Description: Climate change mitigation potential of carbon capture and utilization in the chemical industry

This title appears in the Scientific Report : 2020

Climate change mitigation potential of carbon capture and utilization in the chemical industry

Chemical production is set to become the single largest driver of global oil consumption by 2030. To reduce oil consumption and resulting greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions, carbon dioxide can be captured from stacks or air and utilized as alternative carbon source for chemicals. Here, we show that carb...

Personal Name(s):	Kätelhön, Arne
	Meys, Raoul / Deutz, Sarah / Suh, Sangwon / Bardow, André (Corresponding author)
Contributing Institute:	Modellierung von Energiesystemen; IEK-10
Published in:	Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America, 116 (2019) 23, S. 11187 - 11194
Imprint:	Washington, DC National Acad. of Sciences 2019
DOI:	10.1073/pnas.1821029116
PubMed ID:	31085651
Document Type:	Journal Article
Research Program:	ohne Topic
	Publikationsportal JuSER

Please use the identifier: http://dx.doi.org/10.1073/pnas.1821029116 in citations.

Chemical production is set to become the single largest driver of global oil consumption by 2030. To reduce oil consumption and resulting greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions, carbon dioxide can be captured from stacks or air and utilized as alternative carbon source for chemicals. Here, we show that carbon capture and utilization (CCU) has the technical potential to decouple chemical production from fossil resources, reducing annual GHG emissions by up to 3.5 Gt CO2-eq in 2030. Exploiting this potential, however, requires more than 18.1 PWh of low-carbon electricity, corresponding to 55% of the projected global electricity production in 2030. Most large-scale CCU technologies are found to be less efficient in reducing GHG emissions per unit low-carbon electricity when benchmarked to power-to-X efficiencies reported for other large-scale applications including electro-mobility (e-mobility) and heat pumps. Once and where these other demands are satisfied, CCU in the chemical industry could efficiently contribute to climate change mitigation.