Economic Activities

The BSCSP Economic team efforts are focused on developing models to assist the region in better understanding the economic impacts of geologic and terrestrial carbon sequestration. Understanding the costs and economic impacts of carbon sequestration is essential to the successful development of carbon capture and storage projects at the local and regional level. The Partnership has developed models to analyze the economic viability of both geologic and terrestrial carbon sequestration within the Big Sky region. The economic models evaluate sequestration potential, land use and management, physical factors, implementation costs, policy and regulatory frameworks, carbon markets and risk and uncertainty. An overview of the economic models is described below.

Economic Models


Geologic: In order to assess the economic impacts of geologic carbon sequestration, the BSCSP is developing, testing and validating economic models for different storage options. Enhanced oil recovery (EOR), enhanced coal bed methane recovery, depleted oil and gas reservoirs, deep saline aquifers, and basalts are the five major storage options that the models are analyzing. The models will evaluate the costs of CCS including, the price and source of CO₂, compression costs, transportation and infrastructure needs. The models also analyze the simulated effect of different policy and regulatory approaches over a range of carbon prices.

Terrestrial Economic research on terrestrial sequestration focuses on the financial potential of carbon capture and storage in land based systems such as forests, croplands and grazing lands. An economic model is used to evaluate a number of supplied variables, including: policy management scenarios, grazing data, implementation costs, carbon market potential, biophysical factors, added expenditures, and considerations of risk and uncertainty. Technical and economic data is provided by the Partnership’s project, state and industry partners.