Collaborations and consistent regulations are vital for scaling CCS

The requirements for successfully scaling carbon capture and storage (CCS) were explored in the Decarbonisation Strategic Panel titled ‘Scaling CCS: new business models for rapid deployment.’

Across the panel, it was mentioned that stable regulations, new technologies, risk sharing, and collaborations would all help encourage the large-scale usage of the technology. It was noted that scaling CCS remains a challenge, despite the emergence of successful projects, and the fact that the sector has grown over the past four years.

Bernhard Koudelka, VP Carbon Capture and Storage at Shell, cited the success of the Northern Lights joint venture by Shell in Europe. As the first cryogenic value chain for carbon capture and storage, he said that the industry had “proven that the technology works, and that it is reliable.” However, he said that collaboration was vital for it to work.

“No single entity has the capacity to build CCS projects,” he said.

“It needs to be a collaboration between transport storage providers, regulators, and finance institutions. There are four elements that we need to strengthen, too: demand generation, supply side incentives, risk sharing mechanisms, and regulations. If we do these four things, I hope that we can scale the industry.”

Graham Henley, CEO of IOGP, began by reminding the audience that while many think that the pace of energy transition is slowing down, this is not the case.

“Earlier this year, Bloomberg reported that investment in the energy transition in 2024 exceeded 2 trillion for the first time. This is 60% above what it was in 2020, and 40% more than the amount spent on fossil fuel investment in the same period,” he said.

“But, on a more negative note, 90% of that two trillion was spent on the more mature technologies of wind and solar, electrification, electrical and infrastructure; only a fraction was spent on emerging technologies like biofuels, hydrogen, and CCS.”

He also noted that while there is a lot of concern over the cost of CCS projects, the price will inevitably reduce over time.

“When you are building something for the first time, it always costs more and takes longer than you originally anticipated. The second time it’s cheaper and quicker, and even more so the third and fourth times.

It’s a learning curve, and we need stable enabling policies and regulatory conditions to drive us down the path.”

Bruce Chalton, VP of Global Carbon Capture & Storage at ExxonMobil, also emphasised the importance of consistent policies.

“They allow investors to feel good about the investments they are making, and feel reassured that they are stable. As we are talking about long-term investments that are very capital intensive, this is very important,” he said.

“Having strong international standards is equally vital, particularly when it comes to safely storing CO2.

Having more consistency about who owns the long-term liability related to storage of CO2 would also provide comfort.”

Aniruddha Sharma, Chair and CEO of Carbon Clean, explained that his company is developing a product that compresses carbon capture equipment by 10 times so that it can fit inside a box.

“Carbon Clean is focused on industrial decarbonisation. We are industrialising how people approach carbon capture for hyperlink industries,” he said, noting that the first successful usage of this technology was here in Abu Dhabi during a collaboration with ADNOC that saw them decarbonise a facility in Ruwais.

“We are bringing out three to four models of boxes that can be mass-produced,” he explained.

“With solar, the reason why it has grown by 16 times in 12 years is because the same square pattern was produced a million times. The same kind of thing happened with wind, batteries, and EV. Now, we are trying to standardise and replicate this model for CCS.”