ELEGANCY – Enabling a Low-Carbon Economy via Hydrogen and CCS

Indeed, without CCS, it will be extremely difficult to keep the rise in global temperature within the limits set by the Paris Agreement. Yet there is a large disconnect between policy ambitions and technology readiness – and industrial uptake. This is mainly due to the lack of a business model: costs are immediate, but the benefits are long term.

Similarly, the introduction of hydrogen (H₂) as a low-carbon fuel for heating, cooling, transport and industrial processes has been slower than desired. However, as the natural gas (NG) reforming for H₂ production also produces CO₂ using existing or new processes, this can provide the economic driver needed to fast-track CCS commercial deployment.

The ELEGANCY project will therefore provide three crucial benefits:

1. the decarbonization of heating and transport based on an existing fuel and infrastructure,
2. a commercial model for industrial CCS,
3. the opportunity to broaden public awareness of CCS.

This includes large-scale CO₂ transport and storage infrastructure for use by other sectors, as well as infrastructure for the rapid introduction of H₂ as an energy carrier, thus also opening the door for H₂ generated from spare capacity in renewable sources. It will also enable Europe to export extensive knowledge, products and technologies worldwide.

Building on the ground-breaking findings of the DYNAMIS project, ELEGANCY R&D will provide innovative, cutting edge solutions to key technical challenges for H₂-CCS chains – on both a systems and component level. This includes CO₂ transport, injection and storage, as well as H₂-CO₂ separation – directly increasing the TRL of selected components to 5 where large-scale demon-stration is possible. It will take the most up-to-date experimental data and advance it using world-class research infrastructure, such as ECCSEL and EPOS facilities. To enable application of this research, ELEGANCY will also develop an innovative, open-source design tool for a fully integrated H₂-CCS chain. Finally, taking a fully integrated approach, the project will study business development oppor-tunities, public perceptions of CCS and any environmental aspects of H₂-CCS chains.

The goal: to fast-track European CCS in the 2020s.