University of Texas to Begin First Long-Term Underground CO2 Storage Test in US:
The Bureau of Economic Geology at The University of Texas at Austin has received a 10-year, $38 million subcontract to conduct the first intensively monitored, long-term project in the US studying the feasibility of injecting a large volume of carbon dioxide for underground storage.
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The bureau’s project will study the feasibility of injecting large volumes of CO2 at high rates into deep brine reservoirs. The project has been designed to develop best practices for future large-volume injections by gathering a greater variety of subsurface data than any previous experiments. Key issues include estimating the CO2 storage capacity of brine reservoirs, understanding the effects of injection pressure and developing methods for documenting retention of CO2 in the injection zone.
Let me say up front that whenever I hear a serious discussion of CCS, I flash back to that famous scene in the TV show MASH when Radar O’Reilly famously observed, “that looks pretty breakdownable.”
I mean–storing a gas, underground, permanently?
But intuition shouldn’t be a guide in such matters, and from what I’ve read in various sources, the science seems to say, pretty convincingly, that this will work. We’ll no doubt have a few surprises along the way, in terms of rates of injection, which types of geology are better or worse for our purposes, etc., but the bottom line is that this technology very likely can and will be made to work for permanent (there’s that heebie jeebie-inducing word again) CO2 storage.
And frankly, it damn well better work, because if we’re serious about making the kind of overall reductions in CO2 emissions that the scientists (as opposed to the politicians) say we must (80 to 90% by 2050), then we’ll have almost no choice but to make very heavy use of CCS. Consider it one of those “inescapable conclusions” I’ve mentioned before.
Consider the details given in the current DOE/EIA Annual Energy Review:
The US has 1,493 coal fired electricity plants, nearly all of which cannot be retrofitted for carbon capture at anything approaching a “reasonable” cost, i.e. in many cases it would be cheaper to tear them down and build a new plant. Similarly, virtually none of them were sited with the intention of transporting their captured CO2 emissions to an appropriate place for permanent sequestration, further raising the cost of retrofitting CCS onto existing plants, as we now have a need for new CO2 pipelines.
Add to this static snapshot one of the the dynamics of our energy and environmental situation I talk about most, the coming, creeping electrification of transportation via plug-in hybrids and EV’s. That trend will be welcome, on one hand, as it reduces the CO2 emissions of US transportation, also, oddly enough, about 32% of the total. That increased demand for electricity will make it even harder to reduce our total CO2 emissions from that sector–we won’t be able to build out renewable generation quickly enough to both meet new demand and displace CO2-intensive coal generation at the needed rate.
Therefore, CCS damn well better work, and even if it does, expect electricity to get more expensive and the entire electricity sector to change at a surprising rate. Nowhere will we see the trend to our “D&D” future–decentralized and diversified–more clearly. We’ll be using much larger shares of wind, wave, solar, tidal, and geothermal generation, with many more homes, businesses, and institutional buildings sporting their own solar PV panels.
Related: Pace of coal-power boom slackens
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October 25th, 2007 at 2:37 pm
You have just explained why the “safety valve” provisions in pending Congressional carbon bills are so important. Presuming the lunacy of CCS becomes apparent around say 2020, then utilities will have little choice but to buy allowances out the wazoo. And guess who, ultimately, is going to open their mail and see higher numbers on their bills because of this?
October 26th, 2007 at 10:01 am
Lou and Spock: The environmental cost of CCS and the projects leading up to the implementation of CCS will be expensive and they must be made to work. The cost of doing nothing is too high. The fact that industry has not included the environmental costs up to this point certainly does not mean that the rest of the world should now provide exceptions due to the cost. If consumers have not been paying the true cost in the past, that is no reason to not have them pay the true costs in the future, and is that means the utilities have to buy credits, then they/se will have to pay for those costs. This should lead to increased utilization of renewable energy and the development of the best technologies to accomplish bringing emissions back toward being under control.
October 26th, 2007 at 10:45 am
Woodchuck: Yep, I couldn’t agree more.
Until now, we’ve been living off two semi-free rides in terms of our energy.
First, we’ve been using up this immense store of fossil fuels, which was available for the cost of extraction, processing, delivering, and using. We’ve acted as if the supply of ff’s was infinite. Now as they become more expensive, we’ll have to rely more on renewables and a “triple C” model–collect, concentrate, and control. (Control means controlling the distribution of the energy to overcome the intermittent nature of most renewables.)
Second, we’ve been using the sink of the environment as if it were infinite as well–we’ve dumped CO2 and other gases into the air at a horrific rate, with essentially no attempt until very recently to account for the cost to everyone of doing so.
Change in those two facets of modern industrialized life will be reflected in many ways, but definitely in the form of higher average energy bills. Even with major reductions in the cost of solar PV and wind power, electricity will likely continue to rise in prise for some time as we continue to deal with the legacy generating capacity.
October 26th, 2007 at 1:23 pm
Unfortunately the vibe I get from reading about Congressional action on carbon is that by far the most likely scenario is a “cap and trade” system with the initial allocations grandfathered in. That means that the worst polluters get the greatest initial allowances, which are worth billions of dollars.
This is how they did it with the sulfur dioxide trading program which has been a great success in reducing that pollutant. CO2 will be far larger and more universal but given the precedent of SO2, and given the tremendous lobbying might of the industries which will receive these windfalls, it doesn’t look like anything else is politically feasible.
And in the end, I have to say, it’s better than nothing. It’s not ideal, it’s not the system I would like to see, it’s an enormous giveaway, but it will reward companies for reducing carbon emissions and will do so reasonably efficiently. So I wouldn’t squawk too loud if this is what ends up happening. I suspect that many environmental organizations will find themselves in that same position.
October 26th, 2007 at 1:49 pm
With a few exceptions like Arizona saline aquifers lie under almost the entire US. For the most part long CO2 pipelines will be unneccsary. If we use these aquifers for CCS then we permanently eliminate alternate uses for this resource. Saline aquifers are a major source of minerals like bromines and are being experimented with as compressed air energy storage sites. This ocean under our feet may one day become a major source of water for our society if improvments in desalination technologies arise.
October 28th, 2007 at 12:17 am
all the stated pros/cons for fixing the carbon sound logical. has anyone brought all this down to what a user/bill paying person might see in real incremental cost per 1kwhr?
what does the real incremental cost spread look like for the range of practical solution?
HELP!
November 2nd, 2007 at 12:56 pm
Fran,
Every utility in the U.S. has done the math. The bottom line is that the more allowances a utility must buy, the higher the $/kWh born by the ratepayers. It’s no more complicated than that. So, for example, if in 2012 a utility’s emissions are 42 million tons, and its allocation is 16 million, then its shortfall is 26 million. Multiply 26 by “your-preferred-CO2-price-projection” and you get the allowance cost. Presume a 2012 CO2 price of $26. In our example, the allowance cost is $676 million. At that point, the rate impact for every utility will differ, but you can generally surmise the rate increase by dividing 676 by sales (in kWh). For most coal-burning utilities you are looking at a minimum of 10% increases from the get-go.
November 2nd, 2007 at 3:05 pm
And don’t be fooled into believing all the “windfall profit” nonsense. Those value of those 16 million free allocations will NOT be recovered in rates. The “windfall profit” crowd wants you to believe that utilities will use those allowances, then turn around and ask public service commissions for the right to recover the “opportunity costs.” Not gonna happen. No PSC in the U.S. would allow such a thing, especially in regulated states. There will be no windfall to utilities.