Learning from the past: Limitations of techno-economic assessments for low-temperature CO2 electrolysis

Abstract

Reaching climate goals requires a rapid scale-up of clean energy technologies, which, in many cases, are still under development. Low-temperature CO₂ electrolysis (LT CO₂E) is a promising pre-commercial technology (TRL 3 to 6) that can produce CO₂-based fuels and chemicals using electricity. To understand the future competitiveness of such novel technologies, techno-economic assessments (TEAs) are conducted using the best available knowledge at the time, ensuring that the highest-quality TEA information supports decision-making regarding future investments. As LT CO₂E advances, its techno-economic research must evolve toward more in-depth process designs, integrating the latest knowledge regarding the technology's development and any aspects essential to commercial implementation. To do so, it is important to understand the robustness and limitations of existing LT CO₂E TEAs to identify areas for further improvement; for example, electricity and CO₂ cost assumptions vary significantly between TEAs for syngas, accounting for 18–81% and up to 28% of the total operational expenditure, respectively. This review assessed the origins and justifications behind common assumptions used in TEAs of LT CO₂E with three main findings: 1) the methodological justifications seem stuck in the past, relying on three key studies and mature electrolysis technologies from previous decades; 2) the latest advancements in electrolyzer modeling underscore the need to update existing LT CO₂E performance benchmarks, and 3) future LT CO₂E TEAs need to include pre-treatment of CO₂ and water, product separation steps, as well as heat integration, recycling, and waste valorization, to progress beyond the preliminary conceptual design phase.