explainer: what is a CO₂ storage hub?

A carbon dioxide (CO₂) storage hub may sound like a place buzzing with activity but in fact it’s a deep geological reservoir where emissions from carbon-intensive industries are captured and permanently stored. CO₂ storage hubs offer a solution for what are known as hard-to-abate sectors. Think industries such as petrochemical, power, steel and cement manufacturing where it’s difficult to decrease carbon intensity.

CO₂ storage hubs are often characterized by deep underground reservoirs. They are frequently served by pipes that transport the carbon to the hub. They are considered hubs because they collect and store CO₂ emissions from multiple industries located near the hub.

Hubs provide a place for businesses—such as industrial manufacturers that provide the services and products necessary for modern life (cement, steel and more)—to sequester and permanently store their CO₂. When companies come together to share a hub, economies of scale are created which can drive down costs. Dividing the upfront infrastructure costs, such as pipelines, makes CO₂ storage a more attractive solution.

Hubs can be a critical factor in helping to reduce carbon emissions to support the net zero ambitions of the Paris Agreement. According to the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, large-scale carbon storage and capture technologies are instrumental in achieving such ambitions.

Beyond costs, several factors influence where Chevron decides to build a carbon storage hub:

• Enough customers, also known as emitters, who are close enough to use the hub.
• Sufficient land and pore space to make a hub possible.
• Efficient and transparent regulatory policies in place to enable the development of hubs.

Geology and community engagement also influence where we build a hub. We aim to keep the community informed, answer questions and get input when considering establishing a carbon storage hub.

Before you can store CO₂, you have to capture it. Some companies do this already. For example, liquefied natural gas (LNG) producers routinely remove the CO₂ so they can compress and ship the LNG. Others would like to capture their CO₂ emissions but lack the technology.

Chevron is investing in a number of carbon capture technologies to support decreasing our own carbon intensity and to support customers across a variety of industries. Collaborating with customers, governments and industry enables us to deploy technology and projects on a wider scale. These public-private collaborations can help us overcome barriers such as the high cost of carbon capture and storage and help with public education and acceptance of CCUS.

One such public-private collaboration is the U.S. Department of Energy awarding Chevron a DOE funding grant (project #DE-FE0031944) to pilot technology that captures CO₂ from natural gas post-combustion. In collaboration with Svante and the National Energy Technology Laboratory, we launched the six-month pilot in November 2022 at our Kern River facility in San Joaquin Valley, California.

We are focused on investing in innovative projects across the CCUS value chain to reduce costs and develop new ways to capture, use, and sequester carbon—with the goal of scaling these solutions.

Chevron helped pioneer large-scale CO₂ injection 40 years ago. We have experience transporting CO₂ in pipelines, having safely operated a CO₂ pipeline in Colorado for 35 years. Our insights from this firsthand experience and our understanding of subsurface spaces make us an ideal partner for businesses considering and implementing solutions such as these hubs.

Policies governing CO₂ storage are not uniform across the United States. Chevron complies with all laws and permitting processes. We also support policies that facilitate the establishment of hubs and allow us to provide a service that is important to lowering carbon intensity, particularly of industrial processes and products. Strong policy support and cooperation between potential participants is necessary to develop hubs and CO₂ transport infrastructure to enable lower-cost and large-scale carbon capture and storage deployment.