“For a Net Zero world in 2050, up to 15 billion tons of CO2 need to be removed per year from the atmosphere and permanently stored. This is a huge challenge, and Direct Air Capture (DAC) can help us get us there.’’
“The costs of CCUS can be really high, but the cost of mitigation will always be smaller than the cost of adaptation.’’
‘’We see long-term a more complimentary way to decarbonize by creating a market for low carbon products where customers pay for the product based on the carbon footprint of the product.’’
"The main drivers that can push CCS forward are commitment from government and corporations, low carbon footprint commodities, and economic incentives."
‘’At Lanza Tech, we take waste Carbon and recycle or re-use that to make fuels and chemicals. We envision for a sustainable future where no Carbon is left behind.’’
‘’Oman has committed to reach Net Zero vision by 2050, and PDO’s decarbonization strategy is aligned with the country ‘s vision. We define a new purpose for PDO which is to build a sustainable low carbon future’’
‘’Today, globally close to 800 million people do not have access to electricity. So, we have a responsibility to make sure that while we bring affordable, reliable, and dependable capacity to these people, we execute a timely transition of energy with a clean pathway.’’
‘’Collaboration is essential to drive CCUS. This requires multiple players from regional, national and international level to work together as just a single player cannot do it alone.’’
It is a great pleasure to be back here in Qatar. It has been around seven years since I have been here. I lived here three times and it felt like living in three different countries. I first came to this country in 1995 and now I have returned after a seven-year absence, and it feels like a fourth different country. It is amazing just how much has transformed over time.
Today, I am going to talk about a subset of CCUS, which is Direct Air Capture (DAC). You are all familiar with why we are here and what we’re trying to achieve. But I want to draw attention to the objectives which includes limiting the global warming to 1.5 degrees C. For a Net Zero world in 2050, up to 15 billion tons of CO2 per year needs to be removed from the atmosphere and permanently stored. This is a huge challenge, which is why I am now going to talk about a technology that can help us get us there. That technology is Direct Air Capture (DAC).
With the help of energy derived from zero emissions energy sources which can be a combination of renewables, nuclear or conventional thermal power generation along with integrated CCUS, we can drive the Direct Air Capture facilities. The CO2 captured can be stored geologically and put back to where the carbon came from in the first place. It can be stored permanently for millennia.
We can also take the CO2 and use it as a feed stock. We have looked at some of the products that are being developed and there are a lot of innovative technologies out there for using captured CO2 like in building materials, plastics and fabrics. We can combine CO2 with green hydrogen and make fuels like sustainable aviation fuel or other forms of low carbon intensity fuel.
The point source can be co-located with the direct air capture and sequestration projects. That CO2 can be brought in and stored geologically along with atmospherically sourced CO2. The technology begins with air contactors, which are essentially repurposed force draft cooling towers. Instead of contacting air with water, we’re contacting air with potassium hydroxide, which is alkaline. The CO2 in the atmosphere is acidic. They react and form potassium carbonate which is taken to a Pellet reactor. The calcium hydroxide reacts and it forms calcium carbonate which goes into a Calciner.
Direct heat is applied in the Calciner and the temperature is raised to 900 degrees C. The CO2 dissociates from the calcium carbonate and pure CO2 is captured. The potassium hydroxide goes around in a wet loop, and the calcium hydroxide goes around in a dry loop. They are not being consumed. They are just carrying the CO2 from the atmosphere to its concentrated form.
This technology was developed by a Canadian company, Carbon Engineering. You will be hearing from Amy Ruddock later today, and she will talk more about Carbon Engineering. This innovative technology was founded in 2009 and they have been capturing CO2 from the atmosphere since 2015.
We committed to Carbon Engineering because we believe that it’s the most scalable technology and it is possible to deploy this technology worldwide in a cost-effective way. It is a closed loop. The technology uses basic chemicals and doesn’t require exotic materials. Every piece of equipment in the technology is easily available through well-established supply chains.
According to data produced by Goldman Sachs, in the Carbonomics report, Direct Air Capture and the sequestration costs are today at $450 per ton. We forecast that we can bring the costs down to $250 per ton by 2030, and as we move into manufacturing mode, the costs will come down to $125 a ton. So progressively over that time, more and more of these industries will be abatable using this technology,
I am going to wrap it up here and will be happy to take questions later.
Thank you very much.
Thank you all.
I would like to express my gratitude to the Global Carbon Council and to Birba for the invitation to participate at the CCUS Forum. Unfortunately, due to personal reasons I could not be there in person. Through my presentations, I will provide a more holistic approach on why CCUS is important.
I would like to start talking about the climate emergency that we are living in right now. The CO2 concentration in the planet is scaling up and beyond what we could think as being reasonable for a Net Zero target. That means the Net Zero target for 2050 is virtually impossible to achieve because we are today above 424 parts per millions of CO2 in the atmosphere. That means in 11 years, we will be crossing the line of 450 parts per million of CO2.
Therefore, we need to be prepared for a warmer world. We need to adapt to extreme weather conditions that are already ongoing now in many parts of the world. We need to be prepared to adapt to slow onset changes that will be permanent and effect agriculture. But more than all, we must adopt all possible measures to reduce emissions and increase removals during the transition to a Net Zero Economy. On a long-term perspective that would mean nuclear fusion and the use of renewables. So, the energy problem on a long-term perspective is more or less solved. However, to get there, we need to reduce emissions while still relying partially on fossil fuels.
The majority of energy production today, and in the near future of 20 – 30 years, will still rely on fossil fuels. Due of this, we need to use carbon capture and storage as one of the tools to reduce our emissions and lead us towards the Net Zero goal.
The faster we implement the mitigation measures that are available to us the faster we can get to the Net Zero target. The costs of CCUS can be really high, but the cost of mitigation will always be smaller than the cost of adaptation. We may need to remove approximately 15 gigatons of CO2 per year. That is a lot to be extracted from the atmosphere. We need to open the opportunities for all technologies and all processes to deliver the carbon removals that we need. This also means using depleted wells from enhanced oil recovery or enhanced gas recovery, at the point in time when they do not deliver the necessary amount of gas or necessary amount of oil. They can be used to remove CO2 and store CO2 underground. In spite of this, there are still numerous technological challenges to be taken into account.
We must discuss whether CO2 removals from fossil combustion will be acceptable during this transition period to achieve the 15 gigatons of CO2 removal per year. We also need to discuss about permanence, whether 15, 50, 100 or 1000 years will be required. We do have some global north ideas stating that we need several centers of permanence. We also need to have a discussion on the monitoring activities that will be required from carbon capture and storage.
The industries working with this offer us several tools, and it is a combination between modeling, remote sensing and local measurements for some time to determine whether the reservoir is stable and not promoting reversals. And we do have, under the carbon credit world, a tool or tools to handle, if possible, losses that may occur.
We have to agree on all of these elements in order to be able to come up with a solution that will be accepted, that will deliver the reductions that we need to achieve this sole desired Net Zero target.
I will stop here. I am happy to respond to questions from the audience.
Thank you.
A very good morning to everyone.
I am really excited to be here today to talk about Shell’s involvement in CCS and also how we can accelerate the deployment of CCS. Before I start, I have a note from my legal team in very fine prints, stating that the presentation today may contain some assumptions that may change depending on circumstances. So, when you make the decisions, please do at your own due diligence.
So let me start. Shell targets to be a Net Zero energy business by 2050. This is by no means an easy feat. So first we have prioritized to actually avoid emissions and there is utilizing energy solutions that are emissions free. Secondly, we will try to reduce our emissions by adding operational efficiency and reduce flaring. We are also proactively trying to invest in low carbon energy solutions. We are actively investing in our renewable generation capacity in solar and wind. We are also employing more mobility options in terms of electric charging stations. We are building an interconnected power business to supply electricity to homes, businesses, and companies. But we recognize that there are some sectors that cannot eliminate the use of hydrocarbons and fossil fuels. There will be residue emissions which will need to be captured and stored. That is where we see CCS playing a role in this industry. CCS technology is available today, so we can use it and deploy it. Yes, there will be a need to improve the technology further, for which a lot of R&D is required in that space.
CCS is one of the few technologies that allows us to not just prevent emissions, but at the same time remove emissions from the atmosphere as well. CCS will play a fundamental role in Shell as we try to become a Net Zero emission energy business by 2050.
In Shell, we are constantly working together with governments, business partners and customers to look at how we can deploy CCS solutions where there are not many alternatives to low carbon solutions. If you look at CCS in 2022, we have spent close to around 220 million in terms of investment in these areas, which is a 50% increase from 2021 where we spent 146 million.
We have around two operational CCS Projects running, one in Quest in Canada and the other one in Gorgon in Australia. Apart from that, we are maturing around 11 other CCS opportunities in the portfolio in US, Asia and Europe as well. We have other CCUS Hubs and CCUS study agreements where we try to partner to further explore CCS opportunities. We are very committed in the CCS space. One of the great things about CCS is its ability to enable multiple different value chains. For example, in Quest in Canada we are capturing carbon from the hydrogen manufacturing unit producing low carbon hydrogen. In Northern Lights, Norway, we are enabling, providing storage and transfer solutions to industrial emitters and bring low carbon cement and low carbon fertilizers producers. In Porthos, Netherlands, we are providing storage solutions to our own furnace refinery, producing low carbon fuels. We shall remain very committed and we look forward to more opportunities in this area.
CCS can enable us to achieve Net Zero emissions in accordance with the Paris climate agreement and limit global surface temperatures to 1.5 degrees C.
We see three key enablers for us to accelerate the deployment of CCS. First, we look at a robust carbon regulatory framework. An open, transparent and streamlined permitting and licensing requirement across the entire CCS value chain, including storage wells and transporting infrastructures. This will be very crucial for investment developers to invest in CCS because they give them the clarity and the transparency needed to invest in such projects. A single interface between the industries, government and regulators. The key is to obtain the necessary approvals for us to speed up, as well as simplify the process. If you look from the permitting requirement, we also believe that a risk-based structure for carbon monitoring is key. We talk about post closure monitoring as well as the ability for liability transfer mechanism. We see a majority of CCS activities in the US because they have a much clearer carbon regulatory framework. The second enabler we see is around economic incentives. CCS is a capital-intensive opportunity. Millions of dollars will need to be invested in CCS. We do see the importance. We actually have economic incentives to encourage the CCS investment and we believe that a market-based incentive approach is more effective to demonstrate such a technology compared to mandates.
If you look at most jurisdiction today, carbon pricing is what is driving CCS investments. That can be through emission trading scheme or through carbon taxes. Europe is a good example where they have implemented a carbon border adjustment mechanism, CBAM, which actually helps to decarbonize their industry domestically and at the same time also incentivize climate change across their borders. So, the trading partners to Europe, when they deliver our products to Europe, reinforce certain carbon pricings, so that they will not be penalized when they export to Europe. When carbon pricing is not available at a high level, a broad sense of economic support to relieve the capital commitment that investors need, has to be in place. This can come in the form of either tax credit that we see in the US or it can be a direct subsidy model like in the EU with an innovation fund model.
Lastly, I think what we see long-term in a more complimentary way to decarbonize, is creating a market for low carbon products. This is where customers pay for the product based on the carbon footprint. We see three main ways how we can drive this. The first, is having a very standardized process in terms of being very clear about the carbon emissions that each product or service generates and make that transparent across the economy. We need very key and transparent accounting ways of how carbon is being emitted across the entire value chain. So, customers can actually make an informed carbon choice of what they are procuring. Secondly, it could be through public procurement of low carbon products indirectly or directly through contracts. Lastly, regulations around end products. We have an obligation to procure low carbon materials, building regulations or energy performance certificates, etc. These can have the producer to include emissions as part of the way that they put regulations in place. We believe this will create a guaranteed demand for low carbon products, allowing price premium to emerge. We see these tricky enablers around carbon framework, economic incentives, as well as creating a market for low carbon products to drive and support CCS and unlock new values. And I think the time is do it is NOW.
Thank you.
I am speaking on behalf of the Global CCS Institute. Before I start talking about CCS, I think we are all here because we agree that we have a big problem that we need to deal with, which is the carbon emissions and CCS is one of the necessary options that we need to achieve the job, but it’s definitely not the only option.
We need to invest and tackle this emission problem by investing in CCUS, renewable energy sources, nuclear energy sources, Direct Air capture, capture from a source or all of the above technologies. So that is an important message for all of us to agree on before we start the discussion.
Let me talk briefly about the Global CCS Institute and then I will talk about where we stand in larger scale CCS projects globally. The Global Carbon Capture and Storage Institute is a non-for-profit organization. We work with our members, other corporations and the government, in trying to advance the deployment of CCS globally. We advocate for CCS; we provide technology assessment for different aspects of the CCUS supply chain. We operate from different locations globally.
The UAE office which I manage was opened recently a year and a half ago. So, we try to cover with the expertise we have across the team, the whole supply chain of CCUS. We aim to build a community, and we have our members and different stakeholders interested in CCUS, knowledge sharing, advocacy, and we work with all international organizations to advance the CCUS deployment.
With the increasing interest in CCUS globally, we have seen an increase in the number of people joining our organization. We now have around 196 members globally, and these are from governments, corporates, NGOs, and all industrial sectors from around the world.
I see many of our members sitting around this room. So, this is the community we are trying to establish to open dialogue and share knowledge across regions and industries, so that together we can advance and move CCUS forward.
One of the major publications we produce every year is the global status of CCUS. It is a report we publish around October, where we summarize the current operational projects, the development of different projects globally, policies and regulations at a global scale.
I want to present to you some of the updates on questions like: Where do we stand? What is the size of the deployment scale that we have currently?
So, when we start looking at our report that we published in October 2022, we have seen for the fifth year in a row, a continuous growth in the number of projects being deployed or announced at different stages of development. The capacity that has been promised in the pipeline has exceeded 240 million tons CO2. That is 44% more than the capacity in 2021. So that has been a major milestone, but the increase in emissions is still a huge problem. We have seen an increase in the number of projects, but we still need to accelerate and deploy hundreds of different types of projects by 2050 to achieve the target of carbon reduction.
The presentation shows how the growth in the number of projects are globally. When we look at the projects, it has to be large scale, over 500,000 tons CO2 being captured per year with a full supply chain from transport to either utilization and storage. These are the kind of projects we recognize in our database. We now have about 35 operational projects, largest scale projects globally. We have over 250 facilities at different stages of development and overall capture capacity, either being injected now or in the pipeline by 2030, over 300 million tons of CO2. So that is a major milestone.
However, we still need to double or triple and even more the capacity of carbon capture by 2030 to achieve our NetZero target by 2050.
What are the main drivers that push CCS to move forward?
That will be an important point for our discussion today. Firstly, the commitment from the government and the different corporates by including CCS as part of their strategy to achieve Net Zero by 2050 or 2060. Then we started talking about commodities with low carbon footprint – steel, cement, oil and gas and other type of products. We have to reduce the carbon footprint of these products. We have seen some economic drivers and incentives for the same. In North America we have seen major schemes for tax refund and tax credit, that push CCS and other technologies forward. The link with low carbon hydrogen, for example, is another driver. All of these collective drivers help in accelerating the deployment of CCS.
Where do we deploy these projects?
The ones on the radar are the operational projects, so we have them scattered all around the world. In the region we have three projects, one in Qatar, UAE, and Saudi Arabia; largest scale carbon capture sequestration project or enhance or recovery. Most of the projects that are coming up are mostly in North America, Europe because there is some kind of incentive there. So that helps making these projects feasible.
We also have some announcements in Saudi Arabia and Qatar, the second phase associated with the Northfield expansion. ADNOC has announced their second phase, so there is a momentum for these projects to move forward.
We still have a major challenge ahead of us. Just 35 operational projects by 2030 is not enough, we need hundreds more. But the momentum is good and it is promising, and we need to build on that to achieve more in the next five to seven years by 2030; as a major milestone to achieve Net Zero by 2050.
Looking forward for further discussion and questions. I will leave it here.
Thank You.
Before I introduce myself, I would like to convey my sincere thanks to the organizers and to the leadership committee present in this room. I must say, when I was in the morning session, it gave me a lot of enthusiasm to see how this region is looking at CCUS as an opportunity. In Lanza Tech, which I’m representing here, we look forward to support that opportunity for the region.
My name is Dr. Preeti Jain, and I am the global director with Lanza Tech. We are a carbon capture and transformation leader. When I say carbon capture and transformation leader, traditionally we are looking at all the products, whether it is fuels or chemicals derived from fossil carbon. At LanzaTech we take waste carbon like emissions, municipality waste, agricultural waste, or plastic waste and convert that waste carbon into ethanol. We envision a sustainable future where no carbon is left behind. We also envision to take that carbon to recycle and reuse into fuels and chemicals which we can be used in our daily lives.
Question: In your view, what is required to enable the deployment of this industry? Do we need government support or a greater risk-taking ability from companies or more investments in such projects?
I would say all of above. It is a very simple thumb rule; for any perfect recipe you need all ingredients in varied proportions. To make CCUS take off at a global scale, we need all of them. I would like to start with how the role of innovation, technology development, deployment, and accelerating it to multiple deployments across the industry spectrum is important. The role of policy is central. It is time that we start bringing climate action at the heart of all the policies across the sectors especially the hard to abate sectors. Bringing a mix of mandates as well as incentives will help. And we shouldn’t forget that today we have around 40 gigatons of greenhouse gas emissions every year, and not even 1% of that is being mitigated through CCUS pathways. So, what is hampering that?
We need to reflect at both the policy level and industry level. Lastly, we shouldn’t forget that transition finance is very important to make this happen. The role of carbon markets can be a game changer. So, we need all those solutions at the table. I would like to share an example with our own experience at LanzaTech. We are a carbon capture and utilization player and we de-risk our technology at scale with the three commercial units today and two in the advanced stages of commissioning. All of this is possible because of the collaboration between technology, policy, strategic and financing investors, and then you should have somebody there in the market to take off that product. Only collectively can we achieve this.
Question: Do you see any particular country or company moving in the right direction to develop this?
I would say there is no right or wrong answer to this question. We need all the solutions on the table. We need technology neutrality. That is very important. We also need to be cognizant of the fact that in different industry sectors, utilization can play a more important role. In certain industries, storage can be more important. So, while making decisions, for example, chemicals, if you’re utilizing and making it circular, which is a requirement of the industry today, you are helping the industry to meet the demand as well as decarbonize. The same is with the aviation sector, the hard to decarbonize sector. Here also we need to make a choice of what is more important for the industry.
Question: How can the Middle East region become a leading hub in CCUS?
If I want to answer this question in one line, I would say Middle East can be a trailblazer when it comes to CCUS. When you play on your advantage, you are going to win. The same applies to CCUS. When you play on your advantage according to your industries, you can win and stay ahead in the game. When I am looking at the specific context to Middle East, with the help of the leadership, it is a well-established fact that we are seeing a rising wave of renewables, low carbon, and hydrogen production in the region. So, it is the time that regions start looking at transition feed stocks, transition feed stock waste carbon, transition feed stock of CO2, and bringing that green hydrogen or low carbon intensity hydrogen. Until the time we don’t have green hydrogen at the price of $1 or $2 we can bring renewable power.
Everybody’s talking about renewable power, but we need to be cognizant of the fact that renewable powers have significant land footprints. These technologies are interdependent on each other, so we need to understand that interdependency of technologies and bring them together. The Middle East can be a game changer setting the example to the world.
Question: How can we accelerate the deployment of this critical industry?
I would say innovation and embracing that innovation to scale up technologies and taking it up. This can be a game changer for the industry. We need to be pragmatic in our approach, whether it is CCU or CCS, both are costly investments. We need to see which one gives us more value and has socioeconomic impacts. Lastly, one size may not fit all, so we need to look at each region or each country’s own strengths. We should probably start drawing the blueprint of the CCUS in our own country.
Good morning. My name is Nabil Al-Bulushi and I am leading the CCUS team in PDO.
Let me start first with the country’s vision. So, Oman has committed to reach Net Zero vision by 2050 and the plan and the roadmap to achieve this Net Zero were outlined in detail at COP 27 last year. The plan basically includes six technologies – energy efficiency, electrification and renewables, battery technology and storage, hydrogen, negative emissions and CCUS. CCUS alone can contribute up to 26% of the total CO2 reduction in Oman.
PDO’s decarbonization strategy is aligned with the country ‘s vision to reach Net Zero in 2050. We developed a CCUS team in PDO who will be looking into the full value chain of CCUS.
Question: What are your views on the state of development of the CCUS industry? What is the level of maturity that you see in leading players, be it countries or companies, the differences in usage, and priority use cases? What are differences between CCUS and CCS?
PDO recently refreshed its strategy, and in the heart of that strategy, we define the new purpose for PDO which is basically building a sustainable low carbon future. The strategy to deliver this purpose has five key pillars including, carbon competitiveness and sustainable hydrocarbon growth and within that PDO’s decarbonization strategy is aligned.
As I mentioned, the vision of the country is Net Zero emissions by 2050. PDO has a full decarbonization roadmap and an abatement strategy to achieve this objective. There are several levers that we have in PDO which include energy efficiency, and flare reduction. PDO will have a zero routine flare reduction by 2030. We are also looking into the methane elimination and the range of renewable projects with a target of 50% in 2030. Deployment of these renewables is a key lever for decarbonization and CO2 reduction, given that 60% of CO2 current emissions in PDO is coming from the power generation.
However, all of these levers will reduce the emissions to a limit beyond which CCUS will be required. So, we at PDO, identified that CCUS is an important element for decarbonization.
Under the decarbonization strategy for CCUS, we will be leveraging our existing assets and the skills with an immediate focus area on CCUS for EUR and EGR. We are already studying a lot of applications around that spectrum. We are also looking at other types of utilizations of CO2 in PDO such as gas substitution or chemicals such as soda ash. There are also other opportunities where we will be supporting a strategic project in Oman related to carbon storage. PDO has already announced a memorandum recently in that domain. We have great strength in the area of CCUS and the reason behind that is the tremendous amount of data we have which we can use quickly to de-risk the storage type we have.
Question: Do you see any particular country or company moving in the right direction to develop this?
I think for CCUS to work at a larger scale we need several levers and some of them have already been mentioned. We talk about the technology breakthrough and currently the capture cost is extremely expensive including facility upgrade. So, this element is making the project highly capital intensive. Considerations related to the carbon market, carbon credit and the regulatory framework are extremely important elements on that domain. The availability of the carbon credit and the carbon market is an essential engine for us to provide proper financing. Understanding the investment from framework related to the CCUS projects and its uncertainty in this area will cause delays in taking FID of a lot of projects related to CCUS, hence delaying the global vision of reducing CO2.
Now the regulatory framework which includes storage certifications, classification of the storage, utilization project with the credit aspect is extremely important for the CCUS project. In Oman we are currently working with the Ministry of Energy on how to advance the regulation policy.
The last enabler would be collaborations. CCUS is quite complex and a multi-disciplinary field. We need collaboration from different parties and stakeholders like the government, industry players, policy makers, and also R&D. A serious commitment from all the stakeholders in the CCUS business is required. This serious commitment should be reflected in policy framework, fund allocation and long-term planning to accelerate all those CCUS projects.
Question: How can the Middle East region become a leading hub in CCUS?
Looking at the economies of scales and how we can lead in the Middle East, we really need those levers that I mentioned before. There are two ways to go about it – either waiting for those levers to come to us like the regulatory policy, or to quickly start the deployment of demonstration projects. Maybe we should start with the projects, which could be PE positive as we talk about EUR and EGR. That kind of infrastructure and the foundations will really enable the whole storage business in the Middle East. So, a combination of all these levers should help us out to get to those economies of scale from the Middle East perspective.
Question: How can we accelerate the deployment of this critical industry?
The word collaboration has already been said a lot as working in silos is not really going to help us out. If you take a step back and look at the CO2 projects around the world, you will notice that it has already started in America in the 1960s-70s, so there is no magic about it. The idea is to really fast track all these projects, so we need to bring in the huge experience that has been out there to the Middle East to enhance and accelerate all the CCUS projects.
My vision will be to start with the projects which are PV positive and we can learn quickly through them. We can build infrastructure and foundations and we can see how to monitor the market in terms of the whole carbon credit and provide incentives to help out for storage.
Good morning, everyone. My name is Gagan Porrwal. Thank you for joining us this morning. I work for the Gas Power Division of GE Renova, where I get the opportunity to help customers execute the decarbonization pathways for pre-conversion and post-conversion solution set, which is basically low-carbon fuels to carbon capture of which we’ll talk about today.
In my role, I also get an opportunity to orchestrate a value chain of partners that help make CCUS real for this sector. When it comes to power generation, we at GE supply one third of the world’s electricity. The reason it becomes even more important for us when we talk about decarbonization is that, if you take power generation sector as a whole, I think it’s today, somewhere between 37 – 40% of the total emission that are done globally. With our customers on this asset base, we have a unique opportunity to make that dent in the emission reductions by offering solutions that can be integrated with our gas turbines as well as using our portfolio of offerings within the Renova solution set, which includes everything from wind, nuclear, hydro, and gas power systems.
Today, globally the world generates 27 Terra WATT hours of electricity, and yet close to 800 million people, I’m going to repeat that number, close to 800 million people do not have access to electricity. So, we have a responsibility to make sure that while we bring affordable, reliable, and dependable capacity to these people, we are also able to position our customers to execute a timely transition of energy with a clean pathway to execute upon.
Question: What are your views on the state of development of the CCUS industry? What is the level of maturity that you see in leading players, be it countries or companies, the differences in usage, and priority use cases? What are differences between CCUS and CCS?
I don’t think it’s lost on anyone in this room that irrespective of what report you pick up, CCS plays a fundamental and a very important role to achieve the decarbonization targets of how far and deep we reach by 2015 and 2030. In terms of maturity, the sector has existed for decades, but has had many false stops. I think right now there is a race against time, and people have acknowledged that there is a step beyond those false starts where CCS plays a fundamental role.
We are observing a growing amount of conversation in policies, a pull from the market to be able to explore and deploy pilots to make these solutions as real as possible because not everyone has the taste of this technology yet. The rapid growth that we have seen in last 12 -18 months is good. Now, that being said, there is a huge amount of work that need to be done to make sure that the right policy support as well as incentives are available. This is because at the end of the day the cost or the bill of this is not small to play with.
So how do we make sure that this becomes a long-term investible and bankable project for people to participate in? That remains a question, but no longer is this question hidden somewhere in the backside of the room. It is an active conversation on the policy table today, and we are seeing some good examples coming out whether you talk about the clustering approach that the UK is taking, the conversations in Europe or the broader part of the IRA conversation in the US; it’s going to get there. It needs speed and intention to continue.
Question: Do you see any particular country or company moving in the right direction to develop this?
I think the question should be, which countries and companies are accelerating at this speed, because getting it right is the least of anyone’s problem, because technology is a proven set of technologies. Yes, there is work being done between end-of-life solutions to what the new looks like. But I think if you look at the countries which have really taken a stand in an aggressive way to commit to a target, we need to see what they have enabled as an incentive or a penalty for people to move in that direction.
You can almost walk a table from top to bottom to say that this is the order of priorities where the momentum is surfacing. Now that table makes sense if that order of priority ties with the CO2 concentrations that they have or what they emit as a country. You will see that there is a relative momentum in some of the countries. There is still a lot to be done and you can almost draw a line somewhere in the middle of the hemisphere with Europe on one side and Asia this side. So, I think more work to be done on this side. We here in Middle East sit at a very unique place to probably take a full position there.
Question: What type of collaboration is required between government or companies to ensure development of CCUS?
When we talk about collaboration, we need to get grounded in the reality of the challenges and the risks of this. We can almost group up those challenges in four different categories. The cost remains high; hence economics is a challenge. I think we alluded to a little bit in the morning around getting the permitting or the acceptance for the solution set to be done. Number three is just the social acceptance of CCUS, as in who wants CO2 in their background remains a key challenge as well. There is a fundamental chicken and egg problem of infrastructure as to who lays steel on the ground first, whether it is the pipes or the plant itself, because the learning curve of technology only comes down when there is a scale.
So, if those are your four challenge sets you overlay the full four risks categories if you can, for a project. You have a technology risk, you have the execution risk of the project, you have the bankability or the financial risks and the overall commercial viability of the project.
When you combine it, you can almost draw permutations and combinations to actually identify the collaborators that you need. One theme that will come out fundamentally is the public-private partnership that needs to be at the heart of most of these equations to get solved for. Then comes the challenge of private players looking eye to eye to each other, saying that we are willing to share the risks and understand that we are walking into this project with our eyes wide open. Hence there is a fundamental channel of collaboration that needs to be established. CCUS as a technology set is not something that one entity will do good. This takes a village to solve and that village needs to come together now with a solution.
Question: How can we accelerate the deployment of this critical industry?
For CCS, collaboration will make it happen but policies are going to make it commercialized. Let us understand the unique advantage that Middle East has. We have decades of experience handling hydrocarbons, which means we have the workforce that knows how to make these projects viable. We are talking about hundreds of jobs that are needed in this sector, and having that workforce available here in the region puts us at a place where you have the right talent if an acceleration is required.
As soon as you start executing a large carbon capture project, I think all the panelists would’ve seen it requires human capital available to be able to execute that. My personal takeaway from this conversation is that we have all the important elements here for a CCUS adoption in this region.
Good morning, everyone.
My name is Juman Al Saqlawi. I am the head of decarbonization at OQ. We are an integrated energy company based in the Sultanate of Oman. We operate across the energy supply chain from upstream oil and gas to downstream refineries and petrochemicals. We also operate the national gas pipeline, which is 4,000 kilometers long. We really see opportunities for us across the CCUS value chain. From the capture side, we see the opportunity of decarbonizing our existing assets and also growing into producing low carbon products. From the transport side, given that we are operating the gas pipeline and we have the experience in that regard, we see an opportunity in transporting CO2 as a gas as well. Finally, from the storage and utilization side we believe that Oman as a country is blessed with depleted oil and gas reservoirs and rocks known as peridotite, which can be used as storage sites that can be utilized to decarbonizing our assets. Thank you.
Question: In your view, what is required to enable the deployment of this industry? Do we need government support or a greater risk-taking ability of the companies or more investments in such projects?
I will probably talk about it from Oman’s perspective. There is a lot of effort going on across the country with regards to CCUS but it is quite fragmented and we at OQ believe that this needs to be brought together into a wider CCUS master plan. This makes it a bit more efficient for the country in terms of identifying what the sources are, what the sinks are, and what’s the optimal pathway in transporting that CO2 from source to sink. To add to that, as mentioned today the need to have the legal and regulatory framework to really drive this. So that is the main challenge that we see in Oman at the moment.
Question: What type of collaboration is required between government or companies to ensure development of CCUS?
I think there are multiple layers to this. If you look at it on a national level there are multiple players that benefit from CCUS and not just one player can do it alone. They all need to work together to drive this. So, you have got CO2 sources that require their emissions to be taken, transported and stored or utilized. Hence you have players on multiple levels like from a national level or from a regional level where you can benefit from the sinks or infrastructure that these different countries across your border have that you can utilize. At the international level there are a lot of countries, who have advanced experience and we can all benefit together by learning from each other, whether it’s from the perspective of technology, policy, or strategy.
Question: How can we accelerate the deployment of this critical industry?
I would say collaboration. Not one entity can drive this. This requires multiple players and multiple entities to drive it, so we all need to work together for CCUS.