Boulevard des rêves brisés ? L'économie du transport du CSC

At the turn of the 21st century, carbon capture and storage (CCS) was often heralded as a critical technology to drastically reduce global CO₂ emissions and limit global warming to 1.5°C. However, despite high expectations, the large-scale deployment of this technology has been slow. Among its many challenges, one of the most critical is the economics of transporting CO₂ emissions from capture sites to storage locations. This thesis aims to identify these obstacles and propose solutions to overcome them. The first chapter examines the regulatory framework governing CCS transportation infrastructure in first-mover countries. It highlights the monopolistic nature of CO₂ transportation operators and advocates for regulation to prevent market abuses. The analysis also reveals how average-cost pricing can create a conflict between environmental and economic goals. In the second chapter, the focus shifts to the decision-making process of transportation operators regarding pipeline oversizing facing uncertain future demand. This chapter shows that oversizing is an optimal strategy by introducing a regret-minimizing approach. The findings support an infrastructure push by regulators to encourage early oversizing. The third chapter explores the coordination problem among industrial emitters, who do not have the same incentives to invest in CCS due to the varying costs of capturing their emissions. This chapter proposes that a public entity distributes tailored subsidies to address this coordination issue. It presents a flexible subsidy distribution methodology grounded in cooperative game theory, ensuring fair subsidy allocation and avoiding strategic behavior. It considers capture costs and each emitter's network cost contribution. These first three chapters provide policy recommendations relevant to Europe and the United States, where funding mechanisms are multiplying, and regulatory frameworks are beginning to take shape. Conversely, despite having significant decarbonization potential through CCS, other regions of the world, such as India, have received little attention in the literature. Consequently, The last chapter of this thesis focuses on CCS deployment in India. Through a mixed-integer linear optimization model, this chapter maps the optimal development of a pipeline transportation network for CCS in alignment with India's decarbonization targets. The model identifies a critical north-south transportation corridor along the eastern coast and recommends prioritizing injection tests in the Krishna-Godavari basin.