Transportation systems for CO2––application to carbon capture and storage

Commercialization of carbon capture and storage from fossil fuelled power plants requires an infrastructure for transportation of the captured carbon dioxide (CO2) from the sources of emission to the storage sites. This paper identifies and analyses different transportation scenarios with respect to costs, capacity, distance, means of transportation and type of storage. The scenario analysis shows that feasible transportation alternatives are pipelines (on and off shore), water carriers (off shore) and combinations of these. Transportation scenarios are given for different transportation capacities ranging from a demonstration plant with an assumed capacity of 200 MWe (1Mt/y of CO2) up to a system of several large 1000 MWe power plants in a coordinated network (40 Mt/y up to 300 Mt/y of CO2). The transportation costs for the demonstration plant scenario range from 1 to 6€/ton of CO2 depending on storage type and means of transportation. The corresponding figure for the coordinated network scenario with off shore storage is around 2€/ton of CO2.