Karen Frantz
GHG Monitor
1/24/14
President Obama’s nominee to be Under Secretary for Science at the Department of Energy, Dr. Franklin Orr, pointed to major barriers to commercial adoption of carbon capture and storage technology—including “a lack of a clear market signal, pore space ownership, long-term liabilities and cost relative to other technology options,” factors that had been identified by the 2010 Interagency Task Force on Carbon Capture and Storage—in written response to questions from the Senate Energy and Natural Resources Committee on his views on CCS. But he also added that the Task Force Report said that “there are no insurmountable technological, legal, institutional, regulatory or other barriers that prevent CCS from playing a role in reducing GHG emissions.”
“Since the release of the task force report, DOE is addressing the barriers by implementing its RD&D portfolio that is focused on a suite of first generation and second generation technologies to gain experience through early CCS demonstration projects and coupling this learning with advancements in RD&D to further reduce costs and improve the technology,” Orr said in his response letter to the committee following his Dec. 12 nomination hearing. The letter was provided to GHG Monitor this month. “The large-scale demonstration projects are also helping to provide information and input on addressing the financial and regulatory barriers associated with commercial deployment. In general, existing federal, state and local regulatory programs will apply equally to CCS-equipped plants as they would to plants without CCS. However, there will be additional requirements because of the need to select an appropriate geological reservoir for CO2 storage and the need to obtain proper permits for constructing the offsite CO2 pipeline and CO2 injection wells for the new CCS-equipped plant.”
CCS Demonstration
Orr also said that all components of carbon capture and storage “have been demonstrated world-wide and in the U.S. for many years, and some are in the commercial phase,” in response to questions from the Committee on whether he believes CCS technology has been adequately proven at the commercial scale.
“CCS technology has been and continues to be deployed on a range of projects,” Orr said in response to a question from Sen. Lisa Murkowski (R-Alaska) on whether he believes CCS is currently available for power plant applications. “A number of full-scale, conventional coal-fired projects that will use CCS are moving forward today. IGCC projects using CCS are also moving forward, and projects that use available carbon capture technology have been operational for years, and these projects have direct applicability to the power sector. In my own research career over the last 38 years, my students and I have developed a detailed understanding of how carbon dioxide flows in geologic settings associated with large-scale enhanced oil recovery projects. And there is considerable experience in the process for separating carbon dioxide from other gases in refining, gas processing and fertilizer manufacturing.”
Orr is currently the director of the Precourt Institute for Energy at Stanford University, and has been an associate professor and professor in the Department of Petroleum Engineering since 1985. From 2002 to 2008, Orr served as the director of the Global Climate and Energy Project at Stanford.
