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Friday, December 29, 2017 6:20:33 PM
U.S. Lawmakers And Corporate America Breathe New Life Into Carbon Capture
Ken Silverstein, CONTRIBUTOR
Oct 4, 2017 8:54 AM 2,106
The StatoilHydro Sleipner A gas platform, left, sits with [+]
Cellular telephones were once too big and too expensive, not to mention unreliable — similar arguments that are used today to diffuse the discussions tied to carbon capture and storage. That is what the Global CCS Institute is saying, noting that its goal is to reduce the cost, size and power losses tied to that technology.
Carbon capture is within sight, yet it remains elusive and expensive. And while the Obama administration had allocated billions to advance the concept, the Trump administration has submitted budgets to diminish the funding for those projects — ironic, given the president’s support for increasing the production of fossil fuels in this country.
Advocates of the technology say the world will continue to rely on coal, which makes carbon capture and storage an imperative to meet the goals of the Paris climate accord.
“These days it is popular to consider carbon capture as a clean coal technology,” says Jeffrey Bobeck, lead policy analyst for the Global CCS Institute, in an interview. “But eventually, if the Paris agreement targets are going to be met, you would need it on natural gas and on industrial users like the manufacturers of cement and steel, which aren’t yet regulated.”
Electricity generation remains the largest contributor of greenhouse gases at 29%; transportation is at 27% and industry at 21% while commercial and residential buildings and agriculture are at 12% and 9%, respectively, according to the Environmental Protection Agency.
But what about the most recent experiences for those that have tried this technology? That includes Southern Co.’s advanced 582-megawatt coal plant in Mississippi that was intended to capture and sequester CO2. Cost overruns and time delays drove up the original $2.9 billion price in 2006 to $7.5 billion. As a result, the Mississippi Public Service Commission ordered the plant’s operators to switch to natural gas or to have their shareholders absorb the added expenses.
At the same time, however, Mitsubishi Heavy Industries and Southern Company said that they had completed an initial demonstration phase of carbon capture at Southern’s coal-fired Plant Barry in Alabama. That demo was able to recover more than 90 percent of the carbon dioxide, send it through a 10-mile pipeline, and inject it underground.
Bobeck, from Global CCS, acknowledges the challenges but says that they can be overcome if federal policymakers become proactive. He also points to StatOil, which is the largest demonstration project in the world and is placing 1 million tons of carbon per year into a saline aquifer deep in the North Sea. It’s part of Norway’s strategy to regulate carbon — one that uses CO2 for enhanced oil recovery.
In this country, Exxon Mobil Corp. and FuelCell Energy have a small pilot project going in Alabama — one that tries to capture carbon from a duel coal and natural gas power plant there, using the CO2 to enhance oil recovery. Their technology also cuts nitrogen oxide, or smog-causing pollutants, by 70%. Their mutual goal, obviously, is to scale up this project and to eventually commercialize it.
Meantime, ConocoPhillips, General Electric and RoyalDutchShell Corp. are spending billions to develop both coal gasification as well as carbon capture and sequestration.
The technologies are improving, although commercialization is still a stretch. Many of the prevailing carbon capture and storage tools for power plants lose a third of the electricity, making them inefficient. But newer technologies, such as those for NRG Energy’s Petra Nova plant in Houston have reduced those losses to 20%. That plant will be capturing 1.6 millions tons a day of CO2 from an existing coal plant and using it for enhanced oil recovery.
“As the world’s largest post-combustion carbon capture system, the Petra Nova project confirms that carbon capture and storage technologies can play a critical role in ensuring the Nation’s energy security and providing good jobs for American workers, all while helping us reduce carbon emissions from coal-fired power plants,” Christopher Smith, assistant secretary for Fossil Energy at the Department of Energy said.
The U.S. government gave Petra Nova a $190 million grant while the Japanese government provided its partner JX Nippon a $250 million loan.
While Trump’s original budget request cut the funding for research on carbon capture and storage from about $600 millions a year to less than $200 million, Bobeck said he is confident that this funding will be revived. The effort to do is bipartisan, he says, emphasizing that what is now needed is the restoration of the so-called 45Q tax credit for carbon storage.
Right now, that credit is capped at 75 million tons — a drop in the bucket compared to what is produced each year. But lawmakers from both sides of the aisle want that limit removed so that the 2008 law can live on. Legislation in both chambers would also give a $50 a ton credit for CO2 that is stored and a $35 credit if the CO2 is used for enhanced oil recovery.
“This opportunity represents a genuine win-win for our nation’s economy and the environment, one that will bring high-paying jobs and investment to energy producing and industrial states and regions of our country,” says a letter signed by several entities ranging from Arch Coal to Occidental Petroleum to the Natural Resources Defense Council.
Why would an environmental organization back this plan? BP is projecting a 37% increase in energy consumption worldwide, leading to a 25% jump in CO2 emissions by 2035. That exceeds the levels necessary to keep temperatures from rising no more than 2 degrees Celsius by mid Century.
Carbon capture and sequestration is a tough sell in today’s environment — one that stresses using low-carbon fuels and one where building a new natural gas plant is much easier and cheaper. But energy consumption will escalate, especially coal use in developing countries. That is why a broad swath of U.S. lawmakers support public investment in the technology while some in the corporate world think there is a viable market for it.
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