Block’s Indicator of Sustainable Growth

by Ray Block

Kevin Rudd, Australia’s Prime Minister announced on September 19 2008 the formation of a Global Carbon Capture and Storage (CCS) Institute, to help facilitate the setting up of 20 at scale international CCS projects to be up and running by 2020. An initial $100 million has been allotted to the institute, with annual contributions of around the same amount.

 

While Greenpeace is dismissive of CCS initiatives calling them a “false hope” in its pamphlet of May 10 2008, saying the technology is largely unproven and will not be ready in time to save the climate, both WWF and the Climate Institute are more positive. The reality is that CCS is being proven up now and the demonstration stage will continue over the next 10 years. By 2020, CCS will be ready for installation of new power plants and retrofitting of older ones over the period through to 2030.

 

The essential point is that CCS is only one of a handful of solutions in carbon reduction. There will also be need for large scale exploitation of wind power, solar, biomass, hydropower, geothermal, even nuclear energy to maximise the opportunities.

 

Coal’s cheap costs by comparison with competitive technologies, before the application of a carbon emission tax has one overwhelming advantage. It is the preferred technology of providing baseload power generation, something solar and wind power cannot do. Geothermal also provides the ability for baseload power, but because of its location disadvantages, it would be more costly in transmission costs. 

 

The July 2008 G8 meeting of leading nations in Hokkaido, which Rudd attended as an observer, had called for CCS demonstration plants, and Australia wants to facilitate their quick development. Australia, as the world’s largest coal exporter has a lot at stake, being heavily dependent  on coal fired power for 80 per cent of the nation’s electricity.  

 

In a study of the world’s largest carbon emitters, the Centre for Global Development in Washington, says Australia, which ranks as the world’s eighth biggest carbon polluter, and in per capita terms is almost on a par with America in carbon pollution has a great deal to do to reduce carbon emissions.

 

There are three different types of carbon capture and storage (CCS) technologies in development- post combustion, pre-combustion, and oxy-fuel combustion. Trials are proceeding around the world on all three technologies. In post-combustion, the CO2 is removed after coal is burned in conventional power plants. This is an expensive technology to deploy.

 

In pre-combustion, the coal is partially oxidised in a gasifier, the resulting syngas consisting of carbon monoxide and hydrogen is transformed into CO2 and H2. The CO2 can be captured relatively easily prior to the combustion of the H2, which can also be used for industrial processes or to fuel transportation.

 

In oxy-fuel combustion, coal is burned in an atmosphere of pure oxygen instead of air. This is the first time an oxyfuel boiler is being used in a power station. The resulting waste gas is almost pure CO2, and can be buried, preventing it from entering the atmosphere and contributing to global warming.

 

However, the initial step of separating oxygen from air requires considerable energy, with the result that final electricity costs from such a system are likely to be high. After CO2 is captured, it must be transported to a suitable storage site, which is usually via pipeline.

 

Permanent storage for captured CO2 include gaseous storage in deep geological formations, including saline formations and exhausted gas fields, liquid storage in the ocean, and solid storage by reaction of CO2 with metal oxides to produce stable carbonates.

 

Geological storage, also known as geo-sequestration, involves injecting carbon dioxide directly into oilfields, gasfields, saline formations, coal seams which can’t be mined, and saline-filled basalt formations. Several pilot programs are testing the long term storage of CO2 in non-oil producing geological formations.

 

The International CCS technology survey issue 3 July 2008 lists over 70 demonstration sites. 14 of these are in Australia-seven CO2 capture and storage projects, four capture projects, and three others limited to storage only.

 

In China, there are five major projects to develop CCS.  Greengen was founded in 2005, with the managing partner China Huaneng Group, and six other coal and power generating companies. The first stage (2006-2009) is a 250MW integrated gasification combined cycle (IGCC) plant. This is to be eventually expanded to a 400 MW IGCC plant.

 

NZEC are the initials for the Near Zero Emissions Coal project involving 20 Chinese participants including universities, government, and industry, with funding from the UK Department of Environment, Food and Rural Affairs. In stage three, the intention is to construct and operate a demonstration plant by 2014-2015.

 

EU COACH  is a  demonstration of near zero emissions coal technology. The project has 20 Chinese partners and 12 EU partners. The intention is to eventually construct C02 capture in a IGCC post-combustion plant, with transport and storage in a mature oil and gas reservoir.

 

Yantai IGCC is a US$420 MW plant in Yantai, Shandong province, which has been included in China’s 10^th 5 year plan as a key element in developing and deploying CCS. The European Commission sees the project as an opportunity to promote European technology, and Mitsubishi Heavy Industry in Japan is also involved.

 

Japan-China enhanced oil recovery project signed by the two countries in May 2008 will be involved in a project to inject C02 emitted from a thermal power plant in China into an oil field. The start date is 2009.The intention is to capture annually from 1 to 3 million tons CO2 from the Harbin Thermal Power plant in Heilungkiang province and potentially other plants, and then transport it by pipeline about 100 km to China’s largest oil field-Daqing, for injecting and storing in the oil field.

 

Another international collaboration project is Australian-China Joint Coordination Group on clean coal technologies, which was announced in April 2008.

 

Japan has 18 CCS projects, including a joint venture in Australia, two in China, one in Vietnam, two in Malaysia, one in India, and one in Abu Dhabi.

 

In Europe, there are 26 CCS projects- five in Germany, two in France, 11 in the UK, two in Italy, four in Netherlands, and two in Norway.  

 

Perhaps the most interesting is the Sleipner project in the Norwegian oil zone of the North Sea, which was the first commercial scale project dedicated to geological CO2 storage in a saline formation.

 

Approximately 1 million metric tons is removed annually from the produced natural gas and injected under the sea at Sleipner. The project started in 1996, and over the lifetime of the project a total of 20 million tons CO2 is expected to be stored.

 

Other CCS projects are in Canada, the US and the Middle East.

 

The greatest level of progress has been in Europe, where there is common agreement that CCS is now a proven solution. This level of confidence has been reached through:

Ø      Large cooperative research programs, including international collaborations;

Ø      Amount of data and information acquired, shared knowledge;

Ø      Best practice manuals;

Ø      European demonstration projects and field laboratories;

Ø      Networks of research –CO2Net, CO2 GeoNet and national networks.

 

The next stage of cooperation is to:

Ø      Implement 10-12 large scale CCS demonstration projects Europe wide;

Ø      Prove beyond doubt that CO2 storage is both practical and safe, with zero tolerance for CO2 leakage;

Ø      Create the regulatory framework for storage;

Ø      Establish short and long term commercial incentives for commercial operation.

 

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