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MEOG COMMENTARY MEOG

produce blue hydrogen from gas arriving from initiatives are underway there too – having
the North Sea. Similar developments are also struggled to gain traction initially because they
underway in Merseyside in England and St Fer- had been designed with EOR in mind, but came
gus in Scotland. There are also preliminary plans as the shale revolution lowered demand for such
to capture CO2 at the Isle of Grain terminal in techniques. Now, though, the concept of captur-
southern England and in southern Wales. ing CO2 purely for the sake of lowering emis-
Another key project is Porthos in the Nether- sions is starting to take off, bolstered by a federal
lands, where gas grid operator Gasunie is leading tax credit introduced in 2018.
a consortium that aims to store some 2.5mn tpy For example, at least two proposed LNG pro-
of CO2 in the North Sea from industries in the jects on the US Gulf Coast include a CCS compo-
Rotterdam area. Royal Dutch Shell, ExxonMo- nent as they try to position themselves as being
bil, Air Liquide and Air Products, expected to be the most environmentally friendly projects of
Porthos’ first customers, signed joint develop- their kind. Neither NextDecade’s Rio Grande
ment agreements on the scheme in December LNG nor G2 Net-Zero LNG’s proposed facility
last year. have yet reached the FID stage, however. Indeed,
Porthos is vying for €102mn ($118mn) in NextDecade has suggested Rio Grande could
financial aid from the EU’s Connecting Europe reach FID in 2021 if it secures enough offtake
Facility, and the Dutch government has also agreements. G2 Net-Zero LNG, meanwhile, only
pledged to subsidise some of the cost of CCS. proposed its LNG terminal – a cleaner redesign
This will be vital, as Porthos estimates that stor- of a previous plan – earlier this year and still has
age and transport costs alone will come to €30 some way to go until the facility can be built.
per tonne. Overall there are around 30 CCS projects
under development in the US according to the
North America Houston Chronicle. Almost a dozen of these are
Both the US and Canada are seeing a handful of being planned along the Gulf Coast, with Louisi-
new CCS proposals, with more likely to come ana increasingly keen to position itself as a CO2
as decarbonisation efforts gather momentum. storage hub. Similar geography exists in Texas,
However, it will likely be some time before which would also have extensive aquifers and
any new CCS projects are developed in North depleted oilfields that could potentially be used
America. for storing CO2. But Texas – the largest CO2
Canada considers itself a leader in CCS emitter in the US – has not yet shown the same
thanks to existing projects that notably include state-level enthusiasm as Louisiana to proceed
the Quest project, which captures and sequesters with wide-scale CCS development.
CO2 from a bitumen upgrader. Another particu-
larly prominent project is the Alberta Carbon Australia
Trunk Line (ACTL) – the largest pipeline in the When the Australian government unveiled
world for CO2 emitted from human activity with its ambitions in late September for a hydrogen
a capacity of up to 14.6mn tonnes per year (tpy) industry that would feed both domestic and for-
– which became fully operational in June. CO2 eign demand Canberra also highlighted CCS’
transported via the pipeline is delivered to Cen- potential in decarbonising the industry.
tral Alberta for both storage and use in enhanced The process would allow the country’s exten-
oil recovery (EOR). sive natural gas industry to begin transitioning
“This critical piece of infrastructure supports into the production of carbon neutral, or “clean”,
significant future emissions solutions, new uti- blue hydrogen. This could be sold overseas or
lisation pathways and innovation in the carbon blended in domestic gas pipeline networks, with
capture space,” ACTL operator Wolf Midstream’s some industry observers suggesting that current
president of carbon, Jeff Pearson, said in June, renewable gas blends of up to 10% could rise to
after the pipeline came fully online. “The future 100% hydrogen by 2050.
of energy and a lower carbon economy relies on In announcing the government’s technology
key infrastructure like the ACTL.” roadmap, Australian Energy Minister Angus
More CCS initiatives are underway in Can- Taylor said AUD18bn ($13.18bn) of funding had
ada, aided by recently unveiled government been earmarked for a portfolio of low-emissions
support at both the federal and provincial lev- technologies that included “clean” hydrogen.
els. And with Canada increasingly being touted Taylor has now urged the local industry to
as a potential leader in the development of blue step up its efforts to integrate CCS into their blue
hydrogen – produced through methane steam hydrogen projects in order to deliver on Canber-
reforming alongside a CCS component to mini- ra’s export-orientated goals.
mise emissions – further opportunities for CCS Taylor was reportedly preparing to deliver
developments are expected to arise. However, a speech to the Australian Hydrogen Confer-
as with all emerging technologies, developers ence this week that industry and government
will need to balance costs with local and federal needed to work hand in hand in order to attract
emissions reduction goals. AUD70bn ($51.26bn) worth of investment over
South of the border, meanwhile, CCS has the next decade.
been less visible in the US. However, CCS “Clean hydrogen has enormous potential to

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