Houston Attracts Increasing Number of Carbon Capture Projects

Published Jun 14, 2024 by Taylor Tatum

A recent wave of decarbonization project announcements, including the expansion of a Norwegian company into Houston, demonstrates how the region has positioned itself as a hub for companies and collaborations advancing low-carbon solutions.

Capsol Technologies ASA, a Norwegian carbon capture and storage company focused on capturing carbon from gas turbines, has announced the opening of an office in Houston. The company’s CEO Wendy Lam told the Houston Business Journal that Houston’s strong relationship with Norway, the region’s infrastructure and access to talent were key factors in their decision to move to Houston. Lam also cited the favorable U.S. policies that are making CCS technology more financially viable than in Europe.

One of the region’s biggest projects is a joint venture involving Chevron, Equinor and TotalEnergies called the Bayou Bend carbon capture and storage project along the Texas Gulf Coast between Houston and Port Arthur. Bayou Bend has the potential to become one of the largest CCS sites in the country for industrial emitters, with an underground storage capacity of one billion metric tons of carbon dioxide. Worley, an Australia-based engineering firm with its primary U.S. office in Houston, has been chosen to design and evaluate CO2 gathering, handling and sequestration facilities for the project.

Chevron, a partner in the region’s HyVelocity Hub, is investigating the potential to integrate its hydrogen efforts with the Bayou Bend CCS project, though no official announcements have been made.

Ørsted and ExxonMobil, fellow partners in the HyVelocity Hub, were recently selected by the U.S. Department of Energy as part of its $6 billion Industrial Demonstrations Program to receive federal funding for their decarbonization projects.

A subsidiary of Denmark-based Ørsted, which opened its first Houston office earlier this year, could receive up to $100 million in DOE funding to support the development of the Star e-methanol plant located on the Texas Gulf Coast, which will use captured CO2 to create up to 300,000 metric tons of e-methanol annually.

Meanwhile, ExxonMobil, which relocated its corporate headquarters to the Houston region in 2022, could receive up to $331.9 million through its $6 billion Industrial Demonstrations Program for its Baytown Olefins Plant Carbon Reduction Project. It plans to utilize hydrogen rather than natural gas to produce ethylene.

Exxon has become more involved in CCS infrastructure since its acquisition of Denbury Inc. in 2023, which involved major assets including the largest CO2 pipeline network in the U.S. and ten onshore carbon sequestration sites.

A partnership with EnLink Midstream LLC is allowing Exxon to explore additional CCS opportunities along the Gulf Coast, including the Houston Ship Channel and the Port Arthur-Beaumont area, which are noted as being high sources for CO2 emissions.

This comes after the company’s proposed $100 billion carbon capture collaboration in the Houston area back in 2021. Exxon estimates that the proposed CCS hub could capture and store 50 million metric tons of CO2 annually by 2030 and 100 million metric tons by 2040.

Other major energy players such as SLB are making moves in the CCS space and looking to increase their investments in carbon capture.

In March, SLB announced an agreement to acquire majority ownership of Aker Carbon Capture, a Norwegian pure-play carbon capture company whose proprietary CCS technology serves broad range of industries, including cement, bio and waste-to-energy, gas-to-power, and blue hydrogen segments.

“For CCUS to have the expected impact on supporting global net-zero ambitions, it will need to scale up 100-200 times in less than three decades. We are excited to create this business with [Aker Carbon Capture] to accelerate the deployment of carbon capture technologies that will shift the economics of carbon capture across high-emitting industrial sectors,” said SLB CEO Olivier Le Peuch in a press release.

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