The market for CO₂ capture and storage technologies will grow by 20% annually

Photo by: Nik Shuliahin / Unsplash

Carbon Capture, Utilisation and Storage or CCUS (Carbon Capture, Utilisation and Storage) technologies are becoming increasingly common and interesting for companies aiming at low-carbon development. In some cases, it is only a matter of capturing and storing carbon dioxide. The technology is then referred to as CCS (Carbon Capture and Storage), which does not change the essence of the technology itself.

According to a 2022 Fortune Business Insights report, the carbon dioxide capture and storage industry was estimated to be worth $2 billion as early as 2020. Analysts predict that this market will grow at an impressive rate of nearly 20% per year between 2021 and 2028 to reach $7bn by 2028.

Market growth will come from partnerships between large industrial companies to commercialise CCS technologies, including by building large-scale facilities of this kind, the report believes.

One of the largest such projects is the joint complex The Northern Lights by UK Shell, France’s Total, Norway’s Equinor and the Norwegian government. The project was agreed in 2019 and is scheduled to start up in 2024. The total investment in it amounted to $2.6 billion.

The system will work as follows: the CO2 collected by a system of fans and filters will be stored in underground reservoirs. This carbon dioxide will then be used in chemical production or distributed into the sandstone at a depth of about 2 km beneath the ocean floor.

“We want to put carbon back where it has been stored for millions of years, leading to the formation of hydrocarbons — in the Earth’s crust,” notes Crystal Lambton, technical director of The Northern Lights project.

In the first year of operation, the facility is expected to extract up to 1.5 million tonnes of carbon dioxide from the atmosphere and deposit it in reservoirs, before reaching its design capacity of 5 million tonnes a year.

According to the international Global CCS Institute project, there are now more than 190 carbon capture and storage projects under development or construction around the world. In July, for example, the European Commission announced €1.8 billion for 17 such projects in Germany, France, the Netherlands, Finland, Norway and Poland. More than 150 companies from around the world, such as General Electric, Mitsubishi Heavy Industries, ArcelorMittal, BP, Chevron, Sinopec, ConocoPhillips, Equinor and Eni, are members of the Global CCS Institute.

In Russia, oil and gas companies are showing interest in the technology. Businesses have already expressed plans to adopt CCUS. In particular, Novatek, Gazprom, Gazprom Neft, NMLC, Rosneft and Tatneft have expressed their intentions.

Cover photo: James Kovin / iStock