Carbon Capture and Storage (CCS)
1. Despite India promoting renewable and alternative energy sources, how long will it take for India to still depend on fossil fuels in order to meet the growing energy demand of power systems and industries?
2. Will India be able to inject nearly 10 Gt of CO2 by 2050, towards mitigating fossil fuel use-based emissions under 1.5 degrees Celcius temperature increase scenario?
3. To what extent, CCS will be able to reduce CO2 emissions (a) from oil & gas industries; and (b) from steel and cement industries (explicitly and individually) by 2025 and by 2030?
4. To what extent, the above-ground challenges will reduce, the area available for CO2 storage, as against its theoretical capacity of around 700 Gt (Offshore 200 Gt and Onshore 500 Gt)?
5. In Indian context, depleted oil and gas reservoirs account only for 3 Gt and unmineable coal beds account only for 4 Gt of CO2 storage potential, while, deep saline aquifers and basalts theoretically account for more than 300 Gt of CO2 sequestration potential each.
If so, whether, India requires to depend on (a) Deep Saline Aquifers; and (b) Basalts – predominantly – for CO2 sequestration? If so, would it remain feasible to collect deep saline aquifer’s rock and fluid properties, right from the scratch?? Further, despite India having significant onshore basalt formations across the globe, unlike sedimentary formations, basalts remain to be harder associated with the various origins and chemical assemblage. In addition, basalt is supposed to convert the sequestrated CO2 into stone through mineralization, which, will probably take more than an average period of a human life span. Until its conversion into mineralization process, the sequestrated CO2 is not supposed to escape from the basalts from any artificially induced fractures, resulting from minute accumulated seismic effects. Given these constraints (with possible significant leakage over time and post-injection risks associated with dealing harder rocks), whether, India, still could potentially be a global CCS champion? How can we rule out the possibility of leakage, even before the injected CO2 gets converted into its equivalent mineral salts, which will take, at least, few hundred years? In other words, how will it reduce the monitoring costs for first few decades at least, even though, it may not require long-term liability coverage, say, after, 50 or 75 years? Hopefully, India will not get into monetization opportunity associated with the injected CO2 emissions from other countries into our formations. Further, even, the CO2 emissions from other countries could also find its discharge in Indian Territory, if geological nature of the confined aquifers remain favorable (cannot be ruled out in the long run).
Suresh Kumar Govindarajan
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