Jumpstarting commercial‐scale CO2 capture and storage with ethylene production and enhanced oil recovery in the US Gulf

CO2 capture, utilization, and storage (CCUS) technology has yet to be widely deployed at a commercial scale despite multiple high‐profile demonstration projects. We suggest that developing a large‐scale, visible, and financially viable CCUS network could potentially overcome many barriers to deployment and jumpstart commercial‐scale CCUS. To date, substantial effort has focused on technology development to reduce the costs of CO2 capture from coal‐fired power plants. Here, we propose that near‐term investment could focus on implementing CO2 capture on facilities that produce high‐value chemicals/products. These facilities can absorb the expected impact of the marginal increase in the cost of production on the price of their product, due to the addition of CO2 capture, more than coal‐fired power plants. A financially viable demonstration of a large‐scale CCUS network requires offsetting the costs of CO2 capture by using the CO2 as an input to the production of market‐viable products. We demonstrate this alternative development path with the example of an integrated CCUS system where CO2 is captured from ethylene producers and used for enhanced oil recovery in the US Gulf Coast region.