Abby L. Harvey
GHG Monitor
8/22/2014
Developing carbon emissions regulations before carbon capture and sequestration technologies are available will prove counterproductive, according to a report published last week by the University of Wyoming’s School of Energy Resources. The report states that proposed Environmental Protection Agency regulations on carbon emissions from new and existing coal-fired power plants will hinder innovation in CCS technology. Instead, the report suggests that an alternative technology driven path forward would better address climate mitigation efforts. “It is broadly believed that large reductions in anthropogenic [greenhouse gas] emissions are needed to achieve posited GHG concentration goals and cannot be achieved without viable CCS technologies. Current CCS technologies are not commercially up to the challenge. EPA has pursued a regulatory path to force the use of current technology, or sharply reduce coal use in the U.S. There is a reasonable likelihood that this strategy will be rejected by the courts as inconsistent with legal authority under the [Clean Air Act]. In any case, equipment vendors and others have concluded that these rules will discourage, not encourage CCS technology development,” the report says.
Such technology driven approaches have been implemented successfully in the past according to the report. One such example noted is the acid rain program implemented in the 1980s and 90s. “The relevant pollutants were sulfur dioxide (SO2) and nitrogen oxides (NOx) emitted from power plants. Key technologies for controlling these pollutants (flue gas desulfurization systems and selective catalytic reduction systems) were just emerging from R&D efforts. The strategy chosen was to develop the needed technologies via a collaborative effort between the private sector and public sector, and after a number of commercial scale projects were successful, adopt regulations leading to widespread technology deployment,” the report says.
Key Elements to Technology Driven Path
Three elements of a technology driven path forward are presented in the report, to serve as an alternative to the EPA’s regulatory driven efforts, which the report says “reflect a failure of imagination.” First, the report suggests addressing greenhouse gases other than carbon, essentially to buy time for the development of CCS technology. “CO2 is a long-life GHG; emissions can remain in the atmosphere more than 100 years. As a result, reducing future emissions of CO2 will require decades to have a significant impact on atmospheric concentrations and secondary global warming impacts. Other GHGs have much shorter atmospheric lifetimes with greater near term warming impact. The opportunity for a near-term reduction in global temperature increases centers around reduction of these non-CO2 GHGs,” the report says. By mitigating non-CO2 GHG’s global temperature rise and its potentially harmful effects could be avoided while CCS technology is developed. “A climate strategy including [black carbon] and [tropospheric ozone] mitigation would effectively reduce warming while additional research is conducted to produce cheaper technologies to address longer term mitigation of CO2. Hence, the effort would provide a near-term climate benefit, while allowing technology cost reductions that would make longer-term climate goals economically practicable,” according to the paper.
Increased funding of CCS research and development or incentivizing its use is another element of a technology based path recommended in the paper. Currently, according to the paper, these research efforts are extremely underfunded. “The entire DOE FY14 budget for coal and CCS technology development was $392 million, and the Administration’s proposal for FY15 was $302 million. Compare these amounts to the capital cost of the Kemper County IGCC/CCS demonstration project: over $5 billion.” The report suggests an increase and expansion of this funding. “Consider a hypothetical RD&D program consisting of research activity expanded slightly over FY14’s $392 million to accelerate the pace of development – perhaps a total of $500 million per year. Add to that a demonstration program aimed at building 10 commercial scale power plants with CCS costing $5 billion each, over a 15 year period (a total of $50 billion over 15 years). Assuming a government share of 50-75% for the demonstration units (an increase that reflects the relatively high risk of accelerating CCS technology development) suggests a federal contribution of $1.7 to 2.5 billion per year. Total federal budget: $2.2 – 3.0 billion per year, for more than a decade – a five or six-fold increase over FY14,” the report says. Further, the report suggests expanding existing tax incentives and the increased use of enhanced oil recovery.
The last element of a technology driven path noted in the report is the use of creative approaches to raise funds for investment in CCS RD&D. The report specifically notes a National Commission on Energy Policy recommendation for a “climate policy that recycled fees from early climate regulation to conduct research on less costly mitigation technologies.” This could take the form of a small fee on carbon emissions. “A $1 per tonne CO2 fee on crude oil, natural gas, and coal consumption in the U.S. would generate $6 billion per year in revenues. Half of this could be directed toward CCS RD&D (which would be applicable to coal and gas power plants, and large industrial facilities such as refineries and cement plants). The remainder could be divided between incentives for demand-side energy efficiency to reduce electricity demand, and mitigating non-CO2 GHG emissions that can materially reduce global temperatures by 2050,” according to the report.
