The report identifies overall needs for wide deployment of CCS and strictly technological gaps for every kind of capture, transport and storage activities, and provides relevant economic assessments.

To reduce costs and thus accelerate CCS wide deployment, R&D requires new drivers such as: large scale demonstration projects, emissions regulations and financial incentives, further research to achieve safe long-term storage of CO₂. Knowledge sharing is an additional key driver of CCS development as it  can solve the lack of information on design, costs and space requirements of CCS, which ”impedes making power stations and industrial plants CCS-ready for when CCS technology achieves commercial status.”

More specifically, regarding first the capture phase –most important in determining the overall cost of CCS- the focus is on reducing energy requirements and improving the purity of the CO₂ stream.

As for CO₂ transport, ”only pipeline and tanker transmission are commercially reasonable options for the large quantities of CO₂ associated with centralised collection hubs or point source emitters such as power stations of 500 MWe capacity or greater. Trains and trucks may be appropriate for small volumes of CO₂ over short distances.”

With regards to the storage phase safety, capacity and monitoring are key technology areas. New issues such as water management and the effect of pressure build-up within a reservoir or deep saline aquifer are additional key topics of ongoing research while some loopholes remain concerning site selection, assessment and monitoring.  The report also studies new technology which is in early stages of development.

Furthermore, the CSLF updated from the 2009 version its inventory of the nine commercial-scales integrated CCS projects linked to oil and gas production -four of them having monitoring and verification systems to guarantee permanent CO₂ storage and of all CCS-related projects and activities.  The report also lists the regional and national initiatives and the existing financial schemes worldwide.  It also indicates that significant national investments are occurring globally to advance deployment of CCS technologies.

Report states that research has mainly focused on the capture and storage of CO₂, which is emitted from power plants (mainly natural gas ) so far. Emissions of other GHGs than CO₂ have been regulated in the industry, but from now ”there will be a need to identify and adapt the CO₂ capture processes best suited for theses industries as well as for the emerging bio-fuels industry” says the report.

Overall, the report shows that technology is progressing faster than public acceptance of CCS, which is a key element in CCS deployment. To overcome people’s suspicions and/or their unfamiliarity to CCS, the report recommends to put R&D efforts in improving CCS regulatory frameworks and in CCS communication.

”One of the CSLF activities are to identify key obstacles for further technological development of CCS, and this report provides a summary of the current development. When it states that CCS technology is progressing faster than the public acceptance of CCS it tells us that we have to do our job even better, says Gøril Tjetland Energy and CCS Advisor in Bellona.

The CSLF is a 25-member ministerial-level international climate change initiative focused on developing and deploying cost-effective CCS technologies worldwide.

The list of technological improvements and gaps provided by this article is obviously not exhaustive, please access the full report here or read more information on the Bellona website.