DOE FOSSIL CHIEF: CCS AT THE ‘VERY CENTER’ OF U.S. ENERGY FUTURE

Martin Schneider
GHG Monitor
5/17/13

PITTSBURGH—Calling carbon capture and sequestration “an important part of the President’s oil strategy and certainly the most important part of our efforts in terms of the dollars that we’re spending within the Office of Fossil Energy,” acting Department of Energy Fossil Energy chief Chris Smith made it clear that the Obama Administration will be emphasizing the economic—as well as environmental—benefits of CCS in allowing U.S. coal resources to be utilized in a carbon-constrained economy. “I see that what we’re doing here with these technologies, what DOE is doing in cooperation with industry and academia, is being right at the very center of this challenge making sure that this unique American power source is ready for the clean energy economy of the future,” Smith said here in a keynote address at the 12thAnnual Carbon Capture, Utilization and Sequestration Conference. “So addressing climate change, addressing our environment, and also creating jobs and reducing our balance of trade, and doing those positive things for our country, we don’t certainly see those things as mutually exclusive; in fact, we see those goals as coming together. By developing these technologies to deal with CO2, to avoid emitting CO2 in the atmosphere, we’re not only taking care of the environment, but we’re also doing some really important things for economy.”

Smith made it clear that the recent focus on utilization of capture carbon dioxide through enhanced oil recovery or other means will remain a focus of DOE going forward. “This Administration’s commitment to meeting that challenge is clear,” Smith said. “We made a historic $6 billion investment in developing technologies to capture and to store CO2.  And not only are we working on the cost of capture, but we’re also working on putting CO2 to work in a way that is useful and can help offset the costs of CO2, through utilization.” He added DOE will be particularly interested in “practical, real world applications” for technologies under development. “We’ve got to pour concrete, we need to be bending rebar, we need to be putting steel in the ground, we have to build projects; and you build projects with the technology that you have today,” he said. “We have to put that CO2 to work in a way that’s beneficial and helps offset the cost of the research programs, and we have to learn by doing.  This is an academic exercise we have to be in the process of actually building an industry and the things that we know, the things we’re learning in the laboratory through our research.”

With Tight Budgets, ‘Novel’ Approaches Needed

Citing the unprecedented fiscal pressure in Washington, Smith said DOE will be looking for different ways to work with industry to move projects forward. “So we’ve got to come up with new and novel ways of coming up with smart partnerships with industry,” he said. “We have to make sure that we’re doing, in some cases more with less.  We’ve got important goals to meet and we’re going to do everything that we need to ensure that we fund those appropriately, but again, the current budgetary environment is one where I expect that we’re going to have to find new and innovative ways of cooperating.” He pointed to the Department’s goal of reducing the cost of CO2 capture to $10 per ton by 2030. “I think everybody here recognizes these are very ambitious goals,” he said. “They’re goals that aren’t going to be easy to achieve, and we’re also in an environment where we’re going to be required to do more with less. I think everybody is kind of watching the general budgetary environment of Washington, D.C. And it’s an environment that we kind of expect there is going to be a lot of scrutiny over every single taxpayer dollar that we spend.”

Emphasis on Natural Gas Capture

Smith also said that there will be an increased focus on capture from natural gas plants going forward, most notably with the $25 million prize to incentivize development of such work included in the Fiscal Yyear 2014 budget request. But Smith said that will be accompanied by other new projects at DOE. “Sometimes the challenges that are attached to natural gas are tougher, are different from coal,” Smith said. “… We are very specifically looking at new projects going forward that they’re going to be more specifically geared towards natural gas, because we see, you know, as natural gas pushes its way into our energy mix, as we improve our basis—find our sustainability in the size of resources, we’re going to have to tackle the challenges making sure that the CO2 coming from natural gas fired power plants is also being dealt with.”

But the Obama Administration also knows coal-fired power isn’t going anywhere, Smith said. “I can state one thing very clearly. There is no discussion around CO2, around less gas emissions, around development of our economy that you can have without talking about coal, talking about the technologies that we’re developing here in concert with industry to address that challenge … Coal is predicted to be the largest source of energy generation, according to EIA, through 2040.  And so it’s also an abundant fossil resource that we’ve got resources here that will last till the 23rd century.”