Application of the CO2QUALSTORE guideline for developing a risk-based investment schedule for an integrated CCS project

Abstract The investment schedules of CCS projects that benefit from public funding may be driven by external schedules not derived from bottoms up project-specific timelines. This situation can increase project risk by obliging projects to execute a number of discrete engineering and exploration steps in parallel that would otherwise be staggered to minimize investment risk. Further complications may arise by combining power sector and upstream engineering practices within the same project in order to fulfill the requirements of parallel CO 2 capture and storage sub-projects. Both industries make use of decision gate workflows to create a robust framework for investment, but the workflows themselves can be significantly different due to the dissimilar levels of risk and uncertainty involved. Here, the major difference between an industrial plant project and a storage site project is that the latter involves an additional exploration and verification process prior to selecting an engineering concept for storage and making a final investment decision. For an integrated CCS project this exploration process will ultimately decide the optimal locations of both the storage and the power/capture plant and it is therefore advised to prioritize this process and put all post-concept selection activities on hold until the project location is verified. The CO2QUALSTORE guideline was developed by a consortium of companies representing both power and upstream industry sectors and therefore offers a unique and valid starting point for developing a project specific, risk optimized investment schedule. A method for considering this is in a generic manner is presented.