Global Technologies Group, Inc. (GTGP)

[buccaneer1961]

Coal and oil-fired power plants face a difficult regulatory deadline in the United States. The Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) has mandated that all US coal and oil-fired power plants larger than 25 mega-watts must remove 90% of mercury and other toxic pollutants from their emissions by April 16, 2015. Mercury is a serious environmental and human health threat and over 50% of mercury emissions in the United States currently come from coal and oil-fired facilities.

The EPA’s Mercury and Air Toxics Standards (MATS) prevent the mercury emitted by power plants from being released into the air, and the power plants are scrambling for solutions. Larger and newer facilities have multi-million dollar scrubbers in place but even some of these expensive scrubbers are showing deficiencies in mercury removal. The EPA estimates that the newly mandated emissions compliance will cost power plants $9.6 billion annually.

To meet the regulatory deadline, power plants have been testing more cost effective options than the complex scrubbers that cost hundreds of millions of dollars to install and maintain. Many have tried various forms of Activated Carbon to filter out the mercury with limited success. However, Activated Carbon is only effective at removing 70% of mercury emissions and at higher injection rates create operational issues and makes fly ash unsalable. Fly ash is a byproduct of coal combustion and utilities sell the fly ash ($450 million annually) for use in concrete production.