President Barack Obama is once again planning to reinvent the wheel. Clean coal should have lost its battle a decade ago when commercial utility companies had declined this very complex and expensive technology solution, forwarded by the oil industry, which uses carbon scrubbing on a different technology platform.
Following Norway’s single successful experimental carbon capture and storage, a 12MW pilot plant at Sleipner set up 13 years ago, utilities have examined and rejected clean coal or CCS repeatedly, on grounds of feasibility, scalability, and efficiency.
It is not that CCS does not work. Exxon Mobil runs the world’s largest CCS facility at La Barge, Wyoming. Besides, there are several other facilities of CCS and over 4,000 miles of piping in the US to carry carbon to the gas fields where it is needed. That is but a different need a different technology platform. Even if the cost is prohibitive, the scrubbing technology is too complex, and the pipelines are too elaborate, CCS is a justified expense for oil exploration. But the ROI, scalability, and technology solution of clean coal is just not right for utilities.
Every time the US administration shows interest in alternative energy, the strong oil lobby weaves the CCS dream and pushes for resource guzzling clean coal. Even with Norway’s high Carbon Tax of 40 Euro/tonne, the Sleipner project does not make financial sense.
The Bush administration, which had vowed to build a prototype plant called FutureGen, scrapped the project only two years ago after the projected cost rose to $1.8 billion. The $154 million grant from the Department of Energy to Texas-based developer NRG Energy is yet another example of wasteful beginning as G7 plans 20 experimental CCS plants worldwide.
CCS is the next big blunder for the energy industry after cap-and-trade. It will be akin to funding the electronic typewriter at a time when the PC has just arrived. Though market forces will never let such an experiment prosper, CCS will do its damage, weaning away the focus and resources from renewable energy.
Big Oil would achieve its objective, by selling costly, complex needless technology and equipment for the doubtful resurrection of a fossil fuel mammoth and denying renewable energy for a few years more. The gullible taxpayer will again fund a project that will be wasteful without reaching a scalable solution to reduce his carbon footprint.
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