In a recent conversation sponsored by Stanford University’s Precourt Institute for Energy, Ashok Belani, executive vice president of SLB New Energy, joined Bruce Niemeyer, VP Strategy and Sustainability of Chevron, to discuss the innovation, business models, and policy required for global energy transformation. Professor Sally Benson, Precourt Family professor, energy resources engineering, Stanford University, and Professor Yi Cui, materials science and engineering director, Precourt Institute for Energy, Stanford University, hosted the session.

Chevron and SLB New Energy recently announced a joint initiative to develop a ground-breaking bioenergy with carbon capture and sequestration (BECCS) project designed to produce carbon-negative power in Mendota, California. The BECCS plant will convert agricultural waste biomass, such as almond trees, into a renewable synthesis gas that will be mixed with oxygen in a combustor to generate electricity. More than 99% of the carbon from the BECCS process is expected to be captured for permanent storage by injecting carbon dioxide (CO2) underground into deep geologic formations nearby.

As mentioned by Stanford University Professor Sally Benson in this discussion, and according to the Global CCS Institute, there are about 26 projects in commercial operation today with the capacity to store 40 million tons of CO2 per year. To limit global warming to 1.5–2 degC by 2050, the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) estimates that 5 billion tons of CCS per year will be required.

In the carbon capture and sequestration sector, SLB New Energy’s innovative approach not only enables greenhouse gas emitters to collaborate with us in creating an optimal, holistic solution—it also aligns incentives across the CCS value chain and decreases inefficiencies inherent to split chains.