The role of industrial carbon capture and storage in emissions mitigation

Abstract

Carbon capture and storage (CCS) technology holds potential to reduce greenhouse gas emissions from the industrial sector. Industrial CCS applications, however, are more challenging to analyze than CCS in the power sector - mainly due to the vast heterogeneity in industrial and fuel processes. I focus on emission sources from cement and investigate the estimated costs associated with CCS in cement production. These costs are evaluated based on a variety of factors, including the technological maturity of the capture process, the amount of CO2 captured in different parts of a plant, the percentage of CO2 captured from the entire plant, and the energy requirements to operate the CCS addition. With the goal of integrating industrial CCS into an energy-economic model, the costs obtained from the literature are used to determine two values: the percent increase in total costs for an industrial plant with CCS and the breakdown of costs into shares of capital, labor, fuel, and other costs. I introduce the industrial CCS options into the MIT Economic Projection and Policy Analysis (EPPA) model, a global energy-economic model that provides a basis for the analysis of long-term growth of the industrial sector, and then I discuss different scenarios for industrial CCS deployment in different parts of the world. I find that in scenarios with stringent climate policy, CCS in the industrial sector is an important mitigation option. Industrial CCS reduces global emissions by an additional 5% by cutting industrial emissions by up to 45%, all while allowing for high levels of industrial production throughout the end of the century. In total, industrial CCS can increase welfare and consumption by up to 70% relative to a global economy under a 2-degree Celsius policy without industrial CCS.