CO2NSISTENT

 

Title

Techno-Economic and Life Cycle Assessment Guidelines for CO2 Utilisation

Concept

CO2 utilisation technologies, also known as carbon capture and utilisation (CCU) or CO2 re-use, capture CO2 and convert it into new products or services. CCU is gaining momentum as academia, industry and governments seek solutions to reduce emissions and create new business opportunities.

But benefits cannot be taken for granted and questions about economic viability, environmental impacts and trade-offs between economics and the environment have to be carefully analysed. To enable informed decision-making, systematic and standardised assessment is required, involving a combination of techno-economic assessment (TEA) and life cycle assessment (LCA) so that studies can be easily comparable and allow informed decisions. […]

From 2014 to 2017, EIT Climate-KIC has been fostering innovation for CO2 re-use technologies for polymers and chemical intermediates (for example fibres, rubbers and dampers) at industrial scale. In 2017, our strategy shifted to systems transformation, identifying information flows, standards, market structure and skills as key drivers to enhance our understanding of socio-economic and environmental implication of CO2 utilisation technologies. Findings were translated into a set of free online courses on CO2 reuse, making essential information and facts on CCU accessible to a broad variety of stakeholders.

The guidelines were produced in partnership with the University of Sheffield, RWTH Aachen, IASS Potsdam, TU Berlin, and supported by the Global CO2 Initiative at the University of Michigan, EIT Climate-KIC and several other partner organisations. The first version of these guidelines was published and disseminated in October 2018 in Brussels.

Participants

• Technische Universität Berlin, Germany (Coordinator)
• University of Sheffield, United Kingdom
• Institute for Advanced Sustainibility Studies - IASS Potsdam, Germany

 

 

This activity has received funding from the European Institute of Innovation and Technology (EIT), a body of the European Union, under the Horizon 2020, the EU Framework Programme for Research and Innovation.