IFP Energies Nouvelles (IFPEN) and Total signed a strategic R&D partnership that includes an agreement to endow a chair at the IFP School on carbon capture, utilization and storage (CCUS) and technologies to curb CO₂ emissions. The roughly €40 million partnership covers a period of five years.

The agreement has two parts:

• A strategic R&D partnership on carbon capture, utilization and storage (CCUS) aims to reduce the cost of infrastructure and improve the CCUS chain’s energy efficiency to secure its large-scale deployment. The partnership steps up the long-standing collaboration between Total and IFPEN by marshaling additional resources. The research will focus on fields related to new materials, process scale-up, underground carbon storage in deep saline aquifers, technical and economic feasibility studies and the quantification of environmental benefits for the entire CCUS chain.

• The Carbon Management and Negative CO₂ Emissions Technologies to Net-Zero Carbon Future Chair will help train a new generation of international researchers and experts who will develop technologies to reduce carbon in the atmosphere. Overseen by a scientific committee comprised of world-renowned, independent experts, the chair will bring together seven doctoral and five post-doctoral researchers for five years.

According to the International Energy Agency’s (IEA) Sustainable Development Scenario, which corresponds to a less than 2 °C rise in the global average temperature, it will be necessary to capture and store 6 billion tons of carbon by 2050. This will require developing viable, cost-competitive CCUS technologies.