Fighting Carbon with Carbon: Enhanced Oil Recovery Debate
The 1.5-degree Celsius pathway is the extent to which we must limit global warming to reduce the odds of initiating the most dangerous and irreversible effects of climate change. Many changes and innovations must occur for this goal to turn into a reality – the most notable being carbon collection. The IPCC has noted that all pathways that achieve this goal involve carbon dioxide removal of 100-1000 GtCO2 over the 21st century. The severity of this issue is gaining publicity with the help of some big names such as Elon Musk. He announced a $100 million prize for the best carbon capture technology earlier this year with the goal to inspire carbon negative innovation. Though this is a great feat, experts from around the globe are putting their minds together to navigate around the associated challenges.
What is Enhanced Oil Recovery?
One reason that collecting carbon from the atmosphere has struggled to gain much traction is because the business model is not clear-cut. Sequestering CO2 is costly and if there is no market to sell the collected carbon, there is no incentive. One use for the resource is to pump it into an oil well which causes the oil to become less dense and float to the top, in turn increasing production. This process is called Enhanced Oil Recovery (EOR) and is currently the only carbon sequestration industry of any scale. It may sound counter-intuitive for businesses fighting climate change to partner with the major oil producers, but an argument presents itself for and against this practice.
EOR Pros/Cons
One benefit of injecting the sequestered CO2 underground is that 90 to 95 percent of it stays there and becomes trapped. By nature, it also reduces the need for oil imports because hard-to-recover barrels can be squeezed out through this process.
A downside lies in the fact that EOR qualifies companies for a tax credit titled 45Q. According to CNBC, 9 out of 10 credits given were not in compliance with the EPA. This poses an issue because oil companies are reaping the benefits from this credit without proving or disclosing how much CO2 they really captured. On top of this, EOR adds a new source of revenue for such companies and deepens society’s dependency on non-renewable energy.
Alternatives
Companies in Europe tend to not engage in EOR and have opted to find alternatives to collecting carbon. A less controversial method is Direct Air Capture (DAC) where CO2 is sucked straight out of the atmosphere. One emerging company in the space is Climeworks who operate the world’s first DAC facility. Their machines are powered solely by renewable energy and can permanently remove 90% of the carbon passed through, but similar to others in the space – turning a profit is the biggest challenge.
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