Ultra-Cheap Renewable Energy as an Enabling Technology for Deep Industrial Decarbonization via Capture and Utilization of Process CO 2 Emissions

Mohammed Bin Afif, Abdulla Bin Afif, Harry Apostoleris, Krishiv Gandhi, Anup Dadlani, Amal Al Ghaferi, Jan Torgersen and Matteo Chiesa
Additional contact information
Mohammed Bin Afif: Laboratory for Energy and NanoScience (LENS), Khalifa University, Abu Dhabi P.O. Box 127788, United Arab Emirates
Abdulla Bin Afif: Department of Mechanical and Industrial Engineering, NTNU Trondheim, 7491 Trondheim, Norway
Harry Apostoleris: R&D Center, Dubai Electricity and Water Authority (DEWA), Dubai P.O. Box 564, United Arab Emirates
Krishiv Gandhi: R&D Center, Dubai Electricity and Water Authority (DEWA), Dubai P.O. Box 564, United Arab Emirates
Anup Dadlani: Department of Mechanical and Industrial Engineering, NTNU Trondheim, 7491 Trondheim, Norway
Amal Al Ghaferi: Laboratory for Energy and NanoScience (LENS), Khalifa University, Abu Dhabi P.O. Box 127788, United Arab Emirates
Jan Torgersen: Department of Mechanical and Industrial Engineering, NTNU Trondheim, 7491 Trondheim, Norway
Matteo Chiesa: Laboratory for Energy and NanoScience (LENS), Khalifa University, Abu Dhabi P.O. Box 127788, United Arab Emirates

Energies, 2022, vol. 15, issue 14, 1-15

Abstract: Rapidly declining costs of renewable energy technologies have made solar and wind the cheapest sources of energy in many parts of the world. This has been seen primarily as enabling the rapid decarbonization of the electricity sector, but low-cost, low-carbon energy can have a great secondary impact by reducing the costs of energy-intensive decarbonization efforts in other areas. In this study, we consider, by way of an exemplary carbon capture and utilization cycle based on mature technologies, the energy requirements of the “industrial carbon cycle”, an emerging paradigm in which industrial CO 2 emissions are captured and reprocessed into chemicals and fuels, and we assess the impact of declining renewable energy costs on overall economics of these processes. In our exemplary process, CO 2 is captured from a cement production facility via an amine scrubbing process and combined with hydrogen produced by a solar-powered polymer electrolyte membrane, using electrolysis to produce methanol. We show that solar heat and electricity generation costs currently realized in the Middle East lead to a large reduction in the cost of this process relative to baseline assumptions found in published literature, and extrapolation of current energy price trends into the near future would bring costs down to the level of current fossil-fuel-based processes.

Keywords: renewable energy transition; solar energy; carbon capture and utilization; hydrogen; renewable methanol; technoeconomic analysis (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: Q Q0 Q4 Q40 Q41 Q42 Q43 Q47 Q48 Q49 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2022
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