Tamar Hallerman
GHG Monitor
09/07/12
Coal miners in the Italian region of Sardinia ended a week-long strike earlier this week after the Italian government agreed to pursue a path forward—potentially with carbon capture and storage—for the country’s last remaining mine. However, the project being pursued is not very far along in terms of development, sources confirmed. More than 100 employees of Sardinia’s Carbosulcis mine wrapped up their strike Sept. 3 after the government said it would not to close the pit at the end of the year. Early last week, the miners barricaded themselves in the mine with more than 750 pounds of explosives to try and convince the government to extend the lifetime of the facility beyond Dec. 31. They demanded that the government issue international tender to move forward with the €200 million ($251 million) per year Sulcis ‘clean coal’ project, also known as the Promecas project.
Following an Aug. 31 meeting in Rome, Italy’s Ministry of Economic Development and the Sardinian regional government said that they would instead examine a path forward for the economically-troubled site that could include a joint mining-CO2 storage arrangement. The government will “review the project to update it and make it compatible with the latest technologies and economically sustainable,” according to a rough translation of a government statement. However, the document was short on specifics, and the extent of the government’s commitment to the project was unclear. Requests for more information from the Ministry were not returned.
Giuseppe Girardi, vice president of Sotacarbo, a coal research organization co-owned by the Sardinian government and ENEA, the Italian National Agency for New Technologies, Energy and Sustainable Economic Development that conducted feasibility work on the project, confirmed in an e-mail that the group is “working on a revised Sulcis project.” Fabrizio Pisanu, head of R&D at Carbosulcis, another partner on the project, told GHG Monitor that activities have “partially restarted.”
Project Not Far Along, Sources Say
Despite what appears to be some momentum to move Promecas forward, the project is not far along, several European sources said, and the possibility of moving ahead on some sort of demonstration work is at least several years away. The Zero Emissions Platform’s CCS project database lists Promecas as “active,” saying that Phase I pre-feasibility work has already been completed, but adds that the project is “expected to take some time to start commercially.”
Work on Promecas began in earnest several years ago after a federal law passed in 2009 mandated the construction of a 300 to 450 MW power generation plant that uses coal mined from Carbosulcis and incorporates a CCS demonstration component. Early studies proposed the idea of a post-combustion capture unit and CO2 storage via enhanced coal bed methane operations within the mine, as well as in nearby deep saline aquifers. However, Pisanu said that Carbosulcis’ management changed in 2009 and that company priorities shifted as a result. “Despite that, there have been other collaborations with Italian research organizations which have helped improve the study,” he said, adding that a consortium behind the project is looking to scale down the project somewhat and determine a suitable financing mechanism. “The project has been moving really slowly over the last three years for several reasons,” he said. “But I hope that there will be an increase in project [activities] due to the latest circumstances.”
Sources at multiple organizations that track CCS projects in the European Union said that while their groups have been aware of the project for several years, it has never been considered a serious contender for moving forward to a demonstration phase. “They do not appear to be going anywhere fast,” one source said. Slowing down matters further, Promecas’ developers did not apply for European-level CCS demonstration funding under European Commission’s New Entrants Reserve contest, leaving the issue of financing a major issue of contention.
Even if Promecas does move forward, it, like many energy—and particularly CCS—ventures in Europe, will likely face an uphill battle due the high capital investments required, rocky public acceptance and the poor financial situation in Italy and Europe. Italy in particular has moved away from coal in recent years, even though state funding is available for CCS. The country’s other large-scale CCS demonstration project, Enel and Aker Clean Carbon’s $3.6 billion post-combustion retrofit Porto Tolle, was put on hold after an Italian court overturned government approval for the project in spring 2011.
