The Cost to Consumers of Carbon Capture and Storage—A Product Value Chain Analysis

Journal article, 2023

High-cost abatement measures to mitigate greenhouse gas emissions in the basic commodity industry is known to result in substantial increases in the production costs. Consequently, investments in such measures are lagging behind what is required to make deep emission cuts in line with the Paris Agreement. As high-cost abatement measures (such as Carbon Capture and Storage; CCS) are perceived as expensive for the basic commodity producer, this study investigates the impacts down-stream of the product value chain when assuming full cost pass-through (i.e., the cost increase related to basic commodity production is fully passed on down-stream of the product chain to the end-consumer). We investigate the effects on both costs, by means of a techno-economic assessment, and carbon footprints, using a Life Cycle Assessment (LCA), along the product value chain for the case of post-combustion CCS applied to the cement, pulp, Waste-to-Energy (WtE), and refinery industries, towards abating fossil- and process-related emissions and generating negative emissions. Here, we analyse the product value chains that involve cement to a high-speed railway, pulp to a disposable baby diaper, WtE in connection with housing and plastic products, and refineries to different transportation solutions (truck transport and air-freight). The results show that even though the costs for producing basic commodities can increase significantly (200% for cement, 75% for pulp, 230% for heat, and 6–37% for refinery products) when implementing CCS, the increases in prices for end-users are marginal (1% for the railway, 3% for the disposable baby diaper, 1% for the housing, 0.4% for truck transport and 2% for air-freight). Simultaneously, the carbon footprint associated with the end-use may be reduced by up to 36% for the railway, 31% for the diaper, 80% for the housing, and 3–23% for the refinery cases.