10.6084/m9.figshare.1011606.v1 Carey W King Carey W King Gürcan Gülen Gürcan Gülen Stuart M Cohen Stuart M Cohen Vanessa Nuñez-Lopez Vanessa Nuñez-Lopez (a) No scenarios present a system-wide CCUS network that has a positive net present value IOP Publishing 2013 anthropogenic CO 2 EOR operations system economics drop power plants CO 2 emission penalty oil recovery CO 2 ccus Electric Reliability Council npv CO 2 demand CO 2 emissions penalty Environmental Science 2013-09-09 00:00:00 Figure https://iop.figshare.com/articles/figure/_a_No_scenarios_present_a_system_wide_CCUS_network_that_has_a_positive_net_present_value/1011606 <p><strong>Figure 12.</strong> (a) No scenarios present a system-wide CCUS network that has a positive net present value. (b) When considering only the EOR operations, the oil production is profitable in three cases, none of which assume a CO<sub>2</sub> emission penalty applies to emissions from oil combustion.</p> <p><strong>Abstract</strong></p> <p>This letter compares several bounding cases for understanding the economic viability of capturing large quantities of anthropogenic CO<sub>2</sub> from coal-fired power generators within the Electric Reliability Council of Texas electric grid and using it for pure CO<sub>2</sub> enhanced oil recovery (EOR) in the onshore coastal region of Texas along the Gulf of Mexico. All captured CO<sub>2</sub> in excess of that needed for EOR is sequestered in saline formations at the same geographic locations as the oil reservoirs but at a different depth. We analyze the extraction of oil from the same set of ten reservoirs within 20- and five-year time frames to describe how the scale of the carbon dioxide capture, utilization, and storage (CCUS) network changes to meet the rate of CO<sub>2</sub> demand for oil recovery. Our analysis shows that there is a negative system-wide net present value (NPV) for all modeled scenarios. The system comes close to breakeven economics when capturing CO<sub>2</sub> from three coal-fired power plants to produce oil via CO<sub>2</sub>-EOR over 20 years and assuming no CO<sub>2</sub> emissions penalty. The NPV drops when we consider a larger network to produce oil more quickly (21 coal-fired generators with CO<sub>2</sub> capture to produce 80% of the oil within five years). Upon applying a CO<sub>2</sub> emissions penalty of 60$2009/tCO<sub>2</sub> to fossil fuel emissions to ensure that coal-fired power plants with CO<sub>2</sub> capture remain in baseload operation, the system economics drop significantly. We show near profitability for the cash flow of the EOR operations only; however, this situation requires relatively cheap electricity prices during operation.</p>