MONIZ ON CCS: ‘THE TECHNOLOGY IS READY’

Karen Frantz
GHG Monitor
11/08/13

Secretary of Energy Ernest Moniz strongly backed the readiness of carbon capture and storage to be deployed in new coal-fired power plants this week. “The technology is ready,” he said. “It’s there. Certainly all parts of the technology have been deployed at scale.” Moniz made the remarks at a press conference in response to a question about whether the technology is in a position to meet an Environmental Protection Agency’s draft rule that would effectively require the use of CCS to meet proposed greenhouse gas emissions limits for new coal plants.

The EPA’s retooled proposal sets CO2 emission standards for coal units at between 1,000 and 1,100 lbs CO2/MWh, depending on whether plant operators decide to measure emissions over a 12- or 84-month operating period. The Clean Air Act requires EPA to determine which type of compliance technology, when taking into account factors like cost, technical feasibility and size of emissions reductions, constitutes the “best system of emission reduction” (BSER) for fossil units. Based on those criteria, the agency said the “partial” capture and storage of roughly 30 to 50 percent of a plant’s emissions is the best BSER technology adequately demonstrated for coal plants.

But not all industry experts agree that carbon capture and storage has been “adequately demonstrated.” At a hearing of the Environment and Energy Subcommittee of the House Committee on Science, Space and Technology on the proposed rule last week, the consensus that emerged among Republicans and all but one of the witnesses testifying was that carbon capture and storage technology is not there yet. Charles McConnell, executive director of the Energy & Environment Initiative at Rice University and former assistant secretary for Fossil Energy at the Department of Energy largely mirrored other testimony when he said, “The technology is being demonstrated. It’s successfully deployed in some early first-of-a-kind projects. But it’s clearly not ready. It’s really that simple.”

McConnell also called for bolstered funding for research and development into CCS at the hearing in order to make the technology ready—a topic that was also brought into illumination during Moniz’s remarks at the press conference, at which he announced the Department of Energy will be providing approximately $84 million in investments to drive down the costs for CCS. But a reporter questioned Moniz over whether overall DOE funding support for CCS is enough to move the technology beyond the test project stage, pointing to the large costs of Kemper County and other large CCS demonstration projects. “We think actually now these projects will start operating in these next years,” Moniz said. “I might note that they are a diversity of projects. Six of the eight involve enhanced oil recovery, as does the Kemper project … Some of them also have chemical production, some of them are industrial facilities … It’s a mix. I think that in this decade we will have had extended operation of all of these projects. So we could do more perhaps, but we have multiple geologies, we have saline aquifers, we have EOR.”