Progressing from first-of-a-kind to Nth-of-a-kind: Applying learning rates to carbon capture deployment in Sweden
Journal article, 2024

The deployment of CO2 capture technologies presents opportunities to store fossil fuel emissions from industries and power generation (CCS) and to enable carbon utilization (CCU). However, the costs for early CCS projects are high, and this is a challenge in terms of their economic viability, requiring a strong climate policy with high carbon prices for implementation. This work details a techno-economic assessment of the cost of carbon capture based on a hybrid method and individual project approach, using first-of-a-kind contingency factors and learning rates to study the evolution of carbon capture costs as installed capacity increases over time. The work is based on a case study of 147 Swedish industrial and combined heat and power plants (total of 176 stacks). The results are presented as marginal abatement cost curves, with consideration of early mover CCS projects and learning rates. Deployment scenarios are also presented that take into account an expected increase in the CO2 price. The findings indicate that when accounting for first-of-a-kind contingencies (100 % and 200 % increases in Nth-of-a-kind costs), 90 and 17 projects, respectively, of the total 176 emission sources studied have specific CO2 costs of <300 €/t. However, high learning rates (12 %) can reduce the capture costs from first-of-a-kind to Nth-of-a-kind levels within some 30 project installations (100 % contingency). With lower learning rates (3 %), the first-of-a-kind costs are reduced by 10 %–20 %. With the expected increase in CO2 prices, a peak in carbon capture deployment is observed around Year 2035, at a carbon price of 200 €/t.

Learning rate

Techno-economic assessment

Marginal abatement cost

BECCS

Carbon capture and storage

Author

Johanna Beiron

Chalmers, Space, Earth and Environment, Energy Technology

Filip Johnsson

Chalmers, Space, Earth and Environment, Energy Technology

International Journal of Greenhouse Gas Control

1750-5836 (ISSN)

Vol. 137 104226

Bridging current knowledge gaps to enable the UPTAKE of carbon dioxide removal methods (UPTAKE)

European Commission (EC) (EC/HE/101081521), 2023-09-01 -- 2027-08-31.

Driving Forces

Sustainable development

Subject Categories

Energy Engineering

Other Environmental Engineering

Energy Systems

DOI

10.1016/j.ijggc.2024.104226

More information

Latest update

8/30/2024