Reprinted from MIT Technology Review

By: Kevin Bullis

The wind and solar get all the attention, but one key way to reduce emissions is to find a cheaper way to sequester carbon.
 
Last week, the new secretary of state of U.S. energy, Ernest Moniz, pledged to continue the work of his predecessor for converting the Energy Department into a "center of innovation", while highlighted projects he believes deserve more attention. Almost at the top of your list is renewed interest in CO2 capture and storage (CCS its acronym in English), a technology that could prove vital to combat climate change but is developing too slowly, according to the International Agency Energy.

Moniz will face the challenge of advancing the CSS in a time when budgets are tight compared to the years of plenty who enjoyed the former Secretary Steven Chu as a result of the tens of thousands of dollars awarded to the agency through the Economic Recovery Act of 2009. Despite the challenge, the CSS is considered so important to reduce greenhouse emissions that technologists seek cheaper ways to develop it.

Some researchers have already found ways to make large-scale testing at a fraction of the costs proposed initially. They are also thinking to reduce costs through the sale of captured CO2 oil extraction companies who will use it to get the oil difficult to extract from the wells. In the long term are developing new technologies that can greatly reduce the cost of capturing carbon dioxide (see "Fuel cells could lower the CO2 storage" and "A novel power plants could clean coal")

The technology for the CSS and receives much less attention and funding as solar and wind energy (see "time Will carbon capture.") In the U.S., solar technology and wind get the same funding in a year that the CSS gets in 10-and that includes a single infusion of billions of dollars from the Recovery Act, as calculated Howard Herzog, a senior researcher at Energy Initiative of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, who led Moniz institution before becoming energy secretary. But this does not reflect the key role that the CSS may have to reduce the emission of greenhouse gases. If ever the government can impose strict limitations on CO2 emissions, the CSS could do to comply with this legislation was much cheaper. Herzog says.

In fact, it is expected that by 2020 electricity generation based on coal, grow twice the generation from renewables. Without CSS, many power plants would have to close to comply with strict legislation. The CSS would reduce CO2 emissions at a lower cost per ton than other technologies. "People are reluctant to have an environmental policy for the cost," says Herzog. "If you take the CSS of the equation, the price increases."

The problem is that nobody knows what it will cost the CSS on a large scale, and to find out would be to do large-scale tests that will cost billions of dollars.

A rodeo is possible to find cheaper ways to demonstrate the technology on a large scale. He talked about for years FutureGen project in the U.S., originally a vast new power plant that would produce hydrogen and electricity. The high costs of the project led to the Bush administration to close, but was revived in an incarnation cheaper after the Recovery Act. Now the bill goes through retrofitting existing power plant is expected to cost in half. But even with that change, there are chances that the project will not be ready in time to take advantage of Recovery Act funding in 2009, given the challenge of designing the project and get the necessary permits, says Herzog, who gives chances of success similarly low a handful of other CSS plant projects that could qualify for Recovery Act funds if they gained certain milestones on time.

Another way forward might be to take out the carbon dioxide capture in power plants not only in the sources that produce a more concentrated stream of CO2, such as natural gas production facilities. It is something that has been doing years in a natural gas facility in Norway.

And they are making progress in the capture of carbon dioxide in industrial facilities in the United States. Two of the three projects are planned such that are already in operation: one that captures carbon dioxide from the fermentation of ethanol in a plant and another that captures a hydrogen production plant. These projects represent half the CO2 captured using CCS by 2050, according to the International Energy Agency. Indeed, the CSS might be the only firm to deal with emissions from sources such as ethanol plants and steel mills. "It is a solution for many areas where there are few or no other solutions," says Juho Lipponen, Head of Technology Unit at CSS International Energy Agency.

Sell ​​carbon dioxide for use in oil recovery could also serve to advance the CSS technology, says John Thompson, director of the Transition Fossil in the nonprofit organization Clean Air Task Force. Oil producers can afford to pay for the captured carbon dioxide in some industrial processes, and after extracting oil, can clog wells and trap CO2 underground.

But the market for oil recovery has limits, and oil producers will not pay enough for the carbon dioxide to offset the cost of capturing power plant, says Thompson. However, it could be enough to make carbon capture viable commercially, especially when combined with tax exemptions such as those operators of wind farms.

Sell ​​carbon dioxide to oil companies could have an undesired effect. Increase oil production would lead to increased consumption of fossil fuels and therefore more carbon dioxide emissions. So to achieve the scale needed to have a substantial effect on carbon dioxide emissions will require other forms of storing CO2 in saline aquifers eg porous.

Ultimately, the CSS only significantly affect dioxide emissions, if it puts a price on carbon dioxide through legislation, as Herzog. But the projects implemented could serve to reduce costs and make the technology seem more feasible.

As Moniz said a few weeks ago: "Reducing the cost of the technology of low carbon emissions will be an important enabler for the political agenda in the future."