The Senate Energy and Natural Resources Committee cast an eye yesterday toward clean coal and particularly the prospects for large-scale sequestration of its byproducts.
In the third such hearing this year, the committee learned that several carbon dioxide sequestration technologies were approaching their "adolescence," according to Jeff Phillips of the Electric Power Research Institute.
These include ultra-supercritical pulverized coal, integrated gasification combined cycle and oxy-combustion. Supercritical pulverized coal is the only one of the three that has reached commercial maturity, Phillips said.
One of the ultimate legal challenges, according to Phillips, is to determine "who owns the carbon dioxide once it goes into the ground."
Another issue is gaining the approval of the masses to site such projects in their backyards. The Capitol Power Plant, which would receive $2.7 million to shift from burning coal to natural gas under a House spending bill approved last month, is an example of "nice political feelgood" that would be better spent on getting popular approval and R&D funding for clean-coal technologies, according to Sen. Larry Craig (R-Idaho).
Craig yesterday drew a parallel between the public relations efforts needed to site a nuclear reactor and the likely local public opposition to a carbon sequestration project. "The issue of cleanliness is paramount," he said.
"You need uniformity, you need certainty," he added.
Jerry Hollinden of the National Coal Council presented a June report that found new capture and sequestration technologies could be commercially available within the power sector within the next 15 years, with advanced technical and financial support. As for integrated gasification combined-cycle technology, he said "significantly" more work would be required to integrate it into power plants and CO2 sequestration systems.
Donald Langley, vice president of Babcock & Wilcox Co., said his company is working on oxy projects with AEP and SaskPower that could prove cost-competitive with IGCC as long as R&D programs and incentives "are not structured to pick winners at the outset."
Hollinden also cited storage liability issues as a long-term question, noting that the FutureGen $1 billion clean-coal power plant would help address this and other uncertainties.
Carl Bauer, director of DOE's National Energy Technology Laboratory, said DOE would announce a third round of solicitations for the Clean Coal Power Initiative, which has already spurred nine projects worth $2.7 billion with $530 million from DOE. He said the department was trying to figure out how to structure the announcement to allow those eligible for grants on the basis of efficiency, environmental or economic improvements to incorporate CO2 sequestration field tests.
Frank Maisano, a lobbyist with Bracewell & Giuliani, said the Sithe Global and Dine Power Authority's proposed power plant on Navajo land in New Mexico would be interested in hosting such a large-scale test project. DOE has said it wants to test projects with a capacity of at least 1 million metric tons of CO2 per year.
In June, DOE announced it would push back the deadline for applying for advanced coal and gasification tax credits from June 30 to Oct. 31 to further spur the inclusion of carbon capture and sequestration in the project proposals (Greenwire, June 7).
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