Dependence of CO2 Capture, Transport, and Storage on Reservoir Leakage Risk

In the carbon dioxide capture and storage (CCS) process, pipeline infrastructure may be used to redirect carbon dioxide (CO2) flows from leaking geologic CO2 storage reservoirs to those with storage integrity. We developed and implemented an approach that combined results from the Leakage Risk Monetization Model (LRiMM) that monetizes leakage risk from individual reservoirs with the Scalable infrastructure Model for CO2 capture and storage (SimCCS) to determine the optimal deployment of integrated capture-transport-storage systems that are robust to leakage. We demonstrate this approach using a case study of 27 known coal-fired power plants in the U.S. state of Michigan and 42 potential CO2 storage locations in the Michigan Sedimentary Basin. We compare three cases of leakage risk: (1) as a base case, reservoir leakage risk was not considered, (2) first-of-a-kind leakage risk, which does not consider the reduction in risk from re-directing CO2 from leaking reservoirs, and (3) nth-of-a-kind risk that considers this reduction in risk. The results highlight the selection of reservoirs that quantitatively considers leakage risk, geospatial differences in infrastructure deployment that considers leakage risk, and the nominal increase in costs and total pipeline lengths for these systems.