Response Doctoral Programme: European Policy for CCS networks

Linda Frattini contributed to a policy report that evaluates possible governance frameworks for establishing a European CCS network. In principle, CCS projects are eligible for support through different European and national funding tools, but more ambitious support schemes for CCS projects through national governments seem to be necessary.

From the report:

CCS technologies are poised to help attain the EU’s 2050 net-zero target, mainly by effecting emission reduction in energy-intensive industries and underpinning carbon removal solutions. For this to happen, there is a need for a carefully planned and well-coordinated scale-up of emerging CO2 transport and storage networks, and for national governments to come forward with. This is particularly important for the Just Transition of many industrial regions and clusters in Central and Eastern Europe, where CCS can complement the deployment of renewables, especially in places where clean electricity is not available at the scale and within the timeframe required by the EU’s 2030 and 2050 emissions reduction targets.

Background:

Carbon capture and storage (CCS) is the process of capturing CO2 either through post-combustion capture [1]  [FL1] or via direct air capture[FL2]  [2], transporting it and storing it for centuries or millennia in deep geological formations or sequestering in mineral carbonates from CO2.

For how society is currently structured and, as a result of intense consumer consumption, there are carbon-intensive sectors, such as manufacturing industries or waste-to-energy plants, which are very hard to decarbonise and where concentrated CO2 emissions from the combustion of fossil fuels seem unavoidable. They have significant process emissions (i.e. emissions resulting from the chemical reactions involved in the manufacturing process), which cannot be avoided by switching fuel sources. The most relevant manufacturing sectors for post-combustion capture are iron and steel production, chemicals production (particularly ammonia, used to make fertilisers), refined petroleum products and cement and lime production. As point-source emitters, these industries may require carbon capture to reach net-zero emissions.


Read the full report

Citation: Eivind Berstad, Todd Allyn Flach, Linda Frattini, Ana Šerdoner, Lina Strandvåg, Nagell Michał Wendołowski (2021). Current state of CCS technologies and the EU policy framework. With contributions of Justus Andreas, Reinout Debergh, Mark Preston Aragonès. CCS4CEE.eu.

 [1] Explanation of post-combustion capture (PCC)

[2] Example of industry doing direct air capture (DAC): Video from Climeworks

Featured image is provided by Global CCS Institute

Linda Frattini is currently fellow in the RESPONSE Doctoral Programme (DP) «RESPONSE – to society and policy needs through plant, food and energy sciences» funded by the European Union’s Horizon 2020 research and innovation program under the Marie Skłodowska-Curie Grant Agreement No 847585.

Her research project on developing a source-to-sink value chain for Swiss industrial carbon dioxide via a holistic approach at ETH Zurich is together with Prof. Marco Mazzotti, Department of Mechanical and Process Engineering and in collaboration with Dr. Jan-Justus Andreas, Bellona Europa (Brussels, Belgium).

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