Agenda complete for topical CO2 Summit

Andrew Baxter, CEO and President of Sustainable Energy Solutions, and Andreas Drescher, Program Manager for Carbon Reduction at Austria-based RHI Magnesita, join a rostrum of speakers already confirmed to discuss the current and future outlook for the invaluable carbon dioxide (CO2) industry in Europe.

Against the backdrop of sustained high natural gas prices and their resulting impact on the fertilisers business, the rise of Green Deals and investment in the decade of clean fuels and a race to Net Zero, there are significant questions of how the CO2 business can position itself as fit for both the 2020s and the 2030s.

As a result of regular shortages and supply chain crunches, the question is often asked how we can ensure a sourcing channel(s) diverse and resilient enough to cope with the demands of today. Further still, with such dramatic change ahead in the race to Net Zero, the challenge is on to maximise the opportunities of a global environmental agenda of tomorrow and essentially backfill gaps in the supply chain with newfound CO2 capture and utilisation.

In this context, gasworld’s Europe CO2 Summit 2022 will present the view from 2021, the outlook for 2022 and beyond, and uncover many of the increasingly viable sourcing routes and technologies.

Traditional versus emerging sourcing

The event will begin in the only and natural place to do so – the traditional supply chains in Europe, largely driven by ammonia markets.

CO2 is a by-product of other processes – largely ammonia production or ethanol production dependent on the region – and invariably at the mercy of those feedstocks.

gasworld Business Intelligence affirms that ammonia plants represent a significant share among CO2 sources; in Europe, this share reaches 40-43% while in UK in particular it’s even higher, with as much as 46% of the merchant carbon dioxide is produced from the raw material of the fertiliser industry.

A dual talk from Fertilizer Week’s Jennifer Willis-Jones, Head of Nitrogen, and Alex Derricott, Senior Analyst for Fertiliser Costs and Emissions, will deconstruct both this link between ammonia markets and CO2 supply and the current state of play in the fertilisers sector since the squeezed margins and widespread plant curtailments of autumn 2021.

Further still, Derricott and Willis-Jones (pictured) will provide an outlook this business for 2022 and the near-term future – invaluable insights for anyone in the CO2 business in Europe.

Read more: European CO2 Summit now virtual

As the event agenda progresses and moves into Session 2, so too will the focus, shifting from the traditional supply chain to the rapidly emerging in the shape of carbon capture/recovery and biogenic CO2.

At a time when exceptionally high natural gas prices show no sign of abating and Europe increasingly finds itself in a wartime setting with Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, the focus on future CO2 sourcing could not be more pertinent.

Speakers in Session 2 will include Christopher Carson of Carbonic Solutions and BioCarbonics Limited, and Henrik Lyhne of Pentair Union Engineering.

Circular economies

With the path to 2030 paved with momentous investments in decarbonisation, Sessions 3 and 4 at the event will explore the opportunities this presents for the CO2 sector.

Topics will include carbon capture, commercialising CO2 recovery, and utilisation and mineralisation, with speakers from companies as diverse as CarbonCure Technologies, Atlas Copco, and Cold Jet.

These are the sessions in which both Andreas Drescher and Andrew Baxter will now participate.

Baxter (pictured) co-founded Sustainable Energy Solutions, now a Chart company, at the end of 2008 to help develop a breakthrough integrated carbon capture and energy storage technology. He has led the company through the development and demonstration of this technology to date and remains the president and CEO of SES, which was acquired by Chart Industries in December of 2020.

The combination of SES’ innovative technology with Chart’s decades of experience bringing highly engineered cryogenic equipment to market, makes for a strong proposition to scale and commercialise cryogenic carbon capture. Baxter will share more on this opportunity at the event.

Soon after, Drescher (pictured) will present a case study in how that captured carbon can be put to effective use. Drescher has spent his whole carrier in the heavy industry, with most of his time in the refractory industry. He has worked for RHI Magnesita for 23 years in many different roles and now works as Vice-President of the company’s Carbon Reduction Programme.

The programme’s target is to find and test – until 2025 – the technologies which will allow the company to reduce significantly its Scope 1 emissions in order to take a major step towards Net Zero.

During Session 3 he will discuss a case study in carbon capture and utilisation in heavy industry, with first-hand experience and data to present of particular interest to those pondering their first steps in such recovery and utilisation projects.