U.S Deputy Secretary of Energy Clay Sell today announced that the Department of Energy (DOE) awarded the first three large-scale carbon sequestration projects in the United States and the largest single set in the world to date. DOE plans to invest $197 million over ten years, subject to annual appropriations from Congress, for the projects, whose estimated value including partnership cost share is $318 million.
The three projects - Plains Carbon Dioxide Reduction Partnership; Southeast Regional Carbon Sequestration Partnership; and Southwest Regional Partnership for Carbon Sequestration - will conduct large volume tests for the storage of one million or more tons of carbon dioxide (CO2) in deep saline reservoirs. These projects will double the number of large-volume carbon storage demonstrations in operation worldwide.
The formations to be tested during this third phase of the regional partnerships program are recognized as the most promising of the geologic basins in the United States. Collectively, these formations have the potential to store more than one hundred years of CO2 emissions from all major point sources in North America.
The projects will demonstrate the entire CO2 injection process - pre-injection characterization, injection process monitoring, and post-injection monitoring - at large volumes to determine the ability of different geologic settings to permanently store CO2.
Plains CO2 Reduction Partnership - The Plains CO2 Reduction Partnership, led by the Energy & Environmental Research Center at the University of North Dakota, will conduct geologic CO2 storage projects in the Alberta and Williston Basins. The Williston Basin project in North Dakota will couple enhanced oil recovery and CO2 storage in a deep carbonate formation that is also a major saline formation. The CO2 for this project will come from a post-combustion capture facility located at a coal-fired power plant in the region. A second test will be conducted in northwestern Alberta, Canada, and will demonstrate the co-sequestration of CO2 and hydrogen sulfide from a large gas-processing plant into a deep saline formation. This will provide data about how hydrogen sulfide affects the sequestration process.
Southeast Regional Carbon Sequestration Partnership - This partnership, led by Southern States Energy Board, will demonstrate CO2 storage in the lower Tuscaloosa Formation Massive Sand Unit. This geologic formation stretches from Texas to Florida and has the potential to store more than 200 years of CO2 emissions from major point sources in the region. Injection of several million tons of CO2 from a natural deposit is expected to begin in late 2008. The project will then conduct a second injection into the formation using CO2 captured from a coal-fired power plant in the region.
Southwest Regional Partnership for Carbon Sequestration - Coordinated by the New Mexico Institute of Mining and Technology, the Southwest Regional Partnership for Carbon Sequestration will inject several million tons of CO2 into the Jurassic-age Entrada Sandstone Formation in the southwestern United States. The Entrada formation stretches from Colorado to Wyoming and is a significant storage reservoir in the region.
Over the first 12 to 24 months of these projects, researchers and industry partners will characterize the injection sites and then complete the modeling, monitoring, and infrastructure improvements needed before CO2 can be injected. These efforts will establish a baseline for future monitoring after CO2 injection begins. Each project will then inject a large volume of CO2 into a regionally significant storage formation. After injection, researchers will monitor and model the CO2 to determine the effectiveness of the storage reservoir.
In a related news item, EPA is initiating work to develop regulations (no details available yet) to ensure consistency in permitting commercial scale geologic sequestration projects. The Agency plans to propose regulations in the summer of 2008. Information about the rule-making process will be posted to this site as it becomes available.
I wonder if this is the most effective way to advance the technology of sequestration. It probably is desirable to do this work and will result in a better understating of how CCS works, however it is a very academic way to do the work and takes quite a bit of time. Two of the sources are from coal fired power plants, as highlighted above, and may provide the most useful information in a timely manner. The information may not come in time to influence CCS at the FutureGen plant (2013) or the Mesabi project, scheduled for completion in 2012. While realistically these dates will slip these two plants may be the first two plants built with CCS a major consideration in their design. CCS is definitely planned for FutureGen, but is still in the discussion stage for Mesabi. Several utilities are also planning on building IGCC plant because of the supposed lower cost for construction, although proponents of supercritical pulverized coal plants are now making the same claims.
The EPA regulations regarding sequestration are an essential step in allowing CCS to go foreword although the scope of the proposed regulations does not sound like it will resolve the issue. Several coal fired plants, including this one, have been canceled because of uncertainty about future regulations.
I must reiterate and expand my statement about the role of nuclear and coal power in meeting our future electric needs. I see no way, in the near future, that our electrical needs can be met without the use of coal-fired power plants and nuclear power plants. Regulations must be made to ensure that these plants are as safe as possible and CCS be required at the earliest possible date. At the present time renewable energy, with the exception of geothermal and hydro power, cannot meet a significant portion of our needs within the useful lifetime of the next generation of nuclear and coal-powered plants. If it was possible I would place a moratorium on building coal plants without CCS.
Renewable energy is much more difficult to forecast. Hydro-power is more or less stagnate in the U.S., but still offers a large potential in the rest of the world. Geothermal should be fairly easy to forecast, just digging out the numbers, I believe the potential is for about 5% of total power. Wind power is competitive with other sources of power in some regions of the world, in other locations it still needs incentives. The industry is thriving. I saw one recent report that it should achieve parity in 3-5 years. It is estimated by some that it has a potential of more than 20% of all electrical needs and most of that may be achievable by 2030. Thermal solar is starting to take off, but still needs subsidies. It is most suitable for relatively large installations, perhaps above 50 MW. Costs continue to decrease. A growth rate of 35% per year is anticipated for the next 5-10 years is anticipated. I think this will be limited when PV solar becomes competitive. PV solar is really not competitive yet for large installations, but demand still outstrips supply capabilities. Costs are expected to drop significantly in the next 3 to 5 years as silicon supplies improve and thin film technologies are refined. A 35% growth rate for the foreseeable future is my anticipation. Wave power will become a factor at some time, but it is still too early to guess when and how much of a factor it will be.
Including hydro-power and geothermal I can see the day when renewables can produce 50-70% of our electricity, but we still have close to 10 years to go before the PV solar industry, which I believe will be the largest segment, can make a really significant impact. By 2030, if not sooner, renewables should be able to meet any incremental needs for electric power. This date will vary by regions of the world to some extent as solar power is not suitable everywhere.
Industry is starting to make significant improvements in efficient use of energy. The private sector really does not want to and probably will not implement serious efficiency efforts, in the U.S. unless power becomes very, very expensive, either through natural forces of increasing costs or taxation which would probably resisted too much to be implemented or unless it became a serious factor in national security, which I don't see happening. Requiring more efficient lighting for everyone and requireing higher insulation standards on new homes are reasonable approaches that should be pursued.
Last but not least, economical energy storage technologies will be required to allow solar and wind to achieve their potential because of their intermittent nature. It appears, at this time, that these technologies can be best applied to thermal solar and wind. As technologies such as flow batteries and sodium-sulphur batteries (NaS) prove economical they should be suitable for PV solar. Without energy storage wind and solar together may not be able to exceed 30% because of problems involved in integrating them into the grid. PV solar has an advantage in that it is more suited to distributed generation, but that is usually not in large quantities.
"The whole world hangs in the balance".
These were the momentous words of the the US Secretary of State. They were not said of the scenario which faces Obama.
George Marshall was speaking in 1947. The Marshall Plan tilted that balance by gaining a transfer of 1,300$ billion in today's money that saved devastated starving Europe
This was the first miraculous change of my lifetime, Obama's election was the second. The solution for Oil exhaustion, climate collapse and terrorist threat, even ultimately nuclear terrorist threat, requires a third change, this time in our hearts and minds.
Vast tracts of land are presently unused or under producing. We could create an economic engine harnessed to pulling us out of recession, significantly stemming climate change, creating vast new sources of renewable energy and reflecting the Obama's battle cry of 'hope'.
Presently we lower the world price of food to half the natural economic price by spending £350 billion annually subsidising Western farmers and starve 40,000 Third World farmers to death daily. In one policy, as enlightened as electing Obama, we could deal effectively with the reality of all that threatens us.
I propose a radical rethink for the underdeveloped countries, a 2nd Marshall plan, a policy no more radical or costly than Roosevelt's in his time. America then created a powerhouse consumer for her goods which thrust her economy upward to pre-eminence. I propose that we give farmers across the world the same subsidy as we give our own.
They have land and labour. we have the power of capital. It is not impossible– It would only cost 2% of our standard of living. Instead of a constant drag on the West these countries would create unprecedented demand for our industries. With Europe contributing equally to America the Marshall equivalent would total in to-day's money 2,600$ billion and it would cost less than that..
Without fundamental change the world as we know it will end. Oil scarcity has demonstrated in the current year its stark inelasticity of demand, tripling in response to a small scarcity, then plunging in 4 months by two thirds before a minor fall in demand. Already the exhaustion of the world's exhausted oil fields mean we face a horrendous 6% declining trend in oil production and the inevitable day of oil at 1000$ a barrel. If we do not change we face the seas washing in to cover hundreds of square miles in California and Bangladesh and the majority of the capitals built at the mouth of rivers on low lying land.
By extending the existing sytem of subsidies, such a transfer of financial resources direct to the pesant farmer in Africa, Asia and South America could stop the galloping forest devastation resultant on desperate poverty and gain a 10 times increase in the acreage for vital bio fuels. These presently contribute 3% to World energy use. An increase from 3% to 30% plus ongoing growth would stunt the oil threat.
We weaken and emasculate the salt of the earth, the billions of peasant farmers, so that they are desperately and barely clinging on to existence. Under Marshall 2 they would be claiming the rights of democracy. At first glance a 3rd World starvation death rate, substantially greater than the death rate during the 2nd world war, even if forecast to double, seems irrelevant. That is because we have not asked from where are the numbers, according to the Bush administration, veritable hordes, of terrorist supporters growing from? What are the billion people across the world who have been bereaved by starvation thinking? Could 10 pence from each finance a nuclear bomb.
CARBON CAPTURE AND STORAGE could actually diminish the greenhouse gases in the atmosphere but at great cost. The enormous land resource my plan would release could meet that cost.
There is a reason for the emotional malaise in the Western world. Our psychology when we strove with such extreme unrealistic fervour for more and more wealth that we 'overleaped and fell on the other,' into the sub-prime disaster is one of subconscious anxiety. If we allowed reality to enter our consciousness, awareness that we are enforcing trade rules that kill so many would be less disturbing than the neurotic need to avoid that knowledge for fear the realisation would be unendurable. The Marshall Plan gave America a just sense of rightousness that led to her present greatness.
The fatal fantasy of the Bush administration's policy aimed at extreme military supremacy, 'Full Spectrum Dominance,' was an escapist dream of a hard core of neo-conservatives , first declared explicitly in a letter to president Clinton signed by Rumsfeld Cheney and others. A nightmare for the entire world ended with Obama but the legacy is dire.
We need more than a leap of faith, we need a dream of the triumph of reason.
1000 farmers committed suicide last month in India because they became so destitute that they could not endure human existence. The exhaustion of the oil in the ground, the ozone in the air or the patience in our fellow men, could make our fate worse than theirs.
[automatically entered sender verification.]
Dermot Ryan
BA, DipTh [Nat Uni Ire], Psy/aud [UCLA], Sloan Fellow, [Grad Sch, Stanford Uni, Ca],. Hon Lecturer; [Grad Sch, Dublin Uni.], Former exec chair: National Development Association [Irish Gov Org], Northern Ireland Inter-denominational Distress Organisation [NGO], Eire Tostal [Irish Gov Org]
Posted by: dermot ryann | December 12, 2008 at 11:13 PM
"The whole world hangs in the balance".
These were the momentous words of the the US Secretary of State. They were not said of the scenario which faces Obama.
George Marshall was speaking in 1947. The Marshall Plan tilted that balance by gaining a transfer of 1,300$ billion in today's money that saved devastated starving Europe
This was the first miraculous change of my lifetime, Obama's election was the second. The solution for Oil exhaustion, climate collapse and terrorist threat, even ultimately nuclear terrorist threat, requires a third change, this time in our hearts and minds.
Vast tracts of land are presently unused or under producing. We could create an economic engine harnessed to pulling us out of recession, significantly stemming climate change, creating vast new sources of renewable energy and reflecting the Obama's battle cry of 'hope'.
Presently we lower the world price of food to half the natural economic price by spending £350 billion annually subsidising Western farmers and starve 40,000 Third World farmers to death daily. In one policy, as enlightened as electing Obama, we could deal effectively with the reality of all that threatens us.
I propose a radical rethink for the underdeveloped countries, a 2nd Marshall plan, a policy no more radical or costly than Roosevelt's in his time. America then created a powerhouse consumer for her goods which thrust her economy upward to pre-eminence. I propose that we give farmers across the world the same subsidy as we give our own.
They have land and labour. we have the power of capital. It is not impossible– It would only cost 2% of our standard of living. Instead of a constant drag on the West these countries would create unprecedented demand for our industries. With Europe contributing equally to America the Marshall equivalent would total in to-day's money 2,600$ billion and it would cost less than that..
Without fundamental change the world as we know it will end. Oil scarcity has demonstrated in the current year its stark inelasticity of demand, tripling in response to a small scarcity, then plunging in 4 months by two thirds before a minor fall in demand. Already the exhaustion of the world's exhausted oil fields mean we face a horrendous 6% declining trend in oil production and the inevitable day of oil at 1000$ a barrel. If we do not change we face the seas washing in to cover hundreds of square miles in California and Bangladesh and the majority of the capitals built at the mouth of rivers on low lying land.
By extending the existing sytem of subsidies, such a transfer of financial resources direct to the pesant farmer in Africa, Asia and South America could stop the galloping forest devastation resultant on desperate poverty and gain a 10 times increase in the acreage for vital bio fuels. These presently contribute 3% to World energy use. An increase from 3% to 30% plus ongoing growth would stunt the oil threat.
We weaken and emasculate the salt of the earth, the billions of peasant farmers, so that they are desperately and barely clinging on to existence. Under Marshall 2 they would be claiming the rights of democracy. At first glance a 3rd World starvation death rate, substantially greater than the death rate during the 2nd world war, even if forecast to double, seems irrelevant. That is because we have not asked from where are the numbers, according to the Bush administration, veritable hordes, of terrorist supporters growing from? What are the billion people across the world who have been bereaved by starvation thinking? Could 10 pence from each finance a nuclear bomb.
CARBON CAPTURE AND STORAGE could actually diminish the greenhouse gases in the atmosphere but at great cost. The enormous land resource my plan would release could meet that cost.
There is a reason for the emotional malaise in the Western world. Our psychology when we strove with such extreme unrealistic fervour for more and more wealth that we 'overleaped and fell on the other,' into the sub-prime disaster is one of subconscious anxiety. If we allowed reality to enter our consciousness, awareness that we are enforcing trade rules that kill so many would be less disturbing than the neurotic need to avoid that knowledge for fear the realisation would be unendurable. The Marshall Plan gave America a just sense of rightousness that led to her present greatness.
The fatal fantasy of the Bush administration's policy aimed at extreme military supremacy, 'Full Spectrum Dominance,' was an escapist dream of a hard core of neo-conservatives , first declared explicitly in a letter to president Clinton signed by Rumsfeld Cheney and others. A nightmare for the entire world ended with Obama but the legacy is dire.
We need more than a leap of faith, we need a dream of the triumph of reason.
1000 farmers committed suicide last month in India because they became so destitute that they could not endure human existence. The exhaustion of the oil in the ground, the ozone in the air or the patience in our fellow men, could make our fate worse than theirs.
[automatically entered sender verification.]
Dermot Ryan
BA, DipTh [Nat Uni Ire], Psy/aud [UCLA], Sloan Fellow, [Grad Sch, Stanford Uni, Ca],. Hon Lecturer; [Grad Sch, Dublin Uni.], Former exec chair: National Development Association [Irish Gov Org], Northern Ireland Inter-denominational Distress Organisation [NGO], Eire Tostal [Irish Gov Org]
Posted by: dermot ryann | December 12, 2008 at 11:14 PM
Interesting. I hadn't heard this claim before. I don't believe mining thermal coal (steam coal) releases any radiation but I would be interested to hear any evidence which suggests it does.
Posted by: Coal Reports | July 13, 2011 at 07:46 PM