By 2050, Paris assumes an annual capacity of 20 Mt in the new CCUS strategy
Infrastructures for carbon capture, transportation and storage that give priority to large industrial areas. Annual potential to be achieved by 2030 of 4-8,5 million tons (Mt). A new aid scheme based on the Carbon Contracts for Difference (CCfD). They are the pillars of the new CCUS (Carbon Capture Utilisation and Storage) strategy recently launched by France.
CCUS “is not a technology forining business as usual”: should only intervene for incompressible residual emissions, in the absence of other economically affordable decarbonisation solutions or as a transitional solution”, assures Paris in presenting its CCUS strategy.
What does France’s CCUS strategy envisage?
Like other countries – including Italy – France also includes carbon capture, use and storage among the solutions to focus on to reach zero emissions by half a century. In the final version of PNIEC 2024, sent by Italy to the EU Commission on July 1st, the Meloni government estimates that it can capture 4 Mt of CO2 per year by 2030, mainly from large industries, incinerators and gas plants in the Padana plain and from some industrial poles of the centre-south. And by 2050, it estimates, although with significant margins of uncertainty, that we can increase the annual capacity to 20-40 Mt CO2.
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Paris forecasts more or less the same volumes by 2030, but is more conservative about the use of CCUS by 2050: for half a century, the estimated annual capacity overseas stops at 15-20 Mt. The priority for the development of the necessary infrastructure, says the French CCUS strategy, will be given to the large industrial areas of the country. Starting from the port poles of Dunkerque (where the D’Artagnan project of common European interest insists, which aims to capture 3-4 Mt CO2 by 2030 and should start in 2028), Le Havre and Fos-sur-Mer, secondly to those of Lacq/Sud-Ouest and Loire-Estuaire, and finally to that of the Grand Est.
Paris envisages a support programme through Contracts for Difference (CCfD) awarded through bids to realise the infrastructure to support the strategy. The objective is to support industrial decarbonization projects, particularly carbon capture and seizure projects identified within a plethora of 50 sites that, in the last 2 years, have contributed to the estimation of the French CCUS potential. Between the end of this year and the beginning of 2025, the government wants to launch the first pilot tests for carbon storage in geological deposits, identified mainly among the depleted hydrocarbon deposits.