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REVIEW article

Front. Energy Res.
Sec. Carbon Capture, Utilization and Storage
Volume 12 - 2024 | doi: 10.3389/fenrg.2024.1412770
This article is part of the Research Topic Recent Advances in CCS/CCU Technologies: Engineering and Biotechnological Approaches View all articles

Prospective Techno-Economic and Life Cycle Assessment: A Review across Established and Emerging Carbon Capture, Storage and Utilization (CCS/CCU) Technologies

Provisionally accepted
Pingping Wang Pingping Wang *Ada J. Robinson Ada J. Robinson *Stavros Papadokonstantakis Stavros Papadokonstantakis
  • Institute of Chemical, Environmental and Bioscience Engineering, TU Wien, Getreidemarkt 9, 1060 Vienna, Austria, Vienna University of Technology, Vienna, Austria

The final, formatted version of the article will be published soon.

    Carbon Capture, Storage and Utilization (CCS/CCU) is critical for achieving net-zero emissions. Although the recent surge in CCS/CCU projects announcement, there is a clear gap between announced capacity (around 400 Mt CO₂ per year) and the Net Zero Emissions (NZE) scenario deployment target (around 1 Gt per year) by 2030. This review examines breakthroughs and advancements across both established and emerging CCS/CCU systems with different Technology Readiness Levels (TRLs) in various industrial sectors, emphasizing the necessity of prospective assessments for their acceleration and scalability. It examines the development and application of prospective Life Cycle Assessment (pLCA) and prospective Techno-Economic Assessment (pTEA), highlighting their limitations and importance of their outcomes in decision-making processes. Differences between the evolving dynamics of the technological systems (foreground) and the evolution of the overall socioeconomic system (background) are discussed. Incorporating scenario data from Integrated Assessment Models (IAMs) into pLCA and pTEA reveals an iterative relationship that significantly influences the outcome of both the environmental assessments and the economics of large-scale production of the CCS/CCU systems under study. This, in turn, could reshape investment strategies towards advanced technologies, necessitating their consideration within the evolving structure of IAMs. It is concluded that the inherent limitations of CCS/CCU technologies at an early stage of development require quantitative uncertainty analysis and demand robustness, interdisciplinary collaboration, policy intervention, and data transparency. The rigorous evaluative frameworks are key for developing economic, environmental and climate policies and enable well-informed decisions across rapidly evolving sectors. A framework is proposed in this review, outlining a multistep process that includes a series of databases and open-source tools to interface pTEA and pLCA with enhanced IAMs for CCS/CCU, demonstrating its potential to improve decision-making and policy development.

    Keywords: Prospective life cycle assessment, Integrated assessment models, Prospective Techno-Economic Assessment, Carbon capture & utilisation, Carbon capture & storage

    Received: 05 Apr 2024; Accepted: 03 Jul 2024.

    Copyright: © 2024 Wang, Robinson and Papadokonstantakis. This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (CC BY). The use, distribution or reproduction in other forums is permitted, provided the original author(s) or licensor are credited and that the original publication in this journal is cited, in accordance with accepted academic practice. No use, distribution or reproduction is permitted which does not comply with these terms.

    * Correspondence:
    Pingping Wang, Institute of Chemical, Environmental and Bioscience Engineering, TU Wien, Getreidemarkt 9, 1060 Vienna, Austria, Vienna University of Technology, Vienna, Austria
    Ada J. Robinson, Institute of Chemical, Environmental and Bioscience Engineering, TU Wien, Getreidemarkt 9, 1060 Vienna, Austria, Vienna University of Technology, Vienna, Austria

    Disclaimer: All claims expressed in this article are solely those of the authors and do not necessarily represent those of their affiliated organizations, or those of the publisher, the editors and the reviewers. Any product that may be evaluated in this article or claim that may be made by its manufacturer is not guaranteed or endorsed by the publisher.