Sahabat Alam Malaysia (SAM) would like to respond to a recent article in the press titled “Malaysia is well positioned as a promising regional hub for CCUS“.
Carbon Capture, Utilisation and Storage in the past few years especially has been strongly advocated by fossil fuel companies as a “climate solution”.
Regrettably, the views expressed by MIDF Investment Bank did not touch on the poor track record of carbon capture and storage (CCS) deployment in the last decades – which tells a story of over-promising, under-delivering and cost blow-outs, as far as climate mitigation is concerned.
The article advances a bias in favour of CCUS – which has always been about prolonging business-as-usual fossil fuel use, instead of undertaking bona fide climate action involving a phase-out of such fuels towards other renewable alternatives.
While the article refers to downside risks, it is cursory and brief in this regard, and does not explain how these risks will be addressed. This is unfortunate.
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CCUS is a process designed to ‘capture’ CO2 generated by high-emitting activities. The captured carbon is then used for a variety of purposes.
However, the main use for captured carbon today is for enhanced oil recovery – a process that increases the maximum amount of oil and gas that can be extracted from an oil reservoir that would not have been pumped out otherwise.
Carbon Capture and Storage (CCS) is essentially the same but for the fact that the captured carbon is stored instead of used.
According to the Institute for Energy Economics and Financial Analysis in 2021, 73% of the carbon captured globally each year is used for enhanced oil recovery. Therefore, instead of reducing carbon emissions, CCUS as a whole creates more emissions as it allows for more oil extraction through enhanced oil recovery.
Proponents of CCUS would always claim that the plants will be able to capture 90% of carbon emissions.
In reality, no CCUS plant in the world has ever reached such levels of carbon capture. Instead, CCUS collectively has a history of woefully underperforming.
According to a report by the Energy Transitions Commission, a global coalition of leaders from across the energy landscape, the world’s largest stand-alone CCS facility at the Gorgon liquefied natural gas (LNG) plant in Australia has only managed to capture 45% of emissions. The Quest Oil refinery in Alberta, Canada has an estimated capture rate of 48%. And the Century Gas Processing Plant in Texas has an estimated capture rate of under 10%.
The CCS facility at Kasawari in Sarawak, estimated to cost RM4.5bn when it comes into operation, will be the largest offshore CCS facility to date. If it continues this trend of failures (listed above), Malaysia would have to confront a very large single-point source of emissions that would be both an environmental and economic liability to the nation.
The most critical issue with CCS is ensuring permanent storage, which presents a long-term liability.
There is a need for the Ministry of Economy and the Ministry of Natural Resources and Environmental Sustainability to reassess the overall implications of the proposed CCUS law – including critically assessing the projected capture rate with more thorough assessments and debate, before this technology is accepted as an appropriate solution.
CCUS is inherently expensive whilst only delivering minuscule levels of emissions reduction. This matter is very apparent through the national energy transition roadmap, where CCUS is prescribed as only being able to negate 5% of emissions in the energy sector by 2050 – despite costs being estimated to be around RM25-30bn between 2023 and 2029 and at RM160-RM170bn if extrapolated from 2023 to 2050.
Out of the total needed RM1.2-1.3tn of investments needed for the roadmap by 2050, CCUS by itself would take RM160-170bn, amounting to nearly 13.1% of the total costs, despite only being able to deliver a 5% decrease in emissions. This extraordinary cost over the touted benefits needs much more rigour and scrutiny in assessment.
Additionally, as highlighted in a publication by the UK-based International Institute for Sustainable Development (IISD), on top of high capital expenditure, CCS requires substantial ongoing government financial support and regulation. This will eat into public resources that otherwise could be better directed at more cost-effective mitigation solutions.
According to the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), when compared to the adoption of more proven energy mitigation measures such as the mass adoption of renewables (eg wind and solar), CCS is the most expensive and delivers the least mitigation of carbon emissions.
In addition, research conducted by the University of Oxford found that despite 40 years of CCS development, there is no evidence of technological learning or associated cost reductions to date in any part of the CCS process – which makes it very unlikely that the costs of CCS will go down anytime in the future.
Environmental, social and health risks are additional concerns. As highlighted in the report of the UN special rapporteur on the toxic impacts of some proposed climate change solutions, the CCS process relies on large amounts of chemicals and can release significant quantities of highly toxic ammonia into surrounding communities. At high concentrations, CO2 is a toxic gas and an asphyxiant, which can cause circulatory insufficiency, coma and death. There are also risks relating to leakage: leakage to adjacent geological formations may cause geochemical reactions, including stimulation of seismic activity, and mobilisation of potentially polluting elements, such as heavy metals, which can contaminate drinking water and underground water.
It is clear that CCUS/CCS is not the solution that it sets itself out to be. It is fundamentally flawed and is used as an excuse by fossil fuel interests to continue business as usual and further delay genuine climate action.
SAM appeals to the government to not be buoyed by claims of short-term financial benefits and speculative techno-fixes that can be detrimental to our genuine efforts at combating climate change. Ample and proper weight must be given to the environmental, economic and social costs of CCS/CCUS implementation. This cannot be rushed, as the issue of long-term liability must be considered in depth, in view of the risks involved.
We also urge the government to stop providing, extending or channelling government support, including funding and subsidies for CCS/CCUS and related infrastructure.
Public resources must be invested in genuinely sustainable solutions, including community-based initiatives that serve the public and not big polluters. – SAM
Meenakshi Raman is president of Sahabat Alam Malaysia.
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