Europe’s industrial heartland sprawled across the EU’s founding members could have a promising future as the bloc’s main carbon valley.
As the European hydrogen bubble was pumped ever larger, companies and investors began to dream of “hydrogen valleys” as politicians shovelled subsidies into what they hoped would become interconnected industrial clusters inspired by the Californian El Dorado of digital tech.
With these dreams having collided with cold, hard reality, an alternative future where European industry can continue to generate carbon dioxide is creating excitement for a new type of cluster: the carbon valley, where the greenhouse gas is trapped and managed through carbon capture and storage (CCS), then turned into a commodity rather than a climate-wrecker.
There will be no shortage of CO2. Industrial processes – baking lime for cement, glass and paper production and cracking hydrocarbons – are projected to emit around 130 million tonnes in 2050, according to research company Frontier Economics in a new study commissioned by the eFuel Alliance, which lobbies for synthetic fuel production.
If CO2 from burning biomass is included, there would be some 660 million tonnes of carbon to go around in 2050, the study shared with Euractiv suggests.
“Industrial process emissions are not, per se, reprehensible and are expected to persist past 2050,” said Tobias Block of the eFuel Alliance.
And much of it will be concentrated around Europe’s extended industrial supercluster centred on the Rhineland – Germany’s industrial heartland, and, the data suggests, the perfect spot for a future carbon valley.
“If there were any carbon valley in Europe, it would be wedged between Northern France and Amsterdam, with its massive chemical industry clusters,” said Domien Vangenechten at think tank E3G in Berlin.
“With CO2 transportation likely to be expensive, the closer any would-be buyer can get, the better,” he added.
Europe’s future carbon buyers
For carbon valleys to make sense, there would have to be companies lining up to turn the industrial by-product into a marketable commodity.
Traditionally, oil and gas firms have been pushing the idea of replacing fossil fuels with greener alternatives based on hydrogen and CO2 drawn from the air – hence the setting up of groups like the eFuel Alliance.
Now, they also want to tap into industrial emissions – because of the concentration and abundance of CO2. Current EU rules push firms to either pay for the right to pollute, or sequester it permanently using carbon capture and storage (CCS) technology, barring would-be buyers from accessing it.
“There is the need to open the utilisation for further processes,” argues Block.
They will have to compete for the carbon with the chemical industry, which mainly needs CO2 to produce the fertiliser precursor urea. Then there is the food industry: Dutch greenhouses use it to boost plant growth, while others use it in carbonated drinks.
“Sectors such as fertilisers, chemicals and food and beverages will continue to require CO2 as a feedstock,” said Lino Sonnen of Frontier Economics. Other uses could include building material production or biotechnologies.
“To ensure economic viability, these companies need access to sources that provide sufficient CO2 volumes,” Sonnen said. And they would need the carbon “over the investment horizon, which can be 20 years or longer, making some of the existing large point emitters particularly attractive.”
But the most attractive choice for CO2 emitters could be to put it in permanent storage.
“Current EU rules make it highly unlikely that using the CO2, whether it be for chemicals or e-fuels, can beat the economics of simply storing it underground,” said Vangenechten.
If successfully deployed at scale, CCS would allow firms to “save on expensive CO2 certificates” – already over €70 a tonne and expected to exceed €100 in the coming years – “while also ensuring lasting climate benefits”.
After all, turning carbon into fuel to be burned to propel cars or planes “merely delays the emission”, Vangenechten noted.
(rh, aw)
