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CONTENT

Lead Article

Green hydrogen is coming - and these Australian regions are well placed to build our new export industry
by Steven Percy, Senior Research Fellow, Victorian Hydrogen Hub

Article 01

Green Hydrogen for Industry: A Guide to Policy Making
by IRENA - International Renewable Energy Agency

The Future Now Show

How to end dependence from fossil energy sources
with Livio de Santoli & Angelo Consoli

Article 02

Plastic eating enzymes just got even better! New breakthrough.
by Just Have a Think

News about the Future

> Impact 2030: Ireland’s Research and Innovation Strategy
> Global Foresight 2022 - Atlantic Council

Article 03

Our world in 2050: what lies ahead for you and your business?
by The Law Society

Recommended Book

From Big Oil to Big Green
by Marco Grasso

Article 04

The truth about hydrogen
by DW Planet A

Climate Change Success Story

Carbon Capture Companies

Global Thermostat
Carbfix
CO2 Solutions by SAIPEM
NET Power
Quest Carbon Capture and Storage
Climeworks
1PointFive
CO2Value Europe
Carbon Engineering
Aker Carbon Capture
Zero Carbon Humber

Futurist Portrait

Parag Khanna
Managing Partner at FutureMap

Tags:
2050, Artificial Intelligence, Australia, Carbon Capture,
Climate Change, Fossil Energy, Green Hydrogen,
Hydrogen, Law, Plastic, Sustainability






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Jeremy Rifkin: "Because hydrogen is so plentiful and exists everywhere on earth, a hydrogen economy would make possible a vast redistribution of power. Today's centralized, top-down flow of energy, controlled by global oil companies and utilities would become obsolete.

Parag Khanna: "It is time to re-imagine how life is organized on Earth. We're accelerating into a future shaped less by countries than by connectivity. Mankind has a new maxim – Connectivity is destiny – and the most connected powers, and people, will win."

Stavros Dimas, EU Commissioner for the Environment: "The world will fail to halve emissions of carbon dioxide (CO2) by 2050 without the deployment of technology to capture and store the emissions spewed out from fossil-fuel burning power plants "

 

See also some recent articles in the Club of Amsterdam Journal:

The liquid metal battery

Exploring the TRUE cost of ditching fossil fuels.

Energy Islands - Denmark

The Real Cost of Nuclear Energy

Resources

Stockholm Resilience Centre (SRC) is an international research centre on resilience and sustainability science

The International Renewable Energy Agency (IRENA) is an intergovernmental organisation that supports countries in their transition to a sustainable energy future, and serves as the principal platform for international cooperation, a centre of excellence, and a repository of policy, technology, resource and financial knowledge on renewable energy.

The European Clean Hydrogen Alliance (ECH2A) was announced as part of the New Industrial Strategy for Europe and it was launched on 8 July 2020 in the context of the hydrogen strategy for a climate-neutral Europe.

Lead Article

Green hydrogen is coming - and these Australian regions are well placed to build our new export industry
by Steven Percy, Senior Research Fellow, Victorian Hydrogen Hub

Steven Percy

 

 

Steven Percy, Swinburne University of Technology

You might remember hearing a lot about green hydrogen last year, as global pressure mounted on Australia to take stronger action on climate change ahead of the COP26 Glasgow summit last November.

The government predicts green hydrogen exports and domestic use could be worth up to a $50 billion within 30 years, helping the world achieve deep decarbonisation.

But how close are we really to a green hydrogen industry? And which states are best placed to host it? My research shows that as of next year, and based on where the cheapest renewables are, the best places to produce green hydrogen are far north Queensland and Tasmania.

As ever more renewable energy pours into our grid, this picture will change. By the end of the decade, the north Queensland coast could become the hydrogen powerhouse. By 2040, dirt-cheap solar should make inland areas across New South Wales, Queensland, Victoria and South Australia the lowest cost producers.

Renewable energy you can store and transport

Why is there so much buzz around green hydrogen? In short, because it offers us a zero emissions way to transport energy. Take cheap renewable energy and use it to split water into hydrogen and oxygen using an electrolyser. Store the hydrogen on trucks, ship it overseas, or send it by pipeline. Then use the hydrogen for transport, manufacturing or electricity production.

All the technology exists – it’s the cost holding the industry back at present. That’s where Australia and its wealth of cheap renewable energy comes in.

Making hydrogen is nothing new – it has a long history of use in fertiliser production and oil refining. But until now, the main source for hydrogen was gas, a fossil fuel.

In the last few years, however, there has been a sudden surge of interest and investment in green hydrogen, and new technology pathways have emerged to produce cheap green hydrogen. As global decarbonisation gathers steam, Japan, South Korea and parts of Europe are looking for clean alternatives to replace the role fossil fuels have played in their economies.

Australia is exceptionally well placed to deliver these alternatives, with world-beating renewable resources and ports set up for our existing fossil fuel exports, such as coal and LNG.

In 2019, we sold almost $64 billion of black coal, with most going to Japan, South Korea, India and China. As these countries decarbonise, the coal industry will shrink. Green hydrogen could be an excellent replacement.

How competitive is Australian hydrogen?

At present, Australia is a long way from producing green hydrogen cheap enough to compete with fossil fuels, given we seem to have no appetite for taxing carbon pollution.

Does that mean it’s a non-starter? Hardly. It was only a decade ago sceptics ridiculed solar and wind as too expensive. They’ve gone awfully quiet as renewable prices fell, and fell, and fell – as tracked by the International Renewable Energy Agency. Now renewables are cheaper than coal. Battery storage, too, has fallen drastically in price. The same forces are at work on the key technology we need – cheaper electrolysers.

By 2040, the CSIRO predicts an 83% fall in electrolyser costs, according to its Gencost 2021-22 report. By contrast, gas-derived hydrogen with carbon capture is predicted to reduce in cost only slightly. That means green hydrogen is likely to capture much of the market for hydrogen from 2030 onwards.

Which states could benefit?

My research with the Victorian Hydrogen Hub shows as of next year, the lowest cost location for green hydrogen would be Far North Queensland ($4.1/kg) and Tasmania ($4.4/kg) due to high renewable resources.

But this picture will change. By 2030, northern Queensland’s coastal regions could be the Australian hydrogen powerhouse due to a combination of cheap solar and access to ports. Western Australia and the Northern Territory could also have similar advantages, though the modelling for these areas has not yet been done.

As solar energy and electrolyser costs continue to fall, new states could enter the green hydrogen economy. In CSIRO’s cost predictions, electricity from solar is predicted to become much cheaper than wind by 2040. This means sunny areas like central and northern Queensland ($1.7/kg) and inland NSW, Victoria and South Australia ($1.8/kg) could be the best locations for green hydrogen production.

In making these estimates, I do not consider supply chain and storage infrastructure required to deliver the hydrogen. Transport could account for between $0.05/kg to $0.75/kg depending on distance.

Comparing my modelling to price thresholds set out in the National Hydrogen Strategy indicates we can produce green hydrogen for trucking at a similar cost to diesel within four years. Fertiliser would take longer, becoming competitive by 2040.

Does our dry country have the water resources for green hydrogen?

If we achieved the $50 billion green hydrogen industry the government is aiming for, how much water would it consume? Surprisingly little. It would take only around 4% of the water we used for our crops and pastures in 2019-20 to generate an export industry that size – 225,000 megalitres.

Much more water than this will be freed up as coal-fired power stations exit the grid. In Queensland and NSW alone, these power stations consume around 158,000 megalitres a year according to a 2020 report prepared for the Australian Conservation Foundation. Coal mining in these two states takes an additional 224,000 megalitres.

As the cost of renewable energy falls and falls, we will also be able to desalinate seawater along our coasts to produce hydrogen. We estimate this would account for only about 1% of the cost of producing hydrogen, based on Australian Water Association desalination cost estimates.

How can we get there faster?

This decade, we must plan for our new hydrogen economy. Government and industry will need to develop and support new hydrogen infrastructure projects to produce, distribute, use and export hydrogen at scale.

We’re already seeing promising signs of progress, as major mining companies move strongly into green hydrogen.

Now we need governments across Australia to rapidly get optimal policy and regulations in place to allow the industry to develop and thrive.

 

Steven Percy, Senior Research Fellow, Victorian Hydrogen Hub, Swinburne University of Technology

 

 

This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license.

CONTENT

Article 01

Green Hydrogen for Industry: A Guide to Policy Making
by IRENA - International Renewable Energy Agency

 

The industrial sector is the leading hydrogen consumer, with 87.1 million tonnes of hydrogen consumed in 2020. Hydrogen is used in refineries, chemical industry, and steelmaking, all categorised as "hard to abate" sectors. This large and centralised demand is critical for developing a green hydrogen sector.

However, several barriers impede green hydrogen's full contribution to the industrial sector, including cost, technical, policy, lack of demand and carbon leakage risk. Policy makers can adopt industrial policies that address barriers and oblige or support a change from fossil fuel dependency of hard to abate sectors. An urgent task given the the long lifespans of industrial assets and a limited window to avert the climate crisis.

This report from the International Renewable Energy Agency (IRENA) provides a basis for understanding the challenges and policy solutions. It highlights the range of policy options available, including mandates, carbon pricing, carbon leakage measures, support schemes and market creation measures and complements these policies with country examples. The report separates policy recommendations into various stages to formulate appropriate policy pathways most suitable to a country's level of deployment of green hydrogen.

Geopolitics of the Energy Transformation: The Hydrogen Factor
January 2022
ISBN : 978-92-9260-370-0
Download

Green Hydrogen for Industry: A Guide to Policy Making
March 2022
ISBN : 978-92-9260-422-6
Download

Geopolitics of Green Hydrogen

 

 

CONTENT

The Future Now Show

How to end dependence from fossil energy sources
with Livio de Santoli & Angelo Consoli

Hydrogen is expected to play an important role in achieving EU objectives to reduce greenhouse gas emissions by a minimum of 55% by 2030 and reach net zero emissions by 2050. We are working on actions to facilitate the large-scale deployment of hydrogen use to contribute to climate neutrality.

To achieve our objectives under the European Green Deal, we need to decouple economic growth from resource use. This will require a transformational change and the full mobilisation of industry.

Our guests today are the international energy experts Livio de Santoli & Angelo Consoli. They describe a road map for the major energy transition ahead with a special focus on green hydrogen.

 

 

 

 

 

 

Credits

Livio de Santoli
Deputy Rector for Sustainability, Sapienza University of Rome
https://www.uniroma1.it/it


Angelo Consoli
European Director at Foundation on Economic Trends
Brussels/ Rome
www.foet.org

 

Felix B Bopp
Producer of The Future Now Show
clubofamsterdam.com

The Future Now Show
https://clubofamsterdam.com/the-future-now-show

You can find The Future Now Show also at

LinkedIn: The Future Now Show Group
YouTube: The Future Now Show Channel

CONTENT

Article 02

Plastic eating enzymes just got even better! New breakthrough.
by Just Have a Think

 

 

Steve Borlace

 

Plastic-eating enzymes were discovered in nature several years ago and scientists having been developing them ever since. A big challenge though, was that they could only make use of half of the most common polymer, PET. Now, a newly discovered enzyme allows them to break down the other half of the polymer into a chemical that can be widely used in nutrition and medicine.

 

Research Links

Main Paper

Phys.Org Article

Microplastics in lung tissue

BOTTLE Consortium

Centre for Enzyme Innovation

Montana State University

Anti-carcinogens in PCA

YouTube Climate Communicators

Just Have a Think

zentouro

Climate Adam

Kurtis Baute

Levi Hildebrand

Simon Clark

Sarah Karvner

Rollie Williams / ClimateTown

Jack Harries

Beckisphere

Our Changing Climate

Engineering With Rosie

Ella Gilbert

CONTENT

News about the Future

> Impact 2030: Ireland’s Research and Innovation Strategy
> Global Foresight 2022 - Atlantic Council

Impact 2030: Ireland’s Research and Innovation Strategy

‘Impact 2030: Ireland’s Research and Innovation Strategy’ puts research and innovation (R&I) at the heart of addressing Ireland’s social, economic and environmental challenges.

Impact 2030 will maximise the impact of research and innovation on many national priorities. It will progress objectives shared across the Irish R&I system such as maximising its impact on public policymaking and implementation, and nurturing and attracting talent.

Impact 2030

 

 

Global Foresight 2022 - Atlantic Council

Welcome to the inaugural edition of a new annual report from the Atlantic Council’s Scowcroft Center for Strategy and Security, home for the last decade to one of the world’s premier strategic foresight shops.

In this year’s installment, which is part of the Atlantic Council Strategy Papers series, Mathew Burrows and Anca Agachi identify ten trends that are transforming the world and guide you through three divergent visions for what world those trends could produce by 2030. Burrows and Robert A. Manning pick the top twelve risks and opportunities awaiting the world in the coming year, assessing the likelihood that each will occur. And Peter Engelke spots six “snow leopards” — under-the-radar phenomena that could have major unexpected impacts, for better or worse, in 2022 and beyond.

CONTENT

Article 03

Our world in 2050: what lies ahead for you and your business?
by The Law Society

 

We’re exploring four key areas
1. Climate

Climate change is the greatest perceivable threat facing humanity. For the legal sector, the climate crisis brings new and complex problems around investments and assets, attribution, jurisdiction, and accountability.

Climate change: What will life be like in 2050?

2. Artificial intelligence (AI) and emerging technologies

The pace of development and application of AI and other emerging technologies raises key challenges for the legal sector in terms of:

levels of expertise
ability to prepare for these trends, and
associated issues around perceptions of breach, harm, ethics and liability

3. Geopolitical landscape

The possibilities of the geopolitical landscape raise questions around trade, political leadership, and tensions between nationalism and globalisation, including:

• attitudes to borders and immigration
• cooperation on global problems, and
• vulnerabilities in supply chains that see a return to regional existence

4. Data ethics and trust

Who will be able to own, access and use data in the future?

Digital footprints are now generated from infancy, and there’ll need to be stronger regulation around data privacy, how data is treated and who owns it.

Increasingly, data expertise will be needed across all professions.

Download the full report

Future Worlds 2050: images of the future worlds facing the legal profession 2020-2030 (PDF 4 MB)

CONTENT

Recommended Book

From Big Oil to Big Green
Holding the Oil Industry to Account for the Climate Crisis
by Marco Grasso

 

How Big Oil can transform itself into Big Green through reparation and decarbonization to rectify the harm it has done through fossil fuels.

In From Big Oil to Big Green, Marco Grasso examines the responsibility of the oil and gas industry for the climate crisis and develops a moral framework that lays out its duties of reparation and decarbonization to allay the harm it has done. By framing climate change as a moral issue and outlining the industry's obligation to tackle it, Grasso shows that Big Oil is a central, yet overlooked, agent of climate ethics and policy.

Grasso argues that by indiscriminately flooding the global economy with fossil fuels — while convincing the public that halting climate change is a matter of consumer choice, that fossil fuels are synonymous with energy, and that a decarbonized world would take civilization back to the Stone Age — Big Oil is morally responsible for the climate crisis. He explains that it has managed to avoid being held financially accountable for past harm and that its duty of reparation has never been theoretically developed or justified. With this book, he fills those gaps. After making the moral case for climate reparations and their implementation, Grasso develops Big Oil's duty of decarbonization, which entails its transformation into Big Green by phasing out carbon emissions from its processes and, especially, its products.

Marco Grasso

is Professor of Political Geography in the Department of Sociology and Social Research at the University of Milano-Bicocca. He is the author of Justice in Funding Adaptation under the International Climate Change Regime and has published extensively in major scientific journals.

CONTENT

Article 04

The truth about hydrogen
by DW Planet A



Some say it's the fuel of the future that will soon power large parts of our economies. Others say it's just a hoax propagated by the oil and gas industry. But either way, EVERYONE in the energy world is talking about hydrogen. Can it really help us get to net zero?

 

Global Hydrogen Review 2021 from the International Energy Agency

Powering ships with fuel cells

Hydrogen-powered aircraft

Study on blue hydrogen's emissions

Report on Shell's blue hydrogen plant

CONTENT

Climate Change Success Story

Carbon Capture Companies

 

Carbon capture and storage (CCS)

Carbon Capture and Storage (CCS) is a way of reducing carbon emissions, which could be key to helping to tackle global warming. It’s a three-step process, involving: capturing the carbon dioxide produced by power generation or industrial activity, such as steel or cement making; transporting it; and then storing it deep underground. Here we look at the potential benefits of CCS and how it works.

Examples

Global Thermostat
Carbfix
CO2 Solutions by SAIPEM
NET Power
Quest Carbon Capture and Storage
Climeworks
1PointFive
CO2Value Europe
Carbon Engineering
Aker Carbon Capture
Zero Carbon Humber

Global Thermostat

Founded in 2010, Global Thermostat is working to commercialize its unique, multi-patented portfolio of solutions for capturing and removing CO2 directly from the atmosphere to address climate change and power the growing circular carbon economy. Its goal is to develop the least resource intensive, lowest cost solution to resolve the climate threat through Direct Air Capture.

 

Carbfix

Carbfix is based in Iceland, where they have been an operation at the Hellisheiði Power Plant since 2014. In 2019, they were established as a subsidiary of Reykjavik Energy (OR) and have been operating as a separate entity since January 2020.

Carbfix is academic-industrial partnership that has developed a novel approach to capturing and storing CO2 by its capture in water and its injection into subsurface basalts.

Trees and vegetation are not the only form of carbon drawdown from the atmosphere. Vast quantities of carbon are naturally stored in rocks. Carbfix imitates and accelerates these natural processes, where carbon dioxide is dissolved in water and interacts with reactive rock formations, such as basalts, to form stable minerals providing a permanent and safe carbon sink. The Carbfix process captures and permanently removes CO2. The technology provides a complete carbon capture and injection solution, where CO2 dissolved in water – a sparkling water of sorts – is injected into the subsurface where it reacts with favorable rock formations to form solid carbonate minerals via natural processes in about 2 years. For the Carbfix technology to work, one needs to meet three requirements: favorable rocks, water, and a source of carbon dioxide.

 

CO2 Solutions
by SAIPEM

CO2 Solutions is based in Quebec, Canada. They were established in 1997 and have since developed a unique carbon capture technology that was inspired by the human lung.

Their technology uses an industrial form of the natural enzyme called carbonic anhydrase (CA), which is present in all animals and plants. The enzyme is what allows us to breathe, by managing the carbon we breathe in.

CO2 Solutions turned to the living world for nature’s most powerful known catalyst for carbon management, the carbonic anhydrase (CA) enzyme. After observing, analysing and understanding how this natural enzyme functions, the company was able to develop an innovative industrial disruptive process using the enzyme, at a very competitive operating cost.

Contrary to conventional carbon-capture technologies, the CO2 Solutions by Saipem process neither requires nor produces toxic products. It is a carbon-capture solution that is clean, stable, with extremely fast absorption kinetics and low energy consumption, and poses absolutely no danger to human health or the environment.

The CO2 Solutions allows post-combustion emissions to be captured directly from industrial sources like chimneys. The CO2 is then extracted for purification in order to be reused or converted. Adaptable to all types of gaseous effluents, this innovative technology helps companies better monetize their industrial processes, all while reducing their environmental footprint.

The solution of choice to actively, safely and profitably fight against climate change, our industrial lung technology turns every user into a dynamic player in the new carbon economy.

 

NET Power

NET Power is based in Durham, North Carolina in the United States. Their technology development began in 2008 as an exercise in developing low-cost power that did not produce any carbon emissions.

NET Power technology burns natural gas with pure oxygen. The resulting CO2 is recycled through the combustor, turbine, heat exchanger, and compressor, creating lower-cost power with zero emissions.

The mission of NET Power is to provide advanced clean energy to consumers worldwide by generating lower-cost power with zero emissions. NET Power is a clean energy technology company that promotes, develops, and licenses a proprietary process for efficiently generating electricity from natural gas while capturing all CO2 emissions. NET Power’s revolutionary technology promises to enable the world to meet its climate goals without paying more for electricity. The company is co-owned by and benefitted by the support of Constellation, McDermott International, 8 Rivers Capital, Oxy Low Carbon Ventures, a subsidiary of Occidental, and Baker Hughes.

Quest Carbon Capture and Storage by Shell

Quest is Shell’s carbon capture plant at their Scotford Upgrader power plant in Alberta, Canada. It is run and owned by Shell, who use it to remove the carbon they generate at the power plant converting bitumen from sand into oil.

Shell, on behalf of the Athabasca Oil Sands Project (AOSP), a joint venture between Shell Canada (60 percent), Chevron Canada Limited (20 percent) and Marathon Oil Sands L.P. (20 percent), conducted development work on a carbon capture and storage (CCS) project to help manage carbon dioxide from the Scotford Upgrader. This work led to the Shell Quest project, which captures carbon dioxide from the Scotford Upgrader and permanently stores it deep underground, preventing it from dispersing into the air.

The Quest carbon capture and storage (CCS) facility, near Edmonton, Alberta, shows that large-scale CO2 capture is a safe and effective measure to reduce CO2 emissions from industrial sources. Quest was built ahead of schedule and under budget. Since opening in late 2015, the facility has captured more CO2 than expected and stored it safely 2 km underground

To date, Quest has captured and stored over 6 million tonnes of CO2.

Climeworks

Climeworks is a carbon capture company based in Zurich, Switzerland, and was established in 2009. However, their technology has been in development since 2007. The company filters the CO2 directly from the ambient air through an adsorption-desorption process

Once the CO2 is captured, it can be permanently and safely turned into stone through rapid mineralization which is a natural occurrence where the CO2 reacts with basalt rock.

Climeworks is the largest company offering carbon capture services that capture carbon directly from the air and they’re currently building a new direct air capture plant called Orca in Iceland.

They’re using their own technology to capture CO2 and then using Carbfix’s technology for underground storage. The plant aims to capture 4000 tons of CO2 per year – making it the world’s biggest climate-positive facility to date. In addition to Orca, they have over 6500 smaller plants in operation with various partners.

Carbon Engineering

Carbon Engineering was established in 2009, in Calgary, Canada. They moved to Squamish in 2015, where they built their pilot plant to capture carbon directly from the atmosphere and either store it safely underground or convert it to synthetic fuel.

Carbon Engineering has since partnered with companies in the US and the UK to collect and sequester atmospheric carbon, as well as companies around the world to produce clean fuel from the carbon they collect.

Unlike capturing emissions from industrial flue stacks, our technology captures carbon dioxide (CO2) – the primary greenhouse gas responsible for climate change – directly out of the air around us. This can help counteract today’s unavoidable CO2 emissions, and address the large quantities of CO2 emitted in the past that remains trapped in our atmosphere.

At Carbon Engineering, we’re focused on the global deployment of megaton-scale Direct Air Capture technology so it can have the greatest impact on the huge climate challenge. Our team and partners around the world are working to deploy Direct Air Capture facilities that can capture one million tons of CO2 per year each – which is equivalent to the carbon removal work of approx. 40 million trees.

Aker Carbon Capture



Aker Carbon Capture is a pure-play carbon capture company with solutions, services and technologies serving a range of industries, including the cement, bio and waste-to-energy, gas-to-power and blue hydrogen segments. Aker Carbon Capture’s proprietary carbon-capture technology offers a unique, environmentally friendly solution for removing CO2 emissions.

Zero Carbon Humber

The Humber is the industrial heartland of the UK and there are ambitious plans to decarbonise the region through the East Coast Cluster. Key to that ambition is Zero Carbon Humber, a collection of international energy producers, major regional industries, leading infrastructure and logistics operators, global engineering firms and academic institutions. By collaborating, we can help decarbonise the Humber and deliver a net zero future.

This will be enabled by shared pipelines – delivered by the East Coast Cluster – for low-carbon hydrogen and captured carbon emissions, creating the world’s first net zero industrial region by 2040.

Delivering this is expected to protect 55,000 existing jobs in the Humber and create 49,000 new ones, while supporting skills, apprenticeships and educational opportunities across the region.

 

 

What is CCS? Carbon capture and storage CCS involves the capture of carbon dioxide (CO2) emissions from industrial processes, such as steel and cement production, or from the burning of fossil fuels in power generation. This carbon is then transported from where it was produced, via ship or in a pipeline, and stored deep underground in geological formations. How can CCS help prevent global warming? The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) highlighted that, if we are to achieve the ambitions of the Paris Agreement and limit future temperature increases to 1.5 degrees, we must do more than just increasing efforts to reduce emissions - we also need to deploy technologies to remove carbon from the atmosphere. CCS is one of these technologies and can therefore play an important role in tackling global warming. How does CCS actually work? There are three steps to the CCS process: 1. Capturing the carbon dioxide for storage The CO2 is separated from other gases produced in industrial processes, such as those at coal and natural-gas-fired power generation plants or steel or cement factories. 2. Transport The CO2 is then compressed and transported via pipelines, road transport or ships to a site for storage. 3. Storage Finally, the CO2 is injected into rock formations deep underground for permanent storage. Where are carbon emissions stored in CCS? Possible storage sites for carbon emissions include saline aquifers or depleted oil and gas reservoirs. These typically need to be 1km or more under the ground. As an example, a storage site for the proposed Zero Carbon Humber project in the UK is a saline aquifer named ‘Endurance’, which is located in the southern North Sea, around 90km offshore. Endurance is approximately 1.6km below the seabed and has the potential to store very large amounts of CO2. What is Carbon Capture, Utilisation and Storage (CCUS)? What is the difference between CCUS and CCS? As well as CCS, there is a related concept, CCUS, which stands for Carbon Capture Utilisation (or sometimes this is termed ‘usage’) and Storage. The idea is that, instead of storing carbon, it could be re-used in industrial processes by converting it into, for example, plastics, concrete or biofuel. Is storage of carbon as part of CCS safe? According to industry body the Global CCS Institute, CCS is ‘a proven technology that has been in safe operation for over 45 years’. It adds that all components of CCS are proven technologies that have been used for decades on a commercial scale. Where is CCS being used already? According to the Global CCS Institute’s 2019 report, at that time there were 51 large-scale CCS facilities globally. 19 of these were in operation, 4 under construction and the remainder in various stages of development. 24 of these were in the Americas, 12 in Europe, 12 in Asia-Pacific and 2 in the Middle East. Where was the first CCS facility? CCS has been in operation since 1972 in the US, where several natural gas plants in Texas have captured and stored more than 200million tons of CO2 underground.

Source: National Grid

CONTENT

Futurist Portrait

Parag Khanna
Managing Partner at FutureMap

 

Dr. Parag Khanna is a leading global strategy advisor, world traveler, and best-selling author. He is Founder & Managing Partner of FutureMap, a data and scenario based strategic advisory firm. Parag's newest book is MOVE: The Forces Uprooting Us (2021), which was preceded by The Future is Asian: Commerce, Conflict & Culture in the 21st Century (2019). He is author of a trilogy of books on the future of world order beginning with The Second World: Empires and Influence in the New Global Order (2008), followed by How to Run the World: Charting a Course to the Next Renaissance (2011), and concluding with Connectography: Mapping the Future of Global Civilization (2016). He is also the author of Technocracy in America: Rise of the Info-State (2017) and co-author of Hybrid Reality: Thriving in the Emerging Human-Technology Civilization (2012).

Parag was named one of Esquire’s “75 Most Influential People of the 21st Century,” and featured in WIRED magazine’s “Smart List.” He holds a Ph.D. from the London School of Economics, and Bachelors and Masters degrees from the School of Foreign Service at Georgetown University. He has traveled to nearly 150 countries and is a Young Global Leader of the World Economic Forum.


Why Mobility Across Borders Is A Human Right
by Parag Khanna

 

 

The Futurist Edition
An exhilarating exploration that envisions our global destiny, with acclaimed futurist and best-selling author Dr. Parag Khanna.

 

CONTENT

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