Areas of Expertise

2 DEGREE REALITY

Julio Friedman say there is no math to get to 2 degree that does not use CCS. In 2016 the Paris agreement was signed by 175 countries for GHG reductions. By not building large emission capture plants, there is no chance to reach countries nationally determined contribution (NDC) under the Paris Agreement is to reduce greenhouse gas emissions by at least 40% by 2030 compared to 1990. Time is running out for accelerating global temperatures which directly affect climate change.

One of the barriers to wide scale use of carbon capture plants is the cost and efficiency of the process. The Shand report that was done in conjunction with MHI showed a cost estimate of45$ USD which puts it in the

ball park of being reasonable. With government incentives like 45Q in the United States will help kick start CCS. This fund which is not capped will give companies 35 USD/tonne of CO2 for re-utilized CO2 for example Enhance Oil Recovery processes and 50 USD/tonne for pure storage. The CO2 in both cases must be ultimately stored and must be monitored so no leakage occurs.

INDUSTRIAL SOURCES

The learnings from Boundary Dam Three have demonstrated that similar post combustion processes used for a lignite coal can be used in the Natural gas industry for power generation, metallurgical processes and cement industries. The solvent needs to be “Tuned” for a particular flue gas but this is essential for minimizing solvent degradation and increasing capture efficiency. There are many countries and Laboratories that could use the information from operating plants to work on solvent optimization

GEOLOGICAL STORAGE

Geological storage can take two forms. One is through Enhanced Oil Recovery (EOR) where the CO2 is liquified, used to drive trapped oil to producing wells. CO2 is recycled and certain percentage is trapped naturally in the formation. At the Weyburn project in Saskatchewan, over 35 million tonnes of CO2 is permanently stored in the reservoir. Once the EOR processes if complete, CO2 can be permanently stored in the oil and gas reservoir. There are centuries of storage capacity around the world. This is very encouraging. A key issue for geological storage is proper siting of reservoirs and monitoring. There is a tremendous amount of information that can be available to help pick a suitable site for CO2 storage. Geologist and reservoir engineers that use their skills to identify proper formations to store CO2 permanently far away from potable water. Monitoring is critical in order to develop a base line of information before storage takes place. Monitoring storage of productions in reservoirs has been done form many years. Millions of tonnes of brine water from Potash mines in Saskatchewan have been monitored and successfully stored in saline reservoirs . In Saskatchewan there is also the IEAGHG Weyburn project and the Petroleum Technology Research Centre’s Aquistore project.

ENHANCED OIL RECOVERY (EOR)

EOR is a proven process that has been utilized in The United States for over Fifty years. It has become a very used, efficient way of maximizing recovery rates of oil from a reservoir. There seems to be a lot of controversy over the use of CO2 for EOR. There are a few schools of thought about recovering more hydrocarbons with a CO2 and that CO2 is released back into the atmosphere while bring up more oil. However, as much we would like to change the world usage of hydrocarbons overnight, that task is impossible. We currently use over 80% fossil fuels for world’s energy. There is a transitional period to reduce our fossil fuel usage but the transition my take many tens of years. For a country not to maximize the oil production will reduce revenues that governments receive from the royalties and taxes on oil production. If a province/state cannot maximize oil production, they may have to import oil from countries which may not be environmentally friendly or use the hydrocarbon as a strategic tool for industrial or government prominence. Another misconception is the CO2 used for EOR is released back into the atmosphere. All the CO2 except for a small fraction is stored. Great care is taken by a capture company to make sure the corporate partner storing the CO2 stores all the CO2, otherwise the capture company may lose its permit or credits for capturing CO2. Very similar monitoring processes are used in the EOR fields to make sure not only is the CO2 stored properly during EOR operations but also when EOR is complete and the permanent storage phase is operational.

FINANCING CCS

Financing CCS is a very big issue as these plants are expensive to build. The good news is as more plants are built, they will become more efficient and more cost effective. The Shand study completed by the International CCS Knowledge Centre has shown that new plants can be built 67% cheaper than Boundary Dam Three and over 97% of carbon can be captured. The boilers used in Coal plant can also take a certain percentage of biofuel which potentially can give negative emission to a coal plant.

Another very important issue on financing is government involvement. Governments would like have industry cover the cost of building capture plants. The lack of plants built demonstrate that industry is not buying into this argument and government funding or incentives are needed to get CCS common place.

Business Strategy

Carbon Capture and Storage is not complicated but many misconceptions are prevalent. Most of the miss-information is generated from special interest groups that would like to eliminate fossil fuels altogether.

Here are some of the services Monea CCS can do:

• Educate the client about the pros and cons of carbon capture and storage. The positives are enormous, without CCS there is little to no chance of countries meeting their greenhouse gas commitments within the Paris accord agreement. The two biggest barriers are cost and understanding if the capture technology works or not. I was involved as an employee of SaskPower to spearhead the project to build the world’s first commercial carbon capture on a lignite fueled power plant, the Boundary Dam Three project (BD3). In order for the BD3 project to become operational, not only did we have to understand the potential of carbon capture and storage but other issues like: which technology to use, economics compared to other forms of fuel for power generation, regulatory processes, to name a few.

• Monea CCS has a clear understanding of the regulatory processes in North America which can be applied globally.

• Monea CCS has a clear economic understanding of the next generation of post combustion products that could be built as well as comparing post combustion systems to other capture processes such as precombustion systems.

• Post combustion systems have been derisked since Boundary Dam Three and PetraNova plants have been built. His knowledge of other countries laboratory research in solvents can be shared with other industrial sources like cement, metallurgical, natural gas plants.

• The public learnings of the first mover plants can be shared with companies and governments wishing to explore branching into CCS.

• A team of CCS experts can be assembled to review and assess project development with the ultimate goal of assisting the deployment of CCS where CCS is warranted and needed.

• Depending on the needs of a client, a consulting package can be established.