The United States has announced plans to build a National Carbon Capture Centre to hurry the deployment of technology for carbon capture and storage, or CCS, in-line with a project showcased by Norway on Wednesday.
The American centre will develop and test technology focused on separating carbon-dioxide from the slipstream of coal-based power plants. At the Carbon Capture Conference in Oslo this week, the world learned that the United States is now produces twice as much power from coal as India does, and its northern neighbor Canada plans more plants with cleaner technology.
The U.S. site will be managed and operated by Southern Company Services Inc. at the Power Systems Development Facility in Wilsonville, Alabama. The NCCC is seen “creating or keeping” some 170 jobs over the project’s five year years.
The United States already has the world’s first, large-scale, fully functioning CCS plant at Wilsonville for coal plant, but new technologies are sought to bring costs down. And sequestered carbon-dioxide from coal is sent across the border to Canada, where it is buried in one of the world’s half-dozen fully functioning CCS demonstration projects.
Meanwhile, a new U.S. climate bill recently passed without certain provisions seen necessary for some to facilitate a national cap-and-trade program ahead of a key climate treaty conference in Copenhagen in December 2009.
The new U.S. facility will be able to test various smoke-stack gases and processes. Wilsonville already has a coal gasifier and combuster in place. But technology development at the NCCC will include both pre- and post-combustion CO2 capture, a Department of Energy communiqué said.
Big U.S. coal player are participating in the plant, just as Big Oil players’ back CCS plants aimed at cleaning oil and gas processes, as at Mongstad in Norway.
In Oslo this week, Scandoil.com has coverage of the Carbon Capture Conference hosted by the Norwegian government. Yesterday, U.S. delegates debated CCS's merits for the oil and gas industry and its utility fighting "global warming".
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The claim that "The United States already has the world’s first, large-scale, fully functioning CCS plant at Wilsonville" seems incorrect. According to the Southern Company's website describing the coal research at Wilsonville even the coal gasification is only scheduled for 2010, and no date is given for carbon sequestration.
The major U.S. initiative for carbon sequestration, Futuregen, was abandoned by DOE in February of 2008 on grounds of excessive costs. Four sites had been readied, the lead site being Mattoon, Illinois (southern part of the state). All four had environmental impact statements.
On the other hand, the Synfuels coal gasification plant in North Dakota (which had been producing synthetic gas since 1984) began delivering 5000 tons per day of CO2 to the Weyburn oil field in Saskatchewan, Canada. Pumped into producing formation, the CO2 simultaneously increases oil production and is sequestered. Pumpage of over 2 million tons per day of CO2 makes it currently the largest sequestration project in the world.
As I point out in my recently released book "The Conflict over Environmental Regulation in the United States", Springer March 2009, efforts to promote CO2 sequestration in the U.S. should have long since been successful, given the U.S.'s experience with handling, of subsurface gases, and extensive experimentation with CO2 separation. An example is the fact that the U.S. Fluor Corporation has been involved in Norway's Mongstand operation.
The main problem is the labyrinthine nature of U.S. environmental regulatory laws and associated regulations. This is little changed in principle from the revolutionary laws passed in the 1970s. That system, passed at a time of crisis, was designed to stop or control projects considered to be environmentally hazardous. It has also provide its ability to slow or stop renewable energy projects throughout the country. Longstanding conflicts between environmental organizations and industry have prevented any significant reform or modification of the regulatory system.
Until this system is modified or special provisions created to allow CSS to go forward we cannot expect significant progress in CSS in the United States. For example, DOE has suggested 2020 as a possible target date for demonstration projects, and there is widespread scepticism. I am exploring the potential of new approaches for the state of Virginia at the present time.
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