Abby L. Harvey
GHG Monitor
1/30/2015
While much progress has been made to develop and deploy the technologies needed for a transition to a cleaner energy system in the United States, more work is needed, new Under Secretary of Energy for Science and Energy Lynn Orr said this week. “The energy system is so big and there is so much to do that all the progress we’ve made so far is a stepping stone to what we need to do in the future,” Orr said at the National Conference and Global Forum on Science, Policy and the Environment. “The climate challenge is a big and long-lasting one and the scale of the transition we need to make is really quite large, so that requires us to get to get to work, continue to work hard now and then to stick with it over the long haul but honestly folks, we can do this.”
Orr highlighted achievements made over the last 15 years in several energy sectors, including CCS processes. “We’re working to demonstrate and deploy these processes to places where fossil fuels continue to be used and DOE has put about $5 billion into the demonstration stage of these in President Obama’s time in office. We’ve reached commercial stage for several CCS projects, including a coal fired power plant in Mississippi,” Orr said, referring to Southern Company’s Kemper County Energy Facility. Kemper is a new build coal-fired power plant which once completed will employ carbon capture, utilization and storage technology, using captured CO2 for enhanced oil recovery in a nearby oil field. Orr also cited the Illinois Basin-Decatur Project, a sequestration based project that recently announced that 1 million metric tons of carbon dioxide have been stored roughly 7,000 feet underground into the Mount Simon geologic formation.
These projects, particularly the storage projects, build on decades of experience, Orr said, and moving forward, today’s projects will provide important experience for the next wave of CCS and CCUS innovations. “We know that from about 30 years of experience of injecting CO2 into the subsurface, largely in oil recovery operations, that if these are well engineered and well-chosen sites, they can be operated safely and CO2 can be stored indefinitely,” Orr said. “But these are complicated projects and the costs of the chemical separation required to remove CO2 from combustion product gasses are the biggest cost and are where significant research is underway to reduce costs going forward.”
Adoption of Carbon Price May Change Technology Landscape
If the U.S. were to adopt a carbon price, it would have an effect on the market for various technologies, Orr said, but would not significantly change the overall portfolio of technologies in the U.S. “Obviously carbon price influences how markets respond the various technologies. So much of our work is aimed at diversifying the kind of options that you have in technology. … I think it would undoubtedly have some influence on the conversation about the portfolio, but the fundamental parts of the portfolio would apply pretty much either way,” Orr said.
