Effects of geologic reservoir uncertainty on CO2 transport and storage infrastructure

CO2 capture and storage (CCS) is a climate-change mitigation technology that can significantly reduce greenhouse gas emissions in the near future. To have a meaningful impact, CCS infrastructure will have to be deployed on a massive scale: in the U.S. this will require capturing CO2 from hundreds of fossil fuel power plants and building a dedicated pipeline network to transport a volume of CO2 greater than domestic oil consumption. In this paper, we analyze the effect of geologic reservoir uncertainty on constructing CCS infrastructure-geologic uncertainty can impact reservoir cost and capacity estimates by as much as an order of magnitude. This uncertainty propagates through the capture-transport-storage system, influencing decisions including where and how much CO2 should be captured. We demonstrate the effect of geologic uncertainty using a proposed oil shale industry that could generate tens of millions of tonnes of CO2 each year. We show that uncertainty can make transport and storage costs deviate by over 100% and that CCS infrastructure, particularly the optimal pipeline network, can considerably diverge spatially. Finally, we draw conclusions on how geologic uncertainty may end up being a driving factor on how major industries decide to manage produced CO2. (C) 2012 Published by Elsevier B.V.