Carbon Capture From Coal Not Quick Fix

Carbon Capture From Coal Not Quick Fix

May 07 - Charleston Gazette, The

The capture and burial of carbon dioxide emissions from coal- fired power plants is not a quick fix for fighting global warming, according to the latest analysis by an international team of scientists.

Technology for such emissions reductions is perhaps decades away from making a sizeable contribution to reducing greenhouse gas discharges, says the report released Friday by the expert United Nations panel.

Carbon capture and sequestration - called CCS by the experts - may provide one important strategy for long-term mitigation of climate change, the panel said.

But over the next quarter century, CCS makes up a small share of greenhouse gas emission reduction tools, according to a 35-page summary report released during a meeting in Bangkok, Thailand.

"It's not trivial, but it's probably the smallest set you get from anything," said Jonathan Pershing, director of climate, energy and pollution at the World Resources Institute and a lead author of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change report.

Carbon sequestration described as unproven

In West Virginia, the nation's second-largest coal-producing state, "clean coal" projects including those involving carbon sequestration are being promoted as practically a silver-bullet solution for climate change by politicians and coal industry advocates.

When Gov. Joe Manchin, during his 2006 State of the State address, announced one such project - now delayed by American Electric Power - he said it would allow West Virginia "to continue using our state's coal resources in an environmentally responsible way."

But Friday's U.N. report described carbon sequestration as an unproven technology that - even when it is put into commercial operation - is just one of many steps needed to stem global warming.

"No one sector or technology can address the entire mitigation challenge," says the summary report. "All assessed sectors contribute to the total."

Friday's U.N. report is the third in a series of studies being released this year to update the IPCC's previous comprehensive analysis, published in 2001.

The IPCC is a network of more than 2,000 scientists from around the world. The body was formed in 1988 by the U.N. and the World Meteorological Organization to assess and report on the science of climate change.

Earlier this year, the IPCC published two other reports that warned that unabated greenhouse gas emissions could increase global temperatures by as much as 11 degrees by 2100. This temperature hike could raise sea levels, cause widespread species extinctions and devastate economies in tropic zones, causing mass human migrations.

To try to minimize the damage - limiting temperature increases to about 3.6 degrees - global carbon dioxide concentrations would need to be stabilized at about 445 parts per million by 2015. Doing so would require a carbon dioxide emission cut worldwide of between 50 percent and 85 percent, the IPCC says.

In their new report, IPCC experts say that these figures could be reached with emissions cuts across a broad range of economic segments, from transportation to buildings to energy production.

Also, the new report says, the cuts could be made with a resulting economic cost of less than 3 percent of gross domestic product spread over 23 years until 2030.

Carbon dioxide is the most important man-made greenhouse gas, and global concentrations of it have increased from a pre-industrial figure of 280 parts per million to nearly 380 parts per million in 2005.

The primary source of the increased carbon dioxide emissions since the pre-industrial period is fossil-fuel use, with land use changes providing another significant but smaller contribution.

Coal-fired power plants account for about 37 percent of global carbon dioxide emissions, according to a March study by the Massachusetts Institute of Technology.

In its 2001 report, the IPCC had warned that the coal industry "producing the most carbon intensive of products, faces almost inevitable decline in the long term."

The 2001 report noted that carbon sequestration technologies were being tested and that such plans "may be capable of making major contributions to mitigation" by 2020.

In a 2005 report that focused on carbon sequestration, the IPCC found that various parts of the necessary technology are being used separately. Carbon dioxide from a few plants is being captured. Pipelines exist that transport the material. And, in some places, carbon dioxide is pumped underground to aid in extraction of additional oil. However, the 2005 report said, "there is relatively little experience in combining C02 capture, transport and storage into a fully integrated CCS system.

"The utilization of CCS for large-scale power plants (the potential application of major interest) still remains to be implemented," the report said.

'Shifts away from fossil fuels will have to be made'

Friday's summary report said that carbon sequestration "is a new technology with the potential to make an important contribution to mitigation by 2030.

"Technical, economic and regulatory developments will affect the actual contribution," the summary report said.

Two models used in the IPCC study found that, through 2030, carbon sequestration could be expected to account for less than 20 gigatons of carbon dioxide reductions, or less than 1 gigaton per year. Over a longer period, through 2100, the reductions attributed to carbon sequestration could be much greater, perhaps 1,000 gigatons, or more than 10 gigatons per year.

During the earlier period - when major carbon reductions are still needed to stabilize atmospheric concentrations - other methods, such as energy conservation and efficiency, switching to cleaner fuels and reductions in non-carbon dioxide greenhouse gases such as methane, might be more fruitful, the IPCC report said.

"If you really want to capture the potential for reducing emissions that we have identified, then indeed shifts away from fossil fuels will have to be made," said Bert Metz, a Netherlands Environmental Assessment Agency researcher and IPCC author.

"That does not mean that the world's energy system will be independent from fossil fuels," Metz said during a Bangkok news conference that was broadcast around the world via the Internet. "It's very high now and it will remain there for some time. But new investment can shift to something else."

To contact staff writer Ken Ward Jr., use e-mail or call 348- 1702.