The future of clean coal has been postponed. Technologies to make the burning of coal cleaner are progressing, but the business case for using these technologies is not keeping pace.

Cap and trade policies that were supposed to drive the industry to clean coal have not materialized as imagined. And the explosive shift to natural gas has cut coal-fired electricity generation by about 10 percent over the last decade, thus reducing emissions.

Still, these setbacks do not diminish the need for a technology solution. And as such, clean coal work continues but at a slower pace than anticipated just a few years ago.

After some funding setbacks, the FutureGen project, relaunched as FutureGen 2.0, is pushing ahead with its coal gasification, emissions controls, and carbon dioxide capture and storage work. Rather than building a near-zero-emissions, coal-fueled power plant as was the initial goal, the program now focuses on developing technology approaches to work on existing coal-fired power plants.

To that end, FutureGen 2.0 uses an oxy-fuel combustion approach, which some believe is one of the more cost effective approaches to clean up existing coal-fueled facilities. With this approach, coal is burned using a mixture of oxygen and CO2 instead of air. This produces a concentrated CO2 stream that can be captured and stored.

Phase one of the project, a design stage, was completed in 2012. In February, the Department of Energy announced funding for phase two, which includes permitting and final design. At about the same time, the FutureGen Alliance announced the proposed pipeline route that would deliver the captured carbon dioxide from the selected existing power plant in Meredosia, Ill., to the chosen underground storage location in Morgan County, Ill.

Similar to FutureGen, many other carbon emissions control projects focus on the combustion process. One promising technology that is moving beyond a small trial to a larger-scale pilot stage is based on coal-direct chemical looping. Coal-direct chemical looping chemically harnesses coal’s energy and contains the carbon dioxide produced before it can be released into the atmosphere.

Groups around the world are exploring this technology. Recently, researchers at Ohio State University completed two subpilot tests that proved the potential  effectiveness of the technology. To see if the technology scales well, a pilot plant is under construction at the DOE’s National Carbon Capture Center in Wilsonville, Ala. Set to begin operations in late 2013, that plant will produce 250 thermal kilowatts.

Oxy-fuel combustion and coal direct chemical looping attack the carbon dioxide emissions problem at the combustion level. Another approach that shows great promise focuses on removing carbon dioxide from power plant emissions before they enter the atmosphere. Several years ago, American Electric Power teaming with Alstom carried out a phase one pilot program that used chilled ammonia to separate carbon dioxide from coal-fired power plant emissions. The pilot ran for more than a year with a capture rate of more than 90 percent and successful sequestration of the captured carbon dioxide. Even with such promising results, phase two was not carried out due to the uncertainty of U.S. climate policy and the continued weak economy.

Several technologies for the reduction of carbon dioxide emissions from coal-fired plants seem promising. But to see if these technologies can be turned into operational systems requires much more research,  development work and investments.

Unfortunately, there is little incentive to move existing pilot projects beyond their current stage or to start new projects. As a result, many projects worldwide have stalled or have had their start dates pushed back several years.

What is holding things up? The tough economic conditions in the United States and other factors have resulted in no hard emissions caps. And the cap and trade systems that would have provided the financial impetus to bring carbon dioxide reduction and capture technologies to market have not emerged.

“When it appeared there would be cap and trade requirements, there were early efforts in this area, but now there is no incentive,” said Howard J. Herzog, a senior research engineer in the MIT Energy Initiative.

Additionally, attention to the emissions problem has been somewhat blunted due to the increased use of natural gas, which creates about half the amount of carbon dioxide as coal per kilowatt of electricity produced.

Interestingly, in places where there are cap and trade efforts, other dynamics have come into play. For example, the Regional Greenhouse Gas Initiative involving states in the northeast part of the United States did indeed reduce emissions. Besides natural gas taking over market share from coal due to its dropping prices, carbon charges made coal-generated electricity more expensive. This drove down demand and encouraged conservation.

 

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