Since Senator Munchkin Big Bucks is blocking the President's good faith effort to reduce carbon emissions, US Person takes a look at the so-called "clean coal" solution. In short, NOT! Coal is not clean because it emits tons of carbon dioxide into the atmosphere when burned to generate electricity. About 72% of US carbon emissions come from coal burning power plants. Burning one pound of carbon completely produces three and a half pounds of carbon dioxide according to EIA statistics. Coal advocates, like the heavily invested senator from West Virginia, are frantic to extend the life of coal burning regardless of the effects on global climate. They often point to technologies they claim will allow the burning of coal with 90% capture of carbon emissions.
That claim is not yet a reality. In fact, the DOE cancelled funding for the nation's CO₂ sequester demonstration project near Maltoon, Illinois in 2015. As the name implies the general idea is to chemically capture the gas by burning coal only in pure oxygen resulting in flue gas that is mostly carbon dioxide and water, The waste gas is then pumped into a subsurface saline formation thirty miles away. Construction began in 2014. Plant funding was subsequently cancelled because the DOE did not think the technology would be workable by funding deadlines contained in the Recovery Act of 2009, and because the owners were short of necessary equity. The FutureGen 2.0 project, owned by a consortium of electric power and coal companies, was estimated to cost $1.65 billion with $1 billion coming from the federal government. It would have been the nation's first working power plant equipped with carbon sequestration and storage (CSS) technology. Critics of carbon sequestration say the technology is not yet commercially viable.
Of the nearly $1 billion awarded to the project nearly $116.5 million was spent upgrading the fifty-year old power plant owned by Ameren Corp. Another $86 million was invested in the underground storage site according to DOE records. The agency attempted to spin a positive outcome for its spending, saying the work demonstrated the deep saline formation was, "a world-class location for geologic carbon sequestration." Environmentalists say the clean coal concept is a myth perpetrated by coal interests to prolong the life of a dying industry. Friends of the Earth said in a statement. “After 10 years and millions of wasted dollars, the Department of Energy announced what we knew all along: Coal has no place in our energy future.” This battle is still going on in the context of Biden's reconciliation bill, which mandates clean power generation standards (CEPP) the coal industry and its handmaiden opposes.
A second, larger CCS plant was begun in Kemper County, Mississippi in 2010. That plant was supposed to be in service by 2014, but became mired in cost overruns, project management problems and environmental controversies. The plant was slated to cost $2.4 billion, but by June 2017 the cost had ballooned to $7.5 billion. After the Mississippi Supreme Court ruled in 2015 that the power company had to refund 186,000 ratepayers for rate increases related to the project, state law was changed to permit recovery of cost overruns at ratepayer expense. The Mississippi Public Service Commission recommended that the plant switch to natural gas to avoid more overruns. The owners converted the plant to burn natural gas in 2017.
Mississippi's then governor, Haley Barbour, pushed hard for reallocation of federal funds to the Kemper project after Florida decided it did not want anymore coal fired power plants. The Southern Company was a major client of the governor's lobbying firm according to federal records.
If sequestration sounds technically complex and politically fraught, it is. Most environmentalists say the correct solution is to move away from coal burning to cleaner power alternatives, not funding alleged fixes that produce marginal results.. Nevertheless in the category of 'if they won't go away, join them', a recent research development in Australia, a major coal producing country, has caught US Person's attention and in his opinion, deserves mention. Still an unproven laboratory concept, it may offer a simpler technological "fix" to burning dirty coal in a responsible way. Watch this space for details.