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Cleaning King Coal

Can carbon capture lead to a CO2-free future?

By Paul Voosen
Staff Writer, The Prague Post
February 28th, 2007 issue

ČTK
Coal power plants such as Počerady, near Most, north Bohemia, provide 60 percent of the Czech Republic's electricity — and pump out warming carbon dioxide emissions.
Despite President Václav Klaus’ recent claims to the contrary, it is a near certainty that human-caused global climate change is here, driven by the carbon dioxide (CO2) emissions of combusted fossil fuels — especially the type from coal-fired power plants, which currently provide 60 percent of the Czech Republic’s electricity.
The European Union has set ambitious new targets for cutting emissions in half by 2050, and many people are now questioning how Europe will manage if it relies solely on energy efficiency and renewable energy — wind, solar, hydroelectric.
“There’s an increasing view that renewables aren’t going to do the job,” said Heleen de Coninck, analyst at the Energy Research Centre of the Netherlands.
This concern, along with the recent erratic flow of gas from Russia, has increased the focus of Czech power utilities and scientists on a developing technology that could bridge the gap between the fossil fuel present and a renewable future: carbon capture and storage (CCS).
CCS research has just begun in the Czech Republic, spearheaded by the Czech Geological Survey and the power utility ČEZ, which recently joined the European-wide and industry-led European Technology Platform on Zero Emission Fossil Fuel Power Plants. ČEZ hopes to have a pilot plant running with CCS within 10 years.
The Czech Republic has several suitable locations for storage, with ČEZ primarily interested in depleted south Moravian oil fields surrounding Hodonín, said Ladislav Kříž, ČEZ spokesman.
“Carbon capture gives you an option where you can keep using your fossil fuels” without adding carbon to the atmosphere, said de Coninck. Simply put, the process catches CO2 before or after combustion and then pumps it into geological reservoirs beneath the earth’s surface.
The coal industry has begun to promote CCS as a solution to all of Europe’s energy fears, and the European Commission has said that by 2020 all new coal plants should employ CCS. But questions remain as to how the technology will actually work and whether it will distract from investment into renewable energy.
Into thin air
There are three different styles of carbon capture under research, and much debate on which will win out. The early critical darling has been the Integrated Gasification Combined Cycle, which uses high heat and chemical reactions to “gasify” coal into CO2 and hydrogen before combustion, allowing the CO2 to be captured while the hydrogen is burned.
The two other options are oxycombustion, which uses pure — and expensive — oxygen to burn fuel rather than air, and post-combustion, which would separate CO2 from the flues of existing high-efficiency coal plants.
Utilities naturally have high hopes for this last option, but it also has the most unanswered questions, said de Coninck.
What all of these possibilities have in common is that capturing the carbon requires a share of the plant’s own energy, meaning that plants so outfitted will produce a smaller amount of power with the same lump of coal than they do today.
“If we go the way of coal with CCS, then of course we’ll need more coal and more mining will be necessary,” said Vít Hladík, head of geophysics at the Czech Geological Survey.
Any question of coal consumption should be considered along with expected increases in energy efficiency and renewable energy, de Coninck said.
“Modeling studies have shown that the amount of coal mining will go down even with CSS,” she said. “We’ll have more options [in power sources] because of higher electricity prices.”
However it’s done, capturing CO2 would be useless without somewhere to put it. That’s where the geologists come in.
Captured CO2 would be pumped through pipelines to suitable underground structures, such as deep saline aquifiers, depleted oil and gas fields or unminable coal seams. Sitting under geological caps at least 800 meters (2,625 feet) deep as a supercritical liquid, Hladík said, the CO2 would be closely monitored for leaks. And monitored. And monitored.
“It takes hundreds or even thousands of years before it is absorbed into the geological environment,” said Jan Rovenský, energy campaigner for the Czech branch of Greenpeace. Much like nuclear waste storage, it will require continued vigilance.
Carbon storage is more proven than capture. Norway has been storing CO2 at a site beneath the North Sea for the past decade with no leaks.
Preliminary surveys of the Czech Republic have found that the country could stash 25 years worth of carbon emissions beneath it, said Hladík.
Green support
The Green Party, currently in control of the Environment Ministry, supports developing CCS technology, so long as it doesn’t come at the expense of investing in renewable power and energy efficiency. It does not support any increase in coal mining, which conflicts with ČEZ’s desire to expand beyond geographic limits placed on it in north Bohemia.
Rovenský also welcomes CCS but is wary of the coal industry selling it as a long-term solution, rather than a short-term patch.
“It’s only a dream right now,” he said. “But they’re trying to sell it as a sure thing.”
One thing that is for certain is that coal-fired power plants are going to be used in the country for the foreseeable future, and the less CO2 they emit, the better.
“For the next 30 or 40 years, we won’t be able to stop coal combustion at once,” said Rovenský. “It must be a process, reducing a percentage each year.”

Paul Voosen can be reached at pvoosen@praguepost.com


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