Is CCS Really so Expensive? An Analysis of Cascading Costs and CO2 Emissions Reduction of Industrial Ccs Implementation Applied to a Bridge

Carbon capture, transport, and storage (CCS) is an essential technology to mitigate global CO2 emissions from power and industry sectors. Despite the increasing recognition and interest in both the scientific community and stakeholders, current CCS deployment is far behind targeted ambitions. A key reason is that CCS is often perceived as too expensive to reduce CO2 emissions. The costs of CCS have however traditionally been looked at from the industrial plant point of view which does not necessarily reflect the end-user’s perspective. This paper addresses the incomplete view by investigating the impact of implementing CCS in industrial facilities on the overall costs and CO2 emissions of end-user products and services. As an example, this work examines the extent to which an increase in costs of raw materials (cement and steel) due to CCS impact the costs of building a bridge. Our results show that although CCS significantly increases the cost of cement and steel, the subsequent increment in overall costs of constructing a bridge remains marginal (~ 1%). This 1% cost increase, however, enables a deep reduction in CO2 emissions (~ 51%) associated with the bridge construction. While more research is needed into the impact of CCS implementation on end-user products and services, this work is the first step to a better understanding of the real cost and benefits of CCS