Sequestration Cost Reduction Workshops Report
How can the cost of carbon sequestration be reduced through technical innovation?
Limiting global warming to 1.5oC is only possible with both rapid emission reductions and removal of emissions from the atmosphere. Australian industries will transition to a low emissions future at varying rates. To support slower transitioning industries, we need to develop and deploy technologies that sequester carbon.
Recently CSIRO hosted expert workshops focussed on the urgent need to develop and increase the set of sequestration technologies available to Australia that can achieve large-scale removal of emissions at affordable costs.
The ‘Sequestration cost reduction workshops report’ details the methods, outputs, and analysis from a series of workshops held to gain expert advice on how technical innovation can lower the price of carbon sequestration ($/t of sequestration) and reduce barriers to uptake.
Expert workshops
The workshops brought together over 60 experts from industry, academia and government to aid in identifying and ranking innovation options. Some technologies examined are currently at the early stages of development, costly and not widely utilised; others are widely deployed, but further expansion of use would help reach abatement goals.
The workshops discussed sequestration approaches using:
- planted vegetation (such as reafforestation)
- blue carbon (such as mangrove restoration)
- direct air capture of carbon dioxide from the atmosphere
- bioenergy and biochar, carbon capture and storage
- mineral carbonation
- In addition, two technology options for savanna fire management were reviewed.
Key findings from the workshops:
- All investigated sequestration approaches have technical innovation options that can lower the cost. The less mature technologies (such as direct air capture, biomass/biochar and mineral carbonation) have greater potential for cost reduction and accelerating uptake.
- Innovations in blue carbon could reduce costs by around 40% on current costs,
- Innovations in planted vegetation sequestration could result in approximately 10 to 30%
- Good opportunities exist to lower the costs of mineral carbonation sequestration, a technology at an early stage of development. The early stage of technology makes cost reduction estimates more difficult and less precise. For ex-situ approaches (e.g. treatment of reactive mine tailings), these could decline by around 40 to 70% from current costs. Innovations for in-situ approaches (reaction with rock formations) could lower costs by 10 to 50% of the current cost of around $37 per tonne.
Download CSIRO’s Sequestration Cost Reduction Workshops Report below.
About the report:
- The report findings do not constitute a formal review, an economic analysis, or the final word on any of the sequestration technologies reviewed, which in some cases, are changing rapidly.
- The report does not provide estimates of additional economic potential sequestration that could be unlocked due to the cost reduction potential, and this is left for future studies to undertake.
- All cost reduction figures should be taken as indicative, or “ballpark”, and used more as a means of ranking or prioritising action to drive down the technology cost rather than for formal evaluation of costs of implementation.
- It should be noted that at time of writing the spot price for one tonne of carbon is $35.50.
This is the second phase of a larger investigation into carbon sequestration, together these two reports will help the Climate Change Authority provide advice to government on Australia’s 2035 emissions reduction targets.
The first phase, Australia’s carbon sequestration potential, was published in January 2022. Phase one found that nature-based technologies such as permanent plantings, plantation and farm forestry, and soil carbon currently provide significant potential; as does Australia’s vast geological storage capacity.
