PurGen, a B plant, would pipe the gas beneath the ocean floor

Some scientists call it a hope for reducing the industrial greenhouse gases blamed for global warming; skeptics say it is the new frontier of dumping.

"Carbon capture and sequestra tion" is an emerging -- critics say unproven -- technology that takes carbon dioxide or CO2 that normally would spew from industrial smokestacks and pumps it deep into the earth. Once there, it is, ostensibly, trapped forever.

Unless something goes wrong.

The dialogue over the carbon sequestration worst-case scenario has come out of the laboratory and into New Jersey's backyard with a plan to link the technology for the first time to a large, commercial electric plant proposed in Linden.

Last month, Linden planners received designs for a billion project called "PurGen." It is a 500 megawatt, coal-fueled facility using a 100-mile, underground pipeline to push as much as 10 million tons of CO2 annually -- emissions from the new plant and eventually neighboring industrial operations -- to a point 70 miles off the coast and about 2,200 yards beneath the Atlantic Ocean.

The proposal took on greater significance last week, when the Environmental Protection Agency declared CO2 and other greenhouse gases a public health danger -- triggering a regulatory process that may drastically restrict emissions from existing and new power and industrial plants.

Critics question the viability of piping CO2 under the ocean floor in a heavily traveled area and say the state should instead pursue windmill and solar technology. Propo nents argue the plant will provide a reliable source of energy without spewing pollutants into the air.

"With New Jersey importing about a third of its electrical energy, the 500 megawatts coming from this plant will reduce the state's reliance on power that comes predominantly from uncon trolled dirty coal plants out of state ... while also addressing New Jersey's environmental challenges," said Bradley Campbell, the lawyer spearheading the project.

A former commissioner of the state Department of Environmental Protection now in private practice, Campbell was hired to steer SCS Engineers of Massachu setts through the maze of local, state and federal approvals needed for the project. The plant is slated for a former DuPont chemical site along the Arthur Kill, with the pipeline running under Raritan Bay to the ocean.

Frank Smith and Jim Croyle, two principals of SCS, said their commercial energy plant will be the "first of its kind in the world" to link carbon capture with another so-called "clean energy" process known as coal gasification or Inte grated Gasification Combined Cycle technology.

"But if you look at each compo nent to be included in the plant, they are each well-established, standard and tried technologies. Gasification has been around since the early 1930s, and sequestration since the 1970s," Smith said.

The five coal plants already generating electricity in New Jersey burn coal, creating a toxic by-product known as fly ash. PurGen's gasification process heats coal with pressured oxygen and steam. Gas is formed, and the process also allows PurGen to offset higher operating costs by selling ammonia, hydrogen and other by-products, Croyle said.

TALK ABOUT DEEP STORAGE

Oil companies already sequester CO2 deep underground at dozens of locations around the world, al though not to control greenhouse emissions. They inject CO2 into oil reservoirs to force every last oil drop to the surface.

One of the first commercial operations to sequester CO2 was in Norway. Statoil of Norway, faced with a CO2 byproduct from its natural gas operation, has been piping nearly a million tons of carbon emissions annually into a sandstone aquifer about 1,100 yards beneath the North Sea.

But some activist groups insist carbon sequestration has yet to be used by a large coal-fueled energy plant, and the potential impacts of storing large amounts under an ocean bed are still unknown.

"The sequestration of carbon dioxide in the ocean and its possible impacts are not well understood, so this represents a large experiment with a part of the environment that is already in bad shape ecologically," said Tim Dil lingham of the American Littoral Society, a national group of scientists, naturalists and environmentalists based in New Jersey.

"The ocean has quickly become the new dumping ground for energy -- for siting industrial facilities and now industrial waste," he added.

"Why do they think the carbon will be held there for centuries?" asked Jeff Tittel of the New Jersey Sierra Club. "No one knows. No one can say for sure. This is a gamble. We'd be better off investing in wind, solar and energy efficiency."

Researchers at Princeton, Har vard and Stanford universities, however, advocate sequestration technology, with some testifying before public agencies. The Natural Resources Defense Council and Clean Air Task Force also is urging exploration of carbon capture.

WHAT COULD THE FUTURE HOLD?

The Union of Concerned Scientists, usually on the side of activists, is cautious in its assessment.

"We're agnostic on its long-term contribution as an energy source because we don't have any long- term demonstrations. We don't have many carbon sequestration operations linked to coal facilities, and we don't have anything on a large commercial scale," said Barbara Freese, co-author of the UCS's 2008 report, "Coal Power in a Warming World."

The North Sea operation, she noted, involves a million tons of CO2 annually. The average coal plant generates 4 million tons an nually, and PurGen anticipates generating nearly 5 million tons a year from its plant.

The UCS also contends sequestration must overcome potential challenges of contaminating ground water, seismic events and leakage -- slow leaks that send CO2 back into the air and fast leaks that kill. Activists such as Greenpeace often cite a 1986 natural release of CO2 from Lake Nyos, a volcanic crater lake in Cameroon, that left about 1,700 people dead from as phyxiation.

The U.S. Department of Energy's National Energy Technology Laboratory concluded such catastrophic releases "are virtually nonexistent for geologic sequestra tion," and geologists called it absurd to compare operations such as those planned by PurGen to the natural disaster at Lake Nyos.

"You have a mile of imperme able clay on top of the sandstone. The really big earthquake in Suma tra caused a rupture that was about 10 meters. We're talking about sequestering the CO2 under at least 2,000 meters of clay. It's not possible to have an earthquake to fracture that," said professor Daniel Schrag of the Harvard University Laboratory for Geo-chemical Oceanography, who has reviewed the project.

"I am as green as green gets. But I'm not like groups like Greenpeace, which is saying we can take care of all our energy demands with wind and solar," Schrag added.

Coal also remains the cheapest source of electrical energy in the nation. The Department of Energy estimates the United States has enough natural reserves to meet energy needs for another 250 years.

"Coal is like heroin -- cheap, plentiful and addictive, but very dangerous and to get it they take down mountains along with square-miles of trees, adding to the carbon output and environmental damage," said Tittel of the Sierra Club, arguing projects like PurGen continue the nation's reliance on fossil fuels.

The proposal is too new to gauge local resistance, but initial response appears to be concerns based on the mistaken notion that PurGen would be a traditional, smokestack-belching coal plant, said Linden Mayor Richard Ger bounka, adding, "It is our job to educate local residents."

Approvals on the project may take months, but Gerbounka said an information campaign starts to morrow night with a meeting at Trembley Point, the residential neighborhood closest to the PurGen site.

Trembley Point is more than a mile from the PurGen site and separated by the New Jersey Turnpike, which bisects the city. The site itself is brownfields redevelopment and surrounded by other heavy industry or abandoned factories.

"I'm excited about the project. I think it will be beneficial to the city of Linden, the state of New Jersey and the nation," Gerbounka said. "It helps wean us off Middle East oil, and hopefully the technology is there to do the project as they say it can be done."

New Jersey News

Sunday, April 26, 2009

BY BRIAN T. MURRAY
Star-Ledger Staff

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Fifteen months ago the then energy secretary, John Hutton, came within days of giving permission to build the first new coal-fired power station in Britain in more than 30 years, at Kingsnorth, Kent.

The move would have delivered a huge blow to the government's claims to be leading the world in tackling climate change and almost certainly triggered an intensification of the long-running conflict with activists, who had turned it into one of the green movement's totemic issues.

A last-ditch campaign by green cabinet members, including the then environment secretary, David Miliband, and his brother Ed, backed by Greenpeace and other environmentalists, first delayed the Kingsnorth decision and yesterday, having persuaded the Treasury, overturned the old energy department stance.

"This is a complete rewrite of UK energy policy. Instead of a laissez-faire system where companies told government what they wanted to build and where, government has decided that reducing climate change emissions cannot be left to the market and it must now tell industry what needs to be built to what pollution standards," one government source said yesterday.

No new coal-fired power station will now get government consent without it having equipment to capture and bury at least 25% of emissions now and 100% by 2025 when the technology is expected to be technically and commercially proven.

Details of how the four demonstration CCS projects, each costing around £1bn, will be paid for are still unclear, with both government and industry expecting the consumer to pay eventually with a 2% levy on electricity bills by 2020. But yesterday the industry signalled it was pressing for government subsidies. Paul Golby, chief executive of E.ON UK, said: "We are committed to fit capture technology to Kingsnorth in accordance with the government's proposed conditions, as long as it is properly funded."

The energy secretary, Ed Miliband, said he hoped Britain would lead an emerging world industry. "There is no alternative to CCS if we are serious about fighting climate change. We need new coal-fired power stations [for energy security] but only if they can be part of a low carbon future. With a solution to the problem of coal we greatly increase our chances of stopping dangerous climate change emissions. Without it we will not succeed," he said in a statement to the Commons.

Environment groups joined the CBI, unions, and energy companies in applauding the decision, but there was concern that the new coal plants would be allowed to operate for up to 10 years while still pumping three-quarters of their emissions into the atmosphere.

"Will existing coal plants like Drax, which are slated to continue operation into the 2020s, be allowed to continue operating unabated despite their massive emissions? How will the government ensure that, if CCS technology doesn't work, the UK won't be left with a legacy of new coal plants emitting huge amounts of CO2 at a time when we must be slashing emissions?" asked John Sauven, director of Greenpeace. His organisation's analysis suggested yesterday that the four CCS coal demonstration projects operating for 15 years before fitting 100% capture equipment may still emit up to 275m tonnes of CO2 - some 50% of current UK annual emissions.

Others suggested CCS would unleash a coal "rush" and add to pressure for damaging new open cast coal mines in the UK. "CCS will need 50% more coal for the same generation and it will add 70% to the costs," said independent energy analyst John Busby. "As we import 75% of our coal, the CCS stations would radically decrease our energy security and worsen the balance of payments."

But there was widespread approval for the announcement. "Carbon capture and storage could be a transformative technology," the CBI said. "We know it can work on a small scale but is not yet fully commercially viable for large plants, so we welcome this financial support for demonstration CCS projects."

"The government has now stepped up to the mark on coal. The ban on new unabated coal-fired power stations is the most important UK climate policy we have seen so far," said Matthew Lockwood, senior research fellow at Labour thinktank the Institute for Public Policy Research.

In response to criticisms, Miliband said that existing coal plants and new gas ones would be considered for CCS legislation. "We will have to think seriously how we deal with them. We will consult on how other plants get treated."

The most optimistic government analysis suggests the four new coal-fired power plants will lead to major reductions in emissions after 2025 because they will largely replace ageing coal stations. Of the four plants, at least two are expected to use pre-combustion technology which removes all emissions before burning the coal. One will collect emissions after they have been burned, which is less efficient but can be fitted to existing stations.

"If the four coal plants are 50% efficient by 2020, and we expect 34% of electricity to be generated by renewables and roughly 20% by nuclear, then that would lead to a decarbonisation of the electricity supply of 60%-66% by 2020," a government source said. "The rest would come by 2050."

Political pressure is expected to be placed on the Environment Agency, the government's pollution watchdog, which is to be given the role of independently assessing whether the technology works and decide when companies should move from 25% to 100% CCS.

"This is one of the most important environmental decisions the government has taken," said Lord Chris Smith, chairman of the agency. "We need to reduce dramatically the emissions from coal power stations and carbon capture technology offers real hope of a new era of 'clean coal'. It is an essential element of any sensible energy policy for the next 20 years.

"We will do all we can to ensure it is developed as soon as possible to help us meet the ambitious carbon emissions reduction target of 80% by 2050."

The shadow energy and climate change secretary, Greg Clark, welcomed the move. "But there are still gaps in today's announcement, including the refusal to make a clear commitment to an emissions performance standard, which would set a legal limit on the level of CO2 pollution that a power plant could emit. We also need to know who will pay the new consumer levy and how much will be added to fuel bills."

Lump sums: the new coal rush
Given that world reserves of coal amount to more than 500bn tonnes and every country with the resource plans to dig it up and use it at some point to drive its development, the introduction of carbon capture and storage is more urgent than ever. In a 2006 report BP found that the UK had coal reserves of 220m tonnes. At the current rate of consumption, around 19m tonnes per year, this would last just under 12 years. But undiscovered coal could push this further - according to the World Coal Institute as yet unknown deposits could push the UK's reserves up to 1bn tonnes. The UK's use of coal far outstrips its production, with the country importing around 23m tonnes a year from places such as Russia. The largest deposits of coal exist in the US, Russia, China and India with 122bn, 69bn, 59bn and 56bn tonnes respectively. Of these, the US and China mine the most every year, around 564m and 707m tonnes a year. India digs up around 167m tonnes a year but experts agree that this figure is set to increase rapidly in the coming decades.

Alok Jha

http://www.guardian.co.uk

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Steps to capture and bury greenhouse gas emissions – rather than release them into the atmosphere – appear to have taken an important step forward this week in Britain, where the government proposed making the construction of large new power plants contingent on fitting the technology.
The government also proposed creating clusters of utilities to facilitate the transport and collection of carbon dioxide for storage in depleted oil and gas fields in the North Sea as part of a process known as“carbon capture and sequestration,” or CCS.
One sign that the measures may make a difference to climate protection was the reaction from the British branch of Greenpeace, the environmental group.
In the past, some Greenpeace members in Europe have sharply criticized C.C.S., saying that lobbying by energy companies in favor of a technology – as yet unproven on a commercial scale – was mainly designed to help them to stay in business even as governments introduce ever stricter carbon controls.
But Greenpeace U.K. wrote on its Web site this week that the announcement showed “admirable signs of climate leadership.”
The U.K. group also called the announcement, by Ed Miliband, the energy and climate change secretary, “a key departure from previous policy.” It welcomed recommendations “that from now on power companies planning to build new coal plants will be required to fit full C.C.S. by 2025 at the latest, provided that the Environment Agency is convinced that the technology works.”
Mr. Miliband told members of Parliament on Thursday that the policy should allow Britain to lead the world in the technology while keeping coal as part of the nation’s energy mix without compromising its climate change commitments.

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The government has given the go-ahead for a new generation of coal-fired power plants - but only if they can prove they can reduce their emissions.
Up to four new plants will be built if they are fitted with technology to trap and store CO2 emissions underground.
The technology is not yet proven and would only initially apply to 25% of power stations' output.
Green groups welcomed the move but said any new stations would still release more carbon than they stored.

Energy Secretary Ed Miliband's announcement followed confirmation in the Budget that there would be a new funding mechanism for at least two - and up to four - "demonstration" carbon capture and storage (CCS) projects.
Stations closing
He told MPs it would allow the UK "to lead the world" in the technology - and keep coal within the UK's energy mix without abandoning climate change commitments.
It is not clear where the new plants will be located although the government said areas where the greatest benefits could be generated included parts of Kent and Essex, Humberside, Teesside, Firth of Forth and Merseyside.
In 2008 coal power stations provided 31% of the UK's electricity but a third of them are due to close in the next ten years.
Coal is the dirtiest fossil fuel but is likely to remain widely used across the world because it is cheap and relatively abundant.
Mr Miliband said there was an "international imperative to make coal clean" and said the era of "unabated" growth in coal-fired plants was over.
He said only allow new coal stations fitted with CCS would be allowed to be built in England and Wales.
Higher bills
The technology would at first have to cover between 20 and 25% of the station's energy output.
Once it is "independently judged as economically and technically proven" - which the government expects by 2020 - those stations would have five years to "retrofit" CCS to cover 100% of their output.
Mr Miliband said successful CCS development could cut carbon emissions from coal by 90%.
He told MPs the move put the UK "in a world leadership position on CCS and coal".
"There is no alternative to CCS if we are serious about fighting climate change and retaining a diverse mix of energy sources for our economy," he added.
One publicly funded project had already been planned and the additional ones will be funded through a scheme which will guarantee the price companies receive for electricity generated by CCS.
Mr Miliband said that would add an estimated 2% to energy bills by 2020.
Shadow energy secretary Greg Clark welcomed what he called the government's "Damascene conversion" to CCS adding: "This statement is urgently needed because after 12 years Britain's energy policy is as much of a horror show as our public finances."
For the Lib Dems, Martin Horwood was concerned that by only insisting on 100% CCS use when the technology was deemed ready, Mr Miliband had inserted a "dirty great loophole big enough for some of the dirtiest power stations possible to fit into".
The announcement was welcomed by trade unions who said it could create thousands of jobs, avoid energy shortages and put the UK at the forefront of a technology that could cut carbon emissions across the world.
But while environmental groups welcomed an end to unabated coal fired stations - there were concerns about increased emissions.
Greenpeace executive director John Sauven said that for every tonne of carbon captured before 2020, three would be released into the atmosphere.
Some concerns were raised that billions of pounds of taxpayers' money was being spent on technology that remains unproven.
WWF-UK's Keith Allott said the taxpayer should not have to "shoulder the full brunt of the costs" and the "polluter" should make significant financial contributions.
BBC NEWS

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