Carbon capture and storage at scale: Lessons from the growth of analogous energy technologies

At present carbon capture and storage (CCS) is very expensive and its performance is highly uncertain at the scale of commercial power plants. Such challenges to deployment, though, are not new to students of technological change. Several successful technologies, including energy technologies, have...

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Bibliographic Details
Published in:Energy policy 2010-08, Vol.38 (8), p.4089-4098
Main Authors: Rai, Varun, Victor, David G., Thurber, Mark C.
Format: Article
Language:English
Subjects:
Air pollution caused by fuel industries
Applied sciences
Capital intensive energy technologies
Carbon
Carbon capture and storage
Carbon capture and storage Capital intensive energy technologies Technological diffusion and learning by doing
Carbon emissions
Carbon sequestration
Costs
Diffusion
Electric power plants
Energy
Energy industry
Energy policy
Energy technology
Energy. Thermal use of fuels
Exact sciences and technology
General. Regulations. Norms. Economy
Governments
Innovation diffusion
Liquefied natural gas
Nuclear power plants
Pollution control
Power plants
Studies
Technological change
Technological diffusion and learning by doing
Technology assessment
Technology transfer
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Summary:At present carbon capture and storage (CCS) is very expensive and its performance is highly uncertain at the scale of commercial power plants. Such challenges to deployment, though, are not new to students of technological change. Several successful technologies, including energy technologies, have faced similar challenges as CCS faces now. To draw lessons for the CCS industry from the history of other energy technologies that, as with CCS today, were risky and expensive early in their commercial development, we have analyzed the development of the US nuclear-power industry, the US SO 2-scrubber industry, and the global liquefied natural gas (LNG) industry. Through analyzing the development of the analogous industries we arrive at three principal observations. First, government played a decisive role in the development of all of these analogous technologies. Second, diffusion of these technologies beyond the early demonstration and niche projects hinged on the credibility of incentives for industry to invest in commercial-scale projects. Third, the conventional wisdom that experience with technologies inevitably reduces costs does not necessarily hold. Risky and capital-intensive technologies may be particularly vulnerable to diffusion without accompanying reductions in cost.
ISSN:0301-4215
1873-6777
DOI:10.1016/j.enpol.2010.03.035