Karen Frantz
GHG Monitor
2/28/2014
The Environmental Protection Agency’s new draft rule essentially mandating carbon capture and storage technology for new-build coal-fired power plants has helped spur renewed interest in the technology, Deputy Assistant Energy Secretary for Clean Coal Julio Friedmann said this week. The retooled rule—which sets greenhouse gas emission limits for new coal plants with partial carbon capture and storage identified as the best system of emission reduction—was rolled out by the EPA in September last year. “This is part of the reason why we have this renaissance in CCS and CCUS,” Friedmann said at a Global CCS Institute conference in Washington. “Because this is coming forward, people are starting to look at this in a new way as part of their core business.”
He added that although EPA Administrator Gina McCarthy has said CCS will not be part of an anticipated draft rule setting greenhouse gas emission standards for existing power plants, updates to the rule are likely to include CCS in some fashion. “The ratchet only turns one way,” Friedmann said. “Whether or not this is in the ‘15 ruling or in the 2020 update or 2025 update or the 2030 update, at some point this will be part of what happens in the world of existing sources as well. In that context, I feel a particular urgency in my job to figure out how to get the costs down just as quickly as possible and commercialized through our industrial partners.”
Friedmann also said that part of the renewed optimism surrounding CCS is due to a new age of energy abundance in North America. “We have substantial grounds to be optimistic about both the … impact and growth of CCS and the increasingly recognized value it has in the U.S. and around the world. … We have never had a better time around energy in North America,” he said, pointing to the growth in shale gas, renewables and other energy sources. “This is a good time to actually go for it, and this abundance actually creates an opportunity because it brings with it wealth. The opportunity to harness that wealth in this age of abundance is what’s going to actually get us over the top. It’s going to allow deployment of all of the clean energy technologies, substantial efficiency improvements, all of it, including CCS. This is a once-in-a-generation opportunity to build. We can’t blow it. We have to put our game face on and focus on how do we deploy and get these things up.”
More Projects Needed, Friedmann Says
Friedmann said many more CCS projects are needed in order to deploy the technology. “Towards that end that means hundreds or thousands of plants. That’s what deployment actually will ultimately look like,” he said. “That means we not only have to increase the number of projects, but we also have the gather the learning from those projects and move them through our community quickly.” He also said that although the world is still on track to have 10 million tons a year of CO2 abatement by 2020 through the current projects, more second-generation pilots are needed. “We have a gap in our pipeline, we have to fill that gap,” he said. “We have to take some of the technologies that are small scale today and get them up to large scale,” he said, adding that the scale needed is 20 to 50 megawatts. “If we do CCS at the current prices we will be beat in the market,” he added. “Since we have to deploy CCS widely and at scale in many places we have to drop the costs. So this is just required: If we need more second-generation pilots, that means we will be trying to figure out how to create budgets, create solicitations or create opportunities so that people inside this room and outside this room can make those kinds of investments and develop these commercial technologies into the future.”
He elaborated on what second-generation pilots need to deliver: “They have to be new. We’re not going to take a solvent to make a tweak: Not allowed. Now, if you can take a solvent and cut its cost by 50 percent, that counts. But we have to really do something new and it has to be credible. No voodoo science allowed. They have to be 20 to 50 megawatt scale. It has to be a commercial partnership. If it’s strictly a university or national lab, not getting funded because there’s no commercial pathway. It has to be anchored with some clear-channel partner who can take it to the market. And they have to deliver a robust economic characterization at the end of it. If you don’t have that, it’s a waste of time.”
‘Bullish’ on Advanced Combustion Systems
Friedmann also called for an update to the United States’ research portfolio to advance CCS. “With abundant low-cost natural gas, with renewables and nuclear where they are, we have to look at what we have in the pipeline and rethink and say, is this really what we should be making our investments in? And I’ve tasked my staff to start working that project, and very soon we’ll be making specific requests in the ‘16 budget that reflect that kind of thinking,” he said, adding, “I’m particularly bullish on advanced combustion systems. I think we are just scratching the surface of what’s possible here, everything from supercritical CO2 cycles to pressure gain combustion to chemical looping, there’s actually a lot of opportunity in this space to make dramatic improvements in efficiency, which will be necessary to help deploy CCS.”
