By PHILIP HOPKINS
CARBON capture and storage has a big role to play in India’s energy transition, with even a small reduction in India’s emissions profile potentially removing more emissions from the atmosphere than Australia produces in a year.
The chief executive of the CO2CRC, Dr Matthias Raab, made this comment after signing a major CCS deal with India. The Melbourne-based CO2CRC is researching CCS in Bass Strait as potential CO2 storage sites for emissions from Latrobe Valley energy and industry companies.
The Melbourne researcher signed a memorandum of understanding with the Indian Institute of Technology Bombay, India’s Centre for CCS excellence, in a recent visit.
The MoU acknowledged Australia’s leadership in CCS R&D and supported collaboration between the two countries. The development came as a leading US expert told a forum in Melbourne that as CCS moves from demonstration to commercial deployment, research and development will play a critical role in ensuring projects can scale safely with confidence and remain cost-effective. That was the central message of a presentation byProfessor Sally M. Benson, from Stanford University’s Doerr School of Sustainability, on the importance of CCS R&D.
Dr Raab said India had written CCS into its national development plan to 2047 and was moving quickly, with $3.7 billion in funding for its initial five-year plan.
“We are now working to establish a deeper CCUS research partnership between Australia and India,” he said.
“The concept builds on a successful model we previously put together: a trilateral collaboration of around $19 million among Australia, Japan and Korea, for which the Australian government approved funding in 2024.”
Dr Raab said Australia’s two decades of CCS research and demonstration experience, combined with India’s plans, should advance CCS collaboration following the joint statement on energy security announced during Indian Prime Minister Modi’s Australian visit this month.
“The statement recognised that maintaining stable, secure and reliable energy supply – including Australia’s supply to India of coal and natural gas – is vital to both economies.
“And India recognises that continuing to use those fossil fuels in a sustainable manner means CCS must have a significant abatement role,” he said.
The demand for CO2CRC’s experience and expertise beyond Australia’s borders is growing, but that work is anchored in Australia’s ongoing research, innovation and development work at home.
Dr Raab said the CO2CRC’s Otway international test centre in western Victoria was unique in the world. “Since 2008, the facility has injected and monitored more than 100,000 tonnes of CO2, generating a body of storage field data unmatched anywhere,” he said.
“That record continues to draw research partners from the United States, Japan, Korea, Germany and beyond to trial climate mitigation technologies in commercially relevant demonstrations through to 2027.”
That was also highlighted at this month’s Carbon Capture APAC Summit in Melbourne. Professor Benson’s presentation highlighted the scale of the challenge ahead. Global CO₂ storage has grown steadily since 1996, but reaching climate-relevant levels will require a major increase in deployment.
Professor Benson said several factors were essential to achieving commercial scale CO2 storage, including lower costs, investor confidence, public support and strong industrial capability.
CO2CRC Business Development Director, Paul Barraclough, said CCS would not scale on ambition alone.
“It will scale through practical research, field demonstration and the development of technologies that reduce cost, reduce risk and give industry, regulators and communities confidence in storage performance,” he said.
Professor Benson identified five areas where R&D can make the greatest contribution: technology innovation to lower costs, risk reduction, expansion of the available storage resource, industrial competitiveness and capacity building.
“Each of these areas is central to CO2CRC’s work, particularly through the Otway test centre, where researchers are able to test and validate technologies under real geological conditions,” he said.
“This type of work is essential as CCS projects move toward larger hubs and more complex commercial operating environments. Field validation is what turns good science into deployable technology.”
The presentation also highlighted the growing role of AI and advanced modelling in improving reservoir simulation, storage assurance and project performance prediction.
