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Home > Energy Reports > Energy Futures > 2008 Energy Futures Workshop - Session 3B - CO₂ Capture & Storage

2008 Energy Futures Workshop - Session 3B - CO₂ Capture & Storage

2008 Energy Futures Workshop - Session 3B - CO₂ Capture & Storage [PDF 331 KB]

2008 Energy Future Workshop
Session 3B
CO₂ Capture & Storage
Ottawa, Ontario

Presented by
Tara Smolak
Assistant Project Manager
National Energy Board

22 January 2008

Speakers

Good morning, everyone. My name is Tara Smolak and was the assistant project manager on the Energy Futures Report.

The first thing that I would like to do is briefly introduce our speakers for the session this morning. We have:

• Brent Lakeman from the Alberta Research Council
• Bill Reynen from the Geological Survey of Canada, and
• Dr. Malcom Wilson of the Office of Energy & Environment at the University of Regina

The session this afternoon is scheduled for roughly an hour and a half. The intent of this session is to provide an overview of CCS in Canada and around the world.

I will start with a brief overview of how we examine CCS in the EF report and then each of our speakers will give a 20 minute presentation. These presentations will provide additional information and/or alternative views to the work that was undertaken in the Energy Futures report. We have allocated about 15 to 20 minutes at the end of the session for questions. As this is one of the last sessions of the day, I encourage you to hold your questions until after all the speakers have presented so that we can keep the presentations running on time.

I would like to take this opportunity to ask you to fill out the comment cards that were included with your registration materials. We take feedback that we receive very seriously. If there is a component of the report or the workshop today that you liked or did not like we would like to hear about it.

CO₂ Capture & Storage

CO₂ capture and storage can be broken into three different stages. In the first stage, CO₂ is captured from an industrial facility that produces significant amounts of CO₂. This is illustrated in the diagram as an electricity generator although there are other industrial processes that could be good candidates for CO₂ capture. The CO₂ that is captured is compressed into a more transportable form.

This leads us to the second stage of CO₂ captue and storage. CO₂ that is captured at the industrial site needs to be transported to the place where it will be stored. It can be transported by pipeline or by tanker.

The final stage of CO₂ capture and storage is the storage of the CO₂. CO₂ can be stored in a number of different mediums, including:

• Geological formations – active or depleted oil and gas reservoirs, deep saline aquifers, and salt caverns
• In the ocean – dissolve CO₂ into the ocean or inject it at such a depth that CO₂ is denser than water forming a 'lake' that would delay CO₂ escaping into the atmosphere
• In mineral carbonates – react CO₂ with metal oxides from waste streams to create carbonates
• Industrial processes – use CO₂ as a gas, liquid or feedstock in chemical processes to produce valuable carbon-containing products are also possible

Storage in geological formations shows the most promise.

NEB Assumptions

In the Triple E scenario, the NEB assumes that a backbone pipeline in Western Canada is built to connect large industrial CO₂ sources in the province with geological storage opportunities.

The Triple E scenario contains the right elements to create an environment where CO2 capture and storage on a large scale could be employed:

• There is government, industry and societal support for addressing GHG emissions (i.e., a sustainability mindset)
  • There is a price for CO₂ in this scenario that ranges between $15/tonne in 2015 to $45/tonne in 2025. It is assumed that this price of CO₂ is large enough to provide an economic incentive for industrial producers to participate in CO₂ capture and storage.
  • Revenue collected through the CO₂ price is recycled back into the economy to pay for GHG emission reduction programs. This includes research, demonstration and development funding for the CO₂ backbone pipeline built in this scenario
  • There is significant public support for the development of CO₂ capture and storage as it is seen as a technology that can effectively deal with fairly large volumes of CO₂

The CO₂ capture and storage system is located in Western Canada. This area was chosen because:

• There are a large number of industrial sources of high purity CO₂ in WCSB, including oil sands facilities, natural gas plants, and ammonia plants. As well, Alberta and Saskatchewan are dependent on fossil fueled electricity generation, which could be a good source of CO₂ in the future.
• The WCSB is a well understood geological formation as it has been significantly explored during oil and gas production.
• There are good economic opportunities that could be leveraged in this area as well. For example, there is infrastructure in place that could be utilized for CO₂ transportation and injection as well opportunities for enhanced oil recovery (improved oil recovery), which could be taken advantage of in the near term.
• Proposals for a backbone pipeline in Western Canada have been put forward and is likely the first place where this would occur in Canada

In the Triple E scenario, it is projected that by the end of the period almost 30 Mt per year of CO₂ is captured. In the first years of the forecast, all captured GHG emissions are used in enhanced oil recovery. GHG emissions use for EOR peaks in 2017 and then tapers off for the remainder of the scenario. Total GHG emissions used in EOR over the period is 230 Mt. In the latter part of the scenario, captured GHG emissions supply is larger than enhanced oil recovery demand and GHG emissions are assumed to be stored with out the economic benefit of EOR. The CO₂ price in the latter half of the projection supports this behaviour as industries will prefer to avoid the CO₂ price.

Opportunities & Challenges

There are a number of opportunities and challenges associated with CO₂ Capture and Storage. The speakers today will provide some insight into these issues as well as others.

 

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Date Modified:

2011-10-28