Specialist
Director at University of Houston
Agenda
- Overview of the CCS (carbon capture and storage) industry
- Regulations, policy and investment incentives for the CCS industry, including 45Q tax credits
- Corporate strategies for major oil producers and net zero targets for carbon
- CCS industry growth outlook and upcoming project evaluation on cost, feasibility and economics
Questions
1.
How and where have CCS [carbon capture and storage] projects been sited in North America?
2.
How do the modern CCUS [carbon capture, utilisation and storage] projects differ in size and technology from the original ones? Have advancements been made or is it the same thing in different locations?
3.
How is the CCUS industry subsidised and incentivised by the US government to make investments? You said there needs to be a market draw to get people to invest. How does the CCUS sector compare with alternative energy subsectors here? Is there anything to note from your experience during Obama’s first term?
4.
What gives you the confidence that the 45Q credits can be moved up by year end 2021 and how will that happen? Is it a case of Congress passing a law? Can it be mandated that these credits move up?
5.
You said ethanol is at the forefront of the CCUS industry because cost of capture is low. Why is capturing ethanol or carbon at an ethanol plant relatively easy? What other advantages and disadvantages are there? How penetrated is carbon capture in the ethanol industry?
6.
What’s your estimate of the cost of capture at an ethanol plant? Roughly how much does it cost to capture that pure CO2 if it could be as much as USD 1,000 for direct air capture and USD 50-70 for a steam-methane reformer? I understand that it’s only 4% of the CO2 emitted in the US.
7.
How many steam-methane reformers are there and are they all candidates for carbon capture? Does it make more sense for new builds, retrofits or certain geographies? What is the opportunity for carbon capture on these steam-methane reformers?
8.
What is the cost range to transport and store the CO2 if it costs USD 50-70 per tonne to separate the CO2 in the steam-methane reformer?
9.
In your white paper on the industry you show that CAPEX for natural gas power plants and hydrogen are the biggest drivers of NPV in these projects. How long do they take to build and how much money is required? If I were to leverage the existing infrastructure, how long would it take?
10.
Would using natural gas pipelines to transport CO2 or hydrogen work?
11.
What can you highlight about the reliability of CCS plants? When power plants are running, we can get the data on refinery utilisation and so on, but when these are built, do they run? Are they subject to maintenance? What would we expect if we were to build a CCS plant, no matter the location?
12.
What did you make of ExxonMobil’s CEO Darren Woods’ piece in the Wall Street Journal on the case for the Gulf Coast project? What is the feasibility of that? What needs to happen for that to be a reality?
13.
What other CCS projects or opportunities should we track in North America? What has got your attention?
