U.S. DOE’s Economic Tools to Assess the Cost of CO2 Capture, Utilization, Storage and Transportation (CCUS)

Abstract

The United States (U.S.) Department of Energy (DOE) and the National Energy Technology Laboratory (NETL) have developed a series of economic tools and resources that enable evaluation of the cost to implement CCUS for each segment of the value chain: capture, transport, utilization and storage. This paper provides a comprehensive review of the storage and transport economic models and analytical approaches DOE/NETL has developed for assessing the CO2 storage and transport cost drivers that impact the entire CCUS value chain.

DOE’s CO2 storage and transport models provide for various analytical approaches to evaluate the economics associated with deploying CCUS. The models incorporate all relevant associated costs to estimate the first-year break-even price to store or transport a tonne of CO2. To estimate this cost, these models utilize basic engineering equations to calculate storage or transportation cost drivers. The two major cost drivers for storage are the annual rate of injection of CO2 and areal extent of the CO2 plume in the subsurface. The areal extent of the CO2 plume in turn drives monitoring, verification and accounting (MVA) cost and financial responsibility costs. For transportation, the cost drivers are pipeline diameter and distance between source and storage site. The CO2 storage cost model provides the technology and cost data, including the cost of the financial responsibility instruments, to model storage projects that comply with the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency underground injection control Class VI regulations. It also has a geology database of 64 formations that provide the storage potential for modeling CO2 storage reservoirs. Costs associated with site selection and characterization, permitting, wells, facility construction, injection operation, monitoring, and closure of the storage site are included in the storage cost model. The pipeline model accounts for construction and operation costs. Both models provide for comparative cost analysis of, for example, various storage reservoirs, storage project operations, selection of financial responsibility instruments, selection of a reservoir for overall low cost CCUS, or utilization of a trunkline pipeline system instead of a dedicated pipeline. Examples from several studies illustrate the flexibility of the CO2 storage and transportation cost models to provide cost analysis of CO2 storage potential in the various basins in the Lower-48 states.

AAPG Datapages/Search and Discovery Article #90323 ©2018 AAPG Annual Convention and Exhibition, Salt Lake City, Utah, May 20-23, 2018