Budget gives Rs 20,000 crore: Why India needs carbon capture solutions, challenges it faces

CCUS is not a single technology. It refers to a variety of different technologies and approaches that ensure that the emitted carbon dioxide — the main cause of global warming and consequent climate change — does not get into the atmosphere.

Such technologies have been around for decades, but their deployment has been extremely limited, mainly because of cost and safety considerations, and difficulties in scaling them up. This situation has been changing in the past few years, with many CCUS projects, mainly in the United States, Europe and China, kicking off. Still, barely 50 million tonnes of CO2 are currently captured every year globally, to be stored or utilised. That is less than half a per cent of the nearly 40 billion tonnes of CO2 that is emitted every year.

But with countries struggling to make any significant reduction in their actual emissions, CCUS technologies hold the key to achieving net-zero status. There is no future pathway in which the world is able to keep global warming in check and achieve a global net-zero status by 2050 without a significant intervention from CCUS technologies.

The budget push

For India, which expects its emissions to grow in the near and medium term due to construction and industrial expansion, CCUS is critical. In the past few years, particularly after it announced its intention to attain net-zero status by 2070 at the Glasgow climate conference in 2021, India has been pushing for development and deployment of indigenous CCUS technologies that are suited to its specific needs and circumstances.

Some pilot and demonstration projects are already operational in steel, cement and chemicals industries. Potential sites for largescale carbon capture, and those feasible for long-term storage have been mapped.

Several research groups across different institutions have been working on developing homegrown CCUS solutions. Centres of Excellence like the ones at IIT Bombay and Jawaharlal Nehru Centre for Advanced Scientific Research in Bengaluru have been set up specifically for this purpose.

Several studies have been conducted to assess the needs and gaps. Though the overall science of CCUS is fairly well-established, innovations in engineering, processes and materials are required at every stage of the pipeline — capture, transportation, storage, utilisation — to bring in greater efficiency, cost-effectiveness and safety.

In December last year, the Department of Science and Technology released a R&D roadmap for CCUS for 2030, identifying the technology, finance and policy bottlenecks to quicker development and adoption of these solutions.

The budgetary outlay of Rs 20,000 crore over five years seeks to address one of the biggest gaps in this area. A number of CCUS technologies are said to be ready, having demonstrated their potential in laboratories, but need to be tested out in the field to see whether these can be deployed and scaled up in an efficient and cost-effective manner.

This part requires substantial investments and, given the uncertainties of success, these have not been forthcoming. The budgetary allocation is meant precisely to “achieve higher readiness levels” of these technologies in end-applications.

“This can be a game-changing move. In addition to the commercially available technologies, there are several novel ones proven in the laboratory, and ready for being tried out for commercialisation. To make a meaningful impact, and also be economically viable, technologies need to be scaled up such that they are able to capture and convert, or store, 100 to 500 tonnes of CO2 per day,” Vikram Vishal, professor and convener, DST-National Centre of Excellence in CCUS at IIT Bombay, said.

“I am sure we will see several CCUS technologies get commercially deployed in India in the next five years,” he said.

Economic benefits

The CCUS technologies are particularly relevant for industrial sectors that find it extremely hard to eliminate carbon dioxide. In these industries, like steel or cement, carbon dioxide is released not only as a result of burning of fuel, but also happens to be an intrinsic part of the production process itself. So, merely switching from fossil fuels to renewable-powered electricity does not get rid of the CO2. In fact, in both cement and steel, a majority of CO2 release comes from the production process rather than from burning of fuel.

CCUS solutions are the only way out for reducing the carbon footprint of these industries. Finance Minister’s budget speech mentioned that the Rs 20,000 crore allocation was targeted mainly at developing end-use applications in power, steel, cement, refineries and chemicals industries. These happen to be the largest contributors to India’s CO2 emissions.

Many of these industries are facing carbon-related tariffs like CBAM (Carbon Border Adjustment Mechanism) in the European Union, a key export market for Indian companies. Lowering their carbon footprint through CCUS technologies would make their products more competitive in markets like these.

“CCUS is a significant enabler for large scale decarbonisation of industries such as cement and this (budgetary) intervention directly addresses the technology and cost requirements of the cement sector in this context. For the cement industry, this support is critical to enabling the adoption and scale up of CCUS technologies while continuing to meet the country’s long term infrastructure needs,” Parth Jindal, president of the Cement Manufacturers’ Association, said.