Carbon Recycling:
An alternative to carbon
capture and storage
Feature
Story
Rowan Oloman, Vancouver, B.C.
China and India, coupled with a lack of
cost-effective alternatives to fossil fuels
means that by 2050, 77 percent of the
world’s power will still be derived from
fossil fuels.
Editor’s Note: This article sans graphics
has appeared on the Internet, but is
reprinted here with sidebar commentary
from District Energy’s Technical Editor
Tony Mirabella.
Carbon capture and storage (CCS) is being hailed as the answer to the globe’s most pressing question:
"We will require immediate policy
action and a technological transition on
an unprecedented scale,” IEA Executive
Director Nobuo Tanaka said in Tokyo
after releasing the report.
What to do with the 27 billion metric
tons of carbon dioxide emitted yearly
from the burning of fossil fuels? Touted
as the most promising interim solution
to deal with the greenhouse gas responsible for global warming, CCS still remains
unproven, costly and will not be commercially available for another 10-20 years.
Meanwhile scientists are exploring alternatives to CCS by capitalizing on CO2 as
a commodity instead of treating it as a
waste.
Carbon capture and storage, the
process of capturing CO2 and storing it
in deep geological formations in the
ocean or as mineral carbonates, is being
promoted by the IEA and others as the
most promising technology to deal with
fossil fuel-derived emissions. Not negating the role of alternative energies, the
IEA is merely realistic about the enduring use of fossil fuels and the urgent
need to deal with the resulting CO2
Twenty-seven billion tons of CO2 is
already a hefty number, but energy-related CO2 emissions are projected to
reach 43 billion metric tons per year by
2030, an increase of 60 percent. A new
report by the International Energy Agency
(IEA) estimates that growing energy
demands from emerging giants like
On May 15, 2009, U.S. Secretary of
Energy Steven Chu announced at the
National Coal Council that $2.4 billion
from the American Recovery and
Reinvestment Act will be used to expand
and accelerate the commercial deployment of CCS technology, including
financing to train a generation of engineers and geologists to work in the field.
Chu said, “To prevent the worst
effects of climate change, we must
accelerate our efforts to capture and
store carbon in a safe and cost-effective
way.” Governments in Europe, Australia,
Several massive hurdles still
stand in the way of full-scale
CCS deployment.
Canada and China are also strongly
investing in the technology.
Nevertheless, several massive hurdles
still stand in the way of full-scale CCS
deployment.
U.K. consulting firm McKinsey figures
that adding CCS to the next generation
of European power plants could lift their
price by up to $1.3 billion each. Their
thorough analysis ( www.mckinsey.com)
shows that the typical cost of a demonstration project is likely to be in the
range of $80-$120 per tonne of CO2
sequestered.
Legally, there are concerns over
whether CO2 transport and long-term
storage present human or ecosystem-related risks and who is ultimately
responsible if a leak occurs. While progress
is under way in some countries, no
country has yet developed the comprehensive, detailed legal and regulatory
framework that is necessary to effectively
govern the use of CCS.
In fact, no full-scale CCS project
