Energy Department Pours Money into Carbon Sequestration, 'Clean Coal'
Coal may be a fossil but apparently it isn't dead.
The U.S. Department of Energy looks to be backing carbon sequestration projects and clean coal in a big way, despite some setbacks for the fuel in recent months (see Climate Law Update stories here and here). The Bush administration acted just as some environmentalists have raised new concerns about the technology.
The department announced this week it was supporting sequestration research efforts, which also could be used for capturing carbon from non-coal sources, in California and the Midwest to the tune of more than $126 million (see press statement here). An executive of the company where the California project will be located said the technology would be useful for many fuels.
Then on Wednesday the department outlined the separate restructuring of its "FutureGen" program, which could help underwrite "clean coal" projects using carbon sequestration technology to the tune of many more hundreds of millions of dollars (see press release here).
While neither of the two newest sequestration projects appeared to rely on coal as a primary fuel source, coal clearly wasn't far from the minds of Bush administration energy officials. The energy department's announcement earlier this week said that "advancing carbon sequestration is a key component of the Bush administration's comprehensive efforts to commercially advance clean coal technology" to meet the nation's energy needs.
In a statement, California Energy Commission Vice Chair James Boyd waxed enthusiastic about the $65.6 million headed toward the state (see press release here):
"By demonstrating how greenhouse gas emissions can be safely contained through carbon sequestration, we make strides to curb the effects of global warming. Using the newest carbon capture and storage technology, California can show how environmental and industrial concerns are working together for the same cause."
Carbon capture and sequestration, as the process is known, involves injecting carbon dioxide, a chief greenhouse gas produced by burning fossil fuels, into underground formations to prevent it from reaching the atmosphere.
Promoted heavily in some quarters, the technology has become controversial with environmentalists, partly because of its association with coal. Just this week, the environmental group Greenpeace issued a scathing critique of the technology's use in conjunction with coal, concluding it won't be available in time to save the planet's climate and could consume up to a 40 percent share of a power plant's capacity (see press release here; access report here).
The California project will be located at a plant near Bakersfield operated by Clean Energy Systems. Late last year, the company described the operation as using either natural gas or synthetic gas derived from coal (see text of press release here). Carried out under the auspices of the West Coast Regional Carbon Sequestration Partnership, a public-private partnership partially funded by the energy department, about a million tons of compressed carbon dioxide is expected to be pumped into a geologic formation more than a mile underground.
Adam Gottlieb, a spokesman for the California Energy Commission, which manages the regional partnership, said he did not believe the plant, expected to be in operation by mid-2010, would rely on coal as a fuel source. The commission's statement suggested that the technology could also be used by industries such as cement plants and refineries.
"If we can have other industries embrace this technology, not only for economic reasons but for environmental reasons, it's a win-win all around," he told Climate Law Update.
Keith Pronske, Clean Energy's chief executive officer, told Climate Law Update his plant, which relies on aerospace technology, would likely use natural gas but could rely on other fuels, including renewables.
"What we're focused on is the carbon capture part and it's to have clean energy with captured carbon dioxide from a multitude of fuels," Pronske said. He said carbon dioxide could also become a commercial commodity, sold to be injected under old oil fields as a way of increasing their productivity.
In the other project, to be carried out by the Midwest Regional Carbon Sequestration Partnership, another million tons of the gas is expected to be injected into a sandstone formation in Ohio about 3,000 feet under an ethanol production facility. That project is slated to get about $61 million. Both projects also anticipate additional millions of dollars coming from industry.
The projects are the fifth and sixth to be funded by the department in the current phase of its carbon sequestration program involving the regional partnerships. In addition to promoting at clean coal, the department said the technology would help meet President Bush's recently stated goal of stopping the growth of greenhouse gas emissions by 2025 (see Climate Law Update story here).
Regarding FutureGen, the energy department in January backed away from its original plan to spend upwards of $1 billion to build a virtually zero-emissions power plant, eventually slated for a site in Illinois (see press announcements here and here). Under the new program, the department outlined a plan to solicit proposals for multiple plants, toward which the government would supply between $100 million and $600 million per project. About $1.3 billion is anticipated to be available over the years, the department estimated.
One goal of the government's overall effort is to reduce the whopping $100- to $300-ton cost of the technology (see DOE background information here).
(Photo: Artist's conception of hypothetical FutureGen plant, Department of Energy)
