Carbon Capture Usage and Storage

Carbon Capture Usage and Storage (CCUS), also referred to without the 'usage' part of the acronym CCS (Carbon Capture Storage), has become of increasing interest in the UK waste sector due to the carbon emitted by Energy from Waste (EfW) facilities, and specifically larger plants focused on Municipal Solid Waste (MSW) (many of the plants listed as Residual EfW in WikiWaste).

Context

CCUS involves the following steps:

• Capturing CO₂ from power plants or industrial processes using a chemical reaction. Once captured, CO₂ is then compressed into a liquid state for transportation.
• Transporting the CO₂ (via pipelines or ships) to deep geological storage points, such as depleted oil and gas fields or deep saline aquifers.
• Storing the CO₂ in these sites permanently.
• Utilisation. As an alternative to storage, this involves the use of CO₂ in industrial processes.

The Department for Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy (BEIS) announced its approach to developing carbon capture in October 2017, creating a task force and development pathway action plan through 2018 and 2019. Part of this development plan is to support initiatives in Teeside, Humberside, Merseyside and Grangemouth as 'decarbonisation clusters', announced by BEIS in May 2021.

BEIS have announced support that could see the Suez EfW site in Teeside (Teeside EfW - lines 1-5 (Teeside & NEERC), Billingham. line 3) and the Viridor EfW site in Merseyside (Runcorn EfW) develop CCUS technologies, with Viridor announcing its intent to invest up to £1billion of CCUS storage technology in five of its sites.

In November 2021 Cory announced its intention to develop CCS technology at its site at Riverside Resource Recovery Facility (RRRF).

Reports in October 2021

In October 2021 two reports were published regarding the application of CCUS to EfW facilities:

• Zero Waste Europe 'CCS for Incinerators? An expensive distraction to a circular economy'
• Eunomia 'CCUS Development Pathway for the EfW Sector' (a report commissioned by Viridor)

The reports both refer to carbon emissions from EfW plants as being approximately 1 tonne of CO₂ 'emitted' for 1 tonne of MSW processed whilst the document referenced on page 152 refers to a range of between 0.7 and 1.7 tonnes of CO₂ 'generated' per tonne of MSW waste due to its heterogeneous nature. The document further identifies that between 33% and 50% of this carbon is of fossil origin (i.e. Plastic) which is considered relevant to climate change. This differs from the CO₂e for a combustion facility set out by BEIS, where the figure used is 21.294kg CO₂e per tonne of MSW.

Whilst Eunomia set out the potential for reducing emissions from EfW in their report at a cost of between £66 and £110 per tonne processed, initially centered on the BEIS 'decarbonisation clusters', the Zero Waste Europe report suggests these costs will be higher and that the push towards CCS for EfW plants distract from investing and managing waste further up the waste hierarchy.