the allegheny front

WV Power Plant First Ever to Try Carbon Capture and Storage

Ann Murray

Air date: 05/06/2009

OPEN: As demand for electricity continues to climb, 'clean coal' has become the mantra of not only the coal industry but the federal government. Coal-fired power plants produce about half the electricity in the United States. But that electricity comes with a price to the world's climate and health. Now there's a company that's putting money behind a new "clean coal" technology that has yet to be proven. The Allegheny Front's Ann Murray has the story.

MURRAY: This afternoon trucks haul coal to a colossal storage pile at the Mountaineer power plant in New Haven, West Virginia. Each year, Mountaineer and 19 other plants owned by American Electric Power burn nearly 80 million tons of coal to make electricity. Burning all that coal releases millions of tons of carbon dioxide, the greenhouse gas most linked with climate change. Mike Morris, American Electric Power's CEO, says his company started thinking about that environmental connection years ago.

MORRIS: I don't think there's any question in the 1980s and 1990s as we went through the Clean Air Act amendments we all began to focus in on the larger issue of the Climate Change challenge that faces the world. That tells us we needed to be ready to address that issue and we'd like to think that we are.

MURRAY: Morris believes a carbon emission policy is in the cards for the United States. He says AEP will reduce its carbon footprint with a technology called carbon capture and storage. His company's pilot project will start up this fall at Mountaineer. It'll be the first time an operating coal fired power plant will capture and store CO2 emissions.

NAT SOUND:CONSTRUCTION WORKERS RIVETING STEEL
Dozens of construction workers are now on site putting the pieces of the technology together.

SPITZNOGLE: They got a lot of steel on the ground and there's still a lot more building left to do.

MURRAY: Gary Spitznogle is AEP's carbon capture and storage expert. He says this technology is projected to capture about 100,000 tons of carbon. That's two percent of Mountaineer's annual output. To get a better view of the whole CO2 project, Spitznogle heads to the roof of the plant's boiler building. He points to the construction.

SPITZNOGLE: The predominant thing you see is a big round tower being built. That's where the absorption happens.

MURRAY: Some of the plant's emissions will be diverted to this fifty foot tower. A chilled ammonia-based solvent will absorb the carbon dioxide there. Then the solvent will be heated to dissolve the CO2 out of the emissions. Spitznogle predicts this process will be more energy efficient than other forms of carbon capture.

SPITZNOGLE: It's that removal of CO2 from the solvent that takes so much energy in most processes. This particular ammonia compound doesn't hold as tightly to the CO2 so it allows you to move it with less heat and thus less energy consumption.

MURRAY: AEP anticipates it will take about 15 to 20 percent of the plant's power output to run the process, about half the power other carbon capture technologies use. The pure CO2 will then be compressed into a liquid, piped a short distance and injected into a deep storage well. Back on the ground, Spitznogle opens a gate next to the well heads He says deep layers of porous rock will hold the CO2. Thousands of feet of dense shale above that will keep it in place. Nobody knows for sure if the gas will stay trapped permanently.

MURRAY: Why are you guessing that this is going to work?

SPITZNOGLE: Well, I wouldn't use the term guess. . . It's kind of an extrapolation of what's been done in the oil and gas industry. In oil recovery they actually inject CO2 and use it to push oil out of the ground.

MURRAY: AEP and a partner have invested 100 million dollars in this project. If it's successful, the company hopes to get government help to scale up the technology at one of their plants by 2012. Their plan is to capture and store 90 percent of the facility's CO2 and continue to use coal, the cheapest energy source on the market. Mike Morris is convinced this carbon capture and storage process will work for his company and other coal-fired power plants.

MORRIS: The whole concept of being able to duplicate this technology and install it elsewhere is part of what we're doing. Once it's demonstrated, others will come flying to the technology.

MURRAY: Some groups share his optimism. The United Nations' backed Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change for one. The Panel has named carbon capture as a way to get quick cuts in greenhouse gas emissions. The Environmental Defense Fund sees carbon capture as a way for the US to lead in curtailing climate change. Other environmental groups flat out object to using the technology. Raina Rippel is the director of the Center for Coalfield Justice, a grassroots organization.

RIPPEL: This idea that carbon capture and sequestration is this silver bullet is just false. I mean, it doesn't address the whole coal cycle. It doesn't address the fly ash. It doesn't address the mining impacts. It's almost too little too late.

MURRAY: Rippel deals with the impacts of mining every day.
NAT SOUND: BIRDS CHIRPING Today, she's in a neighborhood in southwestern Pennsylvania located above a longwall mine. That's the kind of mining that causes immediate collapse of the land above. Aimee Erikson's house dropped six inches days after her property was undermined. She shows Rippel raw sewage in her yard.

ERICKSON:The septic tank is located at the corner of my house where my house dropped the most. Smelling this constantly is disgusting.

MURRAY: Rippel says she sees hundreds of landowners with similar stories. She believes investing in carbon capture and storage technologies will only slow down the transition to cleaner, low impact energy sources.

RIPPEL:. I just think that carbon capture and sequestration is the anti-vision. It will tie us to the past.

RUBIN: As much as we wish we could wave a magic wand and replace fossil fuels with so-called clean renewables, there is no such magic wand.

MURRAY: Ed Rubin is a professor at CMU's Department of Engineering and Public Policy. He and others foresee coal as a major player in the US energy mix for decades. Rubin isn't nearly as convinced that the widespread use of carbon capture at coal-fired plants is at hand. He says that two things have to happen to push the technology. The entire process: carbon capture, transport of the CO2 and storage must be proved to work safely and effectively at a commercial scale.

RUBIN: The second is public policy. Right now there's no requirement for plants or for anybody else to reduce CO2 emission.

MURRAY: Many experts predict it could take 10 to 20 years and cost billions to learn if carbon capture and storage is commercially viable. The path for US carbon policy is also an unknown. The EPA is just starting to get the ball rolling to regulate CO2 under the Clean Air Act. But Congress is currently working on energy and climate legislation that could change EPA'S strategy. President Obama favors cap and trade legislation. American Electric Power's Mike Morris is on board.

MORRIS: It is not inexpensive. But it is doable. Society...American society...needs to decide that's the way they want to go.

MURRAY:The Obama administration is trying to move the public in that direction. A cap and trade program would give coal-fired power plants emission allowances to reduce costs and encourage carbon limiting technologies. In the meantime, the federal stimulus package includes 3.5 billion for "clean coal" projects. And the Department of Energy has offered at least six billion dollars in loan guarantees for coal-fired power plants that use Carbon Capture and Storage. Signs that the pieces of the carbon capture puzzle might be falling into place for companies like American Electric Power.

For The Allegheny Front, I'm Ann Murray.