Carbon capture and sequestration have been about research and very little about actually putting the technology to real use. In this four-part series, we'll examine some of the issues and possible solutions.
According to Sally Benson, Director of the Global Climate & Energy Project (GCEP) at Stanford, setting a price tag on carbon emissions will do the job. "If there were a price on CO2 today and it was known that it would increase over time, people would be much more aggressive to employ the new technology," she said.
For the utility companies it's going to be more costly and with lower reliability. On the other hand, oil companies, accustomed to high risk with high reward kind of projects, will need to shift to a business model with long-term utility systems. Policymakers need to really figure out how to stimulate this market since it's not reasonable to think that the oil companies or utilities will do it themselves. Expect high taxes on fossil fuels and CO2 pollution before any major changes are made.
Early Experiments
One of the most common arguments against CCS technologies is that there is a the lack of full scale testing and evaluation. There are pilot projects, like the Schwarze Pumpe, a 1,600-megawatt coal-fired power plant in Germany. It will capture up to 100,000 tons of CO2 and bury it under a nearby gas field, 3,000 meters below ground level. It's one of the first projects that actually puts the technology to use in a full-scale demonstration.
The Schwarze Pumpe
Source: Vattenfall
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