#useCO2: Economics and Valorisation

Carbon Dioxide Utilisation (CDU) is a topic of growing interest around the world and as reported earlier a CO2 Forum panel on 'Impacts, Policies and Strategies of CDU' took place on September 15 in conjunction with the four-day International Conference on Carbon Dioxide Utilisation (ICCDU) in Sheffield, UK.  The ICCDU is now organised as an annual event in response to the growing interest CDU in the academic community. ICCDU 2017 will take place in Shanghai. The CO2 Forum enjoyed a high level of representation from industry with presentations and participation in the debates from companies including Covestro, Carbon8, Total, 3M, and Sunfire.

The high level of debate was reinforced by the presence of delegates from the IEA and IASS Postdam. In addition several partners from the SusChem supported SCOT project were also present and discussed the conclusions and recommendations of their project.

This year, the CO2 Forum was truly international with the participation of a some US delegates sharing views and highlighting additional and currently less known up scaling projects such as Skyonic in the US and CarbFix in Iceland.

CDU (or #useCO2) approaches are a medium to long-term research and innovation priority of SusChem and are featured in the SusChem Strategic Innovation and Research Agenda (SIRA). SusChem inspired #useCO2 calls have been included in Horizon 2020 work programmes including those developed through the SPIRE PPP such as SPIRE calls 05-2016 and 08-2017.

Economic issues
Although more #useCO2 projects are being announced, the economics of CO2 valorisation remains a significant issue in the current conditions. More incentives and support schemes are needed to support technology development and demonstration of CDU technologies at the large scale.

Pierre Barthelemy, Executive Director Research and Innovation at Cefic participated in a panel debate at the CO2 Forum and highlighted the need for support across all Technology Readiness Levels (TRLs), in particular financial support is needed beyond TRL 7 (defined as 'system prototype demonstration in operational environment' under Horizon 2020). He also called for an appropriate regulatory framework that supports #useCO2 business cases.

Inevitably the discussion at the CO2 Forum also included the potential for Carbon Capture and Storage (CCS), however the slow development of this technology was highlighted. By 2025, CCS projects currently in the pipeline could capture only 10% of what is required to support the two degree scenario (2DS) discussed at COP21 in Paris. Clearly no technological option should be rejected and more innovation is needed to meet the challenge of climate change.

Club CO2 seminar

The technical and economic issues around #useCO2 projects will also be the subject of the second CO2 reuse seminar organised by ClubCO2 with the support of ADEME and the CO2Forum. This event takes place on 21 October 2016 in Lyon, France and will focus on the question: What are the economic and environmental benefits of CO2 reuse? The first ClubCO2 seminar was organised in Le Havre in May 2015, Club CO2.

The morning session (to be conducted in English) will present the current position and prospects for the policy-making, regulatory and economic aspects of CO2 reuse and analyses of the economic and environmental benefits of different CO2 conversion processes, based on industrial applications.

The afternoon parallel expert sessions will be organised in English and French speaking workshops with the aim of discussing and highlighting the conditions for the successful emergence of CO2 transformation technologies.

You can find more information about the Club CO2 seminar here and registration for the event can be found here.

The ADEME (French Environment and Energy Management Agency) founded Club CO2 in 2002 with the support of the IFP Energies Nouvelles (IFPEN - formerly French Petroleum Institute) and BRGM (Bureau of Geological and Mineral Research). Since 19 March 2016, Club CO2 has been a non-profit association registered under French law to bring together industry and research organisations in this area.

#useCO2 News

Carbon dioxide Capture utilisation (CCU) and carbon storage are certainly hot topics in sustainable chemistry and rarely out of the energy news. Now the European Commission’s Strategic Energy Technologies Information System (SETIS) has devoted a whole issue of its online magazine to the topic including contributions from SusChem and SPIRE.

The January 2016 issue of the SETIS Magazine includes some 20 articles highlighting the many projects and activities on carbon capture utilisation and storage in Europe. Amongst the various contributions from industry and academic experts are two from SusChem and the SPIRE PPP:

• ‘Chemical valorisation of CO2 for Europe’ by Sophie Wilmet of Cefic R&I
• ‘Carbon dioxide – turning an enemy into a valuable friend!’ by SPIRE executive director Loredana Ghinea

SusChem closely follows progress in CO2 utilisation and regularly tweets on developments using the #useCO2 hashtag.

European #useCO2 Events
A couple of important #useCO2 conferences are taking place in Europe during 2016.

Carbon Dioxide Catalysis - Zing Conference on 19 22 April 2016 in the Algarve, Portugal
This conference will showcase the latest advances in the catalytic conversion of CO2. The primary aim of the conference is to gather representatives from the academic and industrial communities to exchange information and ideas, and to find mutual ground for developing new and improved catalytic methods.

International Conference on Carbon Dioxide Utilization (ICCDU XIV) on 11-15 September 2016 in Sheffield UK
The ICCDU is the premier scientific conference on CO2 utilisation research and  provides a multi-disciplinary forum on recent innovations in fundamental and applied aspects of carbon dioxide utilization. There are three broad themes and abstracts are welcome in the following areas by 29 February:

• CO2 insertion any processes in-which CO2 is inserted i.e. polymerisation, mineralisation.
• CO2 splitting any process in which CO2 is split, i.e. electrochemistry, plasma, photochemistry.
• Enabling technologies i.e. carbon capture, LCA, CO2 utilisation in the circular economy, hydrogen production for CO2 utilisation, energy integration, whole systems approaches.

SCOT project
The Smart CO2 Transformation (SCOT) project has launched its Vision for Smart CO2 Transformation in Europe, a long-term Vision for CO2 utilisation that puts forward why Europe should make CCU a priority and accelerate the development of #useCO2 technologies.

The report suggests three core reasons why Europe should accelerate the market development
of its CO2 utilisation sector:

• CO2 utilisation can be one of the major growth areas in Europe’s future low-carbon circular economy
• CO2  utilisation can help to facilitate Europe’s energy transition
• CO2 utilisation can contribute to achieving Europe’s aims for decreasing carbon emissions

The project also has two further events:

How to deal with oil price ups and downs: SCOT & CO2Chem Workshop on 23 March 2016 in Frankfurt, Germany
The significant work on CCU in recent years is being jeopardised by the current depressed fossil fuel price. For successful market implementation, it is crucial for CCU technologies to compete economically, thus the low oil prices are a major barrier for the development of CCU technologies. The goal of the workshop is to describe the current situation and to discuss how CCU can develop constantly and safely within these uncertain framework conditions.
http://www.scotproject.org/

CO2 Utilisation as a Strong Catalyst for the European Industrial Renaissance on 29 June 2016 in Brussels
The final conference of the SCOT FP7 project will present the Research and Development and the regulatory needs that SCOT has identified as levers for the development of CO2 Utilisation. The day will be split in two parts; in the morning, the CO2 recycling community will gather key industrial and academic players in order to discuss the Strategic European Research and Innovation Agenda (SERIA) and the next steps necessary to implement the Joint Action Plan.  In the afternoon, discussion will move to European and regional policy makers and what can be done from a policy perspective to allow the industrial deployment of these technologies.

About CO2Chem
The information provided in this blog is supplied by the CO2Chem network that brings together academics, industrialists and policy makers over a wide range of disciplines to consider the utilisation of carbon dioxide as a single carbon chemical feedstock for the production of value added products. Network activities are geared towards the founding of strong cross-disciplinary research clusters that will lead research in this increasingly important area.
A calendar of forthcoming events covering carbon dioxide utilisation (#useCO2) topics can be found on the CO2Chem Website.

Carbon Dioxide Utilisation: A Catalyst for European Industrial Renaissance?

Essen will be the “place to be” at the end of September for those working on CO2 recycling and #useCO2 projects in Europe. The city will be the venue for the Fourth Conference on Carbon Dioxide as Feedstock for Fuels, Chemistry and Polymers on 29 and 30 September organised by the Nova Institute. And before the conference the SCOT (Smart CO2 Transformation) FP7 project will hold its mid-term conference on Carbon Dioxide Utilisation (CDU) on 28 September. All the events take place at the same location: Haus der Technik in Essen, Germany.

On 28 September the SCOT team will present its Vision for Carbon Dioxide Utilisation and a Strategic European Research Agenda for Europe. The floor will then be open for the views of high level speakers from politics and industry. Plenty of discussion is expected and you are welcome to take part!

SCOT wants to hear the voices of a wide range of participants. Break-out sessions in smaller groups will also provide opportunities for intense knowledge exchange and discussions on the various aspects of #useCO2 policy and technical issues.

Interactive sessions
This one-day conference will be THE place to hear about the latest developments on Carbon Dioxide Utilisation and help shape the future of CDU/ #useCO2 in Europe. Input from the conference will directly feed into SCOT advisory reports to the European Commission. These reports will cover both the future role of CDU in Europe and future support mechanisms for CDU.

The SCOT conference aims to actively engage academics, politicians and industry to discuss the Vision and business opportunities of CDU up to 2030. The break-out sessions will be in small groups of (20-25 people) and will involve a single presentation and a moderator to guide the discussion. The outcomes can help the SCOT team to further narrow down the project’s Vision, Research Objectives and Action Plan.

The sessions are on:

• The Potential of Carbon Dioxide Utilization for Mineralization and Waste
• Availability of low-cost low-carbon electricity for CDU
• Making chemical building blocks using CO2
• Working towards better LCA for CDU and System boundary definitions of CDU
• Power to X: Synthetic fuels from CO2? 
• Framing Carbon Dioxide Utilisation
• Bridging the Gap: (Policy) options to get from lab to market

The SCOT project team are certain that there are already many ideas for CDU that only require a good platform and funding to make them happen. At the end of the conference, SCOT is organising a matchmaking event to allow people to find projects and partners to respond successfully to the European research calls of 2016 on Carbon Dioxide Utilisation. Information will be available on next year’s Horizon 2020 calls including those under the SPIRE PPP initiative and the forthcoming Horizon Prize on CO2 utilisation. Come along to pitch your project ideas and expertise!

Participation in the SCOT conference (including the matchmaking event) costs €50 and you can register here. Students have the opportunity of getting a free ticket on a first-come-first-serve basis.
For more information, please contact the project secretariat. You can download the programme here.

CO2 as Feedstock
The SCOT conference takes place back to back with the Fourth Conference on Carbon Dioxide as Feedstock that is hosted by the Nova-Institute on 29 and 30 September at the Haus der Technik in Essen.

Over the last few years, the rise of this topic has developed rapidly from several research projects and industrial applications to become more and more dynamic, especially in the fields of solar fuels (power-to-fuel, power-to-gas) and also in CO2-based chemicals and polymers. At this conference leading players will showcase some enhanced and also new applications using carbon dioxide as feedstock. Representatives from political bodies and research institutes will be on hand at the event to present and discuss the latest national and regional policies, strategies and visions.

You can access the full programme for the event here and registration is here.

ACHEMA 2015 - Global Summit of Innovation!

With over 3,800 exhibitors and a huge exhibition space ACHEMA opened on 15 June in Frankfurt am Main, Germany. The growing international reputation of Europe’s premier event for the process industries was underlined by the fact that, for the first time, the majority of exhibitors come from outside Germany. With well over 160,000 participants anticipated to attend from 15 - 19 June one focus of interest for SusChem amongst the varied technical programme are three sessions on CO2 utilisation.

ACHEMA is the world forum for chemical engineering and the process industry providing an international platform for new chemical process innovations and technologies. And innovation was the main focus of the first day of ACHEMA. At the opening press conference Prof. Dr. Rainer Diercks, Chairman of the Board of organiser DECHEMA e.V. described ACHEMA as: “the global summit of innovation.” Being interdisciplinary and highly international, ACHEMA is a “melting pot of ideas.” Diercks also pointed out that the significant contribution of chemistry and process engineering to the solution of global challenges such as water supply, food or health is not well-known to the general public. ACHEMA is therefore aiming to increase its activities directed towards engaging with the public on these subjects.

The importance of the chemical industry for overall innovation should be brought much more strongly to the attention of the general public DECHEMA believes. All speakers in the press conference panel warned that Europe could fall back as a place for innovation if the political and societal framework was not improved.

Innovation in terms of CO2 utilisation technology is of growing interest to SusChem and the chemical industry generally. At ACHEMA DECHEMA has organised a special stand on the German #useCO2 funding programme in the Exhibition area in  Hall 9.2, stand E46 (link text in German). If you are at ACHEMA go visit!

In addition two ACHEMA conference sessions and a workshop are of direct interest in this field.

Energy and alternatives
Energy, water and feedstock are essential for any chemical or biotechnology conversion. As these resources become scarcer, new methods for efficient use are being introduced. This includes energy efficient transformations and operations as well as the temporary storage of energy in the form of electricity or heat. Renewable energy resources that produce electricity depending on weather conditions rather than in response to demand may create a temporary and regional surplus of energy. This can be usefully employed for the production of basic chemicals as well as for conversion of unconventional feedstock such as CO2.

The ‘Power to chemicals’ conference session majors on this latter theme and takes place on the morning of Thursday, 18 June from 10:30. The session will describe  a number of interesting processes in this field including the use of ammonia as a storage medium for fluctuating (renewable) energy sources; synthetic fuels from a sustainable pathway; storage of power as chemicals using gasification plants; tailored foams as catalyst support for highly exothermic processes; and comparison of biological and catalytic methanation for power-to-gas applications.

You can find more information, including downloadable abstracts of all the presentations, here.

On the following morning (19 June) a dedicated session on Industrial carbon dioxide utilisation covers topics including: Materials for the 21st century - can carbon come from CO2?; CO2-based polyurethanes on the way to commercial scale (the Bayer DREAM process); an evaluation of the economic and environmental potentials of using CO2 in chemical processes; Combinatorial screening of catalyst materials for electrochemical CO2 reduction; and Environmentally sustainable syngas production from carbon dioxide and hydrogen.

Again you can find more information, including downloadable abstracts of all the presentations, here.

SCOT workshop
Also on the afternoon of 18 June from 15:00 the EU FP7 project Smart CO2 Utilisation (SCOT) is organising a workshop at ACHEMA entitled: ‘PtX: A new paradigm for energy and gas networks?’

The event will present the draft of the SCOT Project’s Vision for Power to Gas and Power to Liquids and open a discussion on  the potential of these technologies in Europe.
The workshop will address the following questions:

• In which fields will PtX provide added value?
• What needs to happen for the technologies to be viable (policy, technical progress, etc)?
• What impact will PtX have on electricity and gas network operators and industries in Europe?

To guide the discussion, three high-level experts will lead the exchanges with the audience that will consist of people from industry, research institutes as well as policy makers.

A joint Cefic-European Commission Workshop on the Chemistry and Processes of CO2 Utilisation was recently held and the outcomes will be published soon.

Regional partner for #useCO2 Project

The Smart CO2 Transformation (SCOT) project is supported under ‘Regions of Knowledge’ in FP7 to develop a Strategic European Research Agenda aimed at improving the technical and economic performance of emerging CO2 transformation technologies. The project was launched in October 2013 by four partner regions in France, the Netherlands, Belgium and the UK and it now requires the participation of an additional partner (regional authority or organization supported by a region). Could this be you? 

Reducing CO2 emissions, protecting the environment and our resources, while reducing consumption of scarce raw materials are some major challenges facing society. The EU has adopted ambitious goals to reduce greenhouse gas emissions to 80-95% below 1990 levels by 2050. So far, most attention from policy makers and others has been paid to Carbon Capture and Storage (CCS) technologies that aim to concentrate CO2 emitted from large industrial sites and store it in deep geological sites.

The SCOT project is complementary to this approach but focuses on an emerging research area with great economic growth potential: the recycling of CO2 through its transformation into valuable products via chemical or biological technologies – a topic close to SusChem and SPIRE’s research agendas and the subject of many SusChem tweets with the hashtag #useCO2 and previous SusChem blog articles.

In addition to significantly reducing net CO2 emissions, this approach brings the benefit of reducing the consumption of non-renewable resources and CO2 is no longer considered as a waste but as a significant resource.

SCOT is the first ever European regional initiative in the field of CO2 recycling. The consortium gathers four regions which are strongly committed and already well advanced in this emerging area of CO2 recycling. Through a stronger coordination of their individual efforts, the SCOT project aims to:

• define a Strategic European Research Agenda aimed at improving the technico-economic performance of emerging CO2 transformation technologies and at developing new breakthrough solutions and market applications
• attract additional EU clusters, regions and investors to participate in multi-disciplinary research programmes and other collaborative actions defined in a Joint Action Plan
• propose structural policy measures to favour the transition to a new European society based on the paradigm of “CO2-as-a-resource”, and significantly improve the EU’s overall competitive position and environmental performance on the international scene. 

Partner profile

The SCOT consortium has a dedicated Work Package on internationalization and mentoring. And the new project partner will benefit from this aspect of the project. The mentoring activities will be divided into two separate sets of actions: developing research and clustering capacities in the mentored region, and reinforcing the clustering/networking capacities of more advanced regions through a mutual exchange of best practices

Such mentoring activities will be the ideal opportunity for the mentored region to:

• reinforce its research and innovation capacities in the area of CO2 recycling, 
• and to learn how to structure and operate an innovation-driven cluster. 

The deadline for submitting an application to join the project is 3 January 2014 and the selection will happen by 10 January.

Further information on participation can be found on this link and interested parties can find the details of the application process here. Alternatively contact Talia Brun at Axelera.