DEC Climate Chief Talks About Carbon Capture, Storage

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| Sourced From The Post Journal |

Carbon capture and storage technology is one of many new technologies that can be used to address global warming on a worldwide scale.

That’s according to Alan Belensz, the chief of climate science and technology at the state Department of Environmental Conservation. Belensz gave a brief presentation during a recent DEC-sponsored information forum regarding carbon capture and storage technology. The Jamestown Board of Public Utilities plans to use that technology in its proposed clean coal power plant.

”Some might wonder what carbon capture and storage has to do with global warming,” Belensz said. ”Consider that the 10 warmest years on record have been the years since 1990. Global warming is a serious problem because the largest and fastest-growing cultures on our planet use fossil fuels as their primary energy source. Carbon dioxide, a greenhouse gas, is the number one byproduct of those fossil fuels.”

Scientists have predicted that fossil fuels - mainly coal, oil and natural gas - will be a major part of human culture for at least the next 50 years, Belensz said. And since the United States emits more than 5.5 billion tons of carbon dioxide each year and New York releases about 245 million tons a year, Belensz said it’s imperative to find alternatives.

”It might be that we won’t have developed the technology needed to get us totally away from using fossil fuels,” Belensz said. ”The question is, how can we use fossil fuels without putting that carbon dioxide into the air and contributing to global warming? Carbon capture and storage might just be the answer.”

WHAT IS CCS?

Carbon capture and storage is cutting-edge technology that allows for a coal power plant’s carbon dioxide byproduct to be collected, compressed into a liquid-like substance and piped underground - either in massive caverns or inside porous, permeable rock layers - for storage.

There are four components to the carbon capture and storage technology - which is sometimes called carbon capture and sequestration - they are creation of the carbon dioxide gas at the power plant, compression of the gas to a supercritical fluid, transportation of that fluid to a storage site and injection of the fluid thousands of feet underground.

In order to store the supercritical fluid underground - and keep it there - Belensz said two types of rock are needed.

”First, you need a porous, permeable rock layer with ‘pockets’ to store the carbon dioxide in,” he said. ”Second, closer to the surface, you need a very solid, heavy rock layer to keep the pressure on the permeable rock layer and prevent the carbon dioxide from rising back to the surface.”

Chautauqua County is one of several western- and central-New York counties where the right kinds of rock layers exist for carbon capture and storage to be done, Belensz said. In the next two months, a company will drill a test well and take a rock sample for the Jamestown BPU project. The location of that test well has not yet been determined.

Belensz said it’s important to remember that carbon capture and storage technology isn’t entirely new.

”Throughout the southwest, carbon dioxide is already being injected into the ground to force the oil and natural gas underground to come to the surface,” he said. ”That’s been done for nearly 60 years. There’s gas and liquid underground right now - we have no reason to believe that a supercritical fluid that’s artificially put underground wouldn’t stay there. The only thing that’s new about carbon capture and storage technology for power plants is we’re taking all of the existing components of the process that are in use elsewhere and combining them into one process.”

REDUCING GREENHOUSE GASES

State officials are investigating a broad portfolio of tactics to combat climate change, from energy efficiency and conservation programs to investigating things such as renewable energy sources and carbon capture and storage technology.

According to the DEC, no single strategy will eliminate enough carbon dioxide to avoid ”catastrophic global warming.” Strategies such as energy conservation, greater efficiency in appliances and vehicles and widespread use of solar, wind, nuclear and hydrogen power are already being investigated.

In addition to investigating carbon capture and storage technology, New York has several projects under way to reduce greenhouse gas emissions. One such program is called the Renewable Portfolio Standard, which stipulates a full quarter of the state’s energy must come from renewable sources by 2013. The state also has the ”15 by 15 Plan” - a plan to reduce energy consumption by 15 percent of the projected use by 2015.

Jared Snyder, the assistant commissioner for air resources, climate change and energy at the DEC, said continued investigation of carbon capture and storage technology is important.

”Packaging all of the components together and proving that it’s possible is going to be significant,” he said. ”The next time a coal plant is built, we’ll be able to say we have a method for drastically reducing or even eliminating the emissions from that plant. Building a needed power plant without contributing to climate change is becoming a very real possibility.”

By Kristen Johnson