Carbon capture and storage (CCS) is both hailed as a “silver bullet” for the coal industry, and reviled as a pipe dream. The reality is that the U.S. needs CCS, and a comprehensive policy framework for rapid development and deployment.
Undoubtedly, CCS has many detractors. Many are calling for investment in wind, solar and other renewable energies rather than in capture technologies.
Renewable energy will undoubtedly play a critical role in addressing climate change. But renewables currently account for only 2% of the U.S. electricity mix. By contrast, half of U.S. electricity supply comes from burning coal. Technology and the energy mix may look very different in several decades, but in the near and medium term, it is technically and politically impossible to eliminate coal as an energy source. Meanwhile, we need to start reducing carbon emissions today.
Given these realities, any solution that can reduce emissions from coal use—without eliminating coal as an energy source—merits serious consideration. Thus the current level of interest on CCS. The U.N. Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) has said CCS could contribute a bigger share of greenhouse gas cuts than energy efficiency, renewable energy, or nuclear power.
Yet there are considerable challenges to CCS, and they are the focus of WRI’s report [Capturing King Coal: Deploying Carbon Capture and Storage Systems in the U.S. at Scale](node/9863) released this week.
According to our analysis, using CCS technologies to inject carbon dioxide from coal combustion into underground formations will require solutions to a host of technical, regulatory and financial challenges. And there needs to be simulataneous, rapid progress on all three of these fronts for CCS to become a feasible solution to climate change.
Among the challenges:
- CCS is an extremely complex string of processes, each with its own technologies, having to operate in concert on a large scale. Massive amounts of CO2 have to be captured, compressed, transported by ship or rail and sequestrated in underground formations. This would require a fundamental transformation of our country’s energy infrastructure, BUT no more than would be required by a huge scale adoption of wind energy for example.
- On the regulatory front, there are questions around long-term liability for underground sites where carbon dioxide will be stored. Since the gas must stay underground for centuries, there are liability issues around potential leakage 100 years into the future or more. This means we need to make sure that CCS is done right. To that end WRI is developing guidelines that will help ensure that CCS projects are safe and effective in the long term.
- Unique financial and investment challenges will also have to be overcome in order to create a CCS infrastructure in the U.S. In addition to the large capital investment that will be required, a more immediate concern is that construction firms, already facing rising costs, may be reluctant to extend performance guarantees to coal plants built with untested technology.
These challenges are not reason to abandon CCS in the fight against climate change. Significant emission reductions simply cannot occur without a feasible option to coal-based emissions. Whatever its problems, CCS is likely part of the solution.
However, if these challenges are to be overcome within the timeframe needed, there must first be a price on carbon emissions, for instance, through an emissions trading system, that is high enough to make CCS technologies cost-competitive. There must also be immediate government support for large-scale demonstration plants, far beyond current efforts.
If we can get some “steel in the ground” in the form of running demonstration plants, the investment community will follow, and CCS technology will be on the road to cutting greenhouse gas emissions on a significant scale.
Hiranya Fernando, Senior Associate IIHiranya Fernando is a Senior Associate in the Capital Markets team at the World Resources Institute.
11 Comments
By "pipe dream" it is more
By "pipe dream" it is more often because no one has offered funding for what has a high financial input with little financial reward.
Currently companies are more focussed into switching to low cost carbon reduction strategies (such as tree planting, etc) or power reduction strategies (such as solar/wind) which reward the company over a period of time with lower power costs.
Until emissions tax or trading schemes are set in place and working efficiently CCS does not seem to be a viable option for companies when there are other, cheaper, ways to combat carbon emissions.
Well that depends. When a
Well that depends. When a power company or utility has to make a choice to switch to a technology such as IGCC nor not, it chooses the cheapest option. If and when climate legislation is in effect that puts a price on coal, power companies will still choose the lowest cost compliance option – it maybe installing new technologies or to maybe to go out an buy allowance permits. It all depends on how the policy is designed - the cap, offset provisions, allowance allocation, the price of allowances, regional electricity market structure and whether carbon costs can be passed through to the customers etc.
Essentially, even if there is a carbon regime in place, it doesn't mean that CCS will automatically happen. It will happen only if CCS is positioned as the strategy tat will reduce a power plant's expected carbon liability at the cheapest cost.
It is good time to prompt
It is good time to prompt the discussion on CCS. It is a good topic and need new ideas to put CCS forward!
IPCCC released a special report on Carbon Dioxide Capture and Storage, which states the possibilities and examples of serveral trials. However, the costs are very high (13 - 74 US$/tCO2).
An interesting point of the report is pumping the CO2 into geological storage such as gas and oil field, although ocean dissolution is alternative option (I do not agree to pump CO2 into ocean to disturb another living environment -- sea life).
Indeed the IPCC report
Indeed the IPCC report indicates a cost range. But these cost figures depend on assumptions that are pretty variable. Capturing raises costs anywhere between 32% and 74% depending on whether you are adding capture technology to a regular pulverized coal plant, a super critical, ultra-supercritical, or IGCC plant. Although the initial capital outlays for IGCC are more, adding CCS to IGCC is likely more economic.
As for oceanic storage of C02, this is not as yet a mature technology, and certainly won’t be the first choice if and when commercial scale deployment begins.
The pipe dream is in
The pipe dream is in thinking that we can flip a switch and do away with coal and oil and only use renewable energies. I wish we could as much as anyone else.
But the reality is that we need technologies such as Carbon Capture and Storage to get us to where we can go 100% renewable.
It'll also take better solar energy technologies to make it more affordable as well as carbon offset organizations and volunteer groups to start repairing what we've already messed up.
Most of all it will take a master plan that will end the debate so that we can all move forward together.
You are absolutely right.
You are absolutely right. And that is the key issue: renewables are currently only at most 2% of the US electricity supply. Moving it up the grid may happen in time, and this is what we all hope for (it will require, among other things, a massive build up of transmission and distribution infrastructure). Meanwhile, something must be done about the coal that currently accounts for 50% of electricity in the country. CCS is far from a perfect solution- but it is the only clean technology as far as coal use is concerned; therefore we have to try with what we’ve got.
There is a way of using less
There is a way of using less energy to gain more. E=MCsq, Mass is wrong direction, Perpitual motion is the way. Energy consumtion requires a new form of thinking. The earth has the answers. A simple way of seeing this, look and at a compass. This is the direction to follow. Low cost for R&D, ask any Boy Scout.
Dear, Ms. Fernando, It would
Dear, Ms. Fernando,
It would have been good to include some of the ineluctables:
Carbon capture cannot come for free: it will add at least 15% parasitic load to the power generating facility (from the thermodynamics of separation and compression). A considerably higher number attends any storage that can survive geologic timescales (e.g. reduction of calcium carbonate). You have mentioned the capital expense but you should also call attention to the operating burden and costs.
It would be good to contrast carbon sequestration with energy conservation and mode shifting
Absolutely – CCS will not
Absolutely – CCS will not only add large capital expenses (including the energy penalty) but also operating costs. Box 7 on page 29 of our report covers operating costs, in particular fuel costs, the largest component of O&M for power plants. In fact, since the report was written, the rising price of coal further exacerbates the situation.
Your article does not answer
Your article does not answer the question, of whether capturing carbon can become a reality. I was hoping for clear evidence that it works and that it is economically competitive. Apparently not, with thanks for your integrity.
We are at a crossroads, we cannot delay.
The United States has a responsibility to switch immediately to existing wind, solar, geothermal technology to replace the coal plants. We could do that in a couple years and at lower cost than sequestering coal emissions.
It would be useful to know how many people arguing against this course of action are on the receiving end of benefits from the fossil fuel industry. Time is too short not to focus on what we know works.
Pumping more CO2 into the oceans and thereby increasing its acidification would clearly be a death knell for our seafood supply, and should not be considered.
When the country went on the gold standard, the owners of silver mines were not happy. Let's say 'thank you' to the fossil fuel industry, for making the development of clean energy technology possible, then ask them nicely to get out of the way of sustainable progress!!!
Unfortunately there are no
Unfortunately there are no clear answers to this question! Yes it can become a reality but that depends on many 'ifs and whens' tied to the technology, policy, and market conditions- all spelled out in our report.
There is currently no clear evidence that CCS works nor that it will be cost competitive, for the simply reason that there is not a single full-scale CCS operation in the United States. How can we possibly find out what is really involved, what are the real costs, what are the actual challenges with transport and storage, and liability and leakage, without actually doing it?? This is the single biggest issue with CCS – there are no plants, therefore there is no data to go on! We need some steel in the ground – say 5 plants immediately funded by the government – before we can talk about anything.