Karen Frantz
GHG Monitor
2/14/2014
Despite delays of some key carbon capture and storage projects, Department of Energy officials emphasized to House lawmakers this week that DOE is making progress toward wide-spread deployment of CCS, noting a flagship project that is expected to come online later this year should provide DOE insight as to whether it is viable just a few years after it is operational. This week, the House Energy and Commerce Oversight and Investigations Subcommittee held a hearing to examine DOE’s efforts to advance CCS and other technologies. Deputy Assistant Secretary for Clean Coal Julio Friedmann, along with National Energy Technology Laboratory acting Director Scott Klara, said that the Department is supporting a wide-ranging portfolio of projects in order to achieve wide deployment of CCS. “Right now the crown jewels of our program are the eight major large CCS demonstrations deployed around the country,” Friedmann said, saying that they include industrial and power projects; saline formation and enhanced oil recovery projects; pre-, post- and oxy-fired projects; and new-build plants and retrofits.
But Rep. Phil Gingrey (R-Ga.) pressed Friedmann about several demonstration projects referred to in the DOE’s 2010 CCS R&D roadmap—two of which were cancelled and four others of which are two to four years behind schedule, and asked if further delays or abandonments are possible. “It’s the nature of large projects that they take longer than expected, cost more than expected, and some of them don’t make it,” Friedmann responded. “In this context, it’s part of the reason why we are so committed to the portfolio of projects that we have. Sometimes things just get in the way and you can’t anticipate them. … I do not believe, and I would not say that I am concerned about the delays.”
Klara also added that the DOE is “still on track” for second-generation demonstrations to take place by 2025. “Even if one or two of the projects should unfortunately happen to fall apart, that would leave a gap in our understanding, but would still provide a lot of information and a lot of technical findings around what is necessary to get projects off the ground and the likely performance of the technologies,” he said.
Kemper County to Provide “Important Technical Finding”
Friedmann also spoke about Southern Company’s flagship Kemper County IGCC demonstration project, which will gasify local lignite coal and use the captured CO2 for enhanced oil recovery. Friedmann said the project will provide “an important technical finding,” and within two or three years of becoming operational, DOE “should have a strong sense as to whether or not that plant is replicable and a viable option for the future.” He also said that he has spoken with the head of Southern Company, Tom Fanning, about concerns Fanning has about holding Kemper up as a national model for other CCS projects. “That’s exactly the basis on which we have a wide portfolio of plants,” Friedmann said, and later added: “Our conversations with Southern make clear that they very much see a Kemper 2.0 and a Kemper 3.0, and imagine some of those plants around the world where low-cost lignite is also available." He said the DOE is also looking at other places that have a combination of lignite and enhanced oil recovery opportunities where a plant similar to Kemper could be built, including along the Gulf Coast and North Dakota in the United States, and also Turkey, Inner Mongolia, Kazakhstan and Pakistan.
CCS Could Increase Electricity Price by 80 Percent
Project delays and uncertainty about replicability were not the only questions raised about CCS deployment at the hearing: Legislators also raised concerns about the cost of installing CCS technology at coal-fired power plants. Friedmann told the subcommittee that first-generation technology could increase the wholesale price of electricity by 70 to 80 percent, with cost ranging between $70 to $90 a ton—although he said that number would vary by plant, coal rank and the technology used. But he also said that for second-generation technology, it is the DOE’s “strong expectation” that that price will be roughly half that of first-generation technology, at $40 to $50 a ton cost.
“So the initial technology almost doubles the cost and the next generation is going to add 25 percent to the cost, is that fair?” Rep. Joe Barton (R-Texas) asked. Friedmann responded: “With respect to the wholesale price, yes. The retail price, of course, will vary by market. One of the points that I would like to make though, it is in fact a substantial percentage increase in the cost of electricity, but in part that’s because the current price of coal is so low that it represents a large percentage increase.”
But at another point during the hearing, Friedmann also spoke about the potential of utilizing captured CO2—an option that many believe could help drive deployment of CCS and make it more economical, and an option that Friedmann said the DOE is currently exploring. He said the majority of the DOE’s research in the field is into enhanced oil recovery, with six of the eight large projects employing CO2-EOR, but added that the DOE is also exploring ways to convert CO2 into substantives or products. “There’s a project actually in Texas, the Skyonic’s project which we are piloting at about $110 million,” he said. “That’s going to convert to carbon dioxide to basically mineral aggregate and cement-add mixtures. We are also looking at converting carbon dioxide into algae, and then that algae into other useful products including animal feed on one end of the spectrum and possibly bio-fuels on the other.”
