TotalEnergies is committed to tackling the global challenge of reducing greenhouse gas emissions.
Delivering carbon neutrality will require more than just reducing our current and future emissions. Though renewables will undoubtedly play a crucial role, carbon capture, utilization and storage (CCUS) is required to transition to a net zero world. CCUS has the potential to both reduce industrial emissions, but also remove CO2 from the atmosphere.
TotalEnergies allocates 10% of its Research & Development budget to CCUS.
CCUS is the whole value chain process from capturing carbon dioxide to the final recycling in carbon-containing products or the safe and permanent storage in geological reservoirs.
TotalEnergies has implemented CCUS initiatives that help to address this global challenge. The initial focus for CCUS is to retrofit existing fossil-fuel based power and industrial plants. In the longer term, CCUS will shift to removing carbon out of the atmosphere with technologies such as direct air capture and storage (DACS) and bioenergy with CCS (BECCS). TotalEnergies’ activities in CCUS span the entire value chain process.
The best solutions are developed with the support of our partners. With a collaborative approach to CCUS, TotalEnergies works with best-in-class partners from around the world. In North America, TotalEnergies has a variety of activities with start-ups, academic and industrial partners. All the North American partners are managed and coordinated out of the Houston Research Center by a dedicated team.
Carbon Capture
On the carbon capture side, TotalEnergies is a member of the U.S. National Carbon Capture Center (NCCC). The NCCC works to develop carbon capture technology for reducing emissions from fossil fuel-based power plants and to promote carbon utilization and direct air capture solutions. TotalEnergies' portfolio of activities also dives into early-stage research to develop high performing nano porous materials with the University of Alberta and University of Ottawa in Canada.
Our projects range from low maturity and potentially disruptive research activities to industrialization where we assess and optimize full scale capture on industrial emitters through multi-partner collaborative approaches. One example is an engineering study to design a commercial-scale carbon-capture facility with the Svante technology at the Lafarge-Holcim Portland Cement Plant in Florence, Colorado.
A solid material with a porous structure with minuscule pores in which CO2 can be selectively trapped or captured
Carbon Utilization
Once captured, carbon can be recycled into products such as sustainable fuels or ethylene, an essential building molecule in the chemical manufacturing business. TotalEnergies works with leading academic and government research institutions in the U.S. and Canada, as well as technology vendors, to develop industrially viable processes and carbon conversions. Carbon recycling presents market opportunities in a growing low carbon world.
Carbon Storage
Injecting and storing carbon in geological formations is an essential component of TotalEnergies’ net zero ambition. Evaluating risks associated with such operations requires tools that model the impact of injection on rock deformations, over long timescales and on basin-sized models. Together with Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory and Stanford University, TotalEnergies Research & Development has developed such a tool: GEOSX, an exascale, open-source, multiphysics simulator ready for gigatonne-scale CO2 storage simulation.