Can “stranded” fossil fuel reserves drive CCS deployment?

Recent studies have evaluated the climate change implications of burning all of the world’s proven reserves of carbon. To stay below the ambitious target of two degrees Celsius of warming above average pre-industrial temperatures, the International Energy Agency (IEA) estimates that we would need to emit no more than 884 GtCO2 globally between 2012 and 2050, equivalent to burning approximately one third of current global carbon reserves. This would require leaving large amounts of coal, oil and natural gas in the ground. These unutilized fossil reserves have been referred to as “stranded”. In this paper, we analyze CCS not as a cost, but as a potential enabler of utilizing otherwise stranded fossil fuels. We examine case studies at Boundary Dam and Gorgon, introduce a “CO2 Normalized Price” as a useful metric for bottom-up assessments, and evaluate top-down model results to help value CCS as a way to rescue stranded fossil fuel assets. © 2013 The Authors. Published by Elsevier Ltd. Selection and peer-review under responsibility of GHGT.