Climate Law Update: Climate Change & Sustainable Energy News : Thelen Reid Law Firm : Renewable Energy, Construction, Project Finance Lawyers & Attorneys

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) 

Kassie Siegel, a California attorney and climate program director for the Center for Biological Diversity, one of the plaintiffs in the lawsuit prodding the government to act, in a written statement (see text here) called the decision "a huge victory" for the Arctic-dwelling predator. By the judge's deadline, Siegel said, the bear "should receive the protections it deserves under the Endangered Species Act, which is the first step toward saving the polar bear and the entire Arctic ecosystem from global warming."

Activists have long said that they see the listing of such animals as the polar bear -- which would be the first mammal given an endangered species designation because of climate-related reasons -- as bringing the law into the broader struggle against global warming. It could also have implications for more local concerns, such as oil exploration in the Arctic (see previous Climate Law Update story here).

Andrew Wetzler, director of the Natural Resources Defense Council's endangered species project, said in the same statement that the federal court decision was a lifeline for the "incredible animal." He added that the endangered species law "requires the decision to be based solely on science, and the science is absolutely unambiguous that the polar bear deserves protection." The NRDC, along with Greenpeace, is also a plaintiff in the case.

Meanwhile, U.S. Sen. Barbara Boxer, no friend of the Bush administration, also took the opportunity to weigh in (see statement here). Boxer, a California Democrat, who chairs the Senate Environment and Public Works Committee and who has repeatedly clashed with the executive branch's environmental officials, had this to say:

"Interior Secretary Kempthorne, like [Environmental Protection Agency] Administrator Stephen Johnson, has been stonewalling our committee, and I am very pleased that the court has ordered the Interior Department to stop stalling and finalize its decision regarding polar bears. These magnificent creatures are in peril, and this administration has no right to walk away from protecting them."

(Photo: U.S. Department of Interior)