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An Environment of Change: Part 6
Carbon Capture and Storage: The Realities
Note to readers: The sixth part of our ongoing series
continues breaking down each element of the EPRI “prism” strategy.
This one is on carbon capture and storage.
Much work still needs to be done to put complex but promising process to large-scale use
by Jennifer Taylor
While electric cooperatives lead the utility industry in implementing energy efficiency programs and supplying power from renewable energy, they are also on the cutting edge when it comes to testing and deploying carbon capture and storage technology (CCS).
 Carbon capture and storage remains a sophisticated, complex process that involves isolating carbon dioxide from other power plant emissions. The collected gas is then compressed, pumped down into spent oil and natural gas wells, saline reservoirs, or inaccessible coal seams, and, in theory, entombed forever.
As electric utilities strive to meet increasing demand for safe, reliable, and affordable electricity in an environmentally responsible fashion, CCS stands, according to a recent Massachusetts Institute of Technology report, “as the critical enabling technology to reduce carbon dioxide emissions significantly.” Carbon dioxide, a greenhouse gas blamed for contributing to climate change, gets released into the atmosphere when fossil fuels, like coal and natural gas, are burned to produce electricity.
A 2007 study released by the Electric Power Research Institute (EPRI), a non-profit utility-sponsored organization whose members include electric co-ops, found that U.S. electric utilities can help the nation cut carbon dioxide emissions to 1990 levels by 2030 by taking aggressive steps in seven principal areas. The most significant reductions, EPRI noted, will come from CCS technologies. “But much work still needs to be done on CCS,” emphasized George Offen, EPRI senior technical executive.
EPRI points out that building advanced, more efficient coal-fired plants with carbon capture and storage technology will boost capital construction costs by around 40 percent, while the cost for retrofitting existing plants, if possible at all, could run 60 to 80 percent of a new facility.
 Moreover, we have to solve the problem of ultimately storing carbon dioxide. “Storing carbon dioxide in a variety of geological formations is something we do not understand. We have to do more research to determine whether it’s even feasible and then address all of the other issues — the policy and regulatory concerns — that go along with it,” said Clark Gellings, vice president of technology at EPRI.
To date, no coal-fired power plants are equipped with CCS technology. And just three plants worldwide remove carbon dioxide from natural gas production and store it underground. Out of these three, the Great Plains Synfuels Plant, operated by Basin Electric Power Co-operative — a Bismarck, N.D.-based generation and transmission co-op, — starts the process with coal, which is turned into a synthetic natural gas.
Everyday, the synfuels plant sends 8,700 tons of captured, compressed carbon dioxide via a 205-mile-long pipeline buried four feet underground to depleted oil fields in Weyburn, Saskatchewan. There the gas helps bring more oil to the surface. Over the years, more than 10 million tons of carbon dioxide have been captured and shipped in this manner.
Additionally, Basin recently selected a developer to launch a CCS demonstration project at its 900-megawatt coal-fired Antelope Valley Station, located next door to the synfuels plant. But a CCS venture of this scale will face significant technical and economic challenges: transferring this technology to a large-scale, existing coal-fired power plant has never been done.
The Cooperative Research Network (CRN), an arm of Arlington, Va.-based National Rural Electric Cooperative Association (NRECA), which represents the interests of electric co-ops, has joined a DOE sequestration project near Gaylord, Mich., where 10,000 tons of carbon dioxide derived from a natural gas processing plant will be captured and stored in underground saline formations. The Michigan site, about 260 miles north of the Indiana border, features most elements of a complete sequestration system, including a compression plant, an 8-mile-long supercritical pipeline, and injection and monitoring wells.
If electric utilities are to implement CCS on a commercial scale by 2020 — the cornerstone of EPRI’s framework for keeping the lights on and rates affordable as the nation tackles climate change — major projects with coal-fired plants need to begin soon, and they are not going to come easy or cheap. Government funding akin to the Apollo moon program will be needed for research and development. “Carbon sequestration is very expensive,” stressed Tom Lovas, a CRN senior program manager.
Congress needs to invest in new and emerging technologies required for reducing carbon dioxide emissions, argued NRECA CEO Glenn English.
“Electric co-op consumers are conscious that there is a price to pay for addressing climate change,” he concluded. “If Congress is serious about meeting our nation’s energy challenges, then it needs to move forward in providing the funding needed to create sustainable, long-term solutions based on new technology.”
Jennifer Taylor writes on consumer and cooperative affairs for NRECA.
Go to “An Environment of Change” contents page
Written By: eceditor
Date Posted: 7/25/2008
Number of Views: 1045
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