Call for US CCS innovation zone

ExxonMobil believes the US could establish a carbon capture and storage (CCS) ‘innovation zone’ along the Houston Ship Channel and surrounding industrial areas with the potential to capture all the CO₂ emissions from the petrochemical, manufacturing and power generation facilities located there.

For the past three years, ExxonMobil has been assessing the concept of multi-user CCS hubs in industrial areas located near geologic storage sites, such as depleted oil and gas reservoirs. ‘We believe the time is right for a large-scale collaboration in the US between government at every level, private industry, academia and local communities to create an “Innovation Zone” approach to dramatically accelerate CCS progress,’ says Joe Blommaert, President of ExxonMobil Low Carbon Solutions.

The company sees Houston as being the ideal location as it has many large industrial emission sources and is located near geologic formations in the Gulf of Mexico that could store large amounts of CO₂ safely, securely and permanently. The US Department of Energy estimates that storage capacity along the US Gulf Coast is enough to hold 500bn tonnes of CO₂ – more than 130 years of the country’s total industrial and power generation emissions, based on 2018 data.

It would be a huge project, requiring the collective support of industry and government, with a combined estimated investment of $100bn or more, according to Blommaert. But the benefits could be equally big – early projections indicate that if the appropriate policies were in place, infrastructure could be built in Houston to safely capture and permanently store about 50mn t/y of CO₂ by 2030, and 100mn t/y by 2040.