Prospects for Carbon Capture and Sequestration Technologies Assuming Their Technological Learning

By Keywan Riahi, Edward S. Rubin, Leo Schrattenholzer. 2004

123 citations recorded by the source corpus.

This paper analyzes potentials of carbon capture and sequestration technologies (CCS) in a set of long-term energy-economic-environmental scenarios based on alternative assumptions for technological progress of CCS. In order to get a reasonable guide to future technological progress in managing CO2 emissions, we review past experience in controlling sulfur dioxide emissions (SO2) from power plants. By doing so, we quantify a “learning curve” for CCS, which describes the relationship between the improvement of costs due to accumulation of experience in CCS construction. We incorporate the learning curve into the energy modeling framework MESSAGE-MACRO and develop greenhouse gas emissions scenarios of economic, demographic, and energy demand development, where alternative policy cases lead to the stabilization of atmospheric CO2 concentrations at 550 parts per million by volume (ppmv) by the end of the 21st century. Due to the assumed technological learning, costs of the emissions reduction for CCS drop rapidly and in parallel with the massive introduction of CCS on the global scale. Compared to scenarios based on static cost assumptions for CCS, the contribution of carbon sequestration is about 50 percent higher in the case of learning resulting in cumulative sequestration of CO2 ranging from 150 to 250 billion (109) tons carbon during the 21st century. The results illustrate that carbon capture and sequestration is one of the obvious priority candidates for long-term technology policies and enhanced R&D efforts to hedge against the risk associated with high environmental impacts of climate change.

Subfields: Economics and Econometrics, Mechanical Engineering, Renewable Energy, Sustainability and the Environment

View Paper: https://www.semanticscholar.org/paper/7956acc1391ccf13e0af0698678c3d924f0c00ca

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Citations in the corpus

Impact of CCS on the Economics of Coal-Fired Power Plants: Why Investment Costs Do and Efficiency Doesn’t Matter (2009, background): “…of capture technology (IPCC, 2005; MIT, 2007), sufficiently high CO2 prices or reduction targets (WISE and DOOLEY, 2009), learning curve effects (RIAHI ET AL., 2004; ABRELL ET AL., 2009), leakage-free and affordable storage and infrastructure (ODENBERGER ET AL., 2008; DAMEN ET AL., 2009),…”
Cost and performance of fossil fuel power plants with CO2 capture and storage (2007, background): “CO2 capture and storage (CCS) is receiving considerable attention as a potential greenhouse gas (GHG) mitigation option that could allow a smoother and less costly transition to a sustainable, low-carbon energy future over the next century ( Riahi et al., 2003; IPCC, 2005).”
Progress in carbon dioxide separation and capture: a review. (2008, background): “had a modeling study of CO2 capture and sequestration incorporating factors of economic, demographic, energy demand and alternative policy (Riahi et al., 2004).”
Power Generation Expansion Planning Model Towards Low-Carbon Economy and Its Application in China (2010, background): “It is treated as exogenous, constant reduction rate over time in this paper [13], [14]:”
Improving the behavioral realism of global integrated assessment models: An application to consumers’ vehicle choices (2017, methodology): “…modeling framework is available, including documentation of model set-up and mathematical formulation (Messner and Strubegger, 1995, Riahi et al., 2012, ADVANCE, 2015) and the model’s representation of technological change and learning (Rao et al., 2006, Riahi et al., 2004, Roehrl and Riahi, 2000).”