Where the carbon capture industry headed? We asked an energy CEO.

What started as a pilot project on Houston’s ship channel has now been leveraged into three new commercial-scale projects and a big investment from the South Korean industrial conglomerate SK Group. We sat down with Cam Hosie, the CEO of 8 Rivers Capital, to talk about the future of his technology and where the carbon capture industry at-large is headed. The interview has been edited for length and clarity.

Q: It’s been four years since Net Power began operating the world’s first zero emissions natural gas plant on the Houston Ship Channel. How has the project proven out?

A: In any objective reading, it's been a tremendous success. The purpose of the demonstration program was to prove the science behind the technology and to basically ready ourselves to go to commercial scale projects. And it's achieved both of those goals.

You know, we've announced three Net Power projects ourselves in the past 12 months. Those will be 300 megawatt scale systems, two here in the U.S., one in the U.K. There's a strong pipeline of opportunities that are coming for further Net Power deployments. So, in that sense, I think the Ship Channel project has checked that box exactly.

Q: For the most part, carbon capture means pulling carbon dioxide from the smokestacks of power plants and industrial facilities. You’re going another way. How does your technology compete against traditional carbon capture on cost right now?

A: Other competing technologies are genuine carbon capture. They have to go into the flue streams, and they have to try to capture the carbon dioxide out of it. In our system, we inherently separate the carbon dioxide out during the generation process. And as a result, we aren't capturing it because we never lost it. The consequence of that is that we are able to achieve higher capture rates and will be more economic as compared to other technologies.

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One way to think about it is that carbon capture, typically speaking, is inherently a parasitic process where you have to bolt something onto the end of an existing cycle in order to then capture the carbon dioxide. So, it's always going to make the economics worse as opposed to not doing it. Net Power’s system, by capturing the carbon dioxide inherently, you don't have a parasitic cost.

Q: What do you see as the trajectory for your technology? Will all gas-fired power plants eventually be using your turbines?

A: There's tremendous potential. MIT just released a study earlier this year, showing that by 2100 this could be 57 percent of the grid. There's almost no place where this doesn't make sense. We've developed a suite of other complementary technologies, hydrogen production being lead among them.

The energy industry of the future is going to be complex, probably more so than what we have today. There has to be renewables. I don’t view this as an either-or in the slightest, rather all things complementing each other as we look to electrify the entire grid, to try and get there by 2050.

Q: A lot of energy exports talk about the need for a carbon price to make low carbon technologies like yours work. Do you agree? Does the world need a carbon price?

A: It's an accelerant. At the end of the day, I think the only technologies that will actually help achieve needs are going to have to be price advantaged in the long term compared to unabated technologies. All of the technologies that we've worked on have pathway to being more economic than competing technologies without subsidy in the long term. Now in the short term, carbon prices, subsidies like the 45Q federal tax credit and other things like that, they help.

In this first generation of technology, you create a greater launchpad for further deployment. Supply chains are going to have to be built out. Companies you know are going to have to commit manufacturing capacity, etc. And the speed of this first generation will also drive the build out of the supply chain necessary to actually achieve the energy transition.

Q: What impact is the spike in oil and natural gas prices having on carbon capture. It would seemingly push the needle away from fossil fuels, and thus carbon capture, and towards wind and solar energy.

A: Honestly, I don't believe it's having a lot of effect today. These are projects which will be measured in decades. The oil industry, its entire life has had short term price spikes and price drops. Two years ago, we were at zero for a couple of days. It doesn't change the fact that everyone knows that (carbon capture) is the direction of travel they have to go.

Q: What’s preventing you from getting your costs down at this point? Are there supply chain issues you need to overcome or is this just a matter of building to scale? I'm thinking of Tesla's problems right now getting nickel and other raw materials.

A: That’s obviously something we're paying close attention to. We're doing a lot of work making sure we have a good understanding of how supply chains across all of these technologies. Fundamentally, these plants are concrete and steel. They're not all that limited in terms of the availability of the materials.

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At the end of the day, these are big facilities that have a lot of big, complex moving machinery and you need a sophisticated manufacturing supply chain. That’s true for us. It's true for everything else.

Q: You recently announced a $100 million investment by SK Group, the South Korean conglomerate? What are you planning to do with that funding?

There’s been substantial interest in the energy and chemicals space in South Korea, and they have made substantial commitments to decarbonization, aiming to remove, for instance, 200 million tons of carbon dioxide from their operations products by 2030. The investment with Eight Rivers, we'll be using that to grow our capacity, increase the number of projects we can do, the number of technologies that we're offering.

And we're also establishing the joint venture with them to deploy their products and technologies into certain key Asian markets. That's very much intended to drive the technologies into Southeast Asia. Because at the end of the day, if the industry transition doesn't happen in Southeast Asia, it doesn't matter.

Q: When you talk to people in the oil and gas industry about 2050 and achieving net-zero emissions, many of them are very skeptical. But you’re directly engaged in this work of decarbonization. How do you look at the 2050 goal? Is 28 years enough time?

A: I'll tell you in 28 years! The one thing I can really say is that the moment to start is now, and we have to try. It's a moral imperative beyond just an economic one. People talk about 1.5 degrees, as if it's this absolute goal. But every .1 degree one way or the other matters. We have to be deploying at scale as soon as possible across a comprehensive range of fields. I'm absolutely convinced that at the end of the day, it will have to be market-based solutions that do it.

There is a place for regulation in the short term to speed that up, but ultimately the industry as a whole is going to have to find and adopt these technologies. At the end of the day, the private market is the only thing that is actually big enough to build the change required to get anywhere close to net-zero by 2050. But look, is it doable? I'm hopeful. If you look at our industry, it has achieved tremendous change in the last 10 years.

james.osborne@chron.com

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