Illustrative national scale scenarios of environmental and human health impacts of Carbon Capture and Storage

• We present a method which integrates LCA with integrated assessment modelling.
• We quantify the impacts of four illustrative scenarios for CCS deployment in the UK.
• NH3 from amine-based capture affects human health, NEC targets and damages ecosystems.
• We conclude that IGCC technology performs better than post-combustion CCS.
• We estimate that transboundary impacts are of similar magnitude to impacts in the UK.

Integrated Assessment, and the development of strategies to reduce the impacts of air pollution, has tended to focus only upon the direct emissions from different sources, with the indirect emissions associated with the full life-cycle of a technology often overlooked. Carbon Capture and Storage (CCS) reflects a number of new technologies designed to reduce CO2 emissions, but which may have much broader environmental implications than greenhouse gas emissions. This paper considers a wider range of pollutants from a full life-cycle perspective, illustrating a methodology for assessing environmental impacts using source-apportioned effects based impact factors calculated by the national scale UK Integrated Assessment Model (UKIAM). Contrasting illustrative scenarios for the deployment of CCS towards 2050 are presented which compare the life-cycle effects of air pollutant emissions upon human health and ecosystems of business-as-usual, deployment of CCS and widespread uptake of IGCC for power generation. Together with estimation of the transboundary impacts we discuss the benefits of an effects based approach to such assessments in relation to emissions based techniques.