Author(s)

A. Yousefi-Sahzabi, K. Sasaki & Y. Sugai

Abstract

This paper investigates the preliminary strategies and tools for the implementation of CO2 air capture and geological storage as a potential mitigation option in the future climate policy of Iran. It is a method to capture CO2 directly from air and store it in geological structures based on large-scale industrial processes to enable the near-permanent sequestration of carbon. The reason for selecting this approach originates from its capability to mitigate CO2 from all economic sectors with a single technology, while the conventional capture methods are designed only for mitigation of CO2 from point sources of the power generation and industrial sectors. In order to facilitate the workflow of air capture as efficiently as possible, this study suggests some tools and directions for the selection of potential sectors and the prospective areas for the final site selection of the air capture units. Keywords: CO2 mitigation, carbon capture and storage, air capture, Iran. 1 Introduction As a party to the UNFCCC since 1996 and as a signatory to the Kyoto Protocol since 2005, Iran is committed to fulfill its obligations for reducing Greenhouse- Gases (GHGs) emissions into the atmosphere. Iran is defined as a developing country under the Convention and is not included in Annex I. However among developing countries, Iran’s CO2 emission is considerable and placed the country in the 7th place of the world in 2009 [1]. This amount of emissions is increasing every year with a rather high rate corresponding to 4.7% each year (during 1994 and 2007) due to the increasing energy demands and low energy efficiency [2]. Iran’s per-capita CO2 emission is 6.3 tons per year, which is more than the global average (4.48 tons in 2006) and its growth rate is higher than population growth

Keywords

CO2 mitigation, carbon capture and storage, air capture, Iran.