REPORT: SUCCESS OF DOE’S CCS RD&D PROGRAM STILL UP FOR GRABS

Tamar Hallerman
GHG Monitor
6/28/13

A new report from the Congressional Research Service suggests that the Department of Energy’s carbon capture and storage RD&D program could prove to be successful in fulfilling its technological and deployment goals, but says that if large-scale demonstration projects start following the trajectory of FutureGen 2.0 that may not be the case. The recent analysis from Congress’ nonpartisan research arm examines the trajectory of DOE’s program—which it said has been funded with roughly $6.1 billion in federal dollars since 2008—compared to its goal of developing a substantial advanced CCS portfolio by 2020.

It particularly zeros in on the impact of the $3.4 billion in funding injected into the program under the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act (ARRA) in 2009. “The large and rapid influx of funding for industrial-scale CCS projects from the Recovery Act may accelerate development and demonstration of CCS in the United States, particularly if the RD&D pursued by DOE’s CCS program achieves its goals as outlined in the department’s 2010 RD&D CCS Roadmap,” the report says. “However, the future deployment of CCS may take a different course if the major components of the DOE program follow a path similar to DOE’s FutureGen project, which has experienced delays and multiple changes of scope and design since its inception in 2003.”

CRS has expressed doubt about FutureGen’s timeline and planned schedule in the past. In a report earlier this spring, CRS underscored that recent delays are making it increasingly harder for the flagship CCS project to stay on schedule, and questioned whether the retrofit project, planned for a 200 MW unit at a mothballed coal- and oil-fired facility in western Illinois, can spend the entirety of its $1 billion ARRA grant—while meeting all of its DOE benchmarks—by the federally-mandated Sept. 30, 2015 deadline.

CRS: Congressional Involvement Could Increase Clarity

CRS said that more Congressional involvement in DOE’s CCS R&D program could “help inform decisions about the level of support for the program and help Congress gauge whether it is on track to meet its goals,” especially in terms of meeting its 2020 goals for large-scale demonstration and deployment. The report indicates that Congress should examine whether FutureGen “represents a unique case of a first mover in a complex, expensive and technically challenging endeavor, or whether it represents all large CCS demonstration projects once they move past the planning stage.”

If the other large-scale projects in DOE’s demonstration portfolio encounter similar roadblocks as the Department’s oxy-fuel flagship, the chances of meeting the Department’s 2020 goals “may be in jeopardy,” according to the report. “It remains to be seen whether the current large-scale demonstration projects funded by DOE under [the third round of the Clean Coal Power Initiative] follow the path of FutureGen or instead achieve their technological development goals on time and within their current budgets,” the report says. It concludes that since there have not yet been any commercial-scale projects that capture transport and inject industrial scale quantities of CO2 solely for the purpose of carbon sequestration, the CCS RD&D projects moving forward will likely have a large impact on how people view CCS technologies and whether they could be deployed widely.