Toward Improved Guidelines for Cost Evaluation of CO2 Capture Technologies

One of the key barriers to wide-scale application of CCS is its cost. In practice, there are many challenges in establishing reliable cost estimates for CCS technologies. Building on the first set of cost guidelines established under the IEAGHG cost network, we are working on three areas where further cost guidelines are needed.

The first area that this group aims to tackle is the establishment of improved guidelines for cost evaluation of CO₂ capture technologies that are not yet commercial, and the evolution costs beyond demonstration projects. While emerging technologies may have the potential to reduce costs, most techno-economic assessments are performed considering them as mature, introducing a significant bias in their comparison. Our activity in this area is expected to provide a better understanding of cost evolutions from early stages of process development to the first large-scale plant, and then onwards to the N^th-of-a-kind plant for the successful technologies.

The second area to be tackled is the need for transparency, data quality and uncertainty evaluations of both the data and models used in CCS cost analysis. In practice, different cost estimates can be obtained for the exact same process, depending on the assessment methodology, the quality of the applied data, and the level of detail considered. The work in this area will emphasise the needs for improved data transparency and uncertainty evaluation, as well as provide guidelines on which methods to use for a certain task.

Finally, with the growing focus and need for CCS from non-power industries, improved guidelines for the evaluation of CCS for non-power industries are also in development. This area addresses key elements for evaluation of CCS from industrial plant such as heat and power supply strategies, retrofitting costs, the impact of scale of captured CO₂ on transport and storage costs, etc.