US Pulls Plug on Low-CO2 Powerplant Project

Geoffrey.landis writes "The administration announced plans to withdraw its support from FutureGen. FutureGen was a project to develop a low CO2-emission electrical power plant, supported by an alliance of a dozen or so coal companies and utilities from around the world. The new plant would have captured carbon dioxide produced by combustion and pumped it deep underground, to avoid releasing greenhouse-gas into the atmosphere. It had been intended as a prototype for next generation clean-coal plants worldwide. Originally budgeted at about a billion dollars, the estimated cost had "ballooned" to $1.8 billion, according to U.S. Energy Secretary Samuel Bodman."

Comments

Pumping into the ground perhaps not a great idea

[Eric Smith]

I don't know the details of their plan, but it seems unlikely to me that there can be any realistic expectation that when you pump CO2 into the ground, however deep, that it's going to stay there.

In the 1960s, Rocky Mountain Arsenal tried to get rid of waste by pumping it into the ground. When they started doing that, there was an increase in seismic activity in the region, including several earthquakes that caused significant damage. When they finally stopped doing it, the seismic activity tapered off.

Why it was cancelled

[jeffgtr]

I live near the site Futuregen was to be built. There was fierce competition between Illinois and Texas for the location of the plant. Illinois was chosen based on science not politics. I have heard that Bush was furious that Texas was not chosen, pulled a few strings and the project was cancelled. From what I have read this was a technology that would work and let us take advantage of the abundant coal supplies without damaging the environment.

Re:Money well spent?

[tm2b]

The objection that I have to this program was that it was an experiment, a costly one, with no guarantees of future success.

You know, I'm a big fan of nuclear power and not so much of coal. Still.

If there were guarantees of future success, it wouldn't be much of an experiment. It's worth our pouring a lot of money (but still microscopic compared to our overall energy expenditures) into ambitious experiments just so that we learn the full range of options and their implications - if we learned, we example, from this experiment that "low Co2 coal" is much more dangerous and expensive (for whatever reason) than the coal industry would like us to believe, wouldn't that be worth a mere couple billion dollars?

Re:Money well spend?

[timmarhy]

sorry but when i compare the OP's source of the royal academy of engineering vs UK papers, i have to say you'd be crazy to not go with the engineers who actually know something about nuclear power.

there's no "probably" about nuclear being safer, it's a simple fact.

there's always 2 things greenies try to call on nuclear - cost and life span. firstly while nuclear costs more initally, it's running costs see it break even with coal in 5 years. life span they will try tell you we only have 5 years of fissionable material - i make it clear right now they got that figure from the fact we have 5 years IF we all swapped to nuclear TODAY and relied totally on STOCKPILES. that means we didn't dig another ton out of the ground and didn't look for more. we also have breeder reactors which extend a plants life indefinately.

Re:Who cares

[Whiteox]

Don't be too concerned about the loss of funding. Australia's Eastern seaboard is sitting on mountains of coal and the current gov. is pushing research into clean coal. So is China (the biggest user), so if the USA doesn't do it, then someone else will.
As for the comments I've read so far, it's not the CO2 only that is worrisome, but the fact that the waste heat generated from power plants (should read all heat exchange type power plants) is directly warming the Earth.
Not only should there be no CO2 from power plants, but there should also be no waste heat either.
So solar power/geothermal/hydro and to some extent, nuclear technologies have the clear edge.

Ideally, the model for future energy creation and use would be:
* non-heat producing energy creation and storage
* non-heat producing energy consumption

One system currently in focus by the Australian gov. are 1.5kw domestic solar roof installations feeding directly into the grid. If you have every house (excluding high rise) with an installation from Hobart (far South) towards the equator, then that would make a significant impact on all fossil fuel use. Currently, such an installation costs approx $15,000/household and the gov. pays for half.
Every country or geophysical region will have their own solutions, so I doubt that there will be a single technology that would be the panacea for everyone.
http://www.greenhouse.gov.au/rebates/index.html

Re:Who cares

[Bj�rn]

so if the USA doesn't do it, then someone else will.

Vattenfall is working on it.

"Can a coal-fired power plant completely eliminate carbon-dioxide emissions? That's what Swedish energy company Vattenfall is hoping to prove with a pilot project under construction in Germany that promises to be the world's first emissions-free carbon power-generating plant.

The $62 million, 30-megawatt facility, scheduled to go into operation by mid-2008, makes use of oxyfuel technology, in which coal is burned in pure oxygen instead of air. That leaves the resulting emissions nitrogen-free and easier to clean and store. Once the plant in Schwarze Pumpe, south of Berlin, is fully operational, the plan is to compress the CO2 into liquid and inject it into porous rock about a kilometer below ground."

Re:Who cares

[squidinkcalligraphy]

Gases do exist underground naturally. A friend of mine is a research scientist for this technology. He assures me it is technically feasible, and safe too (provided you find the right spot underground to do it (I'm not convinced personally). The major problem with it is cost. Basically, it ends up being cheaper to run solar panels.

Of course, the reason Australia has been investing so heavily in this tech is that Australia has a crap-load of coal, which is propping up it's economy. If international demand for coal drops because people get serious about climate change, Australia's economy goes down the crapper (unless, of course, it goes ahead and tries something different).