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
