Zukünftige Energie- und Industriesysteme
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Prospects of carbon capture and storage (CCS) in China's power sector : an integrated assessment
(2015)
Objective: The aim of the present article is to conduct an integrated assessment in order to explore whether CCS could be a viable technological option for significantly reducing future CO2 emissions in China. Methods: In this paper, an integrated approach covering five assessment dimensions is chosen. Each dimension is investigated using specific methods (graphical abstract). Results: The most crucial precondition that must be met is a reliable storage capacity assessment based on site-specific geological data. Our projection of different trends of coal-based power plant capacities up to 2050 ranges between 34 and 221 Gt of CO2 that may be captured from coal-fired power plants to be built by 2050. If very optimistic assumptions about the country’s CO2 storage potential are applied, 192 Gt of CO2 could theoretically be stored as a result of matching these sources with suitable sinks. If a cautious approach is taken, this figure falls to 29 Gt of CO2. In practice, this potential will decrease further with the impact of technical, legal, economic and social acceptance factors. Further constraints may be the delayed commercial availability of CCS in China; a significant barrier to achieving the economic viability of CCS due to a currently non-existing nation-wide CO2 pricing scheme that generates a sufficiently strong price signal; an expected life-cycle reduction rate of the power plant's greenhouse gas emissions of 59-60%; and an increase in most other negative environmental and social impacts. Conclusion and practice implications: Most experts expect a striking dominance of coal-fired power generation in the country's electricity sector, even if the recent trend towards a flattened deployment of coal capacity and reduced annual growth rates of coal-fired generation proves to be true in the future. In order to reduce fossil fuel-related CO2 emissions to a level that would be consistent with the long-term climate protection target of the international community to which China is increasingly committing itself, this option may require the introduction of CCS. However, a precondition for opting for CCS would be finding robust solutions to the constraints highlighted in this article. Furthermore, a comparison with other low-carbon technology options may be useful in drawing completely valid conclusions on the economic, ecological and social viability of CCS in a low-carbon policy environment. The assessment dimensions should be integrated into macro-economic optimisation models by combining qualitative with quantitative modelling, and the flexible operation of CCS power plants should be analysed in view of a possible role of CCS for balancing fluctuating renewable energies.
This article presents an integrated assessment conducted in order to explore whether carbon capture and storage (CCS) could be a viable technological option for significantly reducing future CO2 emissions in South Africa. The methodological approach covers a commercial availability analysis, an analysis of the long-term usable CO2 storage potential (based on storage capacity assessment, energy scenario analysis and source-sink matching), an economic and ecological assessment and a stakeholder analysis. The findings show, that a reliable storage capacity assessment is needed, since only rough figures concerning the effective capacity currently exist. Further constraints on the fast deployment of CCS may be the delayed commercial availability of CCS, significant barriers to increasing the economic viability of CCS, an expected net maximum reduction rate of the power plant's greenhouse gas emissions of 67%-72%, an increase in other environmental and social impacts, and low public awareness of CCS. One precondition for opting for CCS would be to find robust solutions to these constraints, taking into account that CCS could potentially conflict with other important policy objectives, such as affordable electricity rates to give the whole population access to electricity.
The study presents the results of an integrated assessment of carbon capture and storage (CCS) in the power plant sector in Germany, with special emphasis on the competition with renewable energy technologies. Assessment dimensions comprise technical, economic and environmental aspects, long-term scenario analysis, the role of stakeholders and public acceptance and regulatory issues. The results lead to the overall conclusion that there might not necessarily be a need to focus additionally on CCS in the power plant sector. Even in case of ambitious climate protection targets, current energy policy priorities (expansion of renewable energies and combined heat and power plants as well as enhanced energy productivity) result in a limited demand for CCS. In case that the large energy saving potential aimed for can only partly be implemented, the rising gap in CO2 reduction could only be closed by setting up a CCS-maximum strategy. In this case, up to 22% (41 GW) of the totally installed load in 2050 could be based on CCS. Assuming a more realistic scenario variant applying CCS to only 20 GW or lower would not be sufficient to reach the envisaged climate targets in the electricity sector. Furthermore, the growing public opposition against CO2 storage projects appears as a key barrier, supplemented by major uncertainties concerning the estimation of storage potentials, the long-term cost development as well as the environmental burdens which abound when applying a life-cycle approach. However, recently, alternative applications are being increasingly considered–that is the capture of CO2 at industrial point sources and biomass based energy production (electricity, heat and fuels) where assessment studies for exploring the potentials, limits and requirements for commercial use are missing so far. Globally, CCS at power plants might be an important climate protection technology: coal-consuming countries such as China and India are increasingly moving centre stage into the debate. Here, similar investigations on the development and the integration of both, CCS and renewable energies, into the individual energy system structures of such countries would be reasonable.
Nach jahrzehntelangen, erfolgreichen Reduktionen der CO2-Emissionen in der Industrie, ist der Trend in den letzten Jahren wieder rückläufig geworden: seit 2014 sind die Emissionen wieder angestiegen (UBA 2019). Um die deutschen Klimaziele zu erreichen ist es daher notwendig, die Anstrengungen zu verstärken und intensiver als in der Vergangenheit Innovationen für den Klimaschutz voranzutreiben: Neue Produkte und Geschäftsmodelle sowie neue Herstellungsverfahren zu entwickeln, mit denen sich Treibhausgasemissionen reduzieren lassen.
Um die deutschen Klimaziele für 2030 einzuhalten, werden hierfür gerade auch (inkrementelle) Effizienzsteigerungen nötig sein - diese werden jedoch nicht ausreichend sein. Innovationen müssen auch einen disruptiven Wandel von Strukturen und Geschäftsmodellen erwirken. Disruptive Innovationen und industrielle Konversionsprozesse bergen jedoch hohe Risiken für die etablierte Industrie. Hier stellt sich also die Frage, wie eine auf Klimaschutz ausgerichtete Innovationspolitik gestaltet werden muss, um einerseits die notwendigen CO2-Einsparungen zu ermöglichen und andererseits die Leistungfähigkeit der deutschen Industrie zu befördern?
Vor diesem Hintergrund widmet sich diese Studie zwei zentralen Fragestellungen: Wie laufen Klimaschutz-Innovationsprozesse ab? Wie können Klimaschutz-Innovationen befördert werden?
Basierend auf einer konzeptionellen Klassifizierung von Klimaschutz-Innovationen, wurden eine Reihe von existierenden Klimaschutz-Innovationen, gerade aus der energieintensiven Industrie analysiert. Vier Fallbeispiele aus verschiedenen Sektoren (Aluminiumherstellung und -verarbeitung, Herstellung neuer Kraftstoffe sowie der Verzinkung) und verschiedenen Innovationstypen werden in der Studie ausführlich beschrieben. Dabei zeigt sich, dass sich Unternehmen nicht nur an aktuellen Rahmenbedingungen orientieren, sondern Innovationen - sowohl inkrementeller wie auch radikaler Natur- im Bereich Klimaschutz auch unter der Annahme dynamischer Entwicklungen von sich verstärkenden Klimaschutzrahmenbedingungen vorantreiben. Darüber hinaus waren an allen untersuchten Fällen auch externe Promotoren unterstützend tätig. Daher wurden die möglichen Rollen von Klimaschutz-Promotoren mit unterschiedlichen regionalen und inhaltlichen Schwerpunkten gezielt analysiert.
Emscher 3.0 : from grey to blue - or, how the blue sky over the Ruhr region fell into the Emscher
(2013)
The river Emscher is - similar to the river Ruhr - the symbol of one of the internationally most renowned industrial regions: the Ruhr area with its 5 million inhabitants and an important location of key industries such as steel, chemical and materials industry. The revitalisation of the Emscher over the last 20 years marks a new phase in the region's history and is an impressive example of ecological and socio-economic transformation affecting all aspects of life along the river. What can we learn from the Emscher conversion for upcoming tasks in other infrastructure fields?