With three large-scale projects months from operation in the U.S. and a recent reprioritization in the Department of Energy’s coal office, carbon capture utilization and storage is about to have its moment, David Mohler, deputy assistant secretary for clean coal and carbon management within the DOE Office of Fossil Energy, said Thursday. “I think we’re at a pretty pivotal time,” he said during a presentation at the U.S. Energy Association’s Annual Energy Supply Forum. “I think we’re about to turn the corner for CCUS.”
At the end of fiscal year 2015, the department took stock of its current research and development portfolio and decided a reprioritization was in order. In the past, the department had focused quite heavily on coal-fired generation. Going forward, Mohler said, the focus will be increasingly on the carbon itself, not its source. “We’re not only interested in coal as it has been, although we continue to be, as has traditionally been the case, but in all forms of CO2 generation,” he said, noting an increased focus on industrial CCS efforts in the DOE.
Coal’s share of U.S. CO2 emissions are on the decline as more energy providers shift to cheaper and cleaner-burning natural gas. However, Mohler said, industrial emissions are actually on the rise. “CCUS is the only way to decarbonize some sources around the world, in particular, industrial sources,” he said.
Declining coal use in the U.S., Mohler said, is not a reason to ignore developing CCS technology for coal generation. “Carbon capture is a domestic and global necessity,” he said. “There are voices in this country, and in Washington in particular, that talk about why we don’t we just leave all the fossil fuels in the ground and let’s just do it all with renewables and energy efficiency.”
Even if the U.S. stopped burning fossil fuels, he added, other nations, particularly developing countries that are prioritizing bringing electricity to their citizens, will not leave their fossil fuels in the ground. “There’s a real challenge here globally, not the least of which, in my opinion, is can the U.S. lead here? Can we develop the technologies that are going to be globally useful and actually take those technologies into the global market with some competitive advantage?” he said.
Development of CCUS in the U.S. has been somewhat slow, and a fair number of proposed projects have bitten the dust in recent years. Still, there is hope for the industry on the horizon.
Three projects – the Kemper County Energy Facility in Mississippi, the Petra Nova project in Texas, and the Archer Daniels Midland Illinois Industrial CCS Project – all first of their kind in the U.S., are due to reach full operation in the next few months.
Once completed, the Petra Nova project will be the world’s largest post-combustion CCS project on a coal-fired power plant. The project is 99 percent completed and is expected to reach full operation in January 2017. The project is on time and on budget at $1 billion.
That’s far more than can be said for the Kemper County Energy Facility. The project is currently priced at about $6.9 billion, nearly three times its original $2.4 billion cost estimate. It would have begun full operation in May 2014 under its original timeline, and lately was scheduled to reach that milestone by Oct. 31. Project developer Mississippi Power announced a one-month delay in operation earlier this week.
The project, a new-build, post-combustion CCS facility near the city of Meridian, has been producing energy with natural gas for two years. Once fully operational, the plant will use Mississippi lignite, a low-rank brown coal, to produce electricity. It will employ a custom integrated gasification combined cycle (IGCC) system and CCS technology to produce carbon emissions roughly equal to that of natural gas. The CCS and IGCC portions of the plant are not yet online, though project developer Mississippi Power recently announced the successful production of syngas from both gasifiers.
The final project, Archer Daniels Midland’s industrial CCC project in Illinois, captures CO2 for storage from an ethanol plant in the city of Decatur. CO2 injection is expected this year following authorization from the Environmental Protection Agency.
