Catching the Carbon: India’s baby steps in CCUS | ft. Atanu Mukherjee

[Podcast intro]

Welcome to the season five of the India Energy Hour podcast. This podcast explores the most pressing hurdles and promising opportunities of India energy transition through an in depth discussion on policies, financial markets, social movements and science. Your hosts for this episode are Shreya Jai, Delhi based energy and climate journalist and Dr. Sandeep Pai, Washington based energy transition researcher and author. The show is produced by 101 reporters, a pan India network of grassroots reporters that produces original stories from rural India. If you like our podcast, please rate us on Spotify, Apple Podcasts or the platform where you listen to our podcast. Your support will help us reach a larger audience.

As India eyes its net zero targets, Carbon Capture, Utilization, and Storage (CCUS) is becoming central to decarbonizing core industries like steel, cement, and petrochemicals. While the technology holds immense promise, its adoption in India remains limited—hindered by cost concerns and lack of policy clarity.

To understand the road ahead, we spoke with Mr. Atanu Mukherjee, CEO of Dastur Energy. From shaping early internet technologies to leading CCUS innovation in India, Mr. Atanu Mukherjee shares a compelling perspective on the need for supportive policies, financing models, and industry-wide collaboration to scale CCUS in India’s energy transition.

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[Podcast interview]

Shreya Jai: Hello, and welcome to the India Energy Hour, Atanu. Thank you so much for joining us here. We are going to discuss a very interesting topic, something that this podcast, despite existing for four seasons, has not been able to cover, guilty as charged. But I hope we’ll do justice to this topic because we’re talking with you. You have served in this sector for so long, and now you are at the helm of a company which is doing some path breaking work in India. So welcome again to this podcast, and thank you for joining us.

Atanu Mukherjee: Thank you. It’s a privilege, you know, and thank you for inviting me.

Shreya Jai: Before we get into the topic, we will start this discussion with you, as is our protocol, if you can say so. We like to discuss our guest before we get into the topic. So we wanted to understand about your professional journey. As I mentioned earlier, you have had a long career in energy innovation, carbon markets. You’re now at the helm of Dastoor. What can you tell us about your professional journey? Where did you study? What led you to this sector? And what is exciting you these days?

Atanu Mukherjee: Yes, Shreya. It is kind of very interesting in terms of my professional and personal journey and how it’s evolved over time over the past so many decades. And, I must say that it’s unpredictable and it’s opportunities that come at you over time and you gotta shape and navigate through the opportunities to be able to make an impact right in the areas that you’re working in. So my journey, you know, as a child, if I start from that, you know, I grew up in a very modest place in, in the heartlands of India, in a place called Chhattisgarh, Korba. Right? And, you know, and I must say that I had a very privileged childhood. Not many people understand that now. Looking back, I think I had because those times in the townships that I grew up, which was basically public sector townships. My father worked in a public sector company, and it was so wonderful. In terms of the community, in terms of the system, in terms of, your ability to work with and feel nature, at a very young age was just absolutely fantastic, and I think I was very privileged to have that childhood. And then I did my engineering and, you know, and mechanical engineering, and then I did my master’s in management from Bombay. And then I moved to The United States. A lot of my work in The United States was initially obviously around academics where I went to, the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, where I was working, you know, on, you know, path breaking work, I think, at that point of time in computer science  and networks. And I might say that, you know, I was very instrumental along with my team in terms of laying some of the foundations of the Internet at that point of time in the nineteen nineties. You know? And so that was very pathbreaking in terms of working in terms of working, with, very different, very, very motivated, very, very bright set of people, in the area which was just emerging at that point of time, which is the Internet, which is taken for granted today. But I also worked, towards my dual degrees in economics and management and then computer science and engineering at MIT. And then I was working with a company out there in semiconductors, and it’s a great firm called Digital Equipment Corporation in Boston, Massachusetts. And, it was a pioneer in terms of computer systems at that point of time. And, you know, I had the privilege, and the opportunity to work on probably the fastest chipset of the world at that point of time, you know, called the Alpha, the DEC Alpha. You know, we were very, very, engaged in terms of shaping the future of computing at that point of time, shaping the future of the internet. Had some great, what do you call people to work with? This Gordon Bell, who was known as the one of the greatest engineers in the area of computer systems. There was Alan Kotak and, you know, some wonderful people. And I had the opportunity to learn and really understand, right, how things are shaped, right, in terms of innovation, how innovation moves ahead to the path of commercialization, how research is done, how products are developed. And then I was at, at Microsoft Corporation, you know, in Redmond, Washington, working on, you know, some of the, I think, the best innovations in, personal computing and, the networks. And I used to lead there, you know, the Windows networking division. And we had the opportunity to shape a lot of things in things that we use today. Right? A lot of things that we use that we take for granted in terms of networking and interaction with the Internet. And so I had the opportunity to work again with all the great people out there and great customers and great partners. And we shaped a lot of very interesting things in computing at Microsoft at that point of time in the late nineties, mid to late nineties, which you see today and we’re just taken for granted, like I said. But that was a very interesting and, you know, pathbreaking opportunity that I had to work with different kinds of technologies across, you know, different kinds of regions and different kinds of consumers or customers, which was, you know, really enlightening, I would say. And I think that, you know, this is where it becomes very interesting is that,  I, you know, I always thought always that, you know, that while computing and semiconductors was very interesting and very impactful, the society and the economies of the world have a much larger need, right, in terms of how, people use energy, how people get impacted by energy across the world. Right? And I think that that’s what I had, that’s when I had the privilege of meeting with a lot of people in this space and started working in this area in The United States. And then I met Dastoor, mister Dastoor, and he said, you know what? Why don’t you come? This was like, you know, fifteen years back. And he said, why don’t you come and shape the agenda for energy across the world, as the energy future evolves and shape it for M and Dastoor and Dastoor energy, you know, as we, found it at that point of time, and give leadership in that area to be able to really make good for the world and, you know, create a lot of impact in the world in terms of, the, the consumers who consume energy, make impact in terms of areas which have put extreme energy poverty. Right. And, make it more impactful and obviously make it very clean right over time. You know, how do you make it clean? And then so that the effect on climate is minimal. And so that’s how it started off, right? Fifteen years back. And of course, I kind of like changed completely from a very so-called, high technology industry, which was with chips and semiconductors and operating systems and software products, into something which is very different. Right? Very different in scale, very different in science, very different in technology, very different in economics. But what I realized was perhaps much more complex, much more challenging, much more impactful, I think, than what you could just do in computing and communications and the internet. So I think it’s been an exciting journey over the past decade and a half in terms of being able to shape aspects of the energy systems, being able to work on different aspects of the new energy systems, being able to work on aspects of climate impact, and of course, clean energy systems, and able to see how it shapes societies, how it shapes policies for countries like India, for example, how it shapes consumption of different kinds of energy at different cost structures, how economics or the affordability, plays such a big role, right? In terms of how energy can be made available to the masses, how it drives the cost of living. It’s a fascinating area, right? In terms of what energy does to the society, what energy does in terms of shaping societal prosperity, how energy lifts countries and people and regions out of poverty. And of course, how we should responsibly use that and how we should responsibly produce that and distribute that in a way which has minimal impact going forward on the climate. And therefore it leaves our future generations intact and has minimal impact on them. So I think it’s been a fascinating journey and so, so I think that there’s a lot of work that will be done and we are involved in making and shaping some of those areas which I think will have, probably significant impact over time, around the globe. And I think a lot of that impact will be probably in India. And I think and we think that India is prime for the opportunities that energy presents, that the new energy systems present, right? For it to become, you know, a large economy. Obviously we talk about a $5,000,000,000,000 economy, but I think it could be larger. I think it’s in the tipping point in terms of GDP per capita to become one of the largest, prosperous nations, over time, obviously, in the world. And energy will be a key component of shaping that. And so we are excited about what can be done in India, what is being done right now, and what are the possibilities and how it can impact society and the economy and the companies, in a very meaningful and, in a very transformational manner. So that’s, I think, a shot kind of like, hopefully shot, a sketch of full, you know, of my journey.

Shreya Jai: Great. And it’s very interesting to note, that while you’re currently working in carbon capture, you come from the coal belt of this country in Chhattisgarh. Just very curious to know, have you had any close experience, you know, observing the coal supply chain, from the state that you are? No. Did it shape your career choices or anything? I you  went on to work with some of the marquee names in the sector. But have you had any close shave with the coal industry in any way before Dastoor?

Atanu Mukherjee: Yes. Yes. So I and so, again, this is, you know, this is kind of a little old, but, you know, at that point of time, you know, we didn’t have coal India limited. We had something called the National Coal Development Corporation, NCDC. Right? And NCDC was the controlling corporation which used to manage coal, you know, coal coal manufactured production from a state perspective. And so, yes,I did work, you know, as a kid, you know, with the I used to go to the Gevra coal mines, for example, to see how the blasting used to happen, for example, how surface mining happens. I used to go to the national thermal power corporation, NTPC. I had one of first few plants, you know, in Chhattisgarh. Right? If you know, those are the first plants that came up in NTPC, the large scale super thermal power plants. And how coal would be shipped and how coal would be utilized in the most effective manner to make NTPC plants work at that point of time. I saw that as a kid. You know, and I had a lot of friends, you know, who were tribals, you know, and I used to make friends with all these kids, you know, who were basically tribals. And in fact, I call myself a tribal for that matter from Chhattisgarh. But that gave me a lot of learning on how those families worked in coal mines, for example, what affected them, right? In terms of, things which were good and things which were bad, right? So one of the things as you might know and what I saw and what I can tell you now based on what I saw is that belt, Chhattisgarh, that Korba Bhilaspur, that belt, right? One of the biggest drivers of prosperity, and people think this to be counterintuitive, right? The biggest drivers of prosperity in the, you know, as a kid in the seventies, eighties, right, was basically coal and coal related industries. That is what brought all this tribal poverty and the tribal and translated that into, to some degree, tribal prosperity. Right? And I think it had a huge, huge impact, right, in that belt in terms of lifting millions of people, right, out of, the situation that they were in, right, into the next level of consumption, next level of, I won’t say prosperity, but next level, out of poverty, right? But again, the flip side, if you look today, is the bad side of coal, right? Which  you use coal the way that we used to for the past many, many decades and still continue to, it has a huge impact in terms of pollution. It’s got a huge impact in terms of carbon emissions. You know, and that has a significant impact, right, on the society, in that region in that region, and they’re suffering for that right now. So this is a double edged sword. On one hand, you want to, what you call, drive you know, you you want to lift millions of people and utilize the coal endowment, which is the right thing to do at that point of time, you know, into into taking people out and into into the economy, at a more prosperous level. But on the other hand, you also create this situation where there’s a lot of pollution that is generated, the scale increases. There’s a lot of CO2 emissions that happen. There’s a lot of mining wastelands that affect land use. And over time, that becomes really problematic and affects start affecting society, the very prosperity that you’ve created. So being able to balance both these things, right, in the right way is one of the biggest challenges that India faces today, is how do we leverage the endowments that we have, coal endowments that we have, for example, while ensuring that we do not create significant health hazards, significant climate hazards, significant future intergenerational hazards for our children. This is the biggest the the other big challenge. And that is possible, very possible, but how you do that, there are different ways of doing that. So, so I think one of my biggest learnings when I look back is when as a child, when I went to these mines and kind of like, you know, I worked with these folks, the tribal friends of mine, and and and and and we used to call them uncle aunties at that point of time to work in the NCDC and then the plants and the NTPCs. Learned a lot of things and how these things work, how coal based industries work, and how it creates the impact that it does. But it also has got a big downside in terms of what it does. So I think that was a learning at a very young age, which I think stayed with me, and that probably is the reason why I was so much interested in, you know, really advancing the new energy frontiers, as I call it today.

Shreya Jai: Yes. Fascinating. I’ve found your way back, into the sector somehow now to capture the carbon. I have a lot of punts in my mind, but, let me go ahead and, first of all, you know, ask you, if you can explain, CCUS, Carbon Capture Utilization and Storage, short form CCUS. If you can explain to our listeners what exactly does it entail, you know, the image that comes to anyone’s mind when you say carbon capture is very different to what actually happens. So if you can explain how the segment functions and, you know, what technology is at play, what are we looking at, and most importantly, how efficient it is?

Atanu Mukherjee: Right. Right. So, let me give you some context on this. You know, as the name suggests, carbon capture essentially is a mechanism by which you use certain kinds of technologies which enable you to suck the carbon dioxide that is coming out of an industrial production stack, for example. So for example, if you look at a thermal power plant, you’ve got a lot this long, what you call, you know, chimneys, and these chimneys belch out the CO2 right into the atmosphere.

So instead of belching out CO2, if you have an a mechanism before it goes out to the atmosphere, which absorbs the CO2 from the flue gas, right? Or the or the or the or the gas that is coming out or burning the coal. If you absorb the CO2 and release the gas without the CO2, you essentially capture the carbon dioxide from the gas that is coming out, which has got CO2. That is carbon capture. Right? There’s a carbon capture piece of CCUS, as we call it. There are different ways of capturing carbon depending upon many technological and economic factors. One of the things that is a determinant of the kind of technology that he that one uses for carbon capture is based on what we call as how concentrated is the flue gas stream which has CO two. So for example, atmosphere, you know, the air that we breathe has got carbon dioxide in it. Right? But it is very, very dilute, very dilute, right? And it’s like, you know, four twenty parts per million, which is very, very dilute. If you look at a, you know, a chimney of a thermal power plant, the flue gas, they may have 11 to 12% of CO2. And so, you know, it is much more concentrated. If you look at much, higher concentration, for example, you know, if you got a plant which gasifies coal called coal gasification plant, the concentration is very high, 90% CO2 coming out of the stream. So depending upon the stream, the concentration of the CO2, the technology will vary, right, in terms of its effectiveness and its economics of capture. Right? So, for example, if you want to capture carbon dioxide from air by flowing air into one of those large scale, you know, direct air capture units as they call it, it’s gonna be very expensive and very large because the concentration is so low. Right? But on the other hand, if you use capturing from the chimney of a thermal power plant, you know, obviously it’s, it’s reasonable amount of concentration. You will use a certain kind of technology, chemical technology, chemical solvent, which will absorb that CO2. It’s less expensive, much more manageable. Right? And can you manage a scale, manage that scale? On the other hand, if you go to very high concentration like a coal gasification plant, you don’t require capture technology for that because very little. It’s just because the concentration is so high, 95% concentration of CO2. So you don’t require capture. So the cost of capture is very low in that case, right? So depending upon the different kinds of industries that belch out or spew out a different CO2 with the thermal power plants, the steel plant, there’s an aluminum plant, a coal gasification plant. They spew out different kinds of CO2 with different CO2 concentrations.

And the idea is to be able to capture that CO2 using a technology based, which is based on the concentration of the CO2, from these different kinds of stacks. And then once you capture that in the most effective way, in the most efficient way, and that is where the trick is, you are you should you would then transport that carbon dioxide, you know, to a place where you can either store it, which is what is called a sequestration. You can sequester the carbon dioxide just like you do, you know, in oil wells, deep down in the earth, you can drill down, and and and and store the CO2, which will never escape. Or what you could also do, you could take that CO2 that you have captured and then convert that into useful products. Now, that is the utilization part. Now the challenge is just like capture, how do you do the utilization or the or the translation of the CO2 that you captured into value added products like methanol, for example, which is a chemical, you know, or ammonia for that matter. So there are different ways of doing different kinds of products, but the trick is how do you do it effectively, which basically means cost effectively and at large scale. And that’s where the challenge lies in utilization. So carbon capture, right, which is basically capturing the carbon dioxide with the right technology based on the concentration and other characteristics of the flue gas stream, and then transporting that to the right place. And utilization, which is conversion of the carbon into carbon dioxide that you’ve captured into useful products, which may be methanol, which may also be something like you can inject that CO2 into under the oil fields to generate more oil. That’s also one form of utilization. So that’s utilization, two examples of that. And storage, which basically means that you don’t do any conversion, and you basically take that CO2 that you’ve captured in large scale and large volume and push it under the ground for it to be permanently stored. And that’s got a certain cost. Right? Depending upon the geography, depending upon the terrain, depending upon the location, and so on and so forth. So that is carbon capture utilization and storage. And this whole thing is called a carbon capture chain. And the cost of carbon capture utilization and storage depends upon these factors. What is my technology I’m utilizing for carbon capture? What is my volume? What is my concentration of CO2? When I’m utilize if I’m doing utilization, what am I converting it to? And depending upon what I convert that to, whether it’s a methanol, for example, or some other product like concrete, the cost of utilization or cost of conversion varies and can be very, very high. Or if I say, no. I don’t want to do that because you can only do so much of carbon dioxide conversion because of very large volumes. What you would like to do is take this c o two and then move it under the ground at a very large scale, which again costs you somewhat, but not as much as conversion. Much, much lesser than conversion. And that’s probably the most preferred way of what you call moving carbon dioxide into the ground, because that’s that has got large scale. It’s got low cost. And the fact of the matter is this whole thing that I just talked to you about, CCUS, or more specifically carbon capture, utilization and storage, is nothing new. This has been done for decades, in different areas in the oil and gas industry, for example. If you look at the oil and gas industry in The United States, it regularly, takes CO2, captures CO2 from different kind of sources, and then injects it underground to store the CO2, to a large degree, and also generate oil, right, which is the, you know, the under the the the oil that’s United States, for example, that’s generated, which can be then utilized for, you know, production of petroleum or diesel or whatever. So this has been done for a long, long time. And US, for example, today does about 50,000,000 tons of carbon capture utilization, for generating oil, which is called enhanced oil recovery. And so it’s not very new. Right? It’s been there for a long time. It’s proven. What is challenging is how do you adapt that towards industrial systems or different kinds of generation sources? And you optimize that or make it most efficient, more the perspective of economics, which is very, very important, from a perspective of how much CO two you can handle. Because if you look at CO2 generation, you know, it’s very large. It’s in the millions of tons. So you’re talking about millions of tons of capture, millions of tons of CO2 movement, and millions of tons of CO2 storage. Right? So how do I do it economically? How do I apply the right kind of technology, the different stages of carbon capture, utilization, and storage? And how do I do it at a very large scale so that I’m able to address very large scale CO2 absorption or CO2 capture, and then store it away for forever. So that’s basically just a hopefully, a thumbnail outline of what CCUS means and the different elements in CCUS. Does that make sense?

Shreya Jai: Yes. Yes. It absolutely, makes sense. And, you know, thank you for explaining the science in in in such a lucid manner. Thank you for doing that. And I I’ll just quickly shift to, you know, you you gave examples, across the board. But, as I see it from the lens of, you know, someone sitting in India, it looks very nascent, at least in terms of, you know, operationalization of this technology in the country. How would you describe this landscape currently in India? You know, there have been so many pilot projects that were done globally and also in India, there are several companies which are looking to dabble into it, but it continues to be a very nascent sector. So can you explain the landscape and can you also tell that, you know, is there any inhibition here in the Indian ecosystem that, you know, restricts its widespread usage?

Atanu Mukherjee: Yeah. So I think that, you know, obviously, unlike the other technologies in the energy sector, typically renewable energies, which received a lot of what you call initial funding and fill it. You know, carbon capture was not what you call supported that much initially because it had this, a myth around it that, you know, it’s not a proven technology. It doesn’t work and, you know, so why invest here, much rather invest in renewables and so on and so forth. Right? And so it did not get the initial funding to be able to to be applied towards projects, you know, for, you know, wherever where it’s, will be utilized for large scale carbon capture and and storage. So that was way back, I think. I’m talking global scenario, February, ‘2000, late nineties, ‘2000, and so on and so forth. Right? So that was a a challenge. And now, you know, if you look at it, right, we have got a fair number of projects. People have realized around the world that without decarbonizing the industry, we cannot get to any meaningful decarbonization, right, of the society. What basically that means is that, yes, renewables is absolutely important, right, for, decarbonizing or or or making the electricity sector clean. But, you know, if you look at the emissions, in the world, 75% of the emissions are outside of the electricity sector. And if you look at that, the industry emits about 35 to 40% of the total fuel emissions. There is no way you can apply any other technology apart from CCUS or any or some kind of other technology, new technology to be able to abate that CO2. So that recognition came a little late, right? Much later that, oh, boy, this is like a big problem that we have got, which we need to address. And so people started addressing that around the world and it started picking CCU, carbon capture, utilization and storage started picking steam over the past, I would say, five to eight years, right, in arge scale. So India also, we brought this to the attention of the of  the, you know,  the government, the NITI IO, for example, and the ministries, saying that, look, India, moving towards a 2070 goal of net zero. Absolutely fantastic. It is doing great work in renewables, which is also very good. However, India’s growth, right, will be driven by the industry. Right? India is in a stage where it is gonna get turbocharged growth over the next fifteen, twenty, thirty years, which will be driven by production of steel, production of aluminum, production of automobiles, production of, you know, fertilizers, production of chemicals, all that kind of stuff. All of these things generate a lot of CO2, and there is no substitute that you have which can replace these industries. So you have to live with it. Right? So the only way you can decarbonize while maintaining economic growth, through industrial growth would be through, you know, carbon abatement using things like carbon capture at a large scale. That took a little while to process and get absorbed, but they finally realized that, yes, that is true. And so, there are two things that has to be realized. One is that whenever you do any carbon capture, utilization of storage, or for that matter, whenever you do any kind of, you know, renewable technology or green hydrogen or anything of that sort, there is a cost. There is a cost to that, which one has to pay, which till date was not being paid. And so the question becomes, how do you make that cost minimal? And b, how do you ensure that the country, the nation recognizes that this is a need for this, for growing the industrial base of the country in a manner which is sustainable and also ensure that that is adopted by the industry over time. So the industry will not adopt it if you tell them that you put a or to put a carbon capture system, which will cost you, you know, 1,000 rupees per ton, right, for CO2 capture, for example. Others say, no. I don’t wanna do that. There is no law. There’s no regulation. Nothing. So why should I do that? And that does not make any sense. So that’s when we worked with the government. Right? And gradually, the government recognized that, yes, we need to set a policy where you say that, you know what? It is important to have carbon capture from the industry to decarbonize it and to make it grow, to make the industry grow in a manner which is sustainable and clean. And we must support that using an incentive, a policy incentive, which, you know, is kind of like a PLI, plus potentially a VGF, which allows different companies like a steel company or a cement company, you know, or a petrochemical company to supply and adopt carbon capture equipment, to be able to capture CO2 and then process that and store that. You know? So that just happened about, you know, two, three years back. I think the CCUS bill is probably going to go through. That’s not my understanding is that over the next in any very near future, in terms of the incentive scheme and, you know, how it’s gonna be funded. And so by doing that and with this policy movement happening, we believe that there will be adoption of carbon capture systems with the industry as it progresses over time. And India probably is gonna be one of the largest, you know, decarbonization hubs using carbon capture over the next ten to fifteen years. That’s very, very possible. So I think the policy is very important to drive this forward because it gives you an offset for the cost that you incurred through a policy incentive, And it drives the adoption of carbon capture systems for large scale or different kinds of relevant industries, which will then help reduce this CO2 emissions significantly. So India is at an initial phase, you know, and I think it’s moved significantly over the past two to three years. There have been some pilots at small scale. We did a couple of designs for some large scale, what you call a carbon capture systems like Indian Oil Corporation. We are doing one more for Indian Oil Corporation right now. There’s one for BPCL that we did. There’s a bunch of others that are going on. So the number of opportunities and the number of people who are started working towards this in anticipation of the policy coming in, is growing much more than what it was. And, and we think that you will see a lot of these going into mainstream over the next few years. So that is what the state is in India at this point of time. And obviously, globally, things are a little farther ahead, but not too far, not too far ahead. But we think that as this gathers more momentum, because industrial decarbonization will become a reality, will be recognition of reality that you cannot solve everything just by doing renewables because that’ll only solve 25% of the emissions problem. The rest 75% is still open. And so this is an important way to drive decarbonization and to drive, you know, sustainability forward, in India and, of course, across the world.

Shreya Jai: Interesting. I wanted to also understand from a company perspective now that, you know, it’s extensively doing this business. What kind of a scope do you see? You know, what all industries or, if you can take some names, what are some of the companies that you are, you know, regularly getting interest from? Which area is emerging to you as a big business opportunity, if I may ask? Which particular segment?

Atanu Mukherjee: Right. So if you look at, the applicability of carbon capture systems, it’s most applicable to industries which generate a lot of carbon dioxide. Right? And they generate that in large volumes. So the abatement potential is the highest in those industries. Having said that, if you look at the set which, the industry set which applies towards that kind of a profile, is the steel industry’s own large. The steel industry in India emits probably about 250,000,000 tons to 300,000,000 tons of carbon dioxide, which is significant. Okay? Similarly, cement industry emits a lot of carbon dioxide. It’s probably about a similar number, 300,000,000 tons, a little less probably. Okay? Petrochemical industry, right, which is like an IOCL, for example. They emit a lot of carbon in terms of well, the process, you know, the crude into different kinds of products. The those are three. Then the fertilizer industry, ammonia, you know, generation, that generates quite a bit of significant amount of carbon dioxide, you know, if you will. So if you look at the core industries, the core basic industries which drive the economy, which has basically gotta do with steel. Right? Plastics or chemicals, plastics and chemicals, fertilizers and cement. This is basically what drives an economy, a growing economy. Right? That probably generates, totally about 75 to 80%, right, of the industrial emissions, you know, that comes out. And so these are the industries that we work with. So the companies around that we work we are working with right now, for example, is Indian Oil Corporation Limited, for example, IOCL. We finished one sometime back, which is probably going to go forward right now in terms of its actual implementation, which is IOCL, you know, the Koyali refinery, which has got to do with, you know, capturing the c o two from the petrol from the refinery. And then utilizing that for, again, something I mentioned before, which has got to do with generating oil. Right? Excess oil from the Gandhar, what do you call oil fields, which is near Gujarat. Right? So India has got less oil generation as you know. And so if you can use c o two to be able to push it inside the oil fields and trap the c o two and bubble the oil out, like, just like what the US does. It increases the oil output at a very low cost. That’s one that we’re working on. There’s multiple ones that are going on right now in five refineries in Iowa seal again that we’re working on right now. You know, there’s work that’s happening, you know, with coal gasification plants. And, as you might know that, the prime minister’s coal gasification mission, which is kinda got a delayed start, but, has got a huge opportunity in terms of what can happen, using coal gasification from energy security and affordable cheap chemicals availability and power availability. But that generates a lot of CO2. And again, very highly concentrated CO2 like I talked about before. So capture costs are very low. So bunch of coal gas irrigation plants we’re working with in terms of looking at how to capture and store that and make it clean. The steel plants that we’re working right now, you know, all initial stages, early stages of design, for example. There’s been interest by sales, for example, in terms of looking at it as an option. We believe that, you know, there’s a significant opportunity to be able to decarbonize, the secondary steel sector, which is, as you might know, is one of the dirtiest steel production sectors in India because it, you know, it it it is it is the small small, what do you call, steel plants, which are operated by different, kind of like small operators like Chhattisgarh, you know, Orissa, Andhra Pradesh, and so on and so forth. But they generate a lot of CO2, and they’re very inefficient. Right? And so we have an opportunity to shape that sector, and we’re working with the initiated work with the government in terms of seeing how we can shape that in the best possible way to be able to drive, you know, the sustainable production of steel using this from the secondary steel producers. And that may require some policies that that need to that that that need to happen. We just had a finished a couple of initial work with the cement sector. You know, and we just had, I think, a few months back in terms of how we can move the cement sector forward in terms of, making it more efficient and less emissive, over time. And obviously a lot of the private players were very interest were interested, to move forward provided there is an economic pathway with the right kind of policy in place. And so that’s another sector that, you know, that that that we’re working with. So the core industrial sector is the one that is most amenable to permanent capture, utilization, storage. And, you know, it’s very large volumes. And if there’s the right policy support for doing CCUS, which I think will be there, we think that this should go forward in a significant manner to create a significant emergence of industrial growth, which is sustainable and manageable over a period of time. So that’s basically just an outline of where we’re working on. And, of course, this is only in India and then internationally working on quite a bit. You know? Mostly in the United States. We work quite a bit for the US DOE. And, there’s one that we worked on with a large steel plant, in, in the Great Lakes area. There’s one that we’re working on right now with Duke Energy, which is a very large power provider. You know, it’s very large power provider, which, which generates about 50 – 70 gigawatts of power, and we are decarbonizing that using a combination of carbon capture and other technologies. There’s one we’re doing in, Texas, which has gotta do with creating, you know, hydrogen, which is clean, but not through renewable electrolysis, but by using carbon capture from, hydrogen that is produced from natural gas, which is which turns out to be much cheaper and much easier than, than than doing hydrogen, based on, renewable electricity. So that’s a thumbnail. And there’s, of course, Middle East that you’re working on and a bunch of, you know, companies, you know, in in The UAE area on, things around how to utilize the the petroleum residues that they have and convert that into chemicals while capturing the carbon dioxide for generating more oil, and from their from the old aging oil fields. There’s one that we’re working on in terms of, how we create clean methanol, from waste petroleum residues. You know, and that way we are making methanol very clean, which can be then utilized for maritime shipping. As you might know, maritime shipping is also very, emissive. And so, what we want to do out there is really generate the methanol to be able to use by ships so that the change from the current emissive, you know, diesel and and maritime fuel onto methanol like fuel, which has got much less emission and also cheaper. Right? In this case, it also happens to be cheaper. So those are some of the examples of work that we do in India and outside of India. And we think that there’s significant other opportunities that’ll shape up as this area matures over time.

Shreya Jai: Right. Got it. Is there any, you know, case study that you can share, with us, specific to India? You know, you mentioned examples about, Toma Pa plants, Indian oil, and case study if you can share from India, specifically, you know, talking about, what kind of cost, benefits are these companies looking at? You know, maybe an oil exploration company or a coal company or a thermal power plant. Anything, that where you have worked with or something that you’ve studied, where it had, you know, lead to maybe a higher production as you mentioned in case of an oil company or any sorts of cost benefit that has, you know, helped these companies, maybe a steel company or something, if you if you can share that.

Atanu Mukherjee: Oh, sure. Sure. So I’ll you know, and again, the costs vary, like I said, depending upon the type of carbon capture, right, facility, the type of industry, type of company that you have. But having said that, I think that, you know, some of these are very compelling ones. So for example, if you look at the Indian Oil Corporation, you know, carbon capture unit, that is probably one of the cheapest cost of capture in the world that we designed. Right? And if you look at it, right, the cost of capture, I believe, if I’m not mistaken at this point of time, was it about 25 or 26 dollar per ton of CO2, which is very low, right, compared to because, because the concentration of, like I said, the CO2 quality was high in terms of the, you know, the richness of CO2 or the concentration as you call it. So the so we could engineer something which was, you know, low cost and capture. And the transportation of the CO2 also was nearby, hundred kilometers away is Gandhar Oil Field. So if you look at it, if I take 28 to 30 dollars total in terms of capture and transport, and, you know, that’s on the low side, per ton. And then if I inject that oil, inject the CO2, I’m sorry, into into the field for generating oil, typically typically, you know, for these kind of fields in India, in that region, in the Cambay Basin, and so on and so forth, you probably would generate about, you know, three barrels of oil per ton of CO2 that you inject, approximately. It can be higher two. It can be lower two, but three barrels approximately. So what essentially it means is that for $10, right, additional $10, I’m generating one bottle of oil. That is very, very attractive if you look at it. Even without any subsidies, without any incentives, nothing. Okay? So that’s one case where it tells you that if I have CO2 and if I can find a place, and it all depends upon the specific situation. If I find places, for example, in Upper Assam, in Nomaligarh, for example, or Koyali, or some other places, I can inject the CO2 to generate oil and that reservoir is ready for generating oil, then I can have a very productive generation of additional oil at a very low additional cost, you know, by capturing the CO two at a certain cost. So that’s one example. On the other hand, if I take, you know, from a steel plant, for example, if you want to capture CO2, and transport it, I can, and then sequester it. I can do that, for example, at about 35 to 40 dollars per ton plus another $5 for sequestration per $45 in India. Right? That’s about the range that you’re talking about. However, one that you’re talking about right now, which has got significant benefits, is that what I could also do, which is what you’re talking about in the seed, and this can transform the Indian seed industry, by the way, okay, which you’re talking about at at the very highest levels at this point of time. What I could also do is that I could take the waste gases that are coming out of a steel plant, existing steel plant, at very large volumes. I can not only capture the CO2, but I could separate the gases to extract the useful gas, which is hydrogen, by the way, and utilize that, which I burn away today, I can utilize that to create something called direct reduced iron, which is basically high quality iron with low CO2. So I’m complementing my iron production by extracting useful gas from the exit flue gas stream while I’m taking the CO2 out, right, and separating it out and then sequestering it. So even if I take the cost of CO2 and, for separation and sequestration and compare that to the value that they create by extracting the useful gas to create, direct reduced value added iron, which is utilization, my benefits are significantly more than the cost of extraction and separation of CO2 and and sequestering it or storing it at even $45 per ton. So those are two examples, for example, to give you, an idea of what it looks like. It’s not all it’ll not always be the case. If I take a CO2 capture from a power plant, for example, that’s gonna cost me probably in India around 35, maybe $40, a little more. And, but I cannot do anything with that CO2, apart from sequestering it. Right? And if I do sequester that, my cost of power goes up. Right? Because the cost of CO2 that needs to be added to the cost of power now. So unless I have an incentive to offset that cost, you know, my cost of power will go up just like it does for renewables, any other what you call mechanism. So there are different scenarios, Dominique, when they use on how you capture c o two, what you do with the extracted value from the gas that you have apart from c o two capture dictates how the cost benefit shapes out in different scenarios, in different regions for different kinds of uses. Does that make sense?

Shreya Jai: Absolutely. And a very interesting set of numbers you shared today, on, you know, how just with $10 you can save so much of barrels of oil. Very interesting numbers. I like to now just shift from technology to the policy part. CCUS continues to be a very, voluntary approach in the country. It’s not driven by any policy or any push by the government, which is usually the case for any New Year technology in the country if we could look at renewables, if we look at critical minerals, EVs, etcetera. Towards CCUS, such an approach is missing. Do you think it would be driven by the market, or do you think that there needs to be a policy push from the government which would spur faster growth or accelerate the growth of this particular segment?

Atanu Mukherjee: Yes. There has to be a policy push to accelerate, initiate and accelerate the growth in this segment. It is unlikely that anybody would come in to put a carbon capture unit or carbon capture extension to its plant. Voluntarily because, other perceived risks because of the uncertainty in the perceived benefits, and because of the perceived costs and the real costs. So there has to be a policy push, and that’s what we worked on in 21-22 with Niti Ayog in terms of shaping the policy. Right? So you may have won’t have a look at that. It’s available publicly. It’s one of the, I think, how should I say, one of the most popular policy document that’s that’s viewed around the world in terms of a direction on how a nation like India, can adopt CCUS at large scale over a period of time effectively while supporting it with the right policy without causing any, significant impact on the budget or the exchequer. So that policy has been designed, in a way which allows for capture at large scale, while compensating the emitter who puts the capture equipment and the capture system and the capture technology and and the capture plant at a certain rate, you know, based on per ton of CO2 that’s extracted and, and sequestered or converted for that matter. So that has been outlined very clearly, and that’s what is being utilized, I believe, in terms of framing the CCUS, you know, policy, into, into our initiative. In fact, last July, under the prime minister’s, you know, scientific advisory council, we were a part of that. There’s a CCUS mission that was established, which will take this forward. It is anchored right now, I believe, by the power ministry, to take it forward in terms of an actual, you know, budget goal, in terms of what needs to be done and how it should be, what you call, implement it forward. So policy is fundamentally important to what you call initiate this and move this forward, in terms of adoption, in the country. And I think that’s that’s got a that’s got a that’s got a fair start, and I think it’ll it’ll move forward in terms of, how it how it’s how situation implemented at large scale in India. So I think that’s where it is in terms of, you know, at this point of time. But, I think the opportunities are very, very large, you know, in terms of what can be done. And also one of the things that we didn’t mention, one of the key things that, demers governments from taking fixed policy initiatives is the cost of doing that. Right? So if you’re able to finance that in a way which is not affecting you, you know, significantly, then it becomes a win win for everybody. And so what we did was we designed a body, a quasi finance, quasi government, semi private government body called the Carbon Capture Finance Corporation. And the CCFC essentially, drives the support of the incentives, right, based on pulling in concessional and as well as discounted bonds, climate bonds, and other bonds supported by the sovereign guarantee of India. Right? And then utilizes that to generate what you call additional delta spread on the capital to support these incentives that you give out. We also said that what we would do is, utilize a part of the SES, for example, that is utilized in, in, in India, for example, in the coal SES. 400 rupees per ton, I believe is the coal cess, which is used for GST today. If you redirect it properly towards supporting CCUS, CCFC for providing incentives and combine that with all these, different kinds of bonds and financial instruments that you can mobilize, which whose goal is to support incentives for carbon capture. It would work out in a in a in a budget neutral manner where the CCFC or the Carbon Capture Finance Corporation drives and anchors the entire mechanism of incentive, implementation and incentive administration across the entire spectrum of the carbon capture that is being done in India. Right? So that’s a very powerful way of doing that. And then we said that, look, what we need to do, and that is in the policy document, is that you need to obviously look at it not only from how do you know what price do you want to pay, right, for the incentive? Is it $30, 20 dollars, 50 dollars? 1 way to do that is essentially carbon markets, right, that they have done in, in Europe. But again, we must understand that, while it is important to have carbon markets to determine the price or discover the price, which the CCFC can use to be able to disperse the incentives. Carbon markets per se does not mean a carbon tax. Right? So we are very careful in making the distinction where we say that carbon markets and carbon tax are different. We may use carbon markets to discover the price which can be administered and paid through CCFC over intergenerations as we call it over a period of time, and not the consumer. So by combining the right kind of financial mechanisms and instruments along with the right kind of market mechanisms for signaling and information, we should be able to do this in a budget neutral manner, which does not affect, the government in any way for in terms of, additional costs or the taxpayer anyway in terms of additional taxes right now. So that’s kind of like our, you know, thought and then and then the driver and also how it should go forward.

Shreya Jai: Yeah. Yeah. No. That’s a very comprehensive take. And and I and I also think that, you know, the way this country operates and how new technologies take so much time, to absorb across the SIP system or maybe trickle down, this much push is necessary. I, we are nearing close to, the the closure of this particular discussion. So I’ll I want to close this discussion with something that is on everyone’s mind these days. What would be the impact of the current US dispensation under Donald Trump and whatever decisions he’s taking in favor of fossil fuel or against the clean tech industry? What kind of impact do you think it will have on the CCUS industry as a whole? Because it was just catching up. Investment just started flowing in, and now there is so much cloud over anything, related to this, segment. What are your thoughts on that?

Atanu Mukherjee: Yeah. So I think, you know, we have seen this across, different regimes, political regimes across the globe. And, these kinds of, what you call, political stances, by different countries, will be taken based on their preferences and and their beliefs. However, having said that, the momentum in terms of, clean, of energy transformation, right? Energy transformation, which includes clean energy systems, is very large across the world. It’s very, very large. Right? So while the political dispensations or political or stances of a country, might affect for some time certain regions, Largely, what we have seen till now, and what we think will happen in the future also, I think largely it’ll be not that significantly affected. There obviously will be bumps. Yes. There obviously will be some changes. But I don’t believe so that it’ll have, significant impact in terms of, large scale disruption of, you know, the the pathways in terms of clean energy systems, energy transformations, and so on and so forth because, a lot of the commitments across the world has been made, you know, and those are multi, multiyear commits, which you cannot undo right away. You know? It’s difficult to undo that. Very difficult to undo that, you know, as so not only in The United States, but also across obviously, across the world. So you cannot undo that. And if you look at it, right, going forward, we know that and and we believe that, you know, that, fossil or hydrocarbons, as they call it, will be an integral part, right, of, the global economy, whether we like it or not. Right? That’s that there’s no substitute for that. And so a significant part of the energy system will be global economy. In the global economy, there will be hydrocarbons. So therefore, as you move forward, you know, while there would be what you call reservations, from certain political regimes in terms of why should we clean it. But at the end of the day, if the cost of, you know, reduction of our abatement of CO2  becomes lesser and lesser over time, it becomes, I was a minor, but it becomes a lesser factor in terms of implementation of sustainable systems like carbon capture systems with hydrocarbons. So I think given that stance, given that situation, and given the fact that there’s significant momentum across the world, including United States, you know, and and and the significant momentum also in terms of hydrocarbons being a significant player in the overall energy landscape and given the fact that cost of abatement will drop over time as scale increases, the likelihood that any specific, you know, political stance or a or or a national or regional stance will significantly change the pathway, that we are on, is probably gonna do much less. Okay? So that’s what I think. That’s what we think, how this is gonna shape out.

Shreya Jai: Yes. And like it is with every other sector right now, it’s a wait and watch mode. So we’ll see. You’re absolutely right how it pans out. But, I like to believe, given the state of affairs across the sectors, across, you know, the state of affairs when it comes to climate action. I hope that CCUS catches much pace. On that note, thank you so much for talking with us. It was a comprehensive chat, and I learned so much about CCUS from you. I understood so much about carbon capture, and I hope our listener did too. Thanks again, for joining us here at The India Energy Hour.

Atanu Mukherjee: Oh, thank you, Shreya. It was a pleasure talking to you, and, we’ll hopefully catch up again sometime.

Shreya Jai: Definitely. Thanks a lot. Thank you

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