The publication from Christine Ehlig-Economides &
Michael Economides (E&E) of Texas University, was published recently in Journal
of Petroleum Science and Engineering. The conclusions from this paper was that CCS is not technically or economically feasible, based on a supposed lack of underground storage capacity.
Scientist writing for the EU's Zero Emission Platform (ZEP) has gone through this publication and written a response to it. Their conclusion is that they consider this publication to be a serious misrepresentation of the scientific, engineering and operational facts surrounding CCS. Here is the conclusions from this response:
"This is inconsistent with the experience gained from a number of varied CO2 injection projects around the world and countless other fluid injection projects over the last several decades such as the injection of hundreds of billions of gallons of waste fluid into the subsurface under the auspices of the U.S. EPA Underground Injection Control Program (EPA, 2002). Not only are these projects technically and economically viable, they are effectively managed and safely regulated.
E&E’s central premise is that CO2 storage requires a closed storage container, sealed on all sides by impermeable boundaries, to prevent leakage. This is demonstrably untrue. Moreover, even within the bounds of their own analysis, E&E have had to conflate carefully selected reservoir parameters into improbable storage scenarios to make their case. Should a real storage project wish to utilize closed target reservoirs, the volume balance would be assessed on an individual basis to match capacity with power plant emissions. This would then be linked to an assessment of storage integrity, injectivity and any requirements for pressure control, such as water extraction. This type of engineering, already well mastered by the oil and gas industry, does precisely what the E&E calculations do not allow: it distributes the excess fluid over subsurface volumes much larger than the storage reservoir itself. E&E’s paper therefore is built upon one main premise, without which the paper falls. It is notable that even with the premise, E&E struggle to deliver their central thesis. Their own calculations, when applied to credible storage scenarios with reasonable reservoir properties, do not support it."
Contributors to this response:
Andy Chadwick, Dan Smith (British Geological Survey, UK)
Chris Hodrien (UK)
Sue Hovorka (University of Texas at Austin, US)
Eric Mackay (Heriot-Watt University, UK)
Simon Mathias (Durham University, UK)
Bryan Lovell (University of Cambridge, UK)
Francois Kalaydjian (IFP, France)
Graeme Sweeney (Shell, UK)
Sally Benson (Stanford University, US)
Jim Dooley, Casie Davidson (Pacific Northwest National Laboratory, US)
According to the EU’s GeoCapacity survey, the EU has the geological
capacity to store at least 117 billion tonnes of CO2 storage; that
equates to enough capacity to store CO2 from CCS over the next 60 years,
and is over 100,000 times the capacity for CO2 as is currently stored
on a yearly basis by the Sleipner plant in Norway."
More information
The realities of storing carbon dioxide, ZEP publication (PDF)
Carbon Capture Journal, News
Assessing European Capacity for Geological Storage of CO2, EU
Geocapacity survey
Sequestering carbon dioxide in a closed underground volume, Christine Ehlig-Economides and Journal
of Petroleum Science and Engineering, Volume 70, Issues 1-2,
January 2010
About ZEP
The European Technology Platform for Zero Emission Fossil Fuel Power
Plants (ZEP) – is a broad coalition of stakeholders united in their
support for CCS and its leading authority in Europe. Members include European utilities,
petroleum companies, equipment suppliers, national geological surveys,
academic institutions and environmental NGOs.
