capture technologies applied to the industrial sector are key to guide research activities and inform decision makers. However, each organisation assesses CCS technologies through a different cost methodology, which makes the comparison of cost results difficult. Moreover, the differences are not always evident and can generate misunderstanding and misinterpretation of CCS cost figures.This work is part of a bigger initiative to evaluate carbon capture technologies for the industrial sector and this paper is a first stab at identifying some issues related to techno-economic assessments of carbon capture in cement and iron and steel manufacturing. In this work, a review of transparent economic studies on carbon capture technologies in cement and steel and iron sectors was done to identify cost assumptions and cost methods in the public literature. Secondly, a further analysis of transparent cost methods was done to clarify the impact of terminology and heterogeneous mathematical steps on the differences between cost figures from different sources. With the objective of fairly comparing carbon capture technologies, this paper delivers an explicit cost-review method and guide on how to use it to calculate CO2 capture, CO2 avoidance and products costs, based on an aggregation process where capital and operational costs (CAPEX and OPEX) are assessed. A list of elements to make cost figures comparable is provided. Finally, limitations of this cost-review method are identified and given.