Carbon capture and storage, or CCS, involves sequestering carbon dioxide emissions from a point source, whereas carbon removal takes existing emissions out of ambient air.
And there are a lot of people in the climate community who are for carbon removal and against CCS, arguing that we should shut down these point sources and focus on renewable energy.
But is choosing sides the right thing to do?
Gagan Porrwal is Global Head of Partnerships for GE Gas Power's Carbon Solutions, where he is building an ecosystem of partners that enable, accelerate, and drive the adoption of CCS applications in Europe, the Middle East, Africa, Asia, and the Asian Pacific.
On this episode of Reversing Climate Change’s Happy Hour show, Gagan joins Ross and Siobhan to explain why we need CCS to meet our 2030 climate targets and how he thinks about capturing carbon in the flue versus ambient air.
Gagan discusses how much power is currently generated by coal or natural gas and describes the reality of how long it will take to transition to wind and solar.
Listen in to understand the four key problems facing CCS—social acceptance, economics, infrastructure, and permitting—and find out why we can’t transition to renewables tomorrow, but we can take the next rational step toward clean energy in any given geography.
More from the show
Ad-free episodes and other benefits come with a paid subscription.
Carbon Removal Newsroom, the news show that ran alongside this one, is over. Its episodes are still up, on the feed Climate Workers Anonymous now uses.
Carbon Removal Memes is still going.
Resources
GE Gas Power's Carbon Solutions
Carbon Removal Meme on Paying for Atmospheric Cleanup
Full Transcript
Alexsandra Guerra: You’re listening to the Reversing Climate Change Podcast by the team at Nori, the carbon removal marketplace. This is a show about the innovators and entrepreneurs developing solutions to climate change.
Ross Kenyon: Hello and welcome to the Reversing Climate Change Podcast with Nori. I’m Ross Kenyon. I’m the creative editor at Nori, one of the co-founders here. As usual, I have with me, Siobhan Montoya-Lavender. Hey, Shiv.
Siobhan Montoya-Lavender: Hey, Ross. How’s it going? How’s your week going?
Ross Kenyon: It’s going okay. Yes, Shiv, thanks a ton and all over the carbon removal community. Today, we have a friend of yours joining us for a topic that, have we talked about this before? I’m not even sure that we have.
Siobhan Montoya-Lavender: I don’t know if we have. I feel like once upon a time, Reversing Climate Change did an episode on this topic, but not anytime recently. So I’m glad we’re diving back in. We’re here with Gagan Parwal. And he leads partnerships for carbon solutions in international markets for General Electric. And so he’s going to be talking to us a little bit today about everybody’s favorite controversial topic, carbon capture utilization and storage, also known as CCS or CCUS. God, we have so many acronyms in this business.
Ross Kenyon: So many.
Siobhan Montoya-Lavender: Welcome, Gagan.
Gagan Porrwal: Thank you. Thank you, Shimon, for inviting me. Thank you, Ross, for taking time with me. I think this is going to be a great conversation. I have lived and breathed this topic and other things in climate for a few years now. Not as many years I should have spent considering the career that I’ve had so far, but happy that I’ve found the right place to play. And so I’m looking forward to the conversation today.
Siobhan Montoya-Lavender: Yeah. What got you into speaking of, because you’ve had kind of a legacy career in power generation. What kind of made you the guy that they’re like, hey, this guy, he’s going to do the carbon capture utilization and storage?
Gagan Porrwal: My journey started with like more of, I’m going to say it and it sounds, it’s going to sound like what people call the cliche of it. Like I was trying to search for like, oh, this has been a good career. I’m trying to do something. But then what I actually solving as my purpose, right? That’s where it started. So it started somewhere just before COVID, luckily. And that’s where I started looking at what are the things that I have to go do and what are the things that we have to consider in energy space to move forward.
And Because we are the energy company, I’ve been here for a while, and we as a company have been very vocal on what energy transition should look like and where do we drive it, right? So I think that’s where it started building a little bit more encouragement. I think I took a leap of faith and started investing more time, which is when I ran across you in OnDeck, right? So that was fun. And being part of that robot at that point in time and seeing people not pulling any punches back in putting...
All the ideas on the table. It was fundamentally clear that this space is where more effort is needed, where everyone wants to do something. And that’s when the second realization came that when it comes to technologies which are hard, you need Serious money, you need serious brain power, a large mass to actually think through some of this stuff to be able to put this on the table, right? And this is what we used to call as like those hard sectors or hard tech startups ideas, right? But the true is that it’s not just hard tech for startups, it’s hard tech for everyone.
Now, CCOS is not something which is new. It’s been done for decades, couple of decades, right?
Siobhan Montoya-Lavender: Yeah, I was just reading that it’s been around since, I think, 1978 was the first time we did geologic storage of carbon dioxide.
Gagan Porrwal: Yeah, and I think... So it’s not new, but the thing is that it has had many false starts. And hence, your initial thing is that, oh, it was like a good and bad of fate, and people have started choosing sides of technology. And I think your comment, once upon a time, we talked about this topic, shows that where the gravitation has been to stay away from this topic in general, right? So I think as we do the dialogue more, I hope I can help unravel and put some facts and figures in place that can talk both sides of the equation transparently and effectively.
Ross Kenyon: Probably even explain what exactly carbon capture is independently of how it’s stored or used after it’s captured. And why is it a controversial thing within the climate community?
Gagan Porrwal: Yeah, so put very simply, if there is an emitter source, whether it is a power plant, whether it is an aluminum smelter, steel smelter, all of these emitters have CO2 emissions coming out or CO2 equivalents coming out. Carbon capture, put very simply, is a set of chemical solutions and mechanical things put together to be able to capture those flu streams and reduce CO2 out of it and be able to sequester or use it. That’s essentially, it’s basically a chemical plant that just needs more and more innovation. To your second question of why we think people have a negative, we never have.
There used to be a thing where, because there was a context of the false start, where people just started assuming that because it’s CCS, it’s going into the realm of, hey, I’m going to put it back in the air to get more fossil fuel out. That’s not necessarily where and how we should be thinking about it. It is an oil and gas industry stencil that people keep on using to drive the negativity around it. But the fact that you see a growing amount of momentum, whether it is in terms of the regulatory frameworks, the policy conversation, the laws coming into effect, the general stencil now that people have started putting together, There are things which are more than just, hey, what we call is EOR, right?
That’s not what we are doing. They’re saying that there are storage spaces which can be made available, are being made available, and CO2 should be sent back to where it came from in the first place. And I think what has happened in the meantime is that because there was no other option of the technology, which was talked about very vocally, people just chose their grounds between absolutely green and doing everything which regards nature and forest to, hey, this tech is what we don’t like because it’s harming the nature. Now, whatever I’m saying, people will debate and you can debate days for that, whether they still agree on that.
Ross Kenyon: Yeah, I have so many follow-ups for you. I’m just waiting for my chance, but continue.
Siobhan Montoya-Lavender: Let me just first outline for the listeners. So carbon capture is exactly as Gagan has said, it’s capturing carbon dioxide emissions from a point source. Now this is where concentrations are incredibly high. That also makes it quite a bit easier from an engineering standpoint to capture that carbon dioxide where the concentrations are high. Whereas carbon removal, we’re taking carbon dioxide out of the ambient air. So those are already existing carbon emissions Maybe they were emitted yesterday, maybe they were emitted 30 years ago. And we’re capturing those or removing those from the air and storing them.
The storage mechanism is very similar, but one is a point source and one is ambient air. And so there’s many people who are saying, let’s just focus on ambient air. Why are we talking about these point sources? Let’s just shut down the point sources and let’s focus on renewables. So I want to know, at ODCT, how did you feel like a pariah? I feel like you were pretty welcomed as a GE CCS guy.
Gagan Porrwal: Yeah, but in ODCT, I was not a GE CCS guy. I was this guy who was trying to develop this protocol in which you can exchange services like healthcare and education in lieu of carbon credits that you may generate.
Siobhan Montoya-Lavender: It was espionage. You were just sneaking in with us.
Gagan Porrwal: No, no, I swear I was not. But I think, yeah, look, generally the startup community has been welcoming to me wherever I touch them, right? I think sometimes I just owe it to my looks, I guess. No, I think beyond that, I think it’s just that. Probably that, yeah. I feel that they get a little more value around the industry experience and that I’ve been here for 17 years in General Electric doing different roles across industrial sectors. I think that’s good. I think the second part, and you make good differentiation over there in terms of reduction versus removals.
We have, again, created this gravitation of where instead of talking about direct air capture with CCOS, i. e. point source with removals from air, we have taken positions. No, that is where I’m gravitating towards versus CCS. That to me, Does not make a whole lot of sense. It has to be A plus B, not A versus B. And the reason I make that statement is like all of us, like this is the crowd that I’m probably preaching, but we can probably at the back of our heads say 2050, 2030 targets and where we need to be.
How far is 2030 between now and 2030? So all of us can talk and debate and choose positions of technologies and Or we can actively participate and do something and make these technologies real. The context always being that none of them should be doing a forward-looking damage period. So instead of choosing a side of this is good versus that, I mean, go do everything that is possible because we just don’t have enough time. You made another point there. Which is, oh, there’s this thing about go shut down all the point sources of emissions and go do everything which is renewables, right?
Renewables is going to come. It is coming, right? Today, if you think from a generation mix perspective, I think we somewhere between roughly speaking, right? And I’m talking everything renewables included, like 30% renewable generation versus 70% fossil fuel paste. This equation in 2050 will flip. To 60% renewables to 40% the mix of fossil fuels. So if you think about it, if you have to flip this equation, what do you need? You don’t need point blank switching off of things. If you want renewables to grow with the same acceleration that we expect, you need The right point sources.
And the reason I’m using right word there is on purpose. You need the right point sources to be available so that it gives them the breathing space to come online. And I’m not even going into the details of the grid is important and you need to have a certain amount of management with the evacuation of this part. There’s so many more things that we can talk about, but there has to be a pragmatic approach of if we want the reality of the systems to scale, the renewable sources to scale, let’s not choose sides.
Let’s do the right tech, the right fuels, and go with it. Somewhere in this context, in this discussion, we have decided That we are going to talk about, and we are saying we, I don’t mean this conversation, I’m saying broadly, that we are going to talk about eliminating a technology. And I think everyone forgot, or a large part of the conversation generally forgets that we are not here to talk about eliminating a technology or talk about eliminating the ambitions. So why don’t we focus on that versus saying that, hey, eliminate a text so that I can get there.
And create another 2,000 pages report coming from 500 different places and based on talking about it.
Ross Kenyon: I have perhaps the most annoying question possible. Are you both ready for this?
Gagan Porrwal: Please. I’m getting up for it.
Ross Kenyon: Let’s go. This betrays my formal educational experience. How far outside of a flu stack does it need to go? Does an emission need to go before it becomes ambient? I get stuck on that question all the time. I’m like, is it six inches out? Could you just carbon removal a thing like right? Is it 10 feet? How far off is it until it’s no longer point source? Because ultimately... I think what this gets to is it’s easier to capture it in the flu, right? So ambient capture, super hard, super expensive, yet these communities are not very friendly to each other.
Why? I’ve never quite understood this, except for one thing I will say is EJ concerns like Cancer Alley and stuff like that about petrochemical industry, those broader concerns.
Siobhan Montoya-Lavender: Yeah, but just to jump in right on that then, the EJ concerns are on both sides, right? Because there’s a whole environmental justice concern about telling countries and communities that they can’t burn coal, right? When that’s all they have or telling them that, you know, they can’t use cook stoves when that’s all they have. Whatever the thing is, there’s a whole reality behind like, I mean, I feel like I fall into this camp. It’s like, I want, you know, renewables immediately and I want coal to stop being burned, but I don’t want my power to be turned off.
I still want to be able to turn on my lights at night, you know? And so whose power do I want turned off, you know?
Ross Kenyon: That’s a good point too.
Gagan Porrwal: Yeah. So I agree with what you’ve been saying. So I think just to answer to your question and when you were asking the reason I was smiling is that This has come up in like very awkward conversation, but at very high level platforms sometimes. And because to your point, right? So if I put a capture module, which is like, let’s say six inch away from the Fluestack, would it be considered directly capture? Yeah. Versus if I connect a pipe to it?
Siobhan Montoya-Lavender: How have I never thought of this before? I feel like I’m really behind. This is a critical question.
Gagan Porrwal: Right? And to your point, look, I mean, I think character capture has a role to play for sure, no doubt about it, right? But somewhere in this realm of it, to be honest with you, of the entire population that lives on this face of the earth, do people really care about whether it is DAC or CCS? They care about don’t make the earth which is unlivable for my kids and myself in the next 50 to 100 years. We have somehow figured out that, oh, we’re going to choose these specific terminologies and specific way of reduction versus removal.
Look, peace, it’s good for people like us who are in the pockets of it, trying to make it work and make each other convincing. We are solving for art and the humanity, which is broader than this community that is trying to work in this group. So we have interlocked ourselves into this, oh, six inches and up in the air and this, like, it’s...
Ross Kenyon: It’s very annoying.
Gagan Porrwal: It’s annoying to an extent. I think every single tech piece has the role to play and choosing sides is just not the right thing.
Unknown speaker: I’m going to choose a side now then. I’m going to choose a side.
Siobhan Montoya-Lavender: So if you, if we’re going to say, you know, it’s six feet, it’s six inches, I don’t know. The point is, I think the argument here is that it’s, it’s new emissions, right? These are new emissions that could, we could just not emit them to begin with, right? That’s the whole argument, I think. Is there new emissions versus existing emissions? And I think what a lot of people don’t realize is A, where these new emissions come from sometimes, and then B, just the energy reality. I don’t think I understood the energy reality of Until I got into carbon removal a little bit more and just the reality of energy transitions.
And so can you speak a little bit to like, like what’s, I mean, you have, you know what the wattage and stuff is. I don’t know these, I don’t know like what the, what people are using, what’s, what’s needed.
Ross Kenyon: Not a wattage person.
Siobhan Montoya-Lavender: Not a wattage person. And so like, you have people a real sense of like, is there power being generated by, by coal or by natural gas? And, and could it be tomorrow by, you know, wind and solar or not? And why not?
Gagan Porrwal: So look, there are a few things that I was, as you were talking, I was just like taking it, and I will start with this, right? So I think, let me just start with the tail end of your conversation. The way you have to think about is the following. Today, of the total emissions that we do, right? 40% comes from the power generation sector. Even after that, about 770 million people on the face of the earth don’t have access to electricity, okay? So if you think about energy in general, the problem that you need to think about is that this is what we call as energy trilemma, right?
The reliability, the affordability, and the sustainability of it. And depending upon which locality in the region you’re talking about, you have to hit one of these three things or three or two to be able to make it work for them, correctly. And that hence defines what is the right system slash energy mix to be able to go do that. Just transition in context to energy transition. What people, I think, don’t pay a lot of attention to is probably one of the biggest things that will start surfacing after the other bottlenecks of technical, like, oh, talk about transport infrastructure and storage infrastructure.
Social acceptance is a fundamentally big thing that needs to be discussed as well, right? When we talk about just transition, right, think about this, right? CCS points, so let’s just bring back to like a very small box right now if I have to explain that. Good, bad is okay, we’ll talk about that a little bit, but the number of jobs that you can secure for the people who are coming off the existing industries which are in emitters by doing these technologies, why do we not talk about it and think about it?
There is a whole level of upskilling. There is a whole level of new skill development that can be done. You literally have to prepare the workforce to work in the industry of sustainability. Sustainability is not a topic of just a sustainability report that companies file. Sustainability has to be an industry that needs to be worked on and jobs and employment needs to be tackled. You just can’t switch on and off people’s life because, oh, I’m sorry, you can’t work anymore. Oh, by the way, I have something that’s called this and this and this to go do that, right?
It’s so important for people to consider. Let’s talk about your question on renewables and wins, and will it happen tomorrow or not? Look, it’s happening as we’re speaking, because there are all the right things in place, whether you talk about the regulations, whether you talk about the incentives. It’s helping it scale. The problem is that the speed with which it has been happening has been historically slower than any projections that any party has built. I’m not going to name them, right? You pick up any parties, any report, all have like, oh, we’re going to do X gigawatt.
And today we probably stand in like 12, 13% of the projected number of 2020, and we are in 2023. Correct? So the speed and the acceleration will come because the elements are right. For that speed and acceleration to actually materialize, it’s very important that the firm power or what I just described as the reliable power is available, right? Which basically means that if you want to make sure that right amount of renewable energy sources, which is called as VERs or grid on the grid are being put together and grids are evolving to address that, You are not taking away the oxygen, which basically gets sent out to the people and their homes and the industries to keep them running and hence the grid infrastructure that needs to be involved.
Another thing that we need to understand from a, let’s talk about like, what do you put to build a renewables infrastructure and plant, right? Two components, let’s just talk about it, right? Cement and steel.
Siobhan Montoya-Lavender: No carbon emissions there.
Gagan Porrwal: Well, thank you. So these are hard-to-abate sectors. So if these are hard-to-abate sectors, what do I need to do to help these hard-to-abate sectors to decarbonize themselves so that what we are talking about and helping the renewables to grow, grows the right way? All of us, I’m sure the three of us have gone to this, oh, let’s look at the carbon footprint of this solution. Oh, it looks like positive, but in the net of it is negative or zero. How do we avoid that problem? We avoid the problem By putting a technology solution set to make sure that these sectors which have least or low avenues to decarbonize are able to utilize this to surface themselves or manifest themselves in the realm of renewables, right?
Coming back to CCS again, so CCS in near term does what works. If tomorrow I’m going to go stand up a CCS plant right outside a point source, it immediately plugs the emissions that are coming out of it. So in near terms, it kills the emissions, let’s say. If it keeps running, then what it is doing is it’s almost helping you say that, look, for some of these hard-to-abit sectors, 60-70% of these emissions are coming from power sources, 40% are coming from power sources. It’s helping negate or providing more avenues to hard-to-abit sectors to go and go do that.
And eventually, we go into the directive capsule, which is driving the overall negative emissions that we hope for. So there is a role and time for all of these things to play. And these sectors, which do not have avenues, need to understand the impact of these technologies. And to be honest with you, there is a large and a growing conversation now where people want to go and see, like, what are my avenues? And I say this in all humility, talking to a lot of people, like, I don’t think I’ve come across a single person, and when I say person, the entities in this space who are saying that we will not do it.
They do want to do it. But where is the solution set? And what happens is that if I’m running a smelter or one of these, I have like these 10 consultants and five people all coming and pitching to me different, different solution sets without telling me what’s the mix that helps me because I’m just worried about, look, guys, I need to still produce commodity at a price point where there is competitiveness in the market so that they can be sold, right? The whole thing about green premium, green premium will stay, but green premium will only stay there for the right incentives for people to buy and reject.
Ross Kenyon: I wanted to talk about the social acceptability, but that was at the beginning of your comments, but we’ve moved quite far beyond that. So Shiv, if you had something that was closer to where we ended up, no. Yeah, the social acceptability of various carbon removal or even CCS or CCU solutions. It’s something that I think a lot about. And I attribute this to learning from Holly Jean Buck, especially for constantly pointing out the risks that carbon removal faces from not doing the legwork to be socially acceptable and thought of as a benefit rather than something that’s imposed upon a community.
Almost to the extent where I think of, there’s an old yarn about how amateurs think about tactics and strategy and professionals think logistics in the context of military conflict. And I almost think it’s like amateurs think about process or about science. And professionals think about social acceptability. And because I think about social acceptability, I like this way of framing it because I can pat myself on the back at the same time. I don’t know that I fully even endorsed this question that I just made. What are the upstream currents that you’re facing currently for making sure I’m sure that people see this not as like a techno fix, not as something that is the lifespan of toxic polluting industries is being encouraged by having this like greenwashing veil draped over it.
I’m sure you’ve heard every criticism and then some, not why are they wrong, but how are you addressing the lack of social acceptability for some of those?
Gagan Porrwal: Yeah. So again, I will just start with what you said. I don’t think they are wrong. I think they just need to be Educated or at least have an opportunity to listen to the pragmatic opinion which is coming out of it. Correct. What I think a large amount of effort that is being focused on and continues to be focused on is the right level of policy decisions and policy sitting on the table where the policy decisions are being made, are being discussed. To be able to show what that means and how it places the countries in the right realm of delivering the energy transition that they own.
Correct. You can spend days sitting with individual parties and it generally will end up in like a convince me conversation. But if we have to make these, then a lot of effort that is being done right now and has to be done is making sure that there is a solid regulation which has been agreed, good policy decisions that are being made to make sure that people understand That this is being done with full transparency of what this means and what it does for the ultimate goal of emission reduction in this space.
Look, I’m not saying that these policies and regulations don’t exist. There is a lot which already exists. Right now, the challenge is how do you basically make people understand that it has to be recasted to be thought about in a way Where you can understand that, oh, is CO2 in my backyard is a good thing or a bad thing, right? Is CO2 being put in a well is a good thing or a bad thing? Case in point, the class six well in the US EPAs, right? If you look at the existing framework of why it was made, it was basically made that the drinking water pollution doesn’t happen, right?
It’s a good framework that we have to do when we are sequestering CO2, right? So how do we bring it to make sure that Becomes evident, known, and understood by everyone. There is a lot of effort, by the way, which even the government entities are doing, not just people in the private space, to make sure that it’s out and about and people understand that every single thing which is being done from capture to transport to storage has a set of regulations, requirements, and codes that are being formed to make sure that it’s all tied and it’s not harm to their futures or what you would call as a social acceptance effect.
Ross Kenyon: Yeah, I have a lot of thoughts too on various parts of this. I’m not sure if I want to go this direction, but I’ll try it out. When the debates over the pipelines were really intense too, I remember reading pieces saying that the alternative is not that we stop using oil and gas. The alternative is that it gets trucked and railed to places of production, which is way riskier than just pipelines moving oil and gas. And I wonder... The semiotics of this is maybe just unworkable where people don’t like it going over indigenous land or they just don’t want to be around oil and gas infrastructure at all.
In which case, I don’t think you can really persuade some of these people. I don’t think you could say, well, it’s safer. They’d say it’s really not the point. The point is I don’t want toxic industry existing at all. I don’t care what kind of regulation that you’ve squeaked through. Maybe this is not the modal person you’re trying to convince them. Maybe you’re trying to convince someone who cares more about having a job. They’re willing to accept some risk and they’re not just a hardliner.
Siobhan Montoya-Lavender: Or your partners, like who are these partners that you’re trying to work with and make this industry function?
Gagan Porrwal: Yeah, so I’ll address both of those things. So I think to Ross’s point, look, I don’t think the intention is actually to convince people to get something in their backyard, which is not there, correct? So if you see one of the biggest things that is talked about in this space is land use and permitting, correct? So you just don’t go and walk about saying that just because someone has decided that this is a good place because it makes economical sense for something to be done, it will be done now. And that’s not the crowd that we need to convince and we should be.
So let’s talk about very specific as to what this looks like, right? CO2 storage. If you think about it, correct? The whole concept around where the gas came from, what happened to those oil? They will deplete and they are depleted, right? So there is identified slash to be explored geological capacities that is already available, which is in the space, which was already permitted for this work to happen. So I think the effort should never be to go and go and try to go and get a piece of land or work on a piece of land saying that, oh, this is what it makes it good.
Economics cannot solve for what I think what you were alluding to. In terms of convincing people, right? The convincing is probably not the right word. I think educating is the right word. It needs to be done in the corridors of policymakers, in the corridors of people who are trying to understand and make sure that the right incentives are there for this technology to take off. And that brings you to your point on what kind of partners, right? So if in this context, the biggest partners are the governments themselves, right? Policy consultations that happens, right?
The good part is a lot of this policy consultation is out in the open, people get invited, you give your opinions, and then you work your way through that, correct? So it’s important that is absolutely transparent and pragmatic to what it needs to be versus just because we like something, let’s talk about it and convince people to go to it, correct? That’s a very careful stencil, right? And that’s not where we are. Let’s be transparent. Let’s talk about what makes sense versus what doesn’t make sense. From a CCS perspective, if you think about four key problems, if you would summarize, right?
We just talked about the biggest one, which is the social acceptance, right? The problem of economics of this, the problem of infrastructure of this, the problem of just the permitting of the wells where the storage is, right? Those are the three fundamental things that basically Needs to be solved for in the same context of who are the partners that we need to work for solving this. Look, technology providers and private companies and people who play in this space will come together to make it work. There is an intention to come together.
Transport players, the storage players, the OEMs on the emitter side, the carbon capture tech providers, they will all come together in some way, shape or form. But for them to be able to come together, these four things that I just talked about need to be solved for. How do you solve for that? You solve for that by having solid and a clear line of sight to the regulations and policy that makes sure that there is the right understanding, there are the right incentives to be able to make it work. So just trying to bring it that there’s a box that we need to understand that needs to be solved for.
Siobhan Montoya-Lavender: Yeah, those are some serious problems and some clear hurdles for CCS. And actually, I’d like to talk about how this kind of relates back to... I think a lot of our listeners are interested in carbon removal or work in carbon removal. And I want to kind of pull it back to something that’s very tangible for them, which is, I believe you’re starting to work in, how are you going to do the offtake system? How are you going to build out an international... Offtake system for carbon dioxide. And I think that’s something that we haven’t really...
Started to solve for in a major way as a community. And whether it’s, you know, CCS or DAC or wherever the gas is coming from, like it’s coming and we need to put it somewhere. And right now we do not have, we have the capacity for gigaton storage. I mean, I hear that all the time. Like the amount of basalt reservoirs we have and the amount of empty injection wells we have. But what’s like the reality? Like where is the industry right now? Are we prepared to take gigatons of gas and inject it into basalt reservoirs?
Gagan Porrwal: So I’ll answer with the facts here. If you go and look towards the north part of Europe, you’ll find that there is already capacity which is opening up to start some of the storage happening. It’s no longer only a claim, actually. Now there is an active work which is following this that is literally identifying the capacity which will be allocated and will open up for the storage to be done in different geographies. Your point around the offtake, right? So I would not talk about international offtake because before we go international offtake, you have to figure out what is the domestic infrastructure around this offtake.
Where are those CO2 pipelines? Where do I take it? What do I do with this? International offtake is the subject which is generally dealt with. You will see when the vessel gets transported and crosses international product, there’s something called this London Protocol that it’s talking about, which specifically talks about how we deal with the CO2 transport. That’s under works. I think first let’s solve for like in the vicinity of where it doesn’t happen, how do we transport it? What pipelines do we use? Where do we take it? UK is a good example if you think about it.
So if you think, if you look at UK, they have come up with this 10 point energy transition plan of which there is this whole clustering mechanism around carbon capture systems. They have declared 10 million ton per year capacity that will be opened up for these clusters. Two clusters to be done in 2020s and four clusters in 2030s. So market is slow. And when I say market, I mean what we just described in terms of storage space is slow, but it has come to a more pragmatic way of people now knowing that there is an opening and people are actively working in this space of making storage available to the sequestering partners that they have, to the sequestering possibilities that they have.
And it’s not just them. You would see that there is a portfolio of companies and these companies who have put a lot of money who are even working within the shipping industry to be able to make sure that there are right ships available when that international transport is needed to be able to transport the CO2 across the borders or within the border, even from the shore to the west. So the point that there is a lot of conversation around gigatons of storage space, that is true. That is a conversation. Is it opening up with the speed that we would like it to open up?
Probably not. I don’t say that there is a particular reason behind that. I think it takes time and a lot of money to be able to come to those conclusions.
Siobhan Montoya-Lavender: It also takes the gas itself, right? I mean, like how much gas is even being stored? I know it’s something in the order of, I think I wrote it down, hang on.
Gagan Porrwal: For CCS today, it should be somewhere around 38 to 40 million tonnes is what CCS projects. 40 million tonnes is what I have written down.
Siobhan Montoya-Lavender: Yeah. Roughly 40 million tonnes. Is that because we, do we need more CCS projects? And then we’ll, is it just for the lack of CCS projects? Is it because DAC hasn’t gotten off the ground yet?
Gagan Porrwal: Like, So you are hitting on that, one of the four things, right? That this is a chicken and egg problem of infrastructure that someone needs to solve for. Very simply put, infrastructure will not scale unless there are enough CCS projects. There will not be enough CCS projects unless there’s infrastructure.
Siobhan Montoya-Lavender: Oh, Gagan, what a classic problem for us to face.
Gagan Porrwal: So the question is that who and which entities Can foot the bill for the initial pain points and the years where while these infrastructures are being built up, someone needs to put the money in to not get locked in this chicken and egg problem again. And the scaling happens. And this is where the role of governments come from. And actually becomes as real as possible that the initial years, there has to be sufficient amount of push incentives and policies so that the infrastructure scaling is done. Because while you’re creating that infrastructure before the CO2 is put and you get the right volume for the whole value chain business case to work, there has to be that incentive available that, okay, don’t worry, we understand.
We’re going to subsidize some of it. You start building it. And on the other side, we’re going to go push these CCOS projects so that they can start putting volume into this infrastructure. What we are talking about, by the way, is not just a concept. It has started surfacing in some of the policy documents as well as the real projects being worked in some of these countries, correct, where instruments like Contract for Differences, Dispatchable Purchase Agreements are being designed and talked about to actually address some of those things that how do we Not get landlocked into some of these conversations and put the right structures and incentives in place with reducing subsidies so that you’re not logged into perpetually governmental pay for a design, correct?
To be able to make some of these products possible.
Siobhan Montoya-Lavender: Yeah. Yeah. I feel like every time I talk about infrastructure, whether it’s CCS or CDR, whatever it is, I always just start to hit this wall of, oh, shit. There’s just... There’s so much to do with infrastructure, man. We talk about technology readiness or the finance of it, but just the sheer amount of infrastructure that needs to happen For us to reach Gigaston scale, whether it’s carbon removal, CCS combined, I mean, you know, I think it’s 15% CCS is the Paris Agreement targets, which is enormous, like in terms of the infrastructural capacity we need to build.
And so I guess my question to you is, you’re working on this full-time, I’m not working on this full-time. Say something hopeful to me, Gagan, like, is this going to get built? Are we going to build out this infrastructure?
Gagan Porrwal: Well, the way my boss says it, my job is riding on it, so I hope it gets done. But I think there are certain geographies where it will get done. I’m pretty sure that there are certain countries where we’ll wake up one day and they’ve just decided that they’ll do it because there’s no other avenues to do it. Correct. So if you look at where there is hope or the push specifically on this technology, right? So just the landmass of America is top and down, correct? Canada, US. You go to UK, parts of Europe, right?
You look at some places in the Middle East. There are some bright spots in Asia as well. I think there is a pick up there. The hope resides in the fact that there is now a fundamental belief system which has become stronger in people’s head. That point source is a necessity. It enables the growth of renewables. It has to be there. So I need to deploy the sources to make that as the least carbon or the low carbon or zero carbon energy. And hence, I’m going to deploy solutions like hydrogen, like CCS, like ammonia to be able to go and make sure that these fuels help support the transition that I’m looking for.
Yeah, there’s a lot of hard pills to swallow in this. So I agree with that. And the reason you feel that this is a hard one to solve because we haven’t compared it, right? Because black is black in comparison to white. But here’s the reality of it, right? If you think about it, let’s talk about grid infrastructure if you only think about renewable startup or CCS. And people will throw numbers here. I’ll throw my number. If everything that we say has to be done with the same level of speed that it has to be done to grow all the sources that we’re talking about in the green aspects of it, The investment on the green infrastructure needs to go from, forget the number now, it has to cross somewhere around $800 billion in the next 10, 15 years ahead of us.
What it basically means is that the grid infrastructure which has been laid for the last 140 years, we have to double the layout of that infrastructure in the next 20 years.
Siobhan Montoya-Lavender: Now, how do you feel about Depressed, you’re going the wrong direction here. But I think you’re bringing up this really good points about the reality of where we are. And I think you often do that when we talk is you kind of ground me in like the reality of what’s actually happening. We can talk, talk, talk about these solutions. And then you’re like, yeah, but this is what’s happening today. This is what’s going to happen tomorrow. And I think there are hard pills to swallow. I mean, we made a meme the other day about this, like somebody has to pay for atmospheric cleanup.
That’s like a hard pill to swallow. Like for me, I feel like Conceptually, CCS is a hard pill to swallow. I think a lot of climate-friendly people are that way, but then once you get down to the nitty-gritty, you’re like, okay, but I’m going to have to swallow this because the reality is it’s all hands on deck. There’s no world in which we shut off all coal-burning power plants tomorrow. That doesn’t exist. What do we do?
Gagan Porrwal: Here’s what I will say there. To your point, first, there is no time. What I would say is that there is a step away from coal. People need to just think about what’s the rational step, right? So do you go from coal to natural gas? That’s a transition step to take. Point that we need to be careful about is that, is natural gas accessible to those countries the right price point? Generally, countries have now gone ahead and started figuring out.
Siobhan Montoya-Lavender: I’m glad you’re bringing in price point. We haven’t even talked about price point.
Gagan Porrwal: Yeah. Let’s avoid it completely. The way I think about price points, and I’m going to come back to the point, I think it will solve for itself when there is this structure that’s happening and everything that we talked about is going to happen. The movement from coal to gas and then gas to renewables and gas with CCS, this is the right way to think about how do you go and talk about the reduction in the emissions doing the right by the countries who are still heavily dependent on some of these things to go and move forward.
Correct. The main thing I think that And because we talked a little bit about someone has to pay for the cleanup. I think, look, more than that, what we have to think about is, how do we think that power markets work today? When someone is producing electricity, whether it is a student rebels, they need to get paid for that, right? If you think about it, that has to be a mechanism which drives some of these things beyond policy to create the right incentives to just what we talked about for those transitions to happen.
If the power market incentivization structure or the remuneration structure that sits doesn’t evolve, it doesn’t get us to the right place that we have to be. So there has to be a right evolution of people getting paid for reliable, affordable, and dependable capacity. People getting paid for clean power that they put in the system. People getting paid for the peak demand that is in the system. All of that, by the way, is a manifestation of what you just said. That someone has to pay. Like, where is the social cost of carbon coming from?
Now, this is just one avenue. I’m not saying the entire cost comes here. But you have to have the right structures to be able to bring that cost in the mix and hence incentivize or penalize for it to be done in the right direction. I would say solve for four things. I’m going to repeat that. Solve for the economics of this. Solve for the chicken and egg problem of infrastructure of this. Solve for the permitting process in the timeline. And the biggest thing? Solve for the social acceptance of it. I think if those four things are front and center of every single policy decision, private companies’ conversations on where we are heading and constructing, whether it is the business case or the proposition of discussion, that brings all of these technologies in the right place and specifically CCF gives it the right offtake or right birth in this era to what it needs to be.
So that whether we pick up the IPCC reports or IEA reports, the role that CCS has to play, and I think IPCC latest report had three out of four scenarios, CCS was there. That can only happen if those four things are solved for. I’m hoping there are people from different walks of life and industries and sectors listening to this, right? Think about this way that all these are large investments that will be made, tough investments. How do you guarantee surety and give confidence to people to come and invest in these sectors?
And that confidence basically comes by talking about the longevity and the security of this is a technology that we believe in because we need to solve for a transition path for 2030 and 2050. And the reason we believe it, because for my NDCs, for my company, for my geography, it solves for X gigaton, X million ton that I’ve planned and assessed for. Collaborating in this space is going to be fundamentally important. An ecosystem of right and willing parties are the most important thing that will solve for this. Whether you talk about, again, the whole value chain, whether it is the transport and storage providers, whether it is the emitters, whether it is the technology providers of the CCS, the people who play in the carbon value chain, monetization of the carbon.
All of these, they have to look to be able to look eye to eye with each other and say that, look, you know what, guys, these four people, we are going to go do these projects and work around it. And that just forms, that ecosystem forms the conversation which should manifest in everything that we just talked about today.
Siobhan Montoya-Lavender: I mean, I think collaboration is just one of the key words in climate period. So I think that’s a good note to end it on because, yeah, we need to collaborate. And so I hope that, you know, I hope you come to Mexico, Gavin, and you get your next trip out here. I hope you’re assigned some task here and I get to see you and we get to collaborate on projects near and dear to my heart.
Ross Kenyon: Thanks for co-hosting with me, Shiv. And Gagan, thanks for coming and hanging out. Thanks so much for listening. Hey, give us a great rating and review on whatever podcast app you’re using. Thanks for listening. Send this to a friend and have a lovely day. Thank you so much for listening. If you could please subscribe and give us a great rating and review on Apple Podcasts or a rating on Spotify, that’d be much appreciated. It helps us get our content out to more people. You can sign up for our newsletter at nori.
com. Follow us on social media. We will catch you next time.
