Talk:Carbon capture and storage

More images and a different image for the lead?

Does anyone have time to add more images to this article? For the lead, I think an image of a technical installation for CCS would be better than an image with a bar chart with a very long caption that takes a while to read and understand. I've done a quick search on Wikimedia Commons but nothing jumped at me, except for two protest images which I have now added. EMsmile (talk) 09:28, 10 May 2023 (UTC)

Thanks for finding these. I've been looking for more and the best I've found so far is a diagram, which I added. I would love to add photographs of CCS facilities and pipelines, but most of the photographs on Commons that are labelled as showing CCS infrastructure actually do not show anything CCS-related as far as I can tell. The main image for the category is of a power plant where CCS was never implemented, which in a weird way is actually emblematic of the technology's history. Clayoquot (talk | contribs) 03:13, 13 August 2024 (UTC)

Thanks, that's interesting. Wondering why the image labeling is often wrong, I guess people are confused over what CCS entails. EMsmile (talk) 16:11, 13 August 2024 (UTC)

I wonder too. I removed the miscategorized main image from the category home page. FYI @Bluerasberry: in case I've misunderstood something. Clayoquot (talk | contribs) 16:51, 13 August 2024 (UTC)

@Clayoquot and EMsmile: I agree with the assessment you both made. The situation is that some category images come from Wikidata, and there is incorrect labeling of images in Wikidata which propagate elsewhere. Wikidata is powerful because it allows centralized multilingual management of Wikimedia content, but dangerous for the same reason as in this case when a random power plant is the image for an environmental protection practice. Bluerasberry (talk) 10:34, 14 August 2024 (UTC)

Bias

This article is not balanced as it stands now. First of all, it is extremely technical and complicated where it doesnt need to be. Secondly, it almost completely lacks a thorough discussion and evaluation in the environmental and societal realm. To me it looks as if it was written by industry. I will flag it for WP:NPOV. Wuerzele (talk) 19:04, 11 September 2023 (UTC)

I think what this article fundamentally lacks is an acknowledgement that carbon capture, in all its forms, is a nascent technology; one that hasn't been proven at-scale anywhere in the world (even after Chevron have sunk billions of dollars into its Western Australian CCS project,) and that the technology has a very healthy community of critics — I would argue rightly, and I'm not even anti-gas or anti-trying-to-make-things-better. But on the whole, I agree that this article has a certain admiration in its underlying tone that probably the technology doesn't yet deserve — given nobody can actually make it work. For reference, CO2 emissions at all time highs. Jondvdsn1 (talk) 12:12, 13 December 2023 (UTC)

Hi, I think I agree with you. Are you able to add a section on "drawbacks" or alike? I happened to see a new section on "disadvantages" that was added recently to carbon sequestration. I am not sure if it's written well or if it fits there. But I was reminded of it when I saw your note here. EMsmile (talk) 20:14, 15 December 2023 (UTC)

There is no and there has been no section "disadvantages" on carbon sequestration, EMsmile, the diff you provided is descriptive of the process, nil more. Even the section env. NGOs is totally atrophic and outdated.--Wuerzele (talk) 23:15, 26 June 2024 (UTC)

You wrote: "given nobody can actually make it work", Jondvdsn1. Well.... sadly, the Iowa Utilities Board decided yesterday to permit an Iowa mogul named Bruce Rastetter and his company to start construction of a $5.5 billion pipeline for carbon dioxide from ethanol plants in five states to North Dakota fracking sites for underground sequestration in 2024. They are doing it.--Wuerzele (talk) 23:07, 26 June 2024 (UTC)

@Wuerzele I accept bias but just because a company wins a work permit doesn't mean a nascent technology will work, despite a sensational price tag. It's yet to be proven at scale. Jondvdsn1 (talk) 08:38, 2 July 2024 (UTC)

I agree with you and Jondvdsn1 regarding both the bias and the excessive level of technical complexity. Clearly, efforts have been made to incorporate negative viewpoints into the article, but more needs to be done to have the reasons behind those viewpoints be more clear. Part of the problem is that most of the criticism is bunched towards the end of the article instead of being woven throughout, which goes against the recommendation in the wp:NPOV policy: “Try to achieve a more neutral text by folding debates into the narrative, rather than isolating them into sections that ignore or fight against each other.” I'm planning to put some elbow grease into the article in the next few weeks to address the issues you've identified. Thanks for bringing this up. Clayoquot (talk | contribs) 16:47, 27 June 2024 (UTC)

To address the issue identified above about excessive technical detail, I plan to move some content to a new article titled Carbon capture technology. Will start that fairly soon. Clayoquot (talk | contribs) 23:43, 18 July 2024 (UTC)

Is that in addition to the planned article on carbon capture, utilization and storage? Like an overarching one? Or instead of. EMsmile (talk) 06:59, 19 July 2024 (UTC)

Oh, sorry I wasn't clear. I'm planning to have Carbon capture technology be narrowly focused on the separation of carbon dioxide from other components of flue gases. I'm drafting it in on this page: https://en.wiki.x.io/wiki/User:Clayoquot/Carbon_capture_technology. Clayoquot (talk | contribs) 15:38, 19 July 2024 (UTC)

I've since noticed that there is already an article on Carbon dioxide scrubber so I don't have to create a new article. I'll merge what I can into the existing article. Clayoquot (talk | contribs) 23:31, 19 July 2024 (UTC)

Additional proposed edits

As part of the “Improving communication of climate change knowledge through Wikipedia” project, I have been asked to spend a few hours editing this article. My initial thoughts are to focus on the following:

• Make sure the text of lead reflects the full contents of the article.
• Add a new subsection under “Society and Culture” that would include:
  • Regulatory efforts that support CCS, such as EPA’s 2023 proposed rule making on power plants, which has determined that CCS is an appropriate control technology for CO2 emissions.
  • Tax incentives that support CCS, such as the Biden administration’s CCS incentives as part of the Inflation Reduction Act.

Happy to look at any other areas folks would like to suggest improvements for. Dtetta (talk) 05:14, 15 September 2023 (UTC)

One thing the article doesn't address is the use of CCS to abate 'process' emissions from industrial processes. These are emissions that are inherent in the process and unrelated to the combustion of fossil fuels as an energy source. The prime example of this is the release of CO2 from limestone during clinker production (for cement). The only way to abate these emissions is to use CCS or use different cementitious materials to make cement. Both solutions will likely be required on a global scale (there are no silver bullet technologies or policies). If there are no objections I'll add a couple of lines on this under the Role in climate change mitigation subheading. Adding this would provide a more realistic use of CCS (i.e., where it's essential) rather than the article pointing towards the extremely widespread use of CCS where other abatement pathways would be more efficient from and energy and cost perspective (e.g., CCS on a coal plant rather than switching to renewables and battery storage). PutTheKettleOn (talk) 12:05, 30 July 2024 (UTC) ___

Hello fellow Wikipedians,

In the next couple weeks, I will be revising and editing this article for an energy and sustainability course project. I would appreciate any feedback on my proposed edits, which I will be working on in my user sandbox. So far, my planned changes to the article include:

• Expanding on the "carbon emissions status quo" section to include more of CCS's social implications related to North American indigenous and minority communities.

• Describing how induced seismicity in the "Monitoring: seismicity" subsection related to the lack of detailed information on local/regional seismicity's impact to the storage integrity of CCS sites over time.

It'd be great if you all could help to review whether the tone of the additions is in line with the Wikipedia's professional, neutral tone requirements. Any feedback on the actual content is of course welcomed too!

Thanks! Quasimodo1420 (talk) 08:46, 18 February 2024 (UTC)Quasimodo1420

@Quasimodo1420: Welcome to Wikipedia! Please make edits in very small chunks (preferably one sentence at a time), and accompany with very specific edit comments. Be sure to cite a reliable source that specifically supports each edit, and that you don't stray from the source with your own editorializations or inferences. —RCraig09 (talk) 15:45, 18 February 2024 (UTC)

Wiki Education assignment: Geographies of Energy and Sustainability

This article was the subject of a Wiki Education Foundation-supported course assignment, between 4 January 2024 and 15 March 2024. Further details are available on the course page. Student editor(s): Quasimodo1420 (article contribs). Peer reviewers: BuLingReactor.

— Assignment last updated by Juniper37 (talk) 18:55, 29 February 2024 (UTC)

Quasimodo1420 and BuLingReactor, you apparently overread, that this article is biased!- see section above.--Wuerzele (talk) 23:18, 26 June 2024 (UTC)

Merge and rename proposal

The following discussion is closed. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made in a new section. A summary of the conclusions reached follows.

The result of the discussion was merged but not renamed (involved non-admin closure). Clayoquot (talk | contribs) 23:08, 10 August 2024 (UTC)

---

I would like to merge Carbon capture and utilization into this article and rename the merged article Carbon capture, utilization and storage. It makes sense to cover both CCS and CCU in a single article, for the following reasons:

• "Carbon capture and utilization", "carbon capture and storage", and "carbon capture, utilization and storage" are all the same thing most of the time: carbon capture followed by enhanced oil recovery. EOR is around 73% of CO2 "storage" and 99% of CO2 "utilization".
• The CCU article needs both expansion and a complete rewrite. It says almost nothing about EOR, and lots about early-stage R&D that might never be commercialized. CCU is controversial but it says almost nothing about controversy. The CCS article also has problems, and I'd like to focus on fixing problems in one article instead of in two.

As for the length of a combined CCUS article, I believe it would be manageable. As part of the merge process, I plan to write a new section with ~3 paragraphs on non-EOR utilization methods, based on recent secondary sources. I will make separate proposals to spin off some of the technical detail in the current CCS article into Carbon capture technology and Geological sequestration of carbon dioxide articles, which would shorten things considerably. Clayoquot (talk | contribs) 00:11, 3 July 2024 (UTC)

• Support. Great if you can make the time to work on this. I just wonder if we could brainstorm about the ideal title of the merged article. An article title with a comma seems sub-optimal to me. Is there an overarching term? Or perhaps just carbon capture (this is currently a disambiguation page) or carbon capture systems? But I would also not stand in the way if Carbon capture, utilization and storage is the preferred solution by all. EMsmile (talk) 07:31, 3 July 2024 (UTC)

  Thanks. I understand that a comma in an article title is a bit funny-looking, however omitting the comma is grammatically wrong so it seems to be more common to leave the comma in.[1][2][3][4]. "Carbon capture" and "carbon capture systems" are not wp:common names for the topic and also may give the impression that the article will focus exclusively on capture technology, omitting the story of what is done with the captured carbon.

  As for an overarching term, "carbon capture, utilization and storage" would be that. It's a thing, so to speak, so it's my first choice. My second choice would be "carbon capture and storage", which is a more commonly-used term, but would be a little out of sync with article content that includes the 1% of CCUS that doesn't store carbon. Clayoquot (talk | contribs) 16:38, 4 July 2024 (UTC)

• Support yes I think readers would expect that Chidgk1 (talk) 18:52, 24 July 2024 (UTC)

  Thanks! I'm planning to do the merge later this week. Clayoquot (talk | contribs) 20:05, 24 July 2024 (UTC)

I have completed the merge. I copied the old CCU page to User:Clayoquot/CCU. As for renaming the article, I struggled with this as the sources I found that define CCUS lack precision and consistency. For CCS we have a precise and widely-accepted IPCC definition and having that precision helps the article to stay on track. So I'm planning to leave the title as CCS. Cheers, Clayoquot (talk | contribs) 22:15, 26 July 2024 (UTC)

The discussion above is closed. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page. No further edits should be made to this discussion.

Bias towards favorability of the technology

I agree with the flag placed and assume the bias was about bias towards treating this as a credible, significant climate solution despite significant evidence casting a doubt on these strategies. I have added discussion of one article in the lead and politics sections and wanted to start this thread to be able to link to from the flag for any discussion to make this a more neutral article. Superb Owl (talk) 03:32, 30 July 2024 (UTC)

Updating the "Role in climate change mitigation" section

I'm planning to do some major updates to the following section, so I'm copying the current version here:

Clayoquot (talk | contribs) 21:52, 12 August 2024 (UTC)

Here's my rewrite. The new version is based on newer secondary sources, is in plainer language, and has more qualitative detail. Clayoquot (talk | contribs) 22:12, 12 August 2024 (UTC)

Role in climate change mitigation

Main articles: Climate change scenario and Shared Socioeconomic Pathways

One rationale for CCS is to allow the continued use of fossil fuels while reducing the emission of CO2 into the atmosphere, thereby mitigating global climate change.

In the 21st century CCS is employed to contribute to climate change mitigation. For example, CCS retrofits for existing power plants is one way to limit emissions from the electricity sector for meeting Paris Agreement goals. However, analyses of modeling studies indicate that over-reliance on CCS presents risks, and that global rates of CCS deployment remain far below those depicted in mitigation scenarios of the IPCC Sixth Assessment Report. Total annual CCS capacity was only 45 MtCO₂ as of 2021. The implementation of default technology assumptions would cost 29-297% more over the century than efforts without CCS for a 430-480 ppm CO₂/yr scenario.

As of 2018, for a below 2.0 °C target, Shared socioeconomic pathways (SSPs) had been developed adding a socio-economic dimension to the integrative work started by RCPs models. All SSPs scenarios show a shift away from unabated fossil fuels, that is processes without CCS. It was proposed that bioenergy with carbon capture and storage (BECCS) was necessary to achieve a 1.5 °C, and that with the help of BECCS, between 150 and 12,000 GtCO₂ still had to be removed from the atmosphere.

A 2019 study found CCS plants to be less effective than renewable electricity. The electrical energy returned on energy invested (EROEI) ratios of both production methods were estimated, accounting for their operational and infrastructural energy costs. Renewable electricity production included solar and wind with sufficient energy storage, plus dispatchable electricity production. Thus, rapid expansion of scalable renewable electricity and storage would be preferable over fossil-fuel with CCS.

Iron and steel is expected to dominate industrial CCS in Europe, although there are alternative ways of decarbonizing steel.

References

Content cut from the article

I've removed the following passage:

Norway's Sleipner gas field is the oldest industrial scale retention project. An environmental assessment conducted after ten years of operation concluded that geosequestration was the most definite form of permanent geological storage method:

Available geological information shows absence of major tectonic events after the deposition of the Utsira formation [saline reservoir]. This implies that the geological environment is tectonically stable and a site suitable for CO₂ storage. The solubility trapping [is] the most permanent and secure form of geological storage.

It has the following issues:

• "geosequestration was the most definite form of permanent geological storage method" does not make sense to me. Geosequestration is just another name for geological storage.[5]
• Excessive detail on a single aspect (techtonic stability) of a single project. Tectonic stability is only one factor in whether a site is suitable for CO2 storage.
• "Solubility trapping [is] the most permanent and secure form of geological storage" is not correct. Mineral trapping is more permanent and secure.

Clayoquot (talk | contribs) 01:56, 19 August 2024 (UTC)

I removed the following from the section on storage leakage:

There is also a proposed approach of utilizing clay-rich sandstone formations.

After skimming through the source, which is extremely technical, and also skimming through this source, the point seems to be that sandstone with high clay content has a lower risk of long-term leakage than sandstone with lower clay content. This would be too much detail for an overview of CCS. Clayoquot (talk | contribs) 20:53, 20 August 2024 (UTC)

I removed the following as it doesn't add much. The link does not work:

In March 2009, the national Norwegian oil company StatoilHydro (later renamed Equinor) issued a study documenting the slow spread of CO₂ in the Sleipner field formation after more than 10 years operation.

Clayoquot (talk | contribs) 02:02, 22 August 2024 (UTC)

I removed the following as it's unsourced and the relevance is not clear:

Plants equipped with flue-gas desulfurization (FGD) systems for sulfur dioxide control require proportionally greater amounts of limestone, and systems equipped with selective catalytic reduction systems for nitrogen oxides produced during combustion require proportionally greater amounts of ammonia.

Clayoquot (talk | contribs) 16:56, 28 August 2024 (UTC)

I removed: "Power plant processes based on oxyfuel combustion are sometimes referred to as "zero emission" cycles, because the CO2 stored is not a fraction removed from the flue gas stream (as in the cases of pre- and post-combustion capture) but the flue gas stream itself. A fraction of the CO2 inevitably ends up in the condensed water. To warrant the label "zero emission" the water would thus have to be treated or disposed of appropriately." This is unsourced, doesn't add much information, and is POV. The process could be zero-emission if you look only at direct emissions, but producing the oxygen in the first place requires energy, thus the overall lifecycle is probably not zero-emission. Clayoquot (talk | contribs) 17:48, 28 August 2024 (UTC)

I removed and replaced:

A carbon price of at least 100 euros per tonne CO₂ is estimated to be needed to make industrial CCS viable, together with carbon tariffs. But, as of mid-2022, the EU Allowance had never reached that price, and the Carbon Border Adjustment Mechanism had not yet been implemented.

There are many ways that governments financially support CCS. Carbon taxes are one mechanism, but historically a relatively minor one. Usually government support has been done by direct grants and tax credits. "At least 100 euros per tonne" is actually an understatement - the source says depending on the process, 500 to 1000 euros per tonne could be needed. I'm also leaning towards a relatively strict interpretation of wp:Wikipedia is not a crystal ball for this article because most projections for CCS have historically not borne out. Clayoquot (talk | contribs) 21:49, 2 September 2024 (UTC)

References

Pruning citations on long-term leakage

We currently have citations to 8 different sources about long-term leakage risks. They say similar things and some of them are quite old. wp:Overciting makes articles harder to maintain so I'm going to do some source curation along with wording adjustments. I'm pasting the content here for future reference:

Long-term predictions about submarine or underground storage security are difficult. There is still the risk that some CO₂ might leak into the atmosphere. A 2018 evaluation estimates the risk of substantial leakage to be fairly low.

The IPCC estimates that at appropriately-selected and well-managed storage sites, it is likely that over 99% of CO2 will remain in place for more than 1000 years, with "likely" meaning a probabiliity of 66% to 90%. However, this finding is contested given the lack of experience. If very large amounts of CO2 are sequestered, even a 1% leakage rate over 1000 years could cause significant impact on the climate for future generations. The IPCC recommends that limits be set to the amount of leakage that can take place.

Clayoquot (talk | contribs) 23:55, 21 August 2024 (UTC) Clayoquot (talk | contribs) 23:55, 21 August 2024 (UTC)

References

Splitting off the "Monitoring" section

A heads-up that I'm planning to WP:Split off the "Monitoring" section into a new article titled Monitoring of geological carbon dioxide storage. I don't expect this to be controversial so I will be bold and do it. Clayoquot (talk | contribs) 03:06, 22 August 2024 (UTC)

Cost

I've changed the claim that "Full CCS networks (carbon capture facility, pipelines and auxiliary plants, ports, and injection sites) could require upfront capital investments of up to several billion dollars" to make it clear that this is the cost per project, not the cost for a network involving multiple projects. Also, as ship-based CO2 transport has so far been done only at small scales, I don't know what "ports" refers to in this context.

Here is the quote from the source to help clarify what it means by "project": International experience demonstrates that strong political commitment and leadership is essential for the successful deployment of large-scale carbon capture and storage (CCS) projects. These projects can take up to a decade to develop where suitable geological storage sites need to be identified and assessed. They are also capital- intensive, involving investments of up to several billion dollars, while being considerably more complex than other low emission technology solutions. As a result, the development phase of a first-of-a-kind CCS project has the potential to outlast governments and will often traverse multiple budget cycles. These factors have tested political commitment over the past decade, with significant fluctuations in the availability of policy and financial support for CCS projects. The lack of consistent and adequate support for CCS has contributed to the relatively slow pace of project deployment to date. The global portfolio of large-scale projects has expanded from 8 in 2010 to 15 today, with 22 expected to be operating by 2020 [1]. Clayoquot (talk | contribs) 22:22, 9 September 2024 (UTC)