Ken Silverstein EnergyBiz Insider Editor-in-Chief

Even the biggest skeptics of the validity of global warming recognize that it is an issue that is not going to evaporate. It's here -- and the drumbeat for a carbon constrained world is going to get louder and particularly as new technologies come to the fore that make "zero emissions" possible, as well as "carbon sequestration." Clearly, it's now possible to dramatically cut such pollutants as nitrogen oxide and sulfur dioxide. But, it's also becoming increasingly real to trap carbon dioxide (CO2) in trees or to bury it underground.

"In the next 5 to 10 years, the United States will do something about CO2 and this is about how long it will take to get the technology going," says Paul Grimmer, president of Eltron Research in Boulder, Co. during a visit to his enterprise that is working with the U.S. Department of Energy on carbon sequestration. The technology is most applicable in coal-fired plants, he says, which emit 3.5 times the amount of CO2 than gas-fired plants.

Along those lines, older coal-fired facilities could be retrofitted so as to trap the CO2 before it leaves the smokestack. But such remedies are expensive and less efficient than building modern coal plants called integrated gasification combined cycle generators, commonly referred to as coal gasification. Such plants scrub the mercury, nitrogen oxide and sulfur dioxide before they would separate the remaining byproducts: C02, carbon monoxide and hydrogen. While the hydrogen could later be used for such things as fuel cell-powered cars or even power plants, the high-pressure CO2 is gathered and stored in aquifers, old gas fields or under the ocean.

The largest demonstration projects are in Norway, where Statoil is placing 1 million tons of CO2 per year into a saline aquifer deep in the North Sea, and in Canada, where the CO2 is going into the Weyburn Oil field just north of the North Dakota border. Now, the United States is pushing its FutureGen plan that will build a $1 billion coal facility that is expected to sequester all emissions including CO2. At the same time, American Electric Power and Cinergy Corp. are expected to build coal gasification plants over the next few years, with other companies giving them serious consideration.

Beyond burial of the CO2, it could also be trapped in "carbon sinks." That involves the creation of national forest as well as the planting of trees -- all of which need CO2 to survive. Those sinks are therefore essential to prevent the CO2 imbalance from becoming worse. It's an effort that utilities such as Entergy Corp. are pursuing, not just as a way to preserve the ecology but also as a way to address possible regulations to curb C02 emissions. A study by the Pew Center on Global Climate Change says that if one-fifth of the current CO2 emissions are to be removed, then it would require 148 million acres of new forest land, which is about the size of Texas.

Emissions Advance

By all accounts, CO2 emissions can only rise. The global population is expected to increase from 6 billion today to 9 billion over the next 50 years, which will require more energy to feed that growth, says the U.N. International Panel of Climate Change. Meantime, developing countries are advancing and are expected to increase their use of coal -- all of which will increase the earth's temperature another 2-10 percent by the year 2100, the panel says.

If per capita CO2 emissions remain at their 2000 levels, population increases alone would cause a 27 percent increase in such emissions, says Tom Dyson, with the London School of Economics at a recent conference hosted by the panel on climate change. Such a phenomenon would lead to more pronounced droughts, floods and storms, he adds.

The Kyoto Protocol, which was implemented this year and which requires most of its signatories to reduce their CO2 emissions by 5 percent from their 1990 levels and all before 2012, is a step in the right direction. Still, Dyson said that the industrialized countries will have difficulty achieving their goals and any progress would be offset by increased global productivity. Meantime, the United States, which accounts for 25 percent of all global CO2 emissions, is currently not a party to the pact.

At the same time, the high price of natural gas has caused utilities to opt to build more coal-fired power plants. In fact, 120 such plants are now on the drawing board in the United States alone and only a few of those are coal gasification plants. While those facilities are twice as efficient as conventional coal plants, they cost about 20 percent more. If carbon sequestration tools are built into them, the tab is even bigger. That's why the Energy Act of 2005 would allow up to $800 million in tax credits to apply advanced coal gasification technologies.

Utilities tend to say that until the technologies to allow for CO2 reduction and carbon sequestration become commercialized, they will champion voluntary cuts. It's the approach that the Bush administration has taken, saying that a free market strategy in combination with government funding for such projects as FutureGen will work. The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency estimates 8 million metric tons of CO2 will be prevented each year because of commitments from leading manufacturers.

Powerful Determination

While the president says that the Kyoto Protocol assigns arbitrary reductions in CO2 emissions that would harm American productivity, others say that mandatory reductions in CO2 are the only true way to bring about change. Many in the utility sector that include AEP, Cinergy and PSEG Corp. acknowledge the inevitability of such future mandates. Even the U.S. Energy Department lends credence to the idea, saying that as much as 250 billion tons of CO2 could be captured and buried by 2050.

"When and if a mandatory domestic greenhouse gas reduction program is established in the United States, a carefully designed carbon sequestration program really ought to be included in a cost-effective portfolio of compliant strategies for the country," writes Robert Stavins, a Harvard economist in a report for the Pew Center on Global Climate Change.

Some major companies such as ConocoPhillips, General Electric and Shell Corp. are developing not just coal gasification technologies but also the tools to bury CO2. GE, for example, says it will spend $1.5 billion to develop new ways to separate CO2 from other pollutants in an effort to sequester it. All of those efforts in combination with those of various research outfits are a testament to the will to create zero emissions power plants.

The U.S. government is certainly involved. While lawmakers have not mandated CO2 reductions, they have authorized the dollars needed to help underwrite the research. Without such funding, the technologies would never get out of the lab and into the mainstream. As the global population grows and as the economies of the world advance, the need for new innovations to curb global warming become even more compelling.

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