Modeling a Carbon Capture, Transport, and Storage Infrastructure for Europe.

In this paper, we develop a model to analyze the economics of carbon capture, transport, and storage (CCTS) in the wake of expected rising CO prices. We present a scalable mixed integer, multiperiod, welfare-optimizing network model for Europe, called CCTS-Mod. The model incorporates endogenous decisions on carbon capture, pipeline and storage investments, as well as capture, flow and injection quantities based on given costs, CO prices, storage capacities, and point source emissions. Given full information about future costs of CCTS-technology, and CO prices, the model determines a cost minimizing strategy on whether to purchase CO certificates, or to abate the CO through investments into a CCTS-chain on a site by site basis. We apply the model to analyze different scenarios for the deployment of CCTS in Europe, e.g., under high and low CO prices, respectively. We find that beyond CO prices of €50 per t, CCTS can contribute to the decarbonization of Europe's industry sectors, as long as one assumes sufficient storage capacities (onshore and/or offshore). We find that CCTS is only viable for the power sector if the CO certificate price exceeds €75 per t. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]