Capturing Industrial Carbon Is All About Managing Volatile Costs
The business of removing CO2 from steel, cement and hydrogen production is sensitive to changing variables like fuel prices and interest rates.
A steel production facility.
Photographer: Qilai Shen/BloombergThe processes for making steel, cement and hydrogen have a few things in common. They are emissions-intensive; their production is concentrated in large industrial sites; and they are “hard to abate” — that is, their carbon dioxide emissions are hard to remove for reasons of basic chemistry.
These sectors have something else in common, too. Together they are the most important source of demand for the carbon capture and storage (CCS) market, which aims to create an industry of removing CO2 from significant industrial processes and storing it stably for decades or centuries.