Centre plans Rs 39,000 crore carbon capture programme with phased rollout

New Delhi: The Centre is preparing a carbon capture utilisation and storage (CCUS) programme that would likely cost ₹38,900 crore, and plans to commit a little over half the total outlay, people aware of the programme told ET.Besides the ₹19,500 crore of government commitments, bank loans and funding from multilateral institutions are among the options under consideration to fund the rest of the programme, said the people cited above. "The scheme will have various sub schemes, some of which may get 100% government support like that of R&D," said a government official, who declined to be named. "In others, it varies from 40% to 50%."

Financing Options'Semi-commercial’ projects in the programme may get full financing from the government, whereas ‘lab-scale’ projects could get some percentage of the total cost, said another person aware of the programme and its proposed financing plans.CCUS is a technology that captures carbon dioxide emissions from large, process-based industrial sources, such as power plants, steel, and cement.The programme may come up in multiple phases, and the first phase could be for a period of six years, said one of the persons cited above.Mature industries such as iron, chemicals and petrochemicals, and India’s sunrise sectors such as coal gasification and green hydrogen would also get the enabling support from the technology that is currently still considered expensive but could become affordable with scale, industry officials said.Thermal power relianceSince coal-based power plants play a crucial role in India’s energy sector and will continue to do so with its 97 GW plan by 2032, the technology becomes crucial.India is committed to halving carbon emissions by 2050 and reaching net zero by 2070.

An important aspect of the plan may include carbon dioxide disposition through geological sequestration, which refers to permanent storage of the gas in geologic formations.

The sheer scale of carbon dioxide emission abatement requires that sequestration be an essential complement to utilisation technologies in the CCUS value chain, said an official. ET had in January reported that the government was working to bring CCUS technology in a big way in India.While CCUS deployment has mostly been concentrated in the US, it has spread to other countries, such as Australia, Brazil, Canada, China, Norway, Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates.