Energy Transition

Here's what we should do with the vast amounts of carbon we capture

Silja Yraola, an employee of Icelandic startup Carbfix, holds mineralised CO2 rock samples at its facility in Olfus, Iceland, November 21, 2023. As carbon capture grows globally, the question is quickly becoming what we should do with this new and growing resource.

As carbon capture grows globally, the question is quickly becoming what we should do with this new and growing resource. Image: REUTERS/Marko Djurica

David Wakerley
Co-founder and CTO, Dioxycle
This article is part of: World Economic Forum Annual Meeting
  • 230 million tons of CO₂ are currently captured and utilized annually.
  • As the energy transition picks up pace, more of the carbon we capture could be put to good use.
  • Cement, ethylene, jet fuel and others offer options — but which is viable?

As a means to cut down our carbon emissions, it is hard to find a more direct fix than carbon capture and utilization (CCU): the practice of capturing carbon emissions and turning them into valuable commodities.

CCU is already practiced for enhanced oil recovery and fertilizer synthesis, but to date only around 230 million tons of CO₂ are utilized annually. This is two hundred times less than the approximately 50 billion tons of CO₂ equivalents emitted globally each year.

In the pursuit of net zero by 2050, the International Energy Agency anticipates 1.2 billion tons of CO₂ will be captured by 2030 and 6 billion in 2050, at which point we will be capturing 16 million tons each day to be stored in vast underground deposits. As these plans fall into place, we must ask ourselves: could CCU technologies make good use of this carbon? And if so, which carbon-containing products should we focus on building from all of those emissions?

For example: we could turn CO2 into sodium carbonate for use in glass manufacture and baking, but our current daily demand only requires around 150,000 tons of CO₂. In essence, we shouldn’t commit too many resources to the production of CCU-derived sodium carbonate, no matter how big the Great British Bake Off becomes.

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Making use of our captured carbon

To establish which CCU-derived products could match the scale of our 2050 carbon-capture targets of 16 million tons of CO₂ per day, we must examine the carbon-containing commodities we currently consume at the million-ton-per-day scale and calculate their required carbon budget if they were derived from captured CO₂ . From there, we can assess the energy requirements and economics behind each process to make informed decisions on the best CCU-use cases.

Methane (for heat and electricity generation)

Current usage: ~8 million tons per day

If derived from CCU: Would require ~22 million tons of CO₂ per day

Viability as product of CCU: Low

Low-carbon-footprint methane could be derived from CCU technologies by reacting captured CO₂ with hydrogen derived from low-carbon electricity. However, from an energetics perspective, this is not a great solution; it is much more efficient to use that low-carbon electricity directly.

Gasoline (for ground transportation)

Current usage: ~3 million tons per day

If derived from CCU: Would require ~10 million tons of CO₂ per day

Viability as product of CCU: Low

CCU-derived gasoline was touted as a route to retrofit carbon neutrality onto the internal combustion engine, but the electric vehicle (EV) has long since left this idea in the dust. Internal combustion engines are only 20–30% energy efficient, while EVs can reach up to around 70% efficient when powered by renewable electricity. In other words, energy is much better used charging an EV than producing CCU-derived gasoline.

The long-term appeal of CCU gasoline is not to be completely ruled out, however. With the re-emergence of plug-in hybrid drivetrains, sustainable gasoline may play a role in giving us long-range vehicles with zero carbon footprint.

Cement

Current usage: ~11 million tons per day

If combined with CCU: Could capture up to ~30% of daily production (3.3 million tons per day)

Viability as product of CCU: High

Despite the high carbon footprint of its production, cement has a natural affinity for carbon capture. After its production, it is estimated that cement is able to reabsorb up to 30% of the CO₂ emitted in its production. The absorption of CO₂ forms calcium carbonate, which is permanently embedded in the resulting concrete, enhancing its strength. Unlike generating fuels and chemicals, this process doesn’t require additional energy and, with the right process design, the emissions generated from cement production can be directed straight back into the cement.

What is more, this proposition will continue to be applicable as cement generated from emerging emission-free processes enters the market, presenting the possibility of carbon-negative construction materials.

Jet fuel

Current usage: ~0.8 million tons per day

If derived from CCU: Would require ~3.1 million tons of CO₂ per day

Viability as product of CCU: Medium

Unlike EVs, electric airplanes haven’t really taken off. As such, CCU is the focus of many sustainable aviation fuel (SAF) producers, providing one of the only scalable routes to fossil-fuel-free flights. Producing SAF through CCU centres on converting CO₂ into carbon monoxide, for Fischer-Tropsch synthesis, or into ethanol, for alcohol-to-jet processes, both of which produce the mix of hydrocarbons that would typically be derived from oil refining.

The current problem with CCU-derived SAF is its price. The combination of expensive technology and poor energy use at the CO₂ conversion stage leads to the fuel costing two to eight times higher than the fossil alternative. Nevertheless, provided renewable electricity costs decline and capital expenditures decrease as the technology matures, SAF prices may drop into an affordable range in the not-so-distant future.

Ethylene (for carbon-based products)

Current usage: ~0.6 million tons per day

If derived from CCU: Would require ~2.6 million tons of CO₂ per day

Viability as product of CCU: High

Ethylene offers excellent opportunities for CCU. This chemical is the fundamental building block of most of our daily products, such as piping, flooring, window frames, packaging, detergents, solvents, glues, textiles and more, all of which could lock carbon away for substantial periods of time. As an additional benefit, deriving ethylene from CCU avoids the use of steam crackers, which currently generate 1-2 tons of CO₂ for each ton of ethylene generated.

Compared to other CCU technologies, producing ethylene from CO₂ is less mature. However, substantial progress has been made using electrolyzers that knit together carbon emissions into ethylene or molecular dehydration processes that generate ethylene from CCU-derived ethanol. Like SAF, these routes still have a price premium, and their adoption will boil down to how efficiently they can operate at scale. Nevertheless, technologies that derive ethylene from CCU can decarbonize so many products at once it is hard to overlook their potential.

Our carbon capturing future

In a future where 16 million tons of CO₂ is captured every day, we can certainly do more than simply store it underground.

Just based on the CO₂ needed to meet today’s consumption, ~8 million tons per day could be utilized in ethylene, SAF and cement production alone and other key CCU-viable commodities, such as methanol and propylene, could certainly take a further chunk of the captured carbon.

Taking into account each commodity’s growing demand, their consumption will likely be 2.5-3.5x higher by 2050. Even with a conservative 4% annual growth rate applied to each, our future demands could put all of the carbon we capture to work, with no storage required.

That said, just like recycling waste over putting it in landfill, it is going to take more effort to re-use our carbon emissions than to simply bury them. The major hurdle will be the price of energy. With a low enough price, CCU products could even undercut the cost of their fossil counterparts but there will no doubt be competition for cheap, decarbonized energy in the coming decades.

Nevertheless, clean energy installation is not slowing down, and with 5,500 GW planned to come online before 2030, there is a very real possibility that the CO₂ we capture will become a key future resource.

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