CO2 transformation for storage of off-peak energy
The global trend towards fossil fuel replacement and CO2 reduction will boost large scale power generation from intermittent renewable sources (wind & solar) leading to a large excess of electricity that cannot be absorbed by the grid.
This massive amount of “green electrons” can be used to transform CO2 into energetic products with two main benefits:
- Massive re-use of CO2 to create a new stream of energy products avoiding the equivalent CO2 from fossil origin.
- Absorb the excess of renewable electricity and stabilization of the grid. Pilot processes for such transformation already exist but for an economically viable large scale development, several challenges need to be tackled:
- Develop flexible processes adapted to the variation of renewable electricity production
- Take value from the spread between the cost of the electricity and the price of the energy products in different downstream applications.