Investigating the Critical Success Factors for the Management of Carbon Capture and Storage (CCS) Projects

The use of carbon capture and storage (CCS) technology offers much promise in regard to the capture of major levels of waste carbon dioxide produced from the burning of fossil fuels for electricity generation and from industrial processes. This is needed in order to reduce the impact of fossil fuel burning on global warming and the resulting climate change. Indeed CCS technology is poised to play a significant role in helping nations to meet the obligations set out in the Paris Climate Conference of December 2015, where 195 countries adopted a legally binding agreement and action plan to work towards limiting global warming to well below 2°C. This paper provides the results from an investigative study of carbon capture and storage projects in order to highlight the main areas to be considered when designing and commissioning new CCS projects. The study provides the results of a literature review in order to identify the critical success factors for CCS projects, including technology, economic, policy and regulatory related factors. This is supplemented by an exploratory economic analysis based on a regression model of the levelized cost of electricity (LCOE) for CCS, including results from LCOE trend analysis of CCS adoption for natural gas and coal fired plants. The LCOE approach is based on calculating the present value of costs per unit of electricity that is generated over the life of a specific power plant. A comprehensive treatment of LCOE is provided by Short et al. The paper also includes synthesis of a proposed research agenda on CCS projects to inform future studies in the area.