Cleaner power: reducing emissions with carbon capture and storage

Research opportunities with CCS

Achieving meaningful reductions in greenhouse gas emissions will require a wide range of solutions, and ExxonMobil believes that carbon capture and storage (CCS) has the potential to play an important role.

CCS is the process by which carbon dioxide from power-plant and other industrial activities that would otherwise be released into the atmosphere is captured, compressed and injected into underground geologic formations for safe, secure and permanent storage. The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change estimates that fossil fuel power plants and large industrial facilities account for as much as 60 percent of global carbon emissions. Thus, the broad-based deployment of cost-effective carbon capture and storage would potentially make a massive impact on the world’s greenhouse gas levels.

The greatest opportunity for future large-scale deployment of CCS may be in the natural gas-fired power generation sector. While CCS technology can be applied to coal-fired power generation, the cost to capture CO₂ is about twice that of natural gas power generation. In addition, because coal-fired power generation creates about twice as much CO₂ per unit of electricity generated, the geological storage space required to store the CO₂ produced from coal-fired generation is double that required for gas-fired generation.

In 2017, ExxonMobil captured 6.6 million metric tons of CO₂ for storage – the equivalent of eliminating the annual greenhouse gas emissions of more than 1 million passenger vehicles.

ExxonMobil is leveraging this expertise to conduct proprietary, fundamental research to develop breakthrough carbon capture technologies with an aim to reduce complexity, lower the cost and ultimately encourage wide-spread global deployment of this crucial technology.

The carbon capture and storage process

ExxonMobil is also developing sub-surface CO₂ storage capability by leveraging decades of experience in the exploration, development and production of hydrocarbon resources. This expertise is key to permanently storing CO₂ deep underground in a safe and secure fashion.

For example, we are collaborating with leading universities around the world to better characterize subsurface storage capacity and develop improved CO₂ monitoring technologies and techniques.