Further challenges arise in the decision making for CCU technology research, development, and deployment, in particular when allocating funding or time resources. The TEA guideline was developed in a co-operative and creative approach with roughly 50 international experts and is based on a systematic literature review as well as on existing best practices from TEA and LCA from the areas of industry, academia, and policy.
To the best of our knowledge, this guideline is the first TEA framework with a focus on CCU technologies and the first that is designed to be conducted in parallel to LCA due to aligned vocabulary and assessment steps, systematically including technology maturity. Therefore, this work extends current literature, improving the design, implementation, and reporting approaches of TEA studies for CCU technologies.
Overall, the application of this TEA guideline aims at improved comparability of TEA studies, leading to improved decision making and more efficient allocation of funds and time resources for the research, development, and deployment of CCU technologies. Carbon Capture and Utilization CCU is an emerging technology field that can replace fossil carbon value chains with significant potential in emissions mitigation or even negative emissions Mikkelsen et al.
CCU includes a variety of technologies that separate the greenhouse gas CO 2 from point sources or ambient air and consume CO 2 to make products or services, aiming to provide economic, environmental, and social benefits. CCU products include concrete e. Even though CO 2 is an abundant resource in the atmosphere, its economic capture and cost-effective use still require substantial research and development efforts. To advance further development of CCU requires allocation of funds and time resources primarily to economically promising technologies.
It is therefore paramount to assess the economic viability of a process upfront using a detailed techno-economic assessment TEA in addition to an environmental assessment that is based on life cycle assessment LCA. For the related field carbon capture and storage, a set of international standards ISO βISO has been developed that clarify the scoping and evaluation of CO 2 capture systems see ISO, a.
