As the world’s leading energy organization reports the radical steps needed to reach net zero emissions by 2050, SVP Research and Development Dr. Steve Griffiths discusses the prospects for the oil-producing GCC countries in a webinar hosted by The Middle East Institute.

By Dr. Steve Griffiths

In May 2021, the International Energy Agency (IEA) published a on a pathway to net-zero carbon emissions by 2050. Among the many proposals in the report is the call to immediately end new investments in oil and gas exploration and development. Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC) economies still depend heavily on oil and gas for their national income, despite economic diversification initiatives over the last several years. How credible is the IEA pathway to Net Zero by 2050 and how will this affect the oil-producing countries in the GCC?

In the 1800s, we went through a period where we were a society based on biomass, then the industrial revolution followed and we switched to coal for a new form of energy. Finally, in the last few decades, coal, oil and gas have become the dominant sources of energy with the proliferation of hydrocarbons, but of course, renewable energy sources have appeared as well. We are seeing sustainability coming into play and as it does, we have to ask the question: what’s going to happen over the next 80 years as we see the end of the ‘oil age’, particularly as we work on limiting the emissions from the combustion of fossil fuels?

The current thinking is it would be much better for the planet to limit global warming to 1.5 degrees, because when you get to 2 degrees, the climate issues we’re seeing now will simply be exacerbated. The 2050 dialogue is now on the table, and this creates a discussion about how quickly we can move towards mitigating or eliminating our emissions.

The sustainable development scenario is essentially a net zero solution, but with a postponed deadline: global CO2 emissions from the energy sector and industrial processes would need to fall by more than 70 percent by 2050 to be on track for net-zero by 2070. This would limit global warming to less than 2 degrees Celsius relative to pre-industrial levels.

A shorter timescale, and the one recommended by the recent IEA report,, would see global CO2 emissions reduced to net-zero by 2050, falling around 45 percent from 2010 levels by 2030. This would, with high probability, limit global warming to less than 1.5 degrees Celsius relative to pre-industrial levels.

It’s pretty ambitious to aim for Net Zero by 2050, since to see a more than 40 percent decrease in our CO2 emissions by 2030, which is what the pathway suggests, would require a massive change in the way we use and view energy.

There are many net-zero scenarios and the oil and gas sector is heavily impacted in each. All these scenarios have a fairly similar trajectory for oil and gas, and if we follow a Net Zero 2050 pathway, we’ve already hit peak oil.

To reach net zero by 2050, there will need to be a 70 percent reduction from 2020 to 2050 with oil demand never exceeding 100 million barrels a day. In fact, along this trajectory, we’ll see a rapid decline in oil demand, dropping sharply over the next three decades to 25 million barrels a day. On the same path, natural gas is yet to see its peak, but that’ll happen within this decade. With a more gradual decline to 2050 than oil, demand for natural gas will fall off by 40 percent.

OPEC is particularly well situated in the IEA Net Zero scenario with more than half the market share; if you’re a Middle Eastern country producing oil, the situation looks pretty good, so to speak. However, even if you’re still a producer with more than 50 percent market share, you have to consider the impact the reduced demand will have on revenues as diminished demand impacts oil prices. The challenge we’re going to face here is that the economic structures of the GCC countries are generally not compatible with a Net Zero world. While they have made some positive progress in economic diversification between 2010 and 2020, they are still heavily reliant on hydrocarbons for government revenues, exports, and economic activity. Among the GCC countries, the UAE is perhaps best positioned but also needs to make further progress. As it stands, this region, and many others, are not ready to jump straight into a Net Zero world trajectory.

Net Zero by 2050 assumes a very rapid global shift in energy consumption patterns, with a precipitous drop in demand for oil in particular. To follow this IEA recommendation, we would need to stop developing new oil fields immediately, with any new investment directed to maintaining production at existing fields. Likewise for natural gas, all investment would be used to sustain existing production to meet residual demand in the future.

However, many are still assuming that oil demand by 2030 will largely follow a trajectory based on current and announced government policies focused on climate and sustainability. This, coupled with the fact that a number of countries that are heavy energy consumers, such as India, are rejecting a rapid decarbonization trajectory indicates a good chance that demand for oil will increase by 2030. Confirming this notion, consulting firm Wood Makenzie announced recently that they foresee a 2030 oil demand supply gap of about 20 million barrels per day. This is not to say that Net Zero by 2050 is completely out of the question, but it’s unlikely given the fact that the need for increased oil production in the coming decade is a very real possibility.

However, while Net Zero by 2050 is debatable, planning for Net Zero is nonetheless important. There will be a net zero: maybe not by 2050, but someday it’s going to happen, and the low-cost hydrocarbon producers will be the ones that survive or at least last the longest.

When oil demand decreases, which it inevitably will, oil prices will fall and this will lead many oil-producing countries to have uneconomical or stranded oil reserves. If the asking price for a barrel of oil falls below the cost of production, countries will find themselves with oil reserves they cannot exploit without incurring a loss. Therefore, oil demand in the future will be optimally met by low-cost, low-carbon producers located in economies that can remain viable when faced with reduced income from oil and gas exports, such as the GCC producers.

In planning for net zero, companies in the oil and gas industry need to consider strategies involving reducing production costs, moving downstream into refining and petrochemical production, or investing in low-carbon energy, transitioning from ‘oil and gas’ companies to ‘energy’ companies. The strategy that players in this industry will pick is context dependent. National oil companies (NOCs) need to monetize their oil and gas reserves to the extent possible, and selected NOCs have downstream opportunities to explore. Many of these companies with downstream integration, which are located in the Middle East, and particularly in the GCC, can pursue potential long-term opportunities in refining and petrochemicals. Qatar in particular will bet on long-term demand for low-carbon natural gas, particularly LNG, and its derivative. It is expected that under any future scenario in which demand for oil remains, GCC countries will be prominent producers and gain market share, partly due to the low geopolitical risk in the region.

In the long-term, GCC national oil companies will pursue greener oil and gas production while also looking towards low-carbon energy sources that fit with Net Zero ambitions but align with core competencies. In this vein, hydrogen, particularly blue hydrogen, which is hydrogen produced primarily from steam methane reforming coupled with carbon capture, is an opportunity consistent with Net Zero pathways. Qatar, for example, is likely to focus on low-carbon gas supply for the production of blue hydrogen elsewhere, while Saudi Arabia, and perhaps the UAE, may produce blue hydrogen locally and export it or additionally see opportunities for importing and storing CO2 from blue hydrogen production abroad. Hydrogen is a core element of the IEA Net Zero plan, and the GCC countries are poised to produce and export blue hydrogen, its derivatives, and natural gas for hydrogen production elsewhere. However, finding the right business cases for the options to pursue is the current challenge.

As the IEA report says, reaching net zero by 2050 “requires nothing short of a total transformation of the energy systems that underpin our economies.” While 2050 is an ambitious goal, Net Zero will happen eventually and the global energy transition will, over time, reduce dependency on fossil energy sources. It’s clear that oil producers and exporters will increasingly face economic challenges as the transition unfolds but various strategies exist for continued prospects for GCC national oil companies in a Net Zero world. Gas producers and exporters are expected to have opportunities in low-carbon gases, particularly hydrogen, but hydrogen exports will not make up for long-term decline in oil export rents. The economic diversification initiatives currently underway in the region must continue.

Even as the world pursues decarbonization and emission reduction technologies in the pursuit of Net Zero, oil and gas will continue to play a role in many energy systems. It’s clear that oil and gas must be a part of the broader net zero conversation. 

Dr. Steve Griffiths is the Senior Vice President of Research and Development and Professor of Practice at Khalifa University.

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With myriad materials to choose from, simulations help speed up the process of selecting the right materials for the job. 

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With most of the world still relying on fossil fuel-driven power plants for their energy, carbon dioxide emissions remain a global concern. Reducing greenhouse gas emissions, particularly carbon dioxide, is paramount in combating climate change.

One way to do this is to capture the carbon dioxide (CO₂) emissions directly from the smokestacks of the power plants before they enter the atmosphere.

Dr. Lourdes Vega, Director of the Khalifa University Research and Innovation Center on CO₂ and Hydrogen (RICH) and Professor of Chemical Engineering, is leading a collaborative research team that is analyzing different types of materials to determine their potential for post-combustion carbon dioxide capture and separation.

The team includes Dr. Daniel Bahamon, Research Scientist, and, Assistant Professor of Chemical Engineering, both from Khalifa University, along with Dr. Santiago Builes from EAFIT University, Colombia, and Wei Anlu from China University of Petroleum, a student who spent six months at the RICH Center at Khalifa University for performing part of this study. They published their work in January in the journal.

“Mitigation strategies such as carbon capture, utilization and storage (CCUS) play an import role in limiting the contribution of CO₂ emissions to global climate change. One key approach to this is capturing post-combustion CO₂ from flue gas at power stations and chemical manufacturing plants,” explained Dr. Vega.

Flue gas is the by-product gas that leaves a fossil fuel power station or plant via a chimney known as a flue. While its composition depends on what is being burned, it mostly comprises nitrogen, carbon dioxide, water vapor and a number of pollutants such as particulate matter, carbon monoxide, nitrogen oxides and sulfur oxides. The ‘smoke’ seen pouring from these flues is not smoke at all, but the water vapor in the gas forming a cloud as it meets cooler air.

Carbon dioxide is the second largest component of flue gas at around 4 to 25 percent, depending on the source. Although there are technologies available now to capture this carbon dioxide before it can wreak havoc on the atmosphere, they have several disadvantages.

Currently, aqueous amine solutions, which are solutions containing water and amines, organic compounds derived from ammonia and containing a nitrogen atom attached to hydrogen and carbon atoms, are used to capture CO₂ in large-scale applications. Amine solutions are excellent at trapping the CO₂, making them the most popular and developed carbon capture technology. However, the disadvantage to this technology is that in order to separate the trapped CO₂ from the amine solution, it has to be heated, requiring additional energy, and some of the amines are lost in this high energy process.

To overcome the shortcomings of amine solutions, solid sorbent materials are a viable alternative. Solid sorbents can selectively adsorb CO₂, however some solid sorbent materials perform better than others, and finding the most optimal carbon capturing material was the focus of Dr. Vega’s investigation.

A good adsorbent is a highly porous material with a large internal surface, full of holes to collect the CO₂. Metal-organic frameworks (MOF) materials possess enhanced stability, greater CO₂ cycling capacities and lower regeneration energies, making MOFs a material of choice for solid sorbent-based carbon capture.

However, MOFs alone are not enough to adsorb the CO₂ from flue gas at low pressures, especially since water vapor in the gas can compete with the carbon dioxide for adsorption. To counter this, attention has turned to amine-functionalized MOFs, where amines are grafted onto the open metal sites to increase CO₂ adsorption selectivity and capacity. These materials combine the benefits of both the MOFs and the amines, avoiding the disadvantages of the need for heating the solvent for removing the CO2 or the evaporation of the amines.

There are multiple types of amines, each of which has different characteristics relevant to CO₂ capture. Finding the optimal amine for each real-world application can be a time-consuming endeavor.

“Molecular simulations can allow the systematic and precise study of the various relevant variables of a system,” explained Dr. Vega. “We can isolate and quantify the effect of each functionalized MOF on the performance of the system, making simulation an excellent tool for the rational design of materials.”

The research team used molecular simulations to explore the relationship between the structure of different kinds of amine-grafted MOFs and their CO₂ adsorption performance.

A series of amine-grafted MOFs were screened, establishing the most promising materials for adsorbing low-concentration CO₂, while considering their regeneration performance, or how many cycles the MOFs could operate before degrading.

“Our work offers a molecular understanding of how functionalization takes place on MOFs and how it affects their final performance, providing guidance on the design of the best material/amine combination for optimal post-combustion CO₂ capture,” said Dr. Vega.  Once the best material is found with this procedure, it will be synthesized and tested in a reactor at the conditions required for CO2 capture from different sources.

Dr. Vega’s team’s work is a significant contribution to the development of efficient and sustainable carbon capture utilization and storage solutions, as part of the RICH Center effort to find optimal materials to produce clean energy. 

Jade Sterling
Science Writer
15 April 2021

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By Dr. Ludovic �ٳܳ�é��

Dr. Ludovic �ٳܳ�é�� , Assistant Professor of Chemical Engineering at Khalifa University, outlines the strategies and technologies that could be deployed to turn CO2 emissions into a resilient circular economy.

Read Arabic story .

The continuous emission of carbon dioxide into the atmosphere is the leading cause of climate change and subsequent extreme weather events.

In 2015, the international community adopted the Paris Climate Agreement, agreeing to limit the global average rise in temperature to less than 2° C, compared to pre-industrial levels, but with ambitions to limit the rise to less than 1.5° C. Along with a paradigm shift from fossil fuels to renewable energy sources, deployment of carbon capture and storage technologies was proposed as a core strategy to actively and significantly reduce greenhouse gas emissions. This is in addition to the clear economic benefit that could be derived from using CO2 as a feedstock material for chemical products in a resilient circular economy.

While research into CO2 capture technologies is gaining traction, research into integrated capture and conversion strategies – which involves capturing CO2 at its source and effectively transforming the CO2 into value-added chemicals within the same chemical process – has received significantly less attention.

With my colleagues from Deakin University in Australia, including Dr. James Maina, Prof. Jennifer Pringle and Prof. Joselito Razal, and Dr. Suzana Nunes from King Abdullah University of Science and Technology in Saudi Arabia, Dr. Fausto Gallucci from Eindhoven University of Technology in Netherlands, and Dr. Lourdes Vega, Director of Khalifa University’s Research and Innovation Center on CO2 and Hydrogen (RICH), we published a review paper in the journal to assess recent advances in the integrated capture and conversion of CO2 from industry gases and atmospheric air.

Carbon capture and storage technologies (CSS) have been demonstrated across a number of pilot operations globally and typically include capturing CO2 from emission sources such as power plants, followed by compression prior to transportation to long-term storage sites. Although CSS technologies are viable for the capture of CO2 from large sources at high concentration levels, such as fossil fuel power plants or cement factories, they are not practical for small and distributed sources, such as transportation and residential heating, which cumulatively account for around half of all CO2 emissions.

For these cases, technologies that can extract CO2 directly from the atmosphere are needed if the associated carbon emissions are to be mitigated. These are direct air capture technologies (DAC) and they have some distinct advantages over traditional carbon capture technologies, including not needing to be located close to emission sources, which makes them deployable to any location around the world. However, since there is a much lower concentration of CO2 in the atmosphere compared to that available in the by-product gas from industrial plants, DAC is much more costly and energy intensive.

Associated with carbon capture and storage is carbon capture and utilization (CCU) where the CO2 captured from various sources is put back to work as a raw material. While CCU is most often associated with Enhanced Oil Recovery, CO2 can also produce valuable chemicals and fuels, which may be marketed to generate revenue and offset the expenses associated with the capture process. With a suitable catalyst, CO2 can be converted into a wide variety of products, including acids, monomers and carbon nanomaterials.

The potential for developing profitable businesses from products generated from CO2 is evidenced by the large number of recent start-up companies. The annual methanol market, for example, is expected to reach US$91.5 billion by 2026 and since methanol can be made from hydrogen and CO2, this represents a significant opportunity.

However, to further minimize energy requirements and eliminate the risk of secondary CO2 emissions, new, sustainable and energy efficient materials and processes that capture and convert CO2 emissions from the air directly need to be developed.

In our paper, we recommend that conversion reactions be carried out using renewable energy and that any chemicals and catalyst materials be produced using sustainable methods. Otherwise, CO2 derived products won’t have a low carbon footprint compared to fossil-fuel derived products. To highlight this, the generation of methanol from a reaction between CO2 and hydrogen generated by reforming of natural gas was found to release three times more CO2 than the conventional industrial production technique. But when the same reaction was carried out with hydrogen generated from wind power, there was a 58 percent reduction in emissions.

There is great potential in the scale-up and commercialization of capture and conversion technologies, but there are also key technological challenges hindering the advancement of this field that research can help overcome. Research and development carried out in the RICH Center at Khalifa University is tackling some of these challenges from a different angle. 

Dr. Ludovic �ٳܳ�é�� is an Assistant Professor of Chemical Engineering at Khalifa University and a faculty member of the Research and Innovation Center on CO2 and Hydrogen (RICH). 

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