For coal-fuelled power plants, carbon capture and storage (or sequestration) is no longer a question of whether. In the past few years, with surprising speed, it has become more a matter of when and how, and how much?
Some possible indications of target dates for when it might become a de facto permitting necessity at the European level, perhaps enshrined in a directive or two, are beginning to emerge in Europe. Endorsing the recommendations contained in the European Commission's January package of energy policy measures, this year's spring European Council urged "Member States and the Commission to work towards strengthening R&D and developing the necessary technical, economic and regulatory framework to bring environmentally safe carbon capture and storage (CCS) to deployment with new fossil-fuel power plants, if possible by 2020."
The Commission has also recommended, although this does not appear to have been specifically taken up by the Council, that all new fossil plant consented from 2010 onwards be designed for later fitting of carbon capture and storage, ie be "capture ready."
Some individual regulators and projects may be thinking of going a little faster than this. In fact there are already several new proposed coal plants in Europe aspiring to go some way beyond being merely ready, and where the plan is to be capturing and storing from the outset, eg Powerfuel's Hatfield IGCC (as mentioned in last month's comment) and the Husnes PFBC project in Norway (being developed by Sargas et al). In connection with the latter, it would indeed be difficult to imagine any sort of new coal plant proposal being entertained in pristine Norway without capture and sequestration fully in operation from day one.
And it is becoming almost routine, eg in the UK, for developers of the new wave of coal plants now being planned to talk of being "capture ready", a recent example being RWE npower's just announced project at Blyth, where a feasibility study into a 3x800 MWe supercritical plant is planned. The new station, says RWE npower, would be "designed to be 'carbon capture ready' which, once carbon capture and storage technology is proven, would enable the CO2 to be transported to the North Sea and stored in geological formations." Similarly, to take another example, Scottish Power says it intends its Longannet and Cockenzie stations, which it hopes to see reborn as modern supercritical plants (assuming the recently announced feasibility study proves positive), to be "designed to incorporate carbon capture technology" with the intention of pumping the carbon dioxide into deep underground coal seams to drive out methane gas which can then be used as fuel.
According to the new energy white paper published in May, the UK government is considering whether it "should require future fossil fuel power stations to be built capture ready" and is launching a consultation on this topic.
Attempting to establish just what being capture ready entails was also one of the tasks assigned to the International Energy Agency by the "plan of action" that arose from last July's Gleneagles G8 summit. The IEA's recent clean coal conference in Sardinia (15-17 May) provided an opportunity for an update on this (and the other G8 tasks). A presentation at the conference by Robin Irons of E.On UK et al, "Implications of CO2 capture-ready plants", notes that "no definitive definition exists", and that it is "essentially a task for regulators" to provide such a definition. However they volunteered the following observations:
"A CO2 capture-ready power plant is a plant which can include CO2 capture when the necessary regulatory or economic drivers are in place." It "avoids the risk of 'stranded' assets and consequent 'carbon lock-in'."
"Developers of capture-ready plants should take responsibility for ensuring that all factors in their control that would prevent installation and operation of CO2 capture have been eliminated. This might include: a study of options for CO2 capture retrofit and potential pre-investments; inclusion of sufficient space and access for the additional plant that would be required; and identification of a reasonable route to storage of CO2." They also recommend that the "competent authorities involved in permitting power plants should be provided with sufficient information to be able to judge whether the developer has met these criteria" (a requirement no-one could reasonably disagree with). A definitive statement summarising the IEA's findings on what it means to be capture ready is to be published by the Agency in the very near future.
Meanwhile, on the related issue of how carbon and capture is to be done, and how much it will cost, there is currently a consensus in Europe that demonstration plants – and rather a lot them – are needed. The spring European Council welcomed "the Commission's intention to establish a mechanism to stimulate the construction and operation by 2015 of up to 12 demonstration plants of sustainable fossil fuel technologies in commercial power generation." This essentially means plants with carbon dioxide capture and storage and is the strategy proposed last autumn by the Technology Platform for Zero Emissions Fossil Fuel Power Plants.
As reported in this month's news BP's Peterhead project – once seen as a potential flagship project in the world of carbon capture and sequestration – will however sadly not be one of these demonstration plants. BP has always said the project would need some form of government subsidy to go ahead but appears to have judged that the timing of the UK government's planned competition to identify a CCS demo project (or projects?) worthy of support, which is to be launched in November (as set out in the recent energy white paper) fell outside the "window of opportunity" for Peterhead. In terms of coal based CCS technology, the cancellation of Peterhead is actually no great loss, as it was to be gas-fuelled.
Interestingly, BP, through Hydrogen Energy, the new company it is forming with RTZ, and through a new alliance with GE (giving it access, intriguingly, to gasification technology originally developed by Texaco), is now focusing its efforts on coal and petroleum coke fuelled plants. With the demise of Peterhead its two lead projects are now the newly announced Kwinana coal based scheme in Australia (on which a final go/no go decision will not be taken until 2011, and which BP says will require supportive government policies and an appropriate regulatory framework to render economically viable – which is basically what it said about Peterhead of course), and the proposed Carson petcoke-fuelled plant in California, which has some DoE funding.
As we have noted before it is interesting that enviable amounts of government funding seem to be potentially available for demo CCS projects in Kyoto-non-ratifying countries, USA and Australia.
It is also the case that carbon dioxide has become as much of a driver for the (highly coal dependent) power industries of these countries as anywhere else. And, remarkably, in the USA it is now the big coal burning utilities that are calling for the implementation of carbon regulation (a dramatic about turn from just a few years ago). Their thinking is basically that the uncertainties created by not knowing what carbon regulations will look like is more damaging than the likely impact of the regulations themselves. The business of making investment and technology decisions about multibillion dollar facilities with 40 year lifetimes is already fraught with uncertainties enough, and carbon dioxide has opened up a whole new set of issues to worry about. The upshot is that we can look forward to carbon regulation, with capture and storage as an intrinsic element, sooner rather later, and need to plan accordingly.
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