Imagine that tomorrow, someone comes to your plant and says, “I want to buy all the carbon dioxide that you can produce.” We know there are indeed applications where carbon dioxide is a feedstock, and injection for enhanced oil recovery is another possible use, but the list is short.
Let’s consider the idea from a different angle. Say the visitor offers, “I want to buy all the carbon dioxide that you don’t produce.” What might this mean? It is a much more realistic suggestion, and how it could produce revenue for your company is the subject of my article that was published in both Hydrocarbon Processing and Gas Processing & LNG, in both instances titled Monetizing Carbon Capture, Transport, and Storage.
Carbon capture projects are proliferating rapidly, mostly in North America and Europe. But how do these shift from being a cost to producing revenue?
In some areas around the world, governing bodies have instituted limitations on CO2 emissions. Companies can emit up to the established limits, and regulators intend to incentivize reductions and/or penalize them when limits are exceeded. Some regions have chosen to incentivize reductions. For example, a long-standing cement plant will have a permit to release some thousands of tons per year of CO2 equivalent. If a plant can reduce its output below that figure, it may have an opportunity to sell the excess allowable emissions to another facility that is unable to stay within its limit.
There’s the opportunity, and the idea is getting more common. If your carbon capture system brings you below your limit, you can sell the leftover permits. Environmental goals are still reached because the overall total is not exceeded. So, what is necessary to facilitate this in areas where such programs are operating?
The company buying the credits has a seemingly simple request, but in practice this can be a difficult question to answer: How do we prove to the relevant regulatory agency and/or credit markets that these are legitimate credits? The burden of proof is on the seller. If money is changing hands, or if emissions credits are accepted, the relevant agencies and parties will want auditable proof of what has transpired.
This is not as difficult as it sounds. If your company, as the seller, has thoroughly instrumented carbon capture units with effective automation, gathering the required data should be manageable. If your company isn’t sure about how to do this, we can help. Emerson has a wide range of instrumentation ideal for these applications, and a few are discussed specifically in the article:
- Emerson’s Micro Motion Coriolis Mass Flow Meter family
- Rosemount X-STREAM Enhanced XEFD Continuous Gas Analyzer
- Emerson’s DeltaV Distributed Control System
- Smart Meter Verification
- Emerson’s Rosemount Wireless Permasense Corrosion and Erosion Monitoring System
- Emerson’s PipelineManager Software for Real-Time Transient Modeling (RTTM)
These tools can ensure effective control and monitoring of carbon capture, making it possible to document all transactions and satisfy the requirements of every permit transfer, similar to the methodology now used for custody transfer of oil and gas products.
Companies should be exploring the practicality of reducing their emissions by using CCS strategies, along with calculating the possible value of selling their excess reduction as a new income stream. Partnering with a single provider able to support all aspects of such a program can shorten the development time and ensure successful project executions.
For more information, visit our Optimizing Carbon Capture pages at Emerson.com. You can also connect and interact with other engineers in the Oil & Gas Groups at the Emerson Exchange 365 community.
