S Africa’s CCS ambitions get funding boost

20th October 2015

By: Natasha Odendaal

Creamer Media Senior Deputy Editor

  

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South Africa’s ambitions of proving the viability of carbon capture and storage (CCS) have received a boost, with Norway committing to inject millions of rands into a World Bank-managed CCS fund focused on CCS projects in South Africa and Mexico.

Norway Ambassador to South Africa Trine Skymoen told delegates at the fourth South African CCS Conference, in Sandton, on Monday that up to R60-million would be provided to support the advancement of the pilot carbon dioxide storage project (PCSP) through the the World Bank CCS trust fund (CCS TF), which was established in 2009.

The South African Centre for Carbon Capture and Storage (SACCCS) was now in the third phase of a five-phase CCS roadmap that could lead to the development of a commercial one-million-ton-a-year offshore carbon storage plant by 2025.

Norway, which had provided technical and financial support for the project since 2009, had placed South Africa as a priority for CCS development.

“Our efforts to provide support to CCS in South Africa will continue,” Skymoen said.

World Bank Group senior energy specialist Dr Natalia Kulichenko-Lotz explained that the CCS TF aimed to support capacity- and knowledge-building for developing countries to explore the potential of CCS and to facilitate the inclusion of CCS options into developing countries’ low-carbon growth strategies and policies.

The bank had previously allocated a first-phase $1.35-million injection towards the development of the PCSP, partly funding the regulatory review to enable the implementation of the pilot storage project, capacity building, national and local public engagement programmes and the technoeconomic assessment for CCS deployment.

Second-phase CCS funding of $49.2-million, which was exclusively targeted at South Africa and Mexico, had kicked off in 2014.

The funds, of which South Africa had secured $27.4-million, would provide support for the PCSP’s exploration phase, which was set to get under way next year, the scoping work, the design and construction of the system and the CCS legal and regulatory framework development.

With the first and second phases of the roadmap now completed, SACCCS, which was a division of the South African National Energy Development Institute, was now moving into the development phase of the pilot PCSP.

Speaking on the sidelines of conference hosted by SACCCS and the Department of Energy, SACCCS head Dr Tony Surridge said an assessment completed in 2004 showed, theoretically, that South Africa had capturable emissions and potential storage sites.

With more than 90% of South Africa’s power generated from coal, amid other carbon-emissive industries, more than 400-million tonnes of carbon dioxide (CO2) was released every year.

Surridge explained that the CCS technology was aimed at bridging the lengthy gap until South Africa’s cleaner energy programmes replaced its existing fossil-fuelled energy infrastructure, which had a decades-long life expectancy.

The capture of CO2 at the point of release and the deep underground storage were expected to help decrease CO2 emissions.

Following the initial studies, the Geological Storage Atlas, completed in 2010, identified potential storage sites at a theoretical level.

The third phase that was now under way would determine an appropriate CO2 storage site by apposite exploration seismic surveys and drilling, measure the effect of that storage, build human capacity and determine the future of CCS in South Africa.

The construction of an onshore 10 000 t/y to 50 000 t/y CO2 pilot storage plant within a depleted gasfield, either in the Eastern Cape or KwaZulu-Natal, by 2017, would enable a technical understanding of CCS potential in the country.

By 2020, should the outcomes of the first phases be successful, the SACCCS aimed to establish a 100 000 t/y CCS demonstration plant to test an integrated operating system under local conditions and forms and establish an essential link between feasibility trials and a full-scale offshore commercial plant to one-million tons a year by 2025.

Edited by Creamer Media Reporter

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