Not Enough CO2 Available for Carbon Sequestration Tests

"Water, water, everywhere nor any drop to drink" is the famous lament from the Rime of the Ancient Mariner.

In this age of global warming there is now this equally ironic corollary: "Carbon, carbon, everywhere but not enough to sink."

How so? It turns out that there simply is not enough "captured" CO2 to conduct the large-scale carbon sequestration test projects over the coming decade.

Why? Too expensive.

Says who? The US Department of Energy in its Carbon Sequestration Roadmap and Program Plan 2007.

While huge quantities of CO2 are theoretically available from power plant sources, separation and supply of this CO2 for the carbon storage deployments projects is unlikely because of the expense involved in separating the CO2 in the absence of CO2 emission regulations and/or because of the uncertain reliability associated with utility-scale CO2 separation systems.

If you think I made that up, please look on page 15 for yourself.

Presumably, in the presence of CO2 emissions regulations, the expense would not be prohibitive? Does it follow that in order to help carbon sequestration R&D to proceed, a price on carbon is needed?

Carbon Capture Economics

"Captured" CO2 in a relatively pure form is a rare and valuable commodity. Currently, the majority of the costs associated with carbon capture and storage are incurred in capturing the carbon.

Existing coal fired power plants generate an enormous amount of CO2, but it emerges greatly diluted with nitrogen in flue gas at very low pressure. To capture this "post-combustion" CO2 and strip it of impurities raises the cost of operating a coal fired power plant by 65%, the cost of electricity going from 5.0 cent/kilowatt-hour to 8.25 cents/kWh.

Newer coal gassification technologies (IGCC) now make it easier to capture the CO2 in a "pre-combustion" phase. But few of these plants exist in full-scale operation. Capturing CO2 from IGCC plants may only add 30% to the cost of electricity production, but the plants themselves are far more expensive to build. They produce electricity at 7.8 cents/kWh. Add in CO2 capture, and the price jumps to 10.2 cents/kWh.

That's why right now, nobody is capturing the carbon, and that's why there's not going to be enough to go around to conduct large-scale tests. It's just too expensive. The only sites where CO2 is available in abundance is near oil and gas wells, where it has long been pumped into the ground to force more fossil fuel out.

Yet before "clean coal" can become a reality, millons of tons of C02 must be injected over many years into various kinds of geologic formations all over the country to determine what will work and under what conditions.

Where is all that pure CO2 going to come from? Nobody knows.

Meanwhile, let's sing: "Carbon, carbon, everywhere and not enough to sink."

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