Infrastructure planning for carbon capture and storage

Carbon capture and storage (CCS) is seen as one of the key technologies for cutting CO₂ emissions from coal power plants. It is proposed that carbon capture and storage could reduce CO₂ emissions to the atmosphere from a modern power plant by approximately 80-90%. Building and operating infrastructure for capturing, transporting, and storing CO₂, however, is forecast to be expensive. To gain a better understanding of and to develop clearer insight into the cost of introducing CCS in Australia, the CSIRO Infrastructure Futures Analysis Platform has been extended with capabilities to handle pipeline infrastructures and with an optimisation module specifically designed for CCS infrastructure planning. The Infrastructure Futures and Analysis Platform is a software system for addressing questions regarding the optimal selection, configuration and deployment of infrastructure. This paper has two objectives: (1) To introduce an optimisation model for the detailed design and operation of a carbon capture and storage network and present the results of a computation study involving eastern Australia. (2) To introduce the Infrastructure Futures and Analysis Platform and demonstrate its extendability and versatility by discussing what was needed to customise it for use in the carbon capture and storage context. The core of the carbon capture and storage optimisation module is a multi-period network design model. Given yearly, system-wide carbon capture targets, the model decides when and where to build carbon capture facilities, open basins for geo-sequestration, and install pipelines connecting capture sites with carbon sinks so as to minimise the total cost over the planning horizon. The preliminary results of the computational study are intended primarily to validate the optimisation based approach and to provide the basis for a more extensive study investigating different scenarios involving different and larger regions, different system-wide carbon capture targets, and different economic costing models.