How to transport carbon dioxide with minimal environmental impacts today and tomorrow? A prospective life cycle assessment
Julian Nöhl, J. Burger, Pauline Oeuvray, Viola Becattini, Jan Seiler, David Yang Shu, Marco Mazzotti, André Bardow
Abstract
Carbon capture, utilization, and storage is crucial for climate change mitigation. As carbon dioxide (CO 2 ) source and sink locations typically do not coincide, efficient CO 2 transport solutions are essential. Since installing transport infrastructure requires substantial investments, researchers and decision-makers need to know the long-term evolution of the resulting environmental impacts, and the implications for a gigatonne-scale deployment of CO 2 transport. Here, we quantify the environmental impacts of CO 2 transport modes in Europe up to 2100 via prospective life cycle assessment. Our results confirm that dense phase pipelines result in the lowest environmental impacts for both on- and offshore CO 2 transport today and in the future, despite substantial improvements in truck, train, barge, and ship transport towards 2100. Even for a gigatonne-scale CO 2 pipeline transport network in Europe, all 16 studied environmental impact categories are expected to be less than 0.075% of Europe’s share of the safe operating space based on population. After pipelines, trains and electric trucks impact the climate the least. However, batch-wise onshore transport can exacerbate freshwater ecotoxicity, particulate matter formation, and metal/mineral depletion. Switching from batch-wise to dense phase pipeline transport can pay back the required carbon investment within less than three years. Our analysis, thus, identifies environmentally preferable CO 2 transport modes that are robust for future deployment towards gigatonne-scale carbon capture, utilization, and storage supply chains.