Page 82 - Çevre Şehir İklim İngilizce - Sayı 1

The Role of Carbon Technologies in the
"Net Zero" Target

CCUS technologies have great strategical value in transitioning to global
“net zero“ emission. They can achieve it in four main ways:
I. Decarbonization in industries where emissions are hard to abate:
The cement, iron-steel and chemical sectors, where electrification is not
a viable solution and the required heat or chemical reactions depend on
the availability of carbon, are considered “hard to decarbonize“ due to the
nature of industrial processes. The reports issued by The Energy Transition
Commission and International Energy Agency (IAE) reveal that in industries
where mitigation is difficult, “net zero“ emission is impossible without CCUS,
or at best, more costly. Therefore, CCUS is one of the most suitable or
inexpensive options in these industries (IEA, 2020a).
II. Low-carbon hydrogen production:
In order to decarbonize sectors where mitigation of Greenhouse Gas
(GHG) Emissions is hard, and reach “net zero“ emissions, it is expected to
increase the global hydrogen production from 70 Megaton (Mt) (GCCSI,
2020). Almost all hydrogen production comes from natural gas (%76) and
coal (%23), while the rest is provided by oil and electricity. In the case of
natural gas use during hydrogen production, 9 tCO2/t H2 GHG is released.
When coal is used, 20 tCO2/t H2 GHG is released. Through CCUS-equipped
coal gasification and steam methane reforming (SMR), H2 production (blue
hydrogen) is more cost-efficient than producing H2 with renewable energy
sources through electrolysis (IEA, 2020a).
III. Providing low-carbon energy from existing power plants:
Decarbonizing energy production is essential for achieving “net
zero” emissions. Power plants equipped with CCUS enable low-carbon,
transmissible energy. It will also provide circuit balancing services that cannot
be otherwise gained through inaction, frequency control, voltage control,
solar photovoltaics (PV) or wind power. (IEA, 2020a).
IV. Negative Emissions:
CCUS technologies may remove CO from the atmosphere to balance
2
emissions from sectors where it is financially and technically impossible to
reach zero emission. For instance, CO can be captured through processes
2
combining bioenergy with CCS, (Bioenergy with Carbon Capture and
Storage (BECCS)), or it can be directly captured from the atmosphere rather
than a point source. Negative emission is achieved by capturing CO from
2
the atmosphere (Direct Air Capture (DAC)), and then the captured CO is
2
permanently stored underground (IEA, 2020a).

Year 1 / Issue 1 / Jan 2022 67