Scalable solutions to the carbon capture infrastructure problem

Abstract

CO 2 capture and storage (CCS) is a climate change mitigation strategy that aims to reduce the amount of CO 2 vented into the atmosphere from industrial processes. Designing cost-effective CCS infrastructure is critical to meeting CO 2 emission reduction targets and is a computationally challenging problem. CCS infrastructure design is a generalization of the capacitated fixed charge network flow problem, CFCNF. CFCNF is NP-hard with no known approximation algorithms. In our work, we design three novel heuristics to solve CCS. We evaluate all heuristics on real life CCS infrastructure design data and find that they quickly generate solutions close to optimal. Decreasing the time it takes to determine CCS infrastructure designs will support national-level scenarios, undertaking risk and sensitivity assessments, and understanding the impact of government policies (e.g. 45Q tax credits for CCS).