Carbon Sequestration has so far been focused on coal.
Rather, Engineers and policy makers say, it may be easier and less costly to capture the CO2 at oil refineries, chemical plants, cement factories and ethanol plants, which emit a far purer stream of it than a coal smoke stack does.
CO2 typically makes up only 10 % to 12% of a coal plant’s emissions, they note, and the gas is so mixed with pollutants that it is difficult to separate.
Cheaper strategies for sequestering CO2 could prove especially important if Congress passes a law setting up a so called cap-and-trade system. This would setup a national ceiling for overall emissions and allot pollution allowances to utilities, manufacturers and other emitters, which could then trade them among themselves. Under such a system a coal plant that exceeded its allotment might pay a chemical plant that could separate a ton of CO2 more cheaply.
“Sequestration is not a coal technology – it is a greenhouse gas abatement strategy,” the leader of the carbon management program at Lawrence Livermore National Laboratories, S. Julio Friedmann, said.
For now, no one is sure what it will cost to capture and sequester CO2 from coal plants because the first such project in the US, at American Electric Power’s coal-fired plant in New Haven., West Virginia, got under way only in September.
Even so, experts expect the price to run to $US60 a ton or more. But pure streams could be captured for the cost of drilling a well and compressing the gas into a liquid – perhaps $US10 to $US12 a ton, Dr. Friedmann said.
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Seems this could give a future advantage to Onshore LNG producers.
AOE Price at posting:
$3.99 Sentiment: LT Buy Disclosure: Held
