Pietro D. Pitts, international managing editor, Hart Energy: This is Pietro Donatello Pitts, international managing editor with Hart Energy, here today with Allyson Anderson Book of Baker Hughes talking about why CCS matters. Allyson, could you talk about that a little bit?

Allyson Anderson Book, chief sustainability officer, Baker Hughes: CCS has been around for a long time, but it's really grown in its sort of broader global worldview. People are talking about it a lot. It's more than a buzzword. This is the critical technology that's going to be needed to really meet the ambitions of the Paris Agreement—that is limiting the temperature rise in the world to only 1.5 C. Okay, so CCS, that makes the case on its own, right. This is a really important year in terms of global pledges towards that Paris Agreement COP 28, the conference parties is really looking at the global stock take, and spoiler alert, what will happen and what we're going to see this fall is that we're not moving fast enough. And that's where CCS really plays a big role. Really the mic drop on CCS is whoever can lower the price for capture and storage, particularly under a direct air capture scenario, is really going to be the winner on the solution side.

PDP: And what are you seeing when we talk about projects not only in the U.S. but also internationally? Are you seeing a lot of interest globally in CCUS?

AAB: Almost every country is looking at it. Any country that's really got the capital and the will, and I would say with the exception of low-lying smaller nations, that's a little bit harder. But even there, really looking at that, if we look at direct air capture CCS, then one or two countries globally could really carry the weight if it's heavily deployed in those areas because that's capturing it from the air. But we see a really strong interest globally. There are areas that I would say really have been pushing on this quite a bit. The United Kingdom is an area, the U.S., etc., but I'm really looking towards the Middle East in particular. The Middle East has been preparing for COP for a while. They have the will, they have the capital and they've really got the enabling mechanisms to really advance CCS pretty far, quickly.

PDP: Yeah. Thank you. So you see, I mean when we talk about CCUS, it's still emissions, right? We're still talking about emissions issues there. What other technologies do we really need to really reduce the greenhouse emissions?

AAB: We talk mostly about CCS and not the utilization part of that. And so if we can find some novel uses of solid state carbon after we capture it and we move it into something, I think that that's going to be really great. Particularly one of the areas of research I've seen is then capturing it and putting it into smart cement. That is, you can use it for variety of sources that will basically mean we don't have to mine for as much raw material for that. So that's one cool area that's still developing. But we as Baker Hughes are really looking at geothermal as really critical in the energy transition and low emission energy. We're looking at the hydrogen ecosystem, and so that is a great way that we can look at fuel shifting to some degree and building out a different kind of energy economy. Emissions management, and then the last point I'll say is on methane reduction. We want a world free of unintended methane leakage, or intended. We don't want that either. That's just too potent of a greenhouse gas today.

PDP: So when we talk about net zero push for 2040, 2050, we're still producing oil and gas. And so is CCS just something that's going to be kind of temporary? Is it something that we should eventually phase out if you want to go to net zero in the future?

AAB: So that's a really great question that has a lot of complexity. So I'm going to pull on one thread here. The emissions are not just generated from the use of oil and gas. And so understanding that, if more people understood that they'd realize that CCS is not an oil and gas solution, that's a societal solution. Because there are emissions produced when we make food. There are emissions produced when we're really looking at having sterile products in the medical industry—all of the mining that it takes for making metal instruments and then having single use plastics because they've got to be sanitary, all of that needs a mitigation tactic. So we can continue to use those. There are no viable substitutes for most of these things today. And so particularly with respect to direct air capture and storage, or direct [air capture] to utilization, that is a long-term solution that goes on as long as emissions are made in society.

PDP: So thank you Allyson for the discussion. For more information, go to hartenergy.com.

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