The chairman of the UN climate meeting, Ahmed al-Jaber, leads an oil company that promotes carbon capture as an important way to reach climate goals.
But Kalla fakta’s review of the company’s facility shows that most of the carbon dioxide is released into the atmosphere – and that new oil is pumped up during storage.
On November 30, the UN climate meeting COP 28 begins in Dubai. The chairman of the meeting, Ahmed al-Jaber, is also CEO of the oil company Abu Dhabi National Oil Company, ADNOC. The company identifies carbon dioxide capture as an important way forward to solve the climate crisis and is behind the Middle East’s first large capture plant at a steel mill in Abu Dhabi.
A prestigious project to achieve, according to the company, the climate goals and produce more environmentally friendly steel.
But how much carbon dioxide is actually captured at the facility?
Cold Facts has had Professor Filip Jonsson at Chalmers make calculations. Through data on how much ore the steel mill has the capacity to receive and an assessment of how much energy the process requires, he believes that approximately 2.2 million tons of carbon dioxide per year are formed in the process. At the same time, ADNOC states that the plant only has the capacity to capture 0.8 million tons of carbon dioxide per year.
– This is not a powerful climate measure, because it is a maximum of 36 percent of the carbon dioxide that is separated in the first place, but then there are also uncertainties there, it could be less, says Filip Johnsson, professor of energy systems at Chalmers.
This is how carbon capture works
1: Carbon dioxide is separated from the flue gases in a factory that is fired with coal, oil or natural gas.
2: The carbon dioxide is pressurized to reduce in volume and is led or transported to the place where it is to be stored.
3: The carbon dioxide is pumped deep into the ground to be stored.
Pumped into oil wells – risk of leakage
When Kalla fakta takes a closer look at the method, it also turns out that ADNOC pumps down and stores the carbon dioxide in old oil wells. This increases the pressure in the wells and enables the company to extract even more oil.
It also leads to the risk of carbon dioxide leaking out, says Filip Johnsson.
– There is also a risk that the whole thing will become a greenwash. That this type of combination between a steel mill and an oil company comes together and does things that are more or less symbolic, says Filip Johnsson.
For several weeks, Kalla Fakta has applied to ADNOC, but they have not wanted to put anyone forward for an interview.
That’s how the review was done
The steel plant consumes 5.4 million tons of iron ore per year at full operation according to ADNOC’s marketing.
When converting the iron ore, approximately 14.5 TWh of energy is consumed, according to calculations made by Professor Filip Johnsson at Chalmers University of Technology.
This results in the formation of approximately 2.2 million tonnes of carbon dioxide per year, according to Professor Filip Johnsson’s calculations.
At the separation plant, a maximum of 0.8 million tonnes of carbon dioxide per year can be captured, according to ADNOC’s press releases.
The review is an international collaborative project within the framework of the EIF, Environmental Investigative Forum.