Proceedings of US DOE Workshop

Publication Overview

The aim of the workshop was to review the representation of carbon capture and storage (CCS) and advanced fossil technologies in integrated assessment models (IAMs). IAMs are computer models and can range in the mathematical methods that underpin them, but largely they incorporate representations of the energy system, the economy and earth systems into one IAM. These computational models are then used at global, national and city scales to gain insights into energy and economic system dynamics under various constraints, e.g. from government policy, from socio-economics and from the environment. IAMs are widely used in energy and climate change mitigation scenario analysis to develop technology roadmaps and inform policy pathways.

Publication Summary

1. Many IAMs have simplistic representation of CCS transport and storage costs, with a great variation in capture costs, depending upon what CCS technologies are represented in the model. Where data is available, IAMs should aim to have cost curves (and, potentially, learning rates) for capture, transport and storage.

• Regional differences are important at local and national level models, but at the global level CCS cost modelling becomes represented by an aggregated portfolio of CCS options across a region with a distribution of costs. The range of uncertainty within this distribution of costs should be explored and understood to reduce any biases.
• There is insufficient good data on geological storage sites, their injection rates and dynamics over time.
• Modellers need a cost curve on how capture rates (30% – 90%+) impact on capture costs.
• IAMs need to ensure consistent/smart CO₂ market representation and not simply link CO₂ sources directly to sinks.
• Semantics matter: some models introduce/produce a “carbon fee”, others introduce/produce a “carbon tax”; be cognisant of policy maker’s constraints and stakeholder perspectives.
• Climate mitigating scenarios without CCS will be a lot more expensive; it is not clear why this has not garnered more public or policy support.
• IAMs focus on broad systemic interactions, and as such CCS has not historically been a priority research area in IAMs.
  1. This meeting is an important step in addressing this issue.
  2. IAMs need a more functional representation of enhanced oil recovery, as well as water requirements, learning rates and hurdle rates for CCS in industrial processes and bioenergy CCS.
     1. Representing CCS plant cycling in IAMs may be difficult. How important is cycling to CCS?
  3. IAM modellers need more information on first of a kind (FOAK) and n^th of a kind (NOAK) cost curves and learning rates from industry and demonstration projections.