Industry Group Publishes List of Global CCS Sites

An industry group has published a catalogue of the 525 sites it deems suitable for carbon capture and sequestration (CCS) around the world, it said July 1. It describes it as "the first independent evaluation of geologic CO₂ storage assessments, aiming to provide investor-level confidence in the maturity of commercial resources available to carbon capture, use and sequestration (CCUS) projects globally."

CCUS is seen as a necessary technology if the world is to move towards a net zero carbon economy, where hydrogen will play a major role in delivering heat and power. For cost reasons, it is assumed that most of this will be blue hydrogen, where the carbon is chemically removed from natural gas and pumped underground, the resulting hydrogen being injected into grids. But even this will require government support.

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Consisting of the Oil and Gas Climate Initiative (OGCI), the Global CCS Institute and Pale Blue Dot Energy (PBDE), the group says the document will be updated yearly and it will support the growth of a safe and commercially viable CCUS industry. It will do this by "bolstering investors’ understanding of commercial development and maturity of published CO2 storage resources, thereby leading to increased investor confidence. PBDE is working on a project in the UK, which will use the depleted Goldeneye gas field for the CO₂, along with members of the OGCI.

OGCI said its involvement with the catalogue was "part of a broad range of actions we are taking to accelerate the deployment of CCUS, enabling it to play a key role in achieving net zero emissions."

“While the scale of these estimates is encouraging, ongoing CO₂ storage characterisation and development is critical for the large-scale deployment of CCUS,” said the Global CCS Institute.