Carbon Capture & Storage: The Science Beneath Us & The Controversy Before Us

Public pressure continues to grow for the Alberta government to address the issue of global warming caused by greenhouse gasses, and in response, the province is embarking upon a multi-billion dollar experiment. Intended to be a solution to its greenhouse gas conundrum, Alberta is putting forward the concept of carbon capture and storage — by storing carbon dioxide underground, it would allow for emissions reductions without stopping oil and gas production. However, critics warn that CCS is an expensive gamble with taxpayers’ money.

THE SCIENCE OF CCS

CCS is a process that involves extracting carbon dioxide from the smokestacks of fossil fuel energy generators such as coal-fired power plants. The CO₂ is then transported via pipeline to a storage site where it’s injected deep underground and, thus, out of the atmosphere. The Alberta government expects to put 139 megatons of CO₂ underground by 2050.

“The capture part is about utilizing technologies to remove or capture CO₂ emission streams from any kind of fossil fuel generation,” says Rick Chalaturnyk, a professor of geotechnical engineering at the University of Alberta. “Once you’ve captured it, you transport it, and you transport it to a particular site that is suitable for geological storage, and you inject it into the subsurface.”

Alberta is fortunate when it comes to the availability of such sites, according to Chalaturnyk. “Western Canada has a lot of sites for the storage side: large saline aquifers that have brine [salt water] in the pore space.”

These aquifers (underground porous rock formations) are found beneath non-porous formations. CO₂ will be injected into the rock formations in “supercritical” form, where it will exhibit properties found in both a liquid and a gas.

“800 meters is the depth where you get to the temperature and pressure that lets the CO₂ be supercritical [...] naturally,” explains Chalaturnyk, adding that the aquifers where the CO₂ is to be stored are of an immense scale.

“These are like subsurface plumes of supercritical CO₂ in the formation that go from Spruce Grove to Sherwood Park, Leduc to St. Albert — these are large extents in the subsurface.”

Chuck Szmurlo, Enbridge Vice-President of Alternative & Emerging Technologies, added that these aquifers are full of saline (salt) water, which reacts with the CO₂.

“Carbon dioxide is lighter, more buoyant than salt water, and so it would tend to migrate from the bottom of the zone towards the top of the zone. While it was doing that, some of the carbon dioxide would become trapped within the pores of the rock, just like oil and gas might be trapped in the pores of a rock,” he said.

“Some of [the CO₂] would be absorbed in the salt water itself in the same way that carbon dioxide is absorbed in Coca-Cola. It would become a permeate mineral and would become essentially part of the rock permanently.”

After the injection process, the well is sealed with concrete, and the monitoring process begins.

“When the license is done, the regulations now say, ‘Okay, you need to abandon the site,' so I need to seal up all of the well bores [...] and then I’m going to let the CO₂ sit,” Chalaturnyk explains. The monitoring process continues, carried out by the company responsible for the well. For the next 30–60 years, the company continues with monitoring.

“All the monitoring continues during all of that period: there’s no handover, there’s no change in liability — the company still owns all the liability for that and they call that the 'closure phase.' ”

Once the closure phase has concluded, the liability for the well is handed back to the government.

“At that point, the risk now or the liability for that site I’ll hand back to the government,” says Chalaturnyk. “The government is only going to be in a position to accept that back if I’ve done all that measurement and monitoring to a point where I’ve proven that I know where all that CO₂ is.”

The storage process itself, however, is preceded by the capture stage, where CO₂ is extracted at either the pre-combustion or post-combustion stages.

Martin Lambert, CEO of Swan Hills Synfuels, says that his company uses a pre-combustion method to capture the CO₂. Last December, the Alberta government awarded Swan Hills Synfuels with a $285 million grant for a CCS project that will turn coal into low-emissions electricity and capture CO₂.

“The primary distinction between us and most others is that we’re capturing our CO₂ on a pre-combustion basis, as opposed to capturing it post-combustion out of a flue gas or exhaust stream,” he said.

Post-combustion CO₂ capture, however, removes carbon from the emissions that would be regularly seen coming out of smokestacks at any power generation facility.

“If you think of the Genesee Power Plant, they take these flue gas streams and they push them through all of these chemicals – and the chemicals kind of like the CO₂ – and it sort of pulls the CO₂ out,” Chalaturnyk said.

ALBERTA'S CCS PLAN

It is with this scientific background that the Alberta government published its climate change strategy in 2008. Of the 200 megatons of CO₂ emissions the government hopes to reduce by the year 2050, 139 are to be from CCS. The government expects to reduce annual emissions to 14 per cent below 2000 levels by that time.

While explicitly stating the desire to maintain economic growth, the government’s climate change strategy document states: “Ultimately, CO₂ capture and storage technologies provide the province with the greatest potential to substantially reduce greenhouse gas emissions while, at the same time, retaining our ability to produce and provide energy to the rest of the world.”

However, according to critics like Simon Dyer, the Oil Sands Program Director at the Pembina Institute — a not-for-profit energy think-tank — the biggest issue facing CCS in Alberta is the gap between the government’s ambitions and reality.

“Pembina’s biggest concern is not so much the technological challenge, but simply the lack of the appropriate policy environment to drive the deployment of CCS on the sort of scale that would be necessary to make meaningful contributions to greenhouse gas reductions,” he said.

“Pembina thinks there is a role for CCS to play, but Canada and Alberta seem singularly focused on this idea of CCS as an end-of-pipe solution.”

Nonetheless, Karen Karbashewski, a Public Affairs Officer for Alberta Energy, emphasizes that the government is forcing greenhouse gas emitters to pay into the province’s Climate Change and Emissions Management Fund. The fund is intended to support the development of technologies that reduce CO₂ emissions.

“Companies that produce large volumes of CO₂, they’re given limits, and if they produce over that — over their own limit — they’re charged $15 a ton,” she says. “[The fund is] currently at $122 million — and they’ve had an expression of interest for companies pursuing alternative energy practices to apply for that funding.”

However, Linda Duncan, the federal New Democrat Party’s environment critic, feels that the fund is not enough. “I am opposed to the fact that it seems to be the government’s one and only solution to addressing climate change from the main source of carbon in Canada.”

Likewise, Laurie Blakeman, environment critic for the provincial Liberal party, expresses concern about the Alberta government’s perceived singular approach to emissions.

“I think we have to be very cautious about not putting all of our eggs, or not putting all of our hopes on one big egg, in the basket — that one big egg being carbon capture and storage.”

But in an interview with the Pembina Institute, David Keith, a University of Calgary professor and Canada Research Chair of Energy and the Environment, said that governments’ options for reducing CO₂ on a global scale are limited.

“It looks like wind-power, nuclear power, and CCS [are] among the really big hammers we have to [take] a [...] bite out of humanity’s carbon emissions,” he said in an interview posted on the Pembina website, while stressing CCS as a stop-gap measure to cut greenhouse gas emissions. “It could be that CCS will be a major — like 30–50 per cent — chunk, or it could be that it will be a pretty minor chunk. We simply don’t know.”

In addition, Enbridge's Szmurlo said he feels that Alberta’s policy is heading in the right direction. “I think it’s necessary that we have some projects that demonstrate that some action is being taken.

“And to that end, I think that the Alberta government has kind of taken the lead around North American in trying to implement something tangible, and for that I think they deserve some recognition for that effort.”

While Blakeman argues that Alberta should complement CCS with more support for renewable energy, such as with incentive programs, Dyer says that the debate surrounding CCS is just one part of the national discussion regarding climate change.

“It’s one piece of the puzzle that’s receiving an inordinate amount of attention in Alberta and Canada at the expense of discussion on the need for climate regulation.”

FOLLOWING THE MONEY: THE ECONOMICS OF CCS

The Alberta government established its $2-billion CCS fund with the passage of Bill 14 last June. Companies interested in pursuing CCS were able to apply to the Alberta Carbon Capture Development Council — established by the government in 2008 — for funding assistance to build their CCS projects. Since last October, the government has given hundreds of millions of dollars in funding to four different CCS projects in the province.

Last October, the government gave grants to Shell Energy for $745 million and TransAlta for $436 million. Then in November and December, the government awarded Calgary-based Enhance Energy and Swan Hills-based Swan Hills Synfuels for $495 million and $285 million, respectively.

“The $2 billion is an investment in our environment and our future, and a continued signal of our commitment to the responsible development of Alberta’s resources,” Environment Minister Rob Renner said while introducing Bill 14 in the Alberta legislature last March. “This act will give Alberta a very powerful tool with which to meet the unique set of challenges we face and further cement Alberta’s leadership in this area.”

Separate from the government grants, Enbridge, a Calgary-based energy company, is leading a consortium of 20 firms working on CCS. Called the Alberta Saline Aquifer Project, the consortium is looking to turn a profit from storing CO₂ underground in a pilot project in southern Alberta.

However, Rob Lavoie, project manager for the University of Calgary’s WASP CCS research project, said that the province’s strategy faces some serious obstacles. He explained that since 69.5 per cent of Alberta’s planned greenhouse gas reductions is to come from CCS, the government needs to substantially raise the $15-per-tonne surcharge charged to CO₂ emitters, as well as broaden who it's applicable to.

“The large-scale saline aquifer sequestration of carbon dioxide has no economic driver other than a social conscience and a social desire to eliminate carbon dioxide from the atmosphere, or to prevent CO₂ from being released into the atmosphere to prevent further increases in atmospheric CO₂ concentrations,” Lavoie said, explaining that the financial cost of engaging in CCS will need to be cheaper than doing nothing.

“The only revenue there could be is [through] a carbon tax. That’s the only way revenue can be factored in. There has to be some kind of cost on carbon in order for there to be revenue for pure saline aquifer sequestration.”

Lavoie estimated that because the costs of CCS ranges anywhere from $60–120 per tonne, that would be the minimum carbon tax required to get power plants and factories to switch to CCS. He believes that the government will look to doing this after CCS has proven itself within five years. The main reason the current proposals have received money was because they were the most likely to succeed.

BURNING CRUDE WITH ENHANCED OIL RECOVERY

One possibility for CCS companies to generate revenue is through the well-established process of Enhanced Oil Recovery, known as EOR, which squeezes more oil out of exhausted wells. Enhance Energy and Swan Hills Synfuels — two companies receiving government CCS grants — plan to generate revenue through the sale of the newly recovered oil. The government estimates that 450 million tonnes of CO₂ can be buried using EOR.

However, this raises a paradox, as mentioned by Edmonton Journal columnist Graham Thompson in an article published last October.

“Burning three barrels of oil on average generates about one tonne of CO₂, which means that burning those 1.4 billion barrels will produce about 444 million tons of CO₂ — almost exactly the amount of CO₂ injected in the first place. In other words, Alberta could claim to have buried 450 million tonnes of CO₂, but as far as the global climate is concerned almost no carbon dioxide would have been removed from the atmosphere.”

Despite this, Swan Hills Synfuels CEO Martin Lambert defended using EOR to cut emissions.

“I just don’t understand how an argument based on ‘we shouldn’t produce more oil’ kind of holds together. If you use fresh money and a drilling rig to produce more oil, that’s acceptable, but injecting CO₂ to produce more oil isn’t? That sounds like a non-sequitur to me.”

Susan Cole, Enhance Energy’s president, added, “The CO₂ that remains in the ground after you do enhanced oil recovery means that even though we produce oil, the net calculation is that CO₂ emissions are reduced in the province.”

All requests by the Gateway for comment from Alberta Energy Minister Ron Liepert and Diana McQueen, the Parliamentary assistant to the Minister of Energy and co-chair for Climate Change Central were referred to spokespeople. Karen Karbashewski, a communications officer for Alberta Energy, emphasized that demand for oil is global and not local.

“Oil extracted in EOR is oil that has already been tapped into via conventional wells — so the well is already drilled, the road to the well is already built, and the pipeline to transport the hydrocarbon is already in place,” she said. “This requires minimal new infrastructure. It would be poor resource management to leave resources stranded in the ground.”

CCS IN THE LONG-TERM: THE COST

A major issue taken up by critics of Alberta’s CCS plan is the government’s lack of long-term commitment. Lavoie noted that a greater long-term commitment is essential, estimating that the province will need to spend $2 billion per year for the next decade just to keep CCS viable.

“It’s not just a garbage collection thing; it’s paying the garbage collector. It’s a $20-billion garbage collection exercise per year. I see 2010 to 2015, or even 2020 for [the] experimental [stage], and that’s five megatons sequestration a year — so that’s half a billion dollars by that time a year by the time you get to 2020,” he said, adding that increased CO₂ extraction costs from older factories and power plants will keep CCS's price from falling over time. “Then you roll it out to the next order of magnitude and put 10 times that volume so that’s probably another 20 years of operating at 50 megatons a year.”

One of the ways in which the province has been looking to the future is the investing of funds gathered by the $15-per-tonne surcharge on emissions. These funds are put into the Climate Change and Emissions Management Fund, which is directed towards supporting the development of technologies that reduce CO₂ emissions. So far, this fund has amassed $122 million. The decision of what to invest in is determined by the Alberta Carbon Capture and Storage Development Council, an arms'-length provincial body.

“The board is deciding where that funding will go, and that announcement will happen in May, I believe. $122 million is not chunk change,” Karbashewski said.

However, Andrew Leach, an associate professor from the University of Alberta’s School of Energy and the Environment, said that the government policy itself is leaving the province with fewer options to address greenhouse gas emissions. He explained that such a great proportion of Alberta’s emissions cuts are to come from CCS, as per the government’s 2008 strategy.

However, he added, the government has already set the incentives for companies, making it harder for it to backtrack on policy. If CCS becomes too expensive, it will become harder to shift Alberta’s reliance from less CCS to other forms of green energy.

“There’s a lot of risk. It’s not assured that [carbon capture] will work. There’s no means assured that it won’t — but as soon as we lock in on that as a winner, then you would give up all those other elements that we can shift around.”

Leach added that one key factor to CCS's long-term success is what other provinces do. If CCS forces Alberta to put a per-tonne price on CO₂ emissions over $60, while other provinces only charge emitters $30 per ton, the province is in trouble.

“If we’re doing $150 or $200 [per tonne] in Alberta, I don’t think that’s going to be sustainable. It’s going to be very difficult to do,” Leach said, adding that Europe’s price on CO₂ is only 35–45 Euros per tonne. “We’ll still be doubling the value that Europe’s putting on it.”

Interestingly enough, despite Alberta’s ambitious plans, Leach noted that the government can’t seem to please anyone when it comes to its environmental policy — whether it be industry or environmentalists.

“No other province in Canada has committed to anything near that aggressive in terms of the value signal that you put on carbon, and yet we still get pounded by the environmental groups.”

IMMEDIATE ENVIRONMENTAL IMPACT OF CCS

Critics of CCS in general have raised issues surrounding its environmental impacts. A May 2008 report by Greenpeace, entitled False Hope, raised concerns regarding sulfur dioxide creeping into the process.

“Captured CO₂ often contains various byproducts of combustion processes such as nitrogen oxides (NOx) and sulphur dioxide (SO₂), as well as trace heavy metals including lead, mercury, and cadmium,” the report indicated. “In contact with water, SO₂ forms the highly corrosive sulphuric acid that more readily dissolves materials, such as the cement used to seal wells.”

However John Zhou, the Executive Director of the Environment Solutions branch of Alberta Innovates — the province’s energy and environmental research agency — said that the sulphur dioxide isn’t a concern.

“Most pollutants associated with CO₂ are captured today and disposed [of] safely [for example] in depleted hydrocarbon reservoirs and deep saline aquifers. Sulphur emissions from coal combustion [are] controlled by reacting [sulphur emissions] with limestone to form gypsum (a mineral used in dry wall). CO₂ capture itself will not generate additional pollutants.”

Lavoie echoed this sentiment, “You also have to look at the scale of it and how much SO₂ are we actually talking about. Is there enough to dissolve any significant amount of rock? And the answer to that is CO₂ is 99 or 98 per cent pure going into these reservoirs, so the chances of there being enough impurity of SO₂ in that CO₂ is very low.”

Chuck Szmurlo, Enbridge’s vice president of alternative and emerging technologies, emphasized that the aquifers are separated from usable ground water by impermeable cap rocks.

“There [are] enormous physical distances between these salt water aquifers and a fresh water aquifer, so the odds of them coming into contact are pretty remote. Even given that remote chance, again, where there’s CO₂ injection, there would be extensive monitoring of this and comparing it to base levels.”

THE BOTTOM LINE

The CCS strategy doesn’t appear to be a threat to public safety, and is a scientifically plausible solution to dealing with Alberta’s carbon emissions, albeit to an unknown degree. Still, however, remains the issue of affordability. While Lavoie said that CCS isn’t a silver bullet, he called it “a silver buckshot.”

“It’s one part of the solution and it’s not the entire thing so I think to the degree that it can work for us, it will add to a number of other solutions that are out there to bring CO₂ emissions down,” he said, adding that there needs to be other methods to reduce greenhouse gasses. “But why would you tie a hand behind your back when this is a significant scalable process that is available to us?”

“We need to be looking at the CO₂ sequestration, the CO₂ emissions reductions, and managing the CO₂ concentrations in the atmosphere from all of the options that are available, not just CCS. It is one of many solutions and it’s a significant one.”