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Climate Progress, Living on Earth

 February 18, 2008

“The coal industry says it can trap its global warming gases and put them back in the ground where they came from – a process called carbon capture and storage. But the federal government just pulled the plug on the biggest carbon capture project, Futuregen. Living on Earth’s Jeff Young reports on the big questions about carbon capture and coal’s future.”

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This entry was posted by Joe on Monday, February 18th, 2008 at 10:31 am and is filed under Climate Progress. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.

5 Responses to “Climate Progress, Living on Earth”

  1. Paul K says:
    February 18, 2008 at 12:08 pm

    Joe,
    When the DOE dropped Futuregen, you indicated it wasn’t such a great idea anyway. Someone else said it had been beaten out by a different technology, that it was blue-rayed. I have been unable to find out what, if any, future Futuregen might have. I live in Illinois and would like to know if it should have my continued support.

    I wondered what the DOE was actually doing about cleaning up coal. I found this informative website It is here the discussion on policy should begin. How great if you could cast your critical eye on the contents of the DOE page.

  2. David B. Benson says:
    February 18, 2008 at 2:13 pm

    Here is one idea:

    http://biopact.com/ 2008/ 02/ scientist-explores-deep-ocean-storage.html

    Here is another:

    http://biopact.com/ 2008/ 02/ researchers-find-geosequestration-of.html

    And a third (zeolite ZIF frameworks):

    http://www.nanowerk.com/news/newsid=4540.php

  3. Joe says:
    February 18, 2008 at 3:43 pm

    I’ll take a look at that website and try to comment on that later.

    What I tried to say at the time (expanding on what I say in my book) is that 1) Futuregen was mismanaged and misconceived by this Administration and 2) so canceling it was no great loss.

    It was not blue-rayed or VHS-ed. Had it been managed and designed well, it would have been a very valuable program.

  4. Jay Alt says:
    February 20, 2008 at 2:12 am

    That article makes some poorly supported conclusions. DOE cancelled FutureGen and with those funds opened bids for several carbon sequestration projects. Yet LOE suggests the cancellation is the end of sequestration efforts? Hardly. The new request for proposals cuts out the hydrogen generation requirement. And it asks utilities to propose new, and bigger, projects. ( Hey, I thought demo projects should be big enough to learn from but small enough not to discourage risk taking? Bodman wants to start at commercial scale. Dumb ) The new projects are required to be 300 – 600 MW and sequester at least 1 Mt CO2/year. That is an odd mix since the final FutureGen configuration was 275 MW and it would’ve produced 2 Mt CO2/year.

    The DOE press releases boasts that the new projects will sequester twice the carbon of FutureGen, (as if storing of carbon from 2 plants is the goal, rather than proving the concept) If the proposals again include IGCC plants (as is likely) the gases wouldn’t have to be scrubbed of SOx, Hg or NOx. Perhaps dirtier air appeals to Sec. Bodman, or a looser air quality standard for best available technology? I agree there are other capture processes which should be investigated for their cost, like chilled ammonia. But that in itself is not sufficient reason to cancel the project.

    I generally like Living on Earth. Their link to the MIT coal report is useful, but journalists don’t read it critically, they rely on DOE or Alliance spokespersons to interpret. That doesn’t give a very wide picture. For example, the report chairman thinks FutureGen should be restructured slightly and built. And the sooner the better. (The Alliance offered to do that but DOE won’t talk with them anymore)

    MIT report relevant to both sides of FutureGen dispute, says lead author
    http://www.jg-tc.com/ articles/ 2008/ 02/ 03/ news/ doc47a3a8a575fbb868447815.txt

    DOE suggests crudely that FutureGen was poorly managed and the Alliance is at fault. This is the classic Washington blame game. The Alliance proposal was tailored to DOE project parameters. DOE got what they asked for. But as has been suggested, top management probably never thought they’d really do any carbon sequestration. Can you say ‘centerpiece?’ As a result, many promising, long-term ideas for energy efficiency that came out of DOE fossil energy were ‘parked’ in the FutureGen project. Some short term, some medium or even longer. Higher efficiency turbines, possibilities to test high temperature solid oxide fuel cells . . .

    For example, Japan and the EU lead the USA in very high temperature and pressure power plant experience. A supercritical plant was built at Eddystone in PA back in the 1960s. But little has been done here since then. But our allies have pursued this, while our utilities were content to use cheap energy and not worry so much about efficiency. The FutureGen project is a very high efficiency plant using a new hydrogen turbine. To design such a gas turbine, GE shifted hundreds of engineers from their Evendale, OH aircraft plant to their power division. Building the first such power plant might ‘leapfrog’ the US into advantages of efficiency and technology. But hey, we don’t need to do that. Let India and China buy CCS coal technology from someone else . . .

    Why did DOE pull the plug? In the past year, coal and utilities realized that cap-and-trade is in their future. They are in a panic for an action plan. Bodman has responded like any short-sighted US financial manager would – find a short-term plan that makes him look good. He’ll be gone in less than a year so what the heck! He has moved ‘aggressively’ to push sequestration. But his actions actually setback the chances of seeing any work for 2+ years. He is raiding DOE fossil energies Advanced R&D budget to do it, just as he previously cut DOE energy conservation and efficiency programs.

    Bodman is a blind rat. He foolishly grinds the seed corn of the future as feed for today’s hogs.

  5. Jay Alt says:
    February 20, 2008 at 3:13 pm

    The comment by TX geologist Sue Hovorka is disappointing. She says if you want to you can ‘reduce your guilt’ by burying CO2, however this will cost us. Well Sue, I don’t support these things to ease guilt. I am reminded of Joe’s point on why John McCain would face a nearly impossible task finding appointees to aggressively manage programs for climate solutions. Sue is case in point – she’s just a ‘lil gal down in the oil patch. Her comment suggests she doesn’t regard global warming as much of a problem. But she’ll go along for the paycheck. We can’t get much done with attitudes like that.

    In contrast, I learned 2 weeks ago that my neighbor will work on another carbon sequestration project. He’s a PhD geologist and his agency will monitor an injection site near Decatur, IL. They’ll use many types of detectors to keep track of the gas, including strain gauges to assure that the cap rock is not ruptured. The CO2 will come from an ethanol plant owned by ADM.

    http://sequestration.org/