The past couple days I was at a Carbon Dioxide Capture and Storage (CCS) conference here in DC. CCS, if you don’t know, is basically a way to capture the carbon dioxide emitted from power plants, refineries, and natural sources, and store it permanently, most likely in deep geological formations. It was an interesting conference because the policy-oriented people seemed to be thinking more long term, focusing on the use of CCS with power plants. The business folks, while not generally as interested in solve the climate change issue, cared about capture carbon non-the-less. They see a short term business opportunity in using carbon dioxide for enhanced oil recovery (EOR). By pumping carbon into nearly depleted oil fields, 10-20% more crude oil can be produced. EOR is the last gasp of a dying oil field.
In order to make CCS beneficial, it must be used on the large point sources of emissions, mainly power plants. But in this case CO2 is just a waste product; there is no motivation for power plant owners to make the huge capital expense required to capture CO2. This is expensive technology, and it is not going to happen unless there is a broad societal understanding of the need to reduce emissions.The numbers are debated and always changing, but you will probably need a price of at least $60 per ton CO2 to justify the expense to the power sector. The technology is doable, and there could likely be full-scale coal plants with CCS in 5-10 years, but only if project developers can be assured there will be a sufficient price on carbon, and it won’t change with the next election cycle.
I think CCS has a role to play if we want to get emissions down without an excessive burden on the economy. Wind, solar, biomass, and nuclear will all play an important role as well. I think the natural gas lobby might actually help to get climate legislation off the ground; with half the CO2 emissions of coal, gas stands to gain a lot.
