The challenge:   

The European Union Emissions Trading System (EU ETS) is a pan-European system for trading greenhouse gas emission allowances. To be able to report avoided CO2 emissions through CO2 capture and storage in the EU ETS, traceable metering of CO2 is critical, and hence a business driver for CCS. In addition, custody transfer in CCS needs metering. Currently, no fiscal flow meter technology has been verified at relevant flow rates and conditions for large-scale CO2 management.  

The innovation:  

The ongoing research in NCCS on fluid properties of CO2, modelling as well as targeted experimental investigations, and design of an industrial scale test centre aims for fiscal metering technology that can ensure traceable measurements for CO2 with quantified uncertainties. This can enable qualification of fiscal flow meters for CCS. 

Potential impact: 

Qualified fiscal metering technology and procedures will make CCS relevant for EU ETS. For instance, those who have implemented CO2 capture can avoid buying allowances to emit CO2 (EUAs) under the EU ETS or sell EUAs they already have. With an increasing number of CCS projects and increasing costs of emission allowances, the total value of allowances will grow significantly.

For instance, in the Norwegian full-scale project the conservatively estimated annual value of CO₂ traded under ETS can amount to 20 M€/year (800 k tonne CO₂/year using today's ETS carbon price of 25€/tonne CO₂). For NCCS DC2030, the annual value of CO₂ traded is 700 M€/year (20 mill. tonne CO₂ /year using the ETS carbon prices projected in "EU Reference scenario 2016"; ca 35 €/tonne CO₂). 

NCCS aims to enable verification and validation of commercially available fiscal meters for measurements of CO₂ flow, e.g. from a capture site, certifying that the uncertainty of the stored CO₂ mass is below ETS requirement, currently at 2.5 %. This will qualify the company for release of EUAs.  In addition, innovations in NCCS will improve the accuracy of CO₂ metering systems, and, hence, the financial settlement for the actors along the chain will be more correct. For instance, 1 % accuracy improvement would mean that: 

• For the Norwegian full-scale project, the correct settlement implies that values around 200 k€/year are received by the rightful party.
• In DC2030 the correct settlement can imply that 7 M€/year is received by the rightful parties.

For complex CCS chains and systems, the settlements could potentially be larger as there will be multiple parties along the value chains needing custody transfer and thus, depending on accurate fiscal metering.

Contributors to the NCCS Impact study

Technology providers involved in development of presented innovations are Ansaldo Energia (Case C), and KROHNE and Baker Hughes (Case D). The research is supported by the user industry represented in NCCS: Equinor, Total E&P, Lundin, Vår Energi, Gassco, Norcem, and Oslo. Kommune. The study is conducted by SINTEF, TNO, NGI, NTNU and UiO.