Carbon capture and storage: What can we learn from the project track record?

The report analyzes 13 large-scale CCS projects across various industries, including natural gas processing, hydrogen production, power generation, steel, and cement. It finds that while many projects have met high technical standards, others have faced significant operational hurdles, often due to a lack of climate-focused incentives or unexpected geological challenges. The document argues that transparent reporting and robust climate-driven policies are essential to ensure future projects maximize their emissions reduction potential.

• Several large-scale CCS projects, specifically Sleipner, the Alberta Carbon Trunk Line, and Quest, have consistently achieved high levels of technical performance, establishing a viable standard for future climate-focused projects.
• Many existing 'large-scale' CCS projects were developed for commercial motives, such as enhanced oil recovery (EOR), rather than climate mitigation, and consequently are not incentivized to maximize the amount of CO2 they store.
• The Gorgon CO2 injection project in Australia encountered significant technical difficulties due to unconsolidated sand clogging brine re-injection wells, leading to a failure to meet design injection rates and a shortfall of 9.5 million tonnes of CO2 against regulatory requirements.
• The Boundary Dam 3 project in Canada faced early operational challenges related to ash particulates from local coal causing equipment clogging and scaling, though these were later addressed through design modifications and water spray systems.
• The Petra Nova project in Texas demonstrated that capture unit availability can be improved over time, reaching 92% by 2019, but it was highly sensitive to oil prices, leading to a shutdown in 2020 when EOR economics became unfavorable.
• The Quest project in Alberta has been a technical success, maintaining an average capture rate of 79% between 2015 and 2021 and storing 9 million tonnes of CO2 as of May 2024.
• The Kemper County project failed primarily due to issues with scaling up a new coal gasification technology rather than the CO2 capture process itself, which met its 65% capture target during testing.
• The Al Reyadah project in the UAE demonstrates the viability of integrating CO2 capture into direct reduced iron (DRI) steel production for use in enhanced oil recovery, though it does not publicly report detailed performance data.
• The report concludes that technical challenges encountered by first-of-a-kind demonstration projects are generally surmountable through practical fixes, such as improved gas cleaning and system redundancy.
• To accelerate technology improvements and build public trust, the report recommends that CCS projects be encouraged or required to report their performance data and challenges transparently.

APA

Lockwood, T. (2024). Carbon capture and storage: What can we learn from the project track record? Clean Air Task Force. https://www.catf.us/resource/carbon-capture-storage-what-can-learn-from-project-track-record/

Chicago

Lockwood, Toby. Carbon capture and storage: What can we learn from the project track record? Clean Air Task Force, 2024. https://www.catf.us/resource/carbon-capture-storage-what-can-learn-from-project-track-record/.

Wikipedia

{{cite report |last1=Lockwood |first1=Toby |title=Carbon capture and storage: What can we learn from the project track record? |publisher=Clean Air Task Force |date=31 July 2024 |url=https://www.catf.us/resource/carbon-capture-storage-what-can-learn-from-project-track-record/ |access-date=23 October 2026 |via=Climate Insights Directory}}

BibTeX

@techreport{lockwood2024carbon, author = {Lockwood, Toby}, title = {{Carbon capture and storage: What can we learn from the project track record?}}, institution = {Clean Air Task Force}, year = {2024}, month = jul, url = {https://www.catf.us/resource/carbon-capture-storage-what-can-learn-from-project-track-record/}, urldate = {2026-10-23}, note = {Indexed by Climate Insights Directory} }