Karen Frantz
GHG Monitor
1/31/2014
Wyoming may soon be home to a new carbon capture and storage test center that would explore novel uses for captured CO2 and develop new markets for carbon. Gov. Matt Mead announced last week that he is asking the legislature to approve $15 million to cover some of the capital costs for the project, which is still in the early stages of development but would include five test bays located near a conventional pulverized coal-fired power plant in the state where researchers would have access to the plant’s flue gas.
“Wyoming and many private companies have invested significantly in carbon capture and sequestration research. I want to advance the conversation to look at what happens when CCS technology is commercially viable and to try to add value to CO2, which has significant potential as a resource,” Mead said. “I am asking the Legislature to look closely at the idea of Wyoming joining with utilities, power plants and other private companies to build a test center—essentially setting up a laboratory for a select group of scientists to experiment with uses of carbon.” He added: “Wyoming has an opportunity to make strides in establishing new beneficial uses of CO2. I believe this would be best suited to occur in a location that incorporates real world conditions—namely the heart of coal country.”
The test center as proposed would be used by competitors seeking to win a proposed $10 million inducement prize—an idea that has been touted for several years by Tri-State Generation and Transmission Association, a Colorado-based non-profit wholesale power supplier that has also been a prime mover in developing the proposal for the CCS test center. Tri-State has been trying to raise money for the total cost of the so-called X Prize, which it hopes could stimulate a new market surrounding carbon capture and utilization technologies, although it is unclear how far along Tri-State is in its goal. Jim Spiers, Tri-State Senior Vice President of Business Strategy, was not available for an interview this week, but Rob Hurless, Energy Strategy Advisor to Gov. Mead and Deputy Director of the Carbon Management Institute at the School of Energy Resources at the University of Wyoming, told GHG Monitor that the research bays will be dedicated to the effort with Tri-State and the X Prize. “What the legislature has asked to be considered, and I think the Governor favors, is additional bays that would be used by the University and perhaps the community colleges,” he said.
New Uses for CO2
Hurless said that researchers at the test center could explore ways to separate and capture CO2 and develop new uses for that CO2. Those uses would include development of the CO2 into beneficial products at utility scale. “In a place like Wyoming, where we’re CO2-short, we also have lots of coal plants [where] there’s some amount of CO2 going up the stack,” Hurless said. “So the first part of this is to say, OK, what technologies work best to capture that CO2 and make it ready, make it available for enhanced oil recovery? The longer term goal is to say, OK, what can you do after you’ve captured CO2, what are the technologies that you can employ to turn that CO2 from a waste that people are thinking has to be sequestered into beneficial products that actually provide potentially a revenue stream to the utility and also address the issue of emissions? That’s what’s intriguing about this notion. And certainly if there were existing technologies people would be all over them because the important thing is not only to create that beneficial use, but create it at utility scale. This is a serious challenge but it’s certainly worth making the effort in our view.”
When asked what sort of products the CO2 could be developed into, Hurless responded: “That’s what the contest will be all about. And we don’t know if they’re going to be biological projects, or you’re going to be able to look at those chemical bonds and separate them somehow, or make different compounds from the CO2. That’s what will happen inside those test bays.”
He also said that Wyoming is the ideal site of such a test center. “Since Wyoming is by far the largest coal producing state in the country, we have an intense interest in the future of coal and its use,” he said, adding that the state’s coal is sent to 34 different states and is used in many power plants. “So we have an intrinsic interest in understanding that and looking down the road at the technologies.” The state has spent over $35 million in recent years for research in coal combustion and carbon capture, Hurless said.
