Who’s ahead? Everyone likes a bit of healthy competition and this is also true in the world of carbon capture, utilization and storage (also known as CCUS). Besides, when it comes to decarbonization, winning is a thing to strive for.
In this blog, we’ll take a closer look at a long-time favorite comparison: Europe vs across the pond in Canada and the USA (North America for short). What’s in scope? Volumes and segments of industrial CO2 emissions. And then, just as importantly, how the industry is going about solving these challenges with CCUS.
We’ll go looking for similarities and differences, aiming to highlight common ground and where the two continents differ.
Contents
PS: This is fundamentally based on CaptureMap data. Be sure to check out our approach in the appendix to understand what data we source and how we work with it.
CO2 emissions sources
The carousel below illustrate the large CO2 emission point sources in Europe and North America, as well as a figure comparing the emissions for the largest segments.
Similarities:
- Not surprisingly, at roughly 14 000 total, there are a lot of facilities in both regions, across many segments. That said, ‘a lot’ is a relative term.
- If you look at the number of cars in the same areas, we’re at more than 600 million – that’s 43 000x larger. We make the comparison to illustrate a point that decarbonization at large facilities has the possibility of tremendous impact. Cutting a million tonnes of CO2 from one facility is equivalent to taking several hundred thousand fossil-fueled cars off the road.
- CO2 emissions from power generation takes the day, largest by a significant share in both markets.
- Fossil CO2 emissions significantly outweigh the biogenic type.
Differences:
- North America has a bigger sum of CO2 emissions, by a lot: they have more than twice the number of facilities than in Europe, and more than twice the amount of CO2 emissions.
- Could it be because there are more people there? We thought so, but some quick summing across different sources estimates North America’s population at around 390 million people, whereas EU-27 plus Norway, UK, Iceland and Switzerland is at 533 million.
- Could it be a large difference in GDP? North America combined is at roughly 30 trillion USD, whereas it’s around 23 trillion USD in Europe. A difference yes, but far from twice as much.
- The short answer here is that there’s probably a multitude of factors that explain the significant difference in emissions, but it’s beyond the scope of this article to dive deeper.
- The biogenic share in Europe, at 14%, is more than twice as large as in North America. This could indicate that there will be a larger carbon dioxide removal (CDR) market in Europe going forward, although (as this article shows), it’s difficult to get exact totals for biogenic CO2 across different regions. It could also merely indicate that Europe is better at reporting biogenic CO2.
- Despite the size differences in some segments consistent with the observation made above (power, oil & gas, chemicals and pulp & paper), it’s interesting to note some segments where Europe is actually larger than in North America. This is the case for waste, iron & steel, and minerals(including lime and cement plants).
- A final difference is that in North America, three segments (power, oil & gas and chemicals) alone constitute 83% of the total CO2 emissions. In Europe, it’s distributed across several more segments. This may indicate that Europe has a harder challenge on its hands because it has to find decarbonization solutions across a broader set of emission types to get to net-zero.
Carbon capture projects – high level
From CO2 emissions to what to do about them. To be clear, we’re fond of all things decarbonization, meaning a broad set of approaches including efficiency, electrification, renewables, circularity, consumption reduction, as well as CCUS. And we’re convinced it’s going to take everything we got (and then some) to get to net-zero. But since it’s carbon capture that’s mostly within our domain, we’ll focus on that one.
The first set of charts below depict map-based illustrations of on-going carbon capture projects. Facilities in grey have no capture project associated with them; in yellow for feasibility (anything before Final Investment Decision), in bright green for EPC (past FID), and dark green in operation.
Similarities:
- Both regions have carbon capture projects across the development scale, from feasibility to operation. And there’s much more on the way than what’s currently operating.
- The number of capture projects are quite close to each other, at 431 in Europe and 481 in North America. In one sense, you could expect that the number of capture projects was proportional to the total emissions, but that’s not the case.
Differences:
- The total carbon capture capacity for all projects under development is roughly twice as large in North America compared to Europe. With about the same number of capture projects, it means that on average, the capture projects in North America are also twice as large as in Europe.
- Capture projects in operation are nearly five times as large in North America compared to Europe. What types of projects are in operation? The vast majority of it is pre-combustion capture, including gas processing (removing CO2 and other impurities from natural gas) and hydrogen production for ammonia.
Carbon capture projects – segment analysis
Similarities:
- Capture project development takes place across many segments, although the volumes are not the same.
- Oil & gas capture projects are a major driver for capture volumes in operation, in both regions.
- Geological storage is the preferred destination for capture projects.
Differences:
- There’s a broader distribution of capture volumes under development across segments in Europe.
- North America have larger capacity volumes under development in power, chemicals, oil & gas and iron & steel, whereas Europe leads the way for minerals, waste and pulp & paper.
- When it comes to transportation, the vast majority of projects in North America are going after the pipeline option, although many projects have not yet disclosed transportation methods. Shipping plays a much larger role in Europe, sometimes also in multimodal transport combined with pipelines.
- Moving down the value chain, what about the destination of CO2? Beyond geological storage playing the largest role for both regions, EOR (Enhanced Oil Recovery) plays a role in North America, but has very little utilization on the agenda. Conversely, in Europe utilization plays a role, but EOR is a no-go.
- Looking closer at projects in operation, ⅔ of capture volumes in North America are earmarked EOR purposes, whereas only 10% are pure geological storage. The rest is a combination. There’s also many plants that capture CO2 for food and beverage as well as other industrial applications, but their capture volumes are not disclosed on a site pr site basis. The EPA does list them on an aggregate basis however.
Carbon capture projects – market penetration
The next figure compares carbon capture volumes in each segment to the total CO2 emissions in each segment. One could easily think that the capture volumes will cut the equivalent amount of CO2 in each segment, and that would be the case if all segments were at steady state, with no new sites and no sites closed down. The world is not quite so simple.
To illustrate the point, let’s look at the chemicals segment, where new blue hydrogen, ammonia and SAF plants belong under. These add to impressive capture volumes, but since the vast majority of them are greenfield sites (no previously reported CO2 emissions), they also don’t cut existing CO2 emissions. Instead, they prevent additional CO2 emissions from entering the atmosphere.
Similarities:
- Relatively speaking, significant capture volumes within the chemicals segment across both regions.
- Relatively low penetrations in iron & steel, oil & gas, and power.
Differences:
- Capture penetration in minerals is nearly 2,5 times larger in Europe
- In the waste segment (typically waste-to-energy facilities) capture is almost non-existent in North America whereas it’s the third largest by share in Europe. Similar story for pulp & paper.
Carbon capture projects – timelines
The final set of charts shows announced capture capacity plotted against the year of planned start of operation. Think of it as a way to show market growth. The chart is not trivial to read, but here’s an example. Looking at the 2030 column for Europe, there are 97mtpa currently (as per today) in Feasibility, meaning that these capture projects are expected to come into operation on or before 2030. In addition, there are currently 8mtpa under construction (in EPC) that are also scheduled to start operating in or before 2020.
This is a tricky exercise, because it requires that we have data on both capture capacity AND the planned year for start of operation. In Europe, 188 out of 431 capture projects give us that information, that’s only 43%. In one way, this curve underestimates what’s out there. On the other hand, it’s far from certain that all the projects in feasibility will make it to operation. In that way, it overestimates what’s coming. Perhaps the answer is not so far from what we make in the figures?
Similarities:
- Growth in both regions, but different scales. Europe from 17 to 113 mtpa, that’s a 6x growth factor, whereas it’s closer to a 4x in North America.
- Projects typically don’t announce starting years beyond 2030, that’s why the curves are almost flat past 2030.
Differences:
- There are large capture volumes in operation already in North America, whereas there’s not much happening (yet!) in Europe.
- More projects in Europe actually state timelines. Because of that, by 2030, the capture capacities are almost at parity, whereas the whole funnel (including projects without timeline) stipulates that North America should be twice as large. Is this a relative comparison of maturity, meaning only the more mature projects state timelines, and hence there are more pie-in-the-sky projects in North America? Hard to say. In general though, the more we know about a project, the more confident we feel about it going ahead.
Final reflections
Our intention with this blog was to compare and contrast what’s happening with CO2 emissions and carbon capture in Europe and North America. Calling a winner is a tough call. The more capture projects we get on both sides of the Atlantic, the happier we’ll be. Where we stand today, we still think North America has the lead, but Europe is catching up quickly. And the race isn’t over yet.
In short, here are our main takeaways:
- North America has twice the CO2 emissions of Europe.
- North America has almost the same number of capture projects as in Europe, but their combined capture capacity is double. Are things bigger across the pond, after all?
- North America has more projects in operation, driven by pre-combustion projects like natural gas processing, hydrogen and ammonia.
- Segment focus for capture projects have some overlaps and some differences: Europe is significantly more pushy on minerals, waste and pulp/paper, whereas North America takes a lead on power, chemicals and oil & gas.
- More projects in Europe put their capture capacity on a timeline, which could indicate a maturity aspect.
Appendix: Approach
Our ambition with CaptureMap is to be the world’s most accurate overview of large CO2 emitters and their associated carbon capture projects. We can’t do that without laser focus on data quality. And it’s this elusive chase of data perfection that drives us and that makes our users come to us. We’re the first to tell you that our dataset is still not perfect. Yet, from our users we also hear that we collectively know more than anyone else, and that our advantage is growing.
First clarification: geography. What do we mean by Europe? Europe can be finicky. We’ve drawn a line at the 27 countries included in the EU, plus UK, Iceland, Norway and Switzerland. This can quickly become a larger geopolitical discussion, but for us it’s first and foremost driven by data-availability.
When we make quick comparisons with other segments in this blog post (like population, GDP, number of cars, etc), we admit to letting Microsoft’s Co-pilot make some quick analysis for us, that we sanity check. The purpose of these comparisons is to create a sense of scale, not to have very precise numbers.
Emissions data
Historic CO2 data in CaptureMap is made from a combination of different public databases that we clean, harmonize and consolidate. It’s already quite challenging, but doable. See a blog here about one of the databases that makes us smile and also pull our hair out.
What’s a large emitter? Both regions have mandatory emission reporting regulations, meaning that facilities over a certain annual CO2 emissions threshold have to report their emissions. But the thresholds vary:
- In Canada, it’s above 10 000 tons of CO2 per year
- In the US, it’s above 25 000 tons of CO2 per year
- In Europe (see Annex II), it’s above 100 000 tons of CO2 per year
Does it make a big difference? In our numbers, not really. Yes, the tail of lots of small emitters amount to an impressive number of facilities. That said, they’re so small that they don’t add to a significant amount of additional emissions.
Case in point: In the USA, there are 7585 facilities in CaptureMap, with a total of 2,60 billion tonnes of CO2 emissions per year. 4956 of them (or nearly 65%) are below 100 000 tons pr year, but that constitutes only 6,5% of the total CO2 emissions.
Capture projects data
For capture projects we needed a different approach. That’s in part because the landscape changes so quickly, but also because the publicly available databases lack the granularity and update frequency we’re looking for. Therefore, we decided to develop an in-house database of capture projects using Python sprinkled with a bit of artificial intelligence (AI). We won’t divulge all the secrets of our recipe, but in short, it’s a tech stack that cuts about 90% of the processing time compared to manual approaches. And it scales incredibly well.
Our main data source for capture projects are press releases and news articles about the projects, all available in the public domain. This means that confidential projects are not included. We tie information about every capture project back to a specific facility, existing or future, on the map. This means that we do not include projects for clusters or hubs of emitters when the exact facilities are not specified. This strict mapping framework allows us to avoid double-counting, and makes it possible to tie our precise CO2 emission data and activity segments to capture projects.
In CaptureMap and in this document, a capture project consists of a capture unit being developed or already operating at a specific industrial facility. We focus on the capture of CO2 from combustion, process or fermentation emissions, and the database does not include Direct Air Capture (DAC).
We tag each capture project with relevant data about its engineering stage, the planned capture capacity, companies involved in the project, the transport mode and fate of CO2, and other relevant fields.
In terms of engineering stages, projects are categorized within:
- Feasibility: from early concept through FEED studies, until the final investment decision
- EPC: engineering, procurement and construction, from the final investment decision to the commissioning
- Operation: when the plant is operational
- Hold: for projects that are temporarily set on hold but not abandoned
- Inactive: for decommissioned facilities or abandoned projects.
- When an industrial facility has several different projects for several capture units in different phases, we distinguish between each of these phases, and each one will be counted as a project. We’ve come across facilities that have one capture unit in operation, building the next one and a third one in feasibility, so the distinction is more relevant than you’d think.
We chose deliberately to include pilot and demonstration capture projects in our database, as they tend to be an indicator that the industrial actor hosting those is seriously considering CCUS as a decarbonisation solution. These projects represent about 13% of all the projects in the database at the time of this writing.