CO Capture and Storage - Energy and Climate: How to Achieve a Successful Energy Transition - page 114

In the future, the production of synthetic fuels might also become a
major source of CO 2 . For all these applications, CCS is to be considered as
the main tool in the future for curbing CO 2 emissions.
In the longer term, CCS might avoid the equivalent of 6-7Gt of CO 2
emitted each year.
Thus IEA estimates that around 6.4Gt/year of CO 2 emissions will be
avoided with the help of CCS by 2050, including 3.8Gt/year in the sector
of electricity producers, 1Gt/year in the area of synthetic fuels production
and 1.6Gt/year in other industrial sectors [18].
In order to be able to apply industrially CCS in the future, it has to
become part of the carbon emissions trading scheme, especially in the
EuropeanUnionwhich has set up the first large trading scheme. This is not
yet the case and this issue is presently debated. It will require a rigorous
assessment method of CO 2 emissions which can be avoided in this way.
Maintaining the competitiveness with industries abroad not submitted to
the same constraints is also an important issue to be settled, especially for
exporting industries, when implementing CCS. Due to its comparatively high
cost, a mandatory application of CCS might lead to a relocation of activities,
such as the steel industry, to countries which would not impose similar
constraints. Such a result would of course be quite the opposite of the initial
goal. It is therefore necessary to introduce at international level mechanisms
which will avoid such a breach of the rules enabling fair competition.
Geological storage operations worldwide
Different large scale CO 2 geological storage operations have already been
undertaken or are under way.
The first operation was launched in 1996 at the Sleipner site, in the
North Sea, where, since that date, the Norwegian company Statoil injects
1million tons each year of CO 2 separated from natural gas in a saline
aquifer located at a depth of 1000m below the sea floor. In 2001, a pilot
project combining CO 2 storage with EORwas initiated at theWeyburn oil
field in the Canadian province of Saskatchewan. The CO 2 injected comes
from a coal gasification plant in North Dakota (USA) from where
5000 tons of CO 2 flowdaily through a 330 km long, cross-border pipeline.
Injection of CO 2 in coal seams has also been tested. A demonstration
pilot plant has been tested in Poland, within the framework of the Recopol
project. An industrial CO 2 storage project has been operated since 2004
by BP, Sonatrach and Statoil at In Salah, inAlgeria, where 1million tons of
CO 2 per year are being injected into a deeper part of the same geological
layer that contains the gas which is produced.