CCS Specialist: How We're Slashing Costs in Half

In the hope of finally cracking the economics of carbon capture -- long touted as a lifeline for oil and gas in a low-carbon future -- industry players are showing growing interest in an emerging technology specialist that promises to slash costs in half. Carbon capture firm Svante says its technology still depends on subsidies and has a few technical hurdles left to prove, but continues to accumulate credible backers, most recently through a deal inked with Total and Occidental to study carbon capture and utilization at a US cement facility (NE Jan.9'20). This Total-Oxy project would involve capturing emissions from a cement plant in Colorado owned by building material firm LafargeHolcim, also a partner in the project, and sending the CO2 onto the Sheep Mountain CO2 pipeline owned by Oxy. "For oil and gas, they have all the geotech and all the expertise to safely store the CO2 underground for years," Svante CEO and President Claude Letourneau told Energy Intelligence in an interview this week. "Occidental is the largest end-user of CO2 in the world -- there's close to 60 million tons of CO2 today they are buying -- but there's no benefits for the environment. So what we are trying to do is substitute this with CO2 going up in the atmosphere from an industrial emitter like cement. That's the drive for Oxy. For Total, it's to understand the economics of it so they can duplicate the business model elsewhere in the world." Svante's most high-profile backing comes from the Oil and Gas Climate Initiative, which added the company, named Inventys at the time, to its portfolio of investments in 2018 (NE Oct.31'19). Other Svante ventures include a partnership with Husky Energy at a facility in Saskatchewan capturing 30 tons of CO2 per day for enhanced oil recovery; one with Total and LafargeHolcim at a facility in British Columbia capturing 1 ton of CO2 per day for use in reinjection and storage in concrete; and another with Total at a research facility in France. Svante says it is able to slash costs in half by using special materials called "sorbents" in a solid form that offer a high storage capacity for carbon dioxide, instead of liquid sorbents used in traditional capture technology. The company uses "a very small amount of sorbent, simply because we do that processing in seconds as opposed to hours with [a] liquid-based system," Letourneau says. Also, "the equipment itself is much smaller, whereas "if you look at the conventional liquid system, you'd see very high towers -- very extensive." In the US, the company says it will be counting on the federal "45Q" tax credit program for carbon capture and utilization, which is among the most generous of its kind in the world but isn't being implemented. Svante's costs are $50 per ton -- a bundled number including capital and operating costs. Of that, Oxy will be paying $20 to use the CO2 and 45Q would pay $35 to bridge the gap. Svante, while far along the road to commerciality, still has a few items left to prove and develop. It is now focusing for example on building bigger machines to suit its upcoming projects, including the facility in Colorado, and developing the capacity to make its filters and other devices. "We call this the industrialization phase. All of this is like building up a new industry," Letourneau says. Svante believes another concept gaining commercial traction -- direct air capture -- has a small role to play but is too expensive to be the mainstay for capturing emissions (NE Jun.6'19). By Letourneau's calculations, using technology akin to Svante's to capture the world's industrial emissions would cost roughly $2 trillion, compared with $4 trillion for traditional capture or $7 trillion if the world waited and had to resort to direct air capture. "If you walk into the bathroom and your bathtub is overflowing with water on the floor, what would you do? You turn off the faucet first. That's called capturing CO2 from industrial emissions," Letourneau says. "Second, you would put your hands at the bottom of the tub and pull the plug to make sure you empty the bathtub. It's called storage of CO2. Then you wipe off the floor and make sure there's no water, and that's called air capture. So it's a portfolio of options that need to be addressed, but there's a cost point for every one of them." At the same time, Svante says it is working with a partner to modify its filters so they can be applied to direct air capture, which would presumably lower costs. Lauren Craft, Washington