The magazine for oil and gas professionals in the energy transition
July 2021 – open access articles The following articles are taken from Petroleum Review magazine’s July 2021 edition for promotional purposes. For full access to the magazine, become a member of the Energy Institute by visiting www.energyinst.org/join
Energy transition
NET ZERO
A global roadmap to 2050 The International Energy Agency (IEA) recently published the world’s first comprehensive study to lay out a cost-effective transition to a net zero energy system while ensuring stable and affordable energy supplies, providing universal energy access and enabling robust economic growth. Laura Cozzi, Chief Energy Modeller, IEA and Timur Gül, Head of the Energy Technology Policy Division, IEA, present some of the key findings of the roadmap.
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he energy sector accounts for about two-thirds of the global emissions of greenhouse gases (GHGs), largely in the form of CO2. Mitigating climate change, perhaps the greatest challenge humankind has faced, requires the net emissions of GHGs to fall to zero. This was recognised in the 2015 Paris Agreement on climate change, which called for achieving a ‘balance between anthropogenic emissions by sources and removals by sinks of greenhouse gases in the second half of this century’. Subsequently, the 2018 special report of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) on Global warming of 1.5oC detailed the high risks of global warming above 1.5oC. The report also calculated that limiting warming to 1.5oC would require reaching net zero CO2 emissions globally by 2050. It is in this context that the International Energy Agency (IEA) decided in 2020 to develop a global roadmap detailing a pathway to net zero emissions in the energy sector by 2050, building on analysis published in its World Energy Outlook and Energy Technology Perspectives. The special report – Net zero by 2050: A roadmap for the global energy sector – was published in May 2021.* Designing the pathway The roadmap describes a pathway to reaching net zero emissions from the energy and industrial sectors by 2050. It is not the pathway. Each country has its own circumstances, resource endowments and cultural preferences that will shape a country’s own pathways. Undoubtedly, there will be many surprises along the way. Some
14 Petroleum Review | July 2021
technologies or policy options may exceed expectations; others may fall short. Nonetheless, the IEA’s net zero emissions (NZE) pathway is designed with certain boundary conditions in mind, including: •
Comprehensive technology approach. The pathway is designed to maximise technical feasibility, costeffectiveness and social acceptance while ensuring continued economic growth and secure energy supplies. It takes a prudent approach to technologies such as bioenergy to take account of biodiversity considerations and possible implications for food. At the same time, it highlights the challenges and risks of reaching net zero emissions without a comprehensive technology portfolio.
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Orderly transition in the energy sector. This includes ensuring the security of fuel and electricity supplies at all times, minimising stranded assets where possible and aiming to avoid volatility in energy markets.
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International co-operation. The pathway assumes a high degree of international co-operation to ensure that technologies are developed and diffused rapidly, and that developing countries are assisted in undertaking the challenging transition.
The pathway also involves an unprecedented effort to combine the insights of the IEA’s two energy models, the World Energy Model (WEM) and Energy Technology Perspectives (ETP) model. In
addition, the IEA collaborated with leading international institutions, including the International Monetary Fund (IMF), to model the macro-economic, and the International Institute for Applied Systems Analysis (IIASA) to model the land-use and air pollution impacts of the transition. Key results and policy priorities The resulting pathway is narrow; action over the next decade is critical. But it is also feasible, and allows for continued robust economic growth and the achievement of the United Nation’s (UN) energy-related Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs), including universal energy access by 2030. Short-term action, using commercially-available and proven
technologies, is crucial to the first decade of the NZE pathway. Substantial policy action on energy efficiency across all sectors allows the global economy to grow 40% by 2030, while using 7% less energy. Wind and solar electricity generation scale up dramatically, with 2030 installations reaching four times the record level of 2020. The electrification of energy consumption is accelerated, with electric car sales going from around 5% of the global car market today to more than 60% by 2030. These near-term actions are necessary to bend the rising CO2 emission trajectory and cut emissions by around 13 Gt.
Energy transition
However, by 2050 almost half of the emissions reductions achieved in the NZE involve technologies currently at the demonstration or prototype phase. A major innovation push is therefore required to achieve the NZE, with advanced batteries, hydrogen electrolysers and direct air capture (DAC) and storage being key opportunities. Policies are urgently needed to enhance and strategically direct early-stage R&D, while at the same time completing a portfolio of demonstration projects. We estimate that achieving the NZE requires about $90bn to be spent on technology demonstration to 2030, compared to the $25bn currently budgeted. The NZE pathway is very capital intensive. From a recent annual average of around $2tn, global energy investment is forecast to surge to $5tn by 2030. This would add, according to joint analysis with IMF, an extra 0.4% to global annual GDP growth between now and 2030, resulting in a global economy that is larger by the equivalent of the economic size of Japan today. Policy makers will need to support developing countries in accessing large amounts of low-cost capital, both from public and private sources.
Photo: Shutterstock
Implications for the global energy industry By 2050 in the NZE, the global energy sector looks quite different compared to today. Renewables rise to cover two-thirds of global energy supply, while fossil fuels decline from four-fifths today to one-fifth of global energy supply by 2050. Electricity rises to account for almost 50% of total final consumption, and is deployed across all end-use sectors from buildings, to industry, to transport. Fuel production becomes dominated by advanced biofuels and hydrogen-based fuels, which are crucial to decarbonising
parts of energy consumption that electricity cannot reach. Globally, around 7.6bn tonnes of CO2 are captured, largely in industry and biofuel and hydrogen production. This is much less than typically envisaged by other comparable scenarios, but a very substantial industrial challenge nonetheless. In the NZE, energy security concerns change, but they do not disappear. The contraction of the global oil market, falling to 24mn b/d by 2050, leaves the lowest cost oil producers with a growing market share. The OPEC share in a much-reduced global oil supply rises to 52% by 2050, higher than ever observed in the history of global oil markets. At the same time, producer economies’ per capita revenues from oil and gas sales fall 75% by the 2030s, with substantial implications for fiscal and social policy in these economies. No new investments in fossil fuel production are required in the NZE, beyond projects already committed as of 2021. For producer economies, structural reforms and economic diversification will be critical. At the same time, new opportunities emerge for the global energy sector. The net zero emissions energy system is intensive in critical minerals, with the market size of minerals like copper, cobalt, manganese and various rare earth metals growing seven-fold between 2020 and 2030. Diversified global mining companies, and countries with resource bases in these critical minerals, will be well-placed to benefit. Concurrently, the growing importance of critical minerals creates new energy security concerns around price volatility and supply diversity. Global demand for oil and gas contracts substantially in the NZE, with gas demand falling to 1,750bn cm by 2050, accompanying the decline of oil demand discussed above. However, there are a number of growing energy-sector activities in the NZE, which are well aligned with the existing technical and managerial competences of the global oil and gas industries. These include bio-refining, low-carbon hydrogen production from natural gas combined with carbon capture, use and storage (CCUS), offshore wind, and geothermal to name a few. Total investment in these technologies reaches almost $400bn by the 2030s in the NZE, and rise further thereafter. In the NZE, the business of ‘wires and electrons’ is huge by 2050. Total annual consumer
spending on electricity exceeds $8tn by 2050 (more than twice the retail market for oil products over the last decade). Investment in grids reaches more than $800bn by the 2030s. Electricity is the key fuel across many parts of the energy sector in a net zero world. But the use and treatment of solid, liquid and gaseous fuels – a core competency of fossil fuel industries – continues to play an important role in the NZE – and electricity accounts for about half of final energy demand only by 2050. For example, modern forms of solid biomass, which can be used to reduce emissions in both the electricity and industry sectors, rise from 32 EJ in 2020 to 75 EJ in 2050, offsetting a large portion of a drop in coal demand. The use of low-emissions liquid fuels, such as ammonia, synthetic fuels and liquid biofuels, increases from 1.6mn boe/d in 2020 to just above 12.5mn boe/d in 2050. The supply of low-emissions gases, such as hydrogen, synthetic methane, biogas and biomethane rises from 2 EJ in 2020 to 50 EJ in 2050. The increase in gaseous hydrogen production between 2020 and 2030 in the NZE is twice as fast as the fastest 10-year increase in shale gas production in the US. Near-term milestones and stable public policy Change in the scale and speed that aligns with a transition of the energy sector to net zero emissions by 2050 worldwide will require long-term policy frameworks and clear intermediate targets, allowing industries and investors to adapt their strategies and future expectations. The IEA’s NZE pathway sets out more than 400 milestones detailing how at the global level to reach net zero emissions by 2050 could be achieved in practice. The vast majority of these milestones suggest significant changes in energy demand as a means to trigger the necessary transformation. It is clear that public policy is more critical than ever to guide investments and strategic expectations in the global energy sector. The IEA’s NZE report is a roadmap – not the roadmap – that can help navigating the changes ahead. l *See www.bit.ly/IEANetZero
Petroleum Review | July 2021 15
Energy transition
CIRCULAR ECONOMY
A rounded approach Oil and gas companies have the leverage and expertise to deploy their organisational capabilities to integrate circular economy principles on the road to net zero. University College London’s Daisy de Selliers and Catalina Spataru report.*
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he circular economy (CE) is increasingly coming to the fore on both national and global agendas, driven by climate change concerns, zero waste ambitions and technological innovations. Oil and gas companies have the potential to contribute by developing business models that generate growth in a net zero future, including a shift towards renewable energy, reducing the extraction of natural resources, implementing resource recovery measures and emissions reduction technologies, and extending the useful life of products and assets. This will require the development of new operating models upstream and downstream, that are transformative, systemic and functional.
Movement towards renewable energy Several oil and gas companies have already embarked on this process, including Total, Shell, Repsol and Eni, engaging in the renewable energy business by developing plants producing low carbon energy and acquiring companies active in this segment. Total, for example, has been investing in wind and solar projects through subsidiaries including Total Quadran. Shell has been building wind farms through joint ventures with electric utilities and owns interests in solar asset developers in the US and Germany. Meanwhile, Repsol has added renewable energy projects to its portfolio recently, creating a joint venture in Chile in 2019 to operate and build solar and wind assets. Traditional oil and gas companies have also been exploring alternatives to fossil fuels in the transport sector by investing in electric mobility, hydrogen and biofuels. Total and Shell, for example, have participated in the roll-out of hydrogen stations through the H2 Mobility Germany joint venture; Shell has acquired providers of electric vehicle (EV) charging points such as 18 Petroleum Review | July 2021
NewMotion in Europe and Greenlots in the US; and Repsol has acquired the EV charging network Ibil in Spain. Bioenergy represents another opportunity for oil and gas companies given the synergies between the biofuel and fossil fuel value chain. This includes the conversion of hydrocarbon refineries into biorefineries. Total started up the La Mède biorefinery in France in 2019 with a capacity of 500,000 t/y of hydrotreated vegetable oils (HVO) to use as an alternative to conventional diesel. The French major also launched a research programme to use oleaginous waste and algae for biofuel production without the need for arable land. Meanwhile, Repsol uses commercial biofuels produced from industrial and domestic waste and plans to double its production of HVO biofuels to 600,000 t/y by 2030. It is also developing a project in Spain for a plant that generates gas from urban waste through a pyrolysis process. This consists of heating waste at high temperatures without oxygen until it is transformed into gas. The plant is expected to reuse up to 100,000 tonnes of waste. Italy’s Eni has developed proprietary waste-to-fuel technology for the transformation of organic municipal solid waste into bio-oil with recovery of water contained in the wet waste. A process of hydrothermal liquefaction transforms the organic waste into bio-oil, which can be used for maritime transport or contribute to biofuel production. The company started a pilot plant in Italy, which demonstrated the feasibility of applying the technology on an industrial scale. It has also entered a joint venture to develop industrial plants in the country. Shell has a facility in the US producing renewable natural gas from organic waste through anaerobic digestion. It also completed in 2017 the construction of a demonstration
plant in India that turns waste feedstock, such as agricultural and municipal waste, into transport fuel with the aim of demonstrating the technology for possible scaling up and commercialisation. Circularity in plastics Addressing the issue of end-of-life plastics also presents opportunities for oil and gas companies. Industrial value chains for plastics recycling can be developed in synergy with refining and petrochemical activities. In the field of plastic recycling, Total is conducting research in the three channels of mechanical, chemical and organic recycling. The company markets 15 grades of polymers containing up to 50% recycled materials and has a target of producing 30% of its polymers portfolio from recycled materials by 2030. Repsol produces polyethylene and polypropylene from chemical recycled oil from plastic waste not suitable for mechanical recycling. It has been testing this type of oil at its industrial complex in Spain since 2015. The company marketed its first recycled plastic materials in 2019, which are commercially available to customers in Europe. Repsol has set the goal of achieving 20% recycled content in all its polyolefins by 2030. Eni launched in 2019 its first range of polyethylene and polystyrene made from mechanically recycled plastics. Its chemical company Versalis developed the materials in its research laboratories and uses urban post-consumer plastic, primarily packaging. Eni (Versalis)
Energy transition
has joined the Circular Plastics Alliance launched by the European Union to bring 10mn tonnes of recycled plastics to market by 2025. It has committed to increasing the production capacity of mechanically recycled plastics and to develop a new chemical recycling technology to transform mixed plastic waste into raw material to manufacture new virgin polymers. Meanwhile, Shell is using a liquid feedstock made from plastic waste in a chemical plant in the US. The liquid is supplied by waste management company Nexus Fuels and made from hard-to-recycle plastic via pyrolysis. In 2020, Shell announced a supply agreement with Nexus Fuel for 60,000 tonnes of pyrolysis liquid over four years. The company has committed to using 1mn t/y in its chemical plants by 2021. A group of chemical and consumer goods companies, including Shell and Total, founded in 2019 the Alliance to End Plastic Waste, joined in 2020 by Eni (Versalis). The objective is to develop solutions for the disposal of plastic waste in the environment, especially oceans, and promote projects for waste management and plastic recycling technologies.
Photo: Shutterstock
Operational and decommissioning waste The implementation of circular practices in waste management concerns all lifecycle stages from construction and operation, to decommissioning. Practices include separation of metals, reuse of platform assets and pipelines. Sustainability reports from many oil companies include a commitment to minimise and valorise waste from operations, although data is currently too scarce for waste performance of companies to be able to make a direct comparison. Total estimates the share of waste ending up in landfill, which has fluctuated in recent years at 15% in 2019, 18% in 2018 and 13% in 2017. The company has set a target of valorising more than 50% of waste produced by sites that it operates and integrates four principles in waste management:
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Reduce waste at source by designing products and process generating minimal waste.
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Reuse products.
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Recycle residual waste.
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Recover energy from nonrecycled products.
One challenge for the oil and gas industry is the decommissioning of end-oflife facilities. The CE presents opportunities for capturing economic value and reducing waste during decommissioning. It not only concerns the management of materials, but also land. Total, for example, carries out remediation operations for end-of-life sites with the aim of reusing the site for other activities, such as solar generation or reforestation. Eni has an environmental contractor, Eni Rewind, in charge of its remediation process. It transforms areas to be remediated into new added-value projects, and carries out recovery activities in disused service stations and groundwater remediation activities following oil pipeline break-ins. This includes on-site recovery of excavated land, reforestation, groundwater treatment, restoration of natural riverbeds, asbestos removal and regeneration of existing assets. Globally, improving material reuse requires an inventory of all materials, equipment and components. However, describing materials and getting legislative approval has proved to be a challenge. Limited data availability prevents detailed understanding of the different stages of decommissioning processes at this point in time. Transition is underway After a decade of discussion and research on the CE, the linear ‘make-use-dispose’ model of resource consumption is still deeply entrenched. Oil and gas companies face challenges in the implementation of circular business models. However, they have the leverage and expertise to deploy their organisational capabilities to integrate circular principles. Incentives behind their integration need to be strategic. Circularity can help mitigate risks from material and water supply shortages, supply chain disruptions, anticipate increasingly stringent environmental regulation, and capture and create value from product life optimisation and
waste recovery. The role of policies and regulations is essential to facilitate a CE transition. In the European Union, Member States started taking national measures to control and manage waste in the 1970s. This led to the Waste Framework Directive and the Hazardous Waste Directive adopted in 1975, which lay the basis of the regulatory structure on waste. However, the CE calls for a policy framework that not only focuses on waste, but also supports the transition towards broader sustainability objectives, including climate change mitigation, biodiversity preservation and resource efficiency. The European Commission adopted a Circular Economy Action Plan in 2015, focusing on ecodesign of products, exclusion of hazardous chemicals, waste prevention and environmental footprint. The plan proposes a revised legislative proposal on waste and a set of measures covering the whole cycle from production and consumption, to waste management. For effective CE implementation in the oil and gas industry, there is a need for targets and tools to assess resource use and circularity and monitor trade-offs and synergies between circularity and decarbonisation. Assurance guidance for decommissioning programmes needs to integrate CE principles. Collaboration between micro- and macro-level stakeholders, cross-industry consortiums such as the Alliance to End Plastic Waste, and publicprivate partnerships can support the CE transition. The four oil companies mentioned in this article – Total, Shell, Repsol and Eni – have started to develop solutions to support the CE, such as waste-to-fuel, plastic recycling, renewable energy and remediation measures. They face incentives and opportunities to direct their investments towards technologies and products aligned with environmental constructs and circularity principles. The rising penetration of low carbon energy, the development of waste recovery technologies and the implementation of waste reduction measures, among others, indicate that a transition is underway. l * Daisy de Selliers is a PhD candidate at University College London (UCL) Energy Institute, and Catalina Spataru is Professor in Global Energy and Resources, UCL.
Petroleum Review | July 2021 19
Energy transition
TECHNOLOGY
Carbon economy emerging
CO2 capture and utilisation looks set to create a $550bn market by 2040, driven by the building sector, according to a Lux Research report.* Research Analyst Runeel Daliah and other Lux Research analysts explain.
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he global market for CO2 utilisation looks set to reach $70bn by 2030, climbing to $550bn by 2040, according to a new report by Lux Research. The market will be led by new building materials, capturing 86% of the total market value because CO2 utilisation has low technical barriers. However, adoption could be impeded by regulatory constraints, which are likely to ease post-2030. The polymers and protein sectors are likely to remain niche applications for CO2 utilisation despite the development of new technologies in this area. CO2 utilisation for polymer production has been proven commercially and successfully deployed at scale. But the market for polycarbonates is likely remain small. CO2 utilisation for proteins is still at the development stage, but adoption is forecast to be driven by rising demand for alternative protein feed. New aviation fuels, chemicals and carbon additives have vast potential for CO2 utilisation, but will not be reached without extensive 28 Petroleum Review | July 2021
innovation and/or regulatory support. Demand for synthetic aviation fuels (SAF) using CO2 is likely to rise. Although there are high production costs, SAF is considered to be essential for the aviation sector to decarbonise. Despite having a vibrant start-up landscape, CO2-based chemicals will likely be outrun by bio-based chemicals and recycling due to high production costs. As for carbon additives, the sector is unlikely to become a major market for CO2 utilisation due to the high costs of production, long timelines for performance validation and lack of valuable applications. CO2 emissions growth While CO2 emissions growth stalled between 2014 and 2016, increased industrial activity across developing nations reversed the trend and 2019 witnessed a record 38 Gt of CO2 emitted globally. China is the world’s largest emitter, contributing 30% of global emissions. The US contributes 13%, the EU 8% and India 6%. The power generation
CO2 utilisation is set to be a strongly growing market, led by the building materials market because it has low technical barriers, although some regulatory challenges Photo: Lux Research
sector remains the most flagrant emitter, contributing 36% of the world’s CO2 emissions, followed by industry with 22% and transportation 21%. CO2 capture can be sub-divided into applications with varying concentrations of CO2 in the gas mixture. Pre-combustion is the separation of CO2 from noncombustion gases, eg natural gas or process gas from ethanol/ ammonia plant, which contains 50–90% CO2 concentration. During post-combustion CO2 is separated from combustion flue gas, which contains 5–30% concentration. Direct air capture (DAC) involves the separation of CO2 from ambient air, which contains 0.04% concentration. After separation, the resulting CO2 will have a concentration near 100%. Pre-combustion currently dominates the carbon capture and storage (CCS) industry, with post-combustion expected to gain commercial traction post-2020. Commercial-scale CCS projects today are mostly used for industrial gas separation in natural gas processing and fertiliser production. To date, only two post-combustion capture projects have been built at commercial-scale – the C$600mn ($496.5mn) Boundary Dam CCS plant in Canada and the $1bn Petra Nova CCS facility deployed at a coal plant in the US. So far, over 36mn t/y of postcombustion CO2 capacity has been announced to come online in the 2020s. These facilities will be in the US, Norway and UK, among others, with the captured CO2 used in enhanced oil recovery (EOR) applications or sequestered in dedicated geological resources (see the 2021 Global CCS Institute report for project details). DAC is expected to remain niche, with over 1.4mn t/y of capacity set to come online by 2030. Nevertheless, this figure will increase as technology developers announce more projects and scale up. The main companies active in DAC are Carbon Engineering in Canada, and Climeworks based in Switzerland. Other companies such as Global Thermostat in Canada, and Soletair Power in Finland, are at an earlier stage of development and lag in terms of commercialisation
Energy transition
momentum. So far about $280mn of publicly disclosed funding has been raised by DAC companies over the past five years. The principle of DAC is similar in all these initiatives. A capture medium separates CO2 from ambient air. However, the type of media varies from company to company. Carbon Engineering uses a potassium/calcium cycle, while Climeworks uses solid adsorbents. Carbon Engineering is at the pilot-scale, while Climeworks is at the pre-commercial scale. Carbon Engineering is operating a 350 t/y CO2 capture pilot unit in Canada and is planning a 1mn t/y commercial facility in the US. Climeworks launched a 900 t/y demonstration unit in Switzerland and is building a 4,000 t/y commercial facility in Iceland. Reducing the cost of CO2 capture is paramount for projects to meet mass scale in coming decades. Lux Research Analyst Holly Havel says: ‘Novel technologies are targeting costs of sub-$80/t of CO2 but have yet to validate such claims at scale. Near-term deployment will, therefore, rely on aggressive carbon pricing and financial incentives to drive momentum.’ Nevertheless, CO2 capture is essential for a carbon-neutral energy system. And there are promising developers in anticipation of stronger penalties likely to be implemented this decade in countries aiming for carbon neutrality. Solvent-based CCS (currently being used in the Petra Nova plant) will likely remain the dominant form of carbon capture technology. Petra Nova uses an amine-based solvent, and start-ups such as Carbon Clean and C-Capture are developing improved solvents to reduce the cost of capture. Svante has developed solid adsorbents for its carbon capture technology and is planning to launch its first commercial-scale 2,000 t/y CO2 capture facility in the US. This promises to be the world’s first commercial-scale CO2 capture facility using solid adsorbents. Global CO2 consumption is projected to grow to 272mn t/y, driven by urea production and EOR applications, according to the IEA. Basically, CO2 can be converted into six types of products: •
Building materials – where CO2 is used to produce aggregates or to cure wet concrete mix.
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Chemicals – to produce C1 chemicals such as methanol and formic acid.
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Carbon additives – to produce advanced carbon materials such
as nanotubes and graphene. •
Fuels – using CO2 to produce fuels such as diesel and methane.
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Polymers – to produce polymers such as polycarbonates or polyhydroxyalkanoate.
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Proteins – using CO2 to produce single-cell proteins for feed applications.
Building materials Research Analyst Drishti Masand maintains that: ‘CO2 utilisation provides an avenue for the concrete industry to close its carbon loop. On top of sustainability benefits, performance advantages can also be gained. Though there is low commercial activity today, rapid commercialisation is expected due to low technology barriers.’ In fact, there are about 500 patent publications in the field of CO2-based materials, including over 40 patents filed in 2020. ‘As building materials, CO2 can either be used for producing aggregates or to cure wet concrete mix. The latter option is currently at the commercial-scale and is led by CarbonCure, based in Canada. The CarbonCure system is currently deployed at over 300 plants worldwide. For aggregates production, the technologies are still largely at the pilot scale, but two companies are leading the pack. Carbon8, based in the UK, and Blue Planet in the US, have both reached the commercial stage with their systems,’ says Masand. The main barriers to adoption are regulatory. ‘The building materials industry is quite conservative about innovation and new technologies such as CO2 utilisation face an arduous path to regulatory approval,’ comments Masand. ‘One approach to overcome these barriers (which CarbonCure is using) is to partner with organisations that have pledged to be carbon-neutral and will require low carbon concrete to offset their emissions. Overall, we expect the potential size of this opportunity to reach $450bn by 2040.’ Polymers ‘CO2 utilisation can provide the chemical industry with a fresh source of carbon feedstock in the transition from fossil resources,’ comments Lux Research Analyst Runeel Daliah. ‘However, CO2 utilisation for chemicals is at an early stage of development and highly energy intensive.’ It is hard to decarbonise the chemical industry since carbon is an inherent part of the process.
The goal of CO2 utilisation in the chemical industry is to replace the fossil carbon atom with one that is captured from ambient air. There are several technology platforms. The most advanced is CO2 hydrogenation, where CO2 combines with hydrogen to form methanol. Carbon Recycling International has demonstrated this technology in Iceland. Other platforms, such as CO2 electrolysis for production of syngas or formic acid, are still at laboratory scale. Synthetic fuels There are a lot of commercialscale sustainable aviation fuel (SAF) projects utilising bio-based feedstock, but none using CO2 feedstock yet. The demand for SAF is currently driven by airlines rather than regulatory pull. While there are strong regulatory promoters for road transportation fuel, it is still lacking for the aviation sector. SAF made from CO2 is estimated to be about five times more expensive than from fossil fuels. As such, you would need a carbon price above $300/t CO2 to break even. Such a high carbon price in the global aviation sector is unrealistic in the near-term, hence SAF adoption is likely to be slow, forecasts Lux Research. Single-cell protein ‘Single cell protein has the potential to produce large quantities of protein using less resources in terms of land and water, and in less time compared to conventional protein sources. However, scaled production requires significant investment and technical challenges abound,’ says Analyst Laura Krishfield. Microbial platforms can convert CO2 and hydrogen to protein material using microbes. But this is an early-stage technology and leading companies like NovoNutrients in the US, Deep Branch Technologies in the UK and Solar Foods in Finland, are all currently at the laboratory stage. NovoNutrients is expected to be the first to scale by 2025. ExxonMobil is also focused on algae technology for fuels and chemicals, not feed. Looking forward Ultimately, CO2 utilisation could be a $550bn market by 2040, driven by the building materials market. But there are big question marks over other markets in the short- to medium-term. l * This article was based on a report, Emerging carbon economy, by Lux Research.
Petroleum Review | July 2021 29
Technology
CARBON CAPTURE
Predicting CCUS technology developments T he landmark IEA Report Net zero by 2050* lays out daunting milestones for carbon capture, use and storage (CCUS) (see also pp14). Carbon dioxide (CO2) captured from fossil fuels and processes will need to multiply more than 30-fold over the next 10 years. Equally, CO2 captured from bioenergy and direct air capture (DAC) needs to account for 345mn tonnes of CO2 by 2030, starting from a base of one – a multiple of more than 300. These are huge numbers, both in terms of the availability of scalable technologies and of capital investments to achieve industry-wide deployment. From 2030 onwards, the IEA’s net zero pathway scenario suggests that each month the world should equip 10 heavy industry plants with CCUS. However, one of the key uncertainties in the IEA report is the extent to which fossil fuelbased CCUS applications, which are needed to de-risk other CCUS applications, will actually be developed over the coming decade. ‘Without fossil fuel-based CCUS, the number of users and the volumes of the CO2 transport and storage infrastructure deployed around industrial clusters would be reduced. Fewer actors and more limited pools of capital would be available to incur the high upfront costs of infrastructure, as well as other risks associated with the initial roll-out of CCUS infrastructure clusters,’ says the report. ‘In addition, there would be less spill-over learning and costreduction benefits from developing fossil fuel-based CCUS, making the successful demonstration and scaleup of nascent CCUS technologies much less likely.’ While geological storage and re-use of CO2 in industrial processes will be needed at scale, increased technology innovation will also be required to unlock additional pockets of CCUS and further de-risk the road to net zero emissions. This is where IBM comes in. 5 in 5 predictions Each year, IBM Research showcases five ways in which technology will reshape business and society in the next five years. This year’s ‘5 in 5’ predictions focus on accelerated 30 Petroleum Review | July 2021
materials discovery to enable a more sustainable future. IBM predicts that within the next five years, new materials or novel uses of existing ones will help address the global climate challenge – efficiently capturing CO2 to mitigate emissions, finding more sustainable ways to grow crops, rethinking materials that go into batteries and developing more sustainable electronics. Materials design is a lengthy, complex process because the number of potential molecular combinations is vast and the final properties of materials also depend on the production processes. It typically takes more than 10 years and many tens of million dollars to discover a useful new material. With the help of artificial intelligence (AI), high-performance and quantum computing, generative models and laboratory automation, the time and cost needed for materials discovery could be cut by 90%.
Accelerated materials discovery To accelerate the discovery of CO2-absorbing materials for carbon capture, IBM has created a cloud-based screening platform to rapidly sift through millions of potential CO2 adsorbents at the nanoparticle level. This should enable materials engineers to select the best materials for enhancing the absorption of CO2 in a particular application. The platform allows fast searches through large quantities of known structures, enabling faster discovery. Once the most viable candidates are identified, the computational framework can then inform chemical synthesis and material optimisation for accelerating the discovery in the lab. So how does this work? The AI software can consolidate all available knowledge on a specific topic from a multitude of sources. Then supercomputers and, eventually, quantum simulations can cover knowledge gaps on – in this case – CO2-absorption. Using the full set of data, the AI can then create models to generate hypotheses about new materials with useful properties. What’s more, the manufacture and testing of new materials can also be automated.
IBM Research shows five ways in which CCUS technology developments are likely to shape up in the next five years. Sonia van Ballaert, IBM Distinguished Industry Leader, explains. IBM’s AI-based approach includes a cloud-powered chemistry lab, which allows researchers to create materials by predicting the outcome of chemical reactions. IBM scientists are using this automated lab to synthesise materials for carbon capture. The IBM Research team has worked on the discovery of better polymer membranes to separate CO2 from flue gases. Using molecular generative AI modelling, they have identified hundreds of molecular structures that could offer alternatives to existing separation membranes for capturing CO2 from industrial processes. These candidate molecules are then evaluated with the help of automated simulations on high-performance computing clusters.
IBM predicts that within the next five years, new materials or novel uses of existing ones will help address the global climate challenge – efficiently capturing CO2 to mitigate emissions, finding more sustainable ways to grow crops, rethinking materials that go into batteries and developing more sustainable electronics.
Simulating carbon separation and conversion Safely and effectively storing CO2 into geological formations is also a huge challenge. The physics and chemistry of the process at a reservoir rock’s pore scale is not well understood. Furthermore, the efficiency of CO2 conversion and storage also depends on the type of rock and reservoir conditions. To tackle the issue, IBM has created a cloud-based tool that simulates fluid flow of CO2 in specific types of rock, allowing scientists to evaluate CO2 trapping and conversion scenarios at pore scale. The technology can enable rapid analysis and optimisation of the rock-specific requirements for mineralising and storing CO2 efficiently and long-term. In these projects, IBM Research combines AI, highperformance computing and cloud technologies to speed up the discovery of new materials. Innovative CCUS materials and approaches are needed in widely different industries such as energy, agriculture and electronics. IBM's 5 in 5 predictions bode well for their accelerated discovery. l * See www.bit.ly/IEANetZero See also www.bit.ly/IBMCCS
