The cost of CCS - a product chain analysis of the cement and pulp industries

Paper in proceeding, 2022

Global greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions need to be net-zero around mid-century and net-negative thereafter to comply with the Paris Agreement and restrict global warming to less than 2°C with reasonable certainty. Carbon Capture and Storage (CCS) can be implemented to mitigate fossil-based emissions from the cement industry and to create negative emissions in the sulfate pulp industry. However, the application of CCS on basic material production typically results in large increases in production costs due to investment costs of the capture plant and increased operational cost to power the capture process. This work quantifies the change in costs and CO2-emissions in a product chain perspective when introducing CCS in cement and Kraft pulp production. The changes are explored through end-product case studies for the cement and pulp industries for a high-speed railway and disposable baby diaper, respectively. The results show that the production cost of cement increases by 230-260% when applying CCS with 90% capture rate and a carbon price of 80€/tCO2 on non-abated fossil emissions. However, the production cost for the end-product, the high-speed railway, only increases by 1.4-2.0%. Similarly, the production cost of pulp increases by 75-130% when applying CCS on two out of three emissions sources at the Kraft pulp mill with an overall capture rate of 77.5%, but the production cost of the end-product, the disposable baby diaper, only increases by 3.3-4.8%.