|
09.10
Plans Outlined for Carbon Capture
and Storage
By IEEE-USA Staff
In mid-August, a federal task force outlined a
plan to overcome barriers to widespread,
cost-effective deployment of carbon capture and
storage (CCS) technologies within 10 years.
With approximately 80 percent of
the U.S. electrical energy supply currently
derived from various fossil fuels (including
over 45 percent from coal), policy-makers see
carbon capture and sequestration technologies as
a means to help U.S. power generators meet
national greenhouse gas emission goals, while
continuing to draw on the United States’
abundant domestic supplies of coal. Energy
independence and the growing demand for
electricity, especially in the transportation
sector, also are driving the interest in
cleaning up carbon-based generation.
According to IEEE-USA Past
President Gordon Day, “CCS sits at a branch in
the road to our future energy portfolio. If it
succeeds technically, at the necessary scale,
and at an acceptable cost, coal may become an
even more important fuel than it is today. If
it fails, much of the energy currently supplied
by coal must eventually be obtained from other
sources.”
On 3 February 2010, President Obama tasked fourteen Executive Departments and
Federal Agencies to establish an Interagency
Task Force on Carbon Capture and Storage, with
the goal of developing a coordinated Federal
strategy to speed the commercial development and
deployment of clean coal technologies.
Co-chaired by the Department of Energy and the
Environmental Protection Agency, the Task Force
was charged to propose a plan to overcome the
barriers to the widespread, cost-effective
deployment of CCS, with the goal of deploying
five to 10 commercial demonstration projects by
2016.
Replying on published
literature, input from more than 100 experts,
and public comments submitted in response to a
request for information, the task force
concluded that carbon capture and storage is
viable, without any insurmountable technical,
legal, or institutional barriers to development
and deployment. They concluded, however, that
widespread cost-effective deployment of CCS will
occur only if the technology is commercially
available at economically competitive prices and
supportive national policy frameworks are in
place.
Although accomplished with
different technologies, CCS is essentially a
three step process of capturing, transporting,
and storing carbon emissions from power plants
and industrial sources in suitable geologic
reservoirs such as deep saline solutions, oil
and gas reservoirs or unminable coal seams.
Existing technologies have not been widely
deployed because of the cost, estimated at
between $60-114 per tonne of CO2 avoided. The
incremental cost of carbon capture at new
conventional coal-fired plants typically range
from $60-95 per tonne (1 Tonne = 1000kg). In
each case, most of the cost is associated with
capture and compression of the CO2 for storage.
The Department of Energy is
already embarking on multiple demonstration
projects using $3.4billion of available
budgetary resources from the American Recovery
and Reinvestment Act and other appropriated
funds. Up to ten integrated CCS demonstration
projects supported by DOE are planned to be in
operation in the United States by 2016
As part of DOE’s Clean Coal
Initiative, six specific pre-combustion and
three post-combustion CO2 capture demonstration
projects are planned using currently available
technologies.
Also continuing is
FutureGen , a public-private partnership to
design, build, and operate the world's first
coal-fueled, near-zero emissions power plant.
FutureGen will employ a 200 MW advanced
oxy-combustion unit in Meredosia, Illinois,
integrated with CO2 storage in Mattoon,
Illinois, with the goal of capturing and storing
at least one million tonnes of CO2 per year.
One of the principal barriers to
wide-spread implementation of carbon capture is
cost. The Department of Energy estimates that
adding pre-combustion carbon capture and
compression technology to a new 500 MWe power
plant would increase its capital cost by
approximately 25% or roughly $400 million.
Post-combustion capture technologies would add
80% or $900M. Capital costs associated with
post combustion capture from natural gas
combined cycle power plants are similar.
The cost implications become a
significant barrier because of uncertainty about
the future price of carbon emissions, which
discourages needed private investments.
Specifically the report notes that "the lack of
comprehensive climate change legislation is the
key barrier to CCS deployment. Without a carbon
price and appropriate financial incentives for
new technologies, there is no stable framework
for investment in low-carbon technologies such
as CCS."
Technology is also a barrier in
that current CO2 removal technologies have not
been demonstrated on a scale necessary to
establish confidence for power plant
application. In addition to concerns about
auxiliary power loads and the impact of flue gas
contaminants on the CO2 capture systems,
planners must also account for water usage
issues associated with cooling required for
capture and compression of the carbon.
Since the bulk of emission
reductions will need to come from the existing
power plants, retrofitting those plants will be
challenging due to the size and space
requirements for CCS systems. Retrofitting CCS
to existing plants also imposes a significant
penalty of up to 30 percent on their electrical
output..
According to the experts, the
nation’s CO2
storage potential is estimated to be
large. Studies of storage options with
appropriate geology estimate a storage potential
of more than 3,000 billion tonnes of CO2, enough
to store current emissions from the entire coal
fired electricity sector for over 1000 years.
But underground storage raises other issues, due
to geologic and hydrologic factors that could
affect storage security over long periods. The
necessity for close monitoring and mitigation
capabilities in the case of unplanned carbon
releases adds to the overall operating costs.
Other issues that complicate
planning are the lack of a national climate
policy that sets a price on carbon as a means of
encouraging emission reductions, the need for a
new legal and regulatory framework to address
CCS, the long-term liability for CO2
sequestration stewardship in managing storage
facilities with a thousand year life-span, and
the need for a well trained workforce of highly
skilled professionals to design, build and
operate CCS facilities.
While recognizing these issues,
the Task Force concluded that “there are no
insurmountable technological, legal,
institutional, or other barriers that prevent
CCS from playing a role in reducing GHG
emissions.” So what is the plan?
To enable CCS to play that role,
the report calls for large scale demonstration
projects, R&D with an emphasis on reducing
project uncertainties and improving technology
cost and performance, clarifications to the
regulatory requirements for CCS operations, and
increased federal interagency cooperation. The
panel advised against federal indemnification to
address long-term stewardship liabilities. The
panel also recommended international
collaboration and efforts directed at generating
increased public awareness and support.
The report’s overall emphasis is
in alignment with recommendations made by
IEEE-USA in its National Energy Policy
Recommendations, which supports both R&D to
develop economical carbon capture and storage or
conversion technologies and the demonstration of
carbon capture and storage technologies at
fossil fueled power plants.
On its release, House Science
and Technology Committee Chair Bart Gordon
(Tennessee) praised the report as a
“significant step” and noted “we need to
develop carbon capture and sequestration
technologies — and the jobs that come with them
— here in the United States."
U.S. Rep. Jerry Costello (Ill.)
added “The coal reserves in my home state of
Illinois contain more Btu's than the oil
reserves of Saudi Arabia and Kuwait. We must
make significant investments in clean technology
to continue using coal as efficiently and
cleanly as possible, and Carbon Capture and
Storage technology has increasing promise and
market forces are showing it can be
competitive. I look forward to ensuring a
robust and focused program of continued
research, development, and demonstration for
CCS.”
For more information
The final report is available
online for review at:
www.fe.doe.gov/programs/sequestration/ccstf/CCSTaskForceReport2010.pdf
For more information about the
federal Interagency Task Force on Carbon
Capture and Sequestration, see:
www.fe.doe.gov/programs/sequestration/ccs_task_force.html
U.S. Department of Energy Carbon
Sequestration Program
http://www3.fossil.energy.gov/sequestration/
National Energy Technology
Laboratory Carbon Sequestration FAQ
http://www.netl.doe.gov/technologies/carbon_seq/faqs.html
Comments may be submitted to
todaysengineer@ieee.org.
|
Comments
on this story may be
sent directly to