Multi-criteria assessment of inland and offshore carbon dioxide transport options

Assessment of Potential and Techno-Economic Performance of Solid Sorbent Direct Air Capture with CO2 Storage in Europe

“… Figure illustrates that the costs of CO 2 transport can be an important contributor to the CDR cost when the distance between the DAC plant and the nearest geological storage site is large (more than 1500 km); such costs could have a share of up to 10% of the total cost in, for example, Portugal or Spain, even when assuming a large-scale, low-cost CO 2 transport mode as pipelines. Such transport costs would increase significantly if pipelines were not available and other discontinuous batch-based transport modes were deployed (e.g., trains or trucks) . Overall, the transport component must be considered in a comprehensive assessment of more and less suitable geographical locations for the large-scale deployment and roll-out of DACCS.…”

“…Such transport costs would increase significantly if pipelines were not available and other discontinuous batch-based transport modes were deployed (e.g., trains or trucks). 35 Overall, the transport component must be considered in a comprehensive assessment of more and less suitable geographical locations for the large-scale deployment and roll-out of DACCS.…”

“…Due to uncertainties regarding the topology of pipeline networks, we choose to disregard the inclusion of a tortuosity factor in the analysis, as its impact on transport costs is assumed to be considered in the uncertainty of pipeline costs. However, pipeline transport networks are not developed yet, and recent research 35 demonstrates that container-based transport (i.e., relying on CO 2 loaded onto a container that is transported via truck, railway, and ship/barge) exhibit substantially higher emissions and costs per unit of distance of CO 2 transported. For example, the most economic transport solution available in the short term to deliver CO 2 captured at a location in inland Europe (i.e., Switzerland) to a storage site located in the North Sea (i.e., Northern Lights in Norway) consists of a combination of pipeline, truck, train, ship, and truck transport resulting in a cost of 160 € t CO 2 –1 .…”

“…Currently, there exists no cross-border infrastructure to transport CO 2 . For simplicity and due to substantial uncertainties with regard to the transport of CO 2 , we have considered the unitary costs (€ t CO 2 –1 /km) of pipeline transportation using 0.04 € t CO 2 –1 /km and 32 gCO 2 -equiv tCO 2 –1 /km …”

“…/km. 35 The distance for any given DAC facility to the nearest geological storage location is based on the most direct path, i.e., the straight-line distance. In other words, captured CO 2 is always assumed to be delivered to the nearest storage site, regardless of its capacity.…”