Successful development of carbon capture and storage (CCS) is going to be vital to achieve Paris Agreement targets, according to Daniela Abate, new energy solutions platform leader for Baker Hughes.

Achieving Paris Agreement targets will require increasing the capacity of clean energy by a factor of about 40 over the next two decades, Abate told conference delegates at the Baker Hughes annual meeting.

“CCS is vital to the development of the hydrogen economy because it will enable the deployment of blue hydrogen production,” she said. “It is also an opportunity as it is a trillion-dollar industry waiting to be born.”

However, Abate also acknowledged that, without CCS, the oil and gas industry does not have a viable technology roadmap to remain relevant in a low-carbon energy future.

Urgent requirement

Hege Rogno, head of R&T low-carbon O&G technologies at Norway’s Equinor, stressed that time was of the essence if CCS was to be a success.

“Decarbonisation must take place as quickly and as efficiently as possible,” she told conference delegates. Rogno pointed to the Longship project, which she claims demonstrates a new value chain that can be a future option for storing large quantities of CO₂.

“CCS is vital to the development of the hydrogen economy” Abate, Baker Hughes

Equinor has completed a final investment round for the Longship project, which will capture CO₂ on the east coast of Norway and transport it by ship to the west coast, where it will be temporarily held before being sent through a pipeline out to the field and stored in the subsurface.

Rogno said the project highlighted a business opportunity in third-party storage of CO₂. “There are a large number of plants and industries around Europe where CO₂ is emitted, and that makes them possible customers for CO₂ storage,” she said.

“We are talking to a number of third parties about the ways in which CO₂ can be stored. We are also building the market, so it takes an innovative private-public collaboration to make this happen, and we are very pleased that it is actually taking place.”

As a result of the technology developed on the Longship project, Equinor is working on projects around Europe, such as storing CO₂ from the Humber region in the UK to exploring the North Sea basin to look for upscaling possibilities, open saline aquifers and depleted fields.

Rogno said Equinor may will produce ammonia as a commodity in the future. “CS is a key technology to produce clean hydrogen from natural gas and a potential new value chain for Europe and globally,” she said. “It is the realistic alternative to reduce emissions from the offshore oil and gas industry. But if it is to be effective, we have to implement it quickly.”

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Author: Che Golden