GOVERNMENT REPORT CRITICIZES U.S. PLANS FOR CARBON DIOXIDE BURIAL

Rachel's Environmental News
October 16, 2008
In the U.S. today we burn coal to make half of all our electricity.
This coal emits about 1.9 billion metric tons of carbon dioxide (CO2)
per year, which is 33% of all U.S. CO2 emissions.[1] CO2 is the main
culprit in the global warming problem. Rather than eliminate the
problem by weaning ourselves off fossil fuels (coal, oil, and natural
gas), government and industry are proposing an end-of-pipe solution --
they intend to solve the global warming crisis partly by capturing and
storing CO2 emissions from coal-fired power plants. The CO2 would be
captured as a gas, pressurized until it turned into a liquid,
transported by pipeline to a suitable location, and pumped a mile or
so below ground, intending for it to stay there forever.

This is called CCS, short for carbon capture and storage, and it is
the coal and electric power industry's strategy for allowing the
continued use of coal. If CCS never happens on a large scale, then the
global-warming CO2 emissions from burning coal will eventually kill
the coal industry.

The basic problem, according to climate experts like the IPCC
(Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change), is that we need to reduce
CO2 emissions by something like 80% by 2030 if we want to avoid
runaway global warming. To do this, we could generate electricity
using machines that don't emit very much CO2 (wind, solar, geothermal)
or we could add end-of-pipe filters to smoke stacks to capture CO2.
According to some engineering projections, CCS filters could trap up
to 90% of the CO2 from coal-burning power plants. However, to make a
dent in the global warming problem, the International Energy Agency
estimates that as many as 6,000 CCS projects would be needed, each
injecting a million metric tons of CO2 a year into the ground.[2] In
other words, this end-of-pipe approach would require creation of a
major new waste disposal industry devoted to CO2.

How far along are we toward actually burying CO2 in the ground? Last
month the Government Accountability Office -- the investigative arm of
the U.S. Congress -- released a report [2 Mbyte PDF] that looks at
the state of CCS in the U.S.

The GAO took a broad survey of government officials, scientists,
nonprofits, and fossil company executives to find out just how far
along CCS is in the U.S. and what needs to be done to help it expand.

They concluded that CCS faces serious technological, economic, legal
and regulatory barriers.

The GAO report says that CCS entails five steps: 1) Carbon capture and
compression into liquid C02; 2) transport to a storage location; 3)
injection and storage deep underground; 4) long term monitoring to
verify that the CO2 stays put; 5) remedial measures in case leakage
occurs.[3]

Technological and Economic Barriers

The vast majority of coal power plants in operation today burn
"pulverized" (powdered) coal to produce heat to create steam to drive
a turbine to make electricity. Capturing the CO2 from the smoke stack
of these power plants is difficult and costly, but not impossible. CO2
makes up just 15% of the waste stream from a coal plant, so it takes a
lot of energy to concentrate the CO2 into a pure form that can be
compressed and stored. There are currently no commercial-scale coal
plants that do this. The world's first demonstration-scale pulverized
coal power plant to capture and store its CO2 emissions went online
in Germany this Fall.

Here in the U.S., the DOE (Department of Energy) began studying CCS in
1997. However, the DOE program has largely ignored the capture of CO2
from existing pulverized coal plants; instead, DOE has focused on
"next generation" power plants employing IGCC (integrated gasification
combined cycle) -- a new technology that doesn't burn pulverized coal.
An IGCC coal plant resembles a chemical factory -- it treats coal with
lots of heat and steam to break it into hydrogen and CO2 -- and then
burns the hydrogen to make electricity and disposes of the other
byproducts, including CO2. Capturing and burying the CO2 from IGCC
plants is cheaper, in theory, than from a pulverized coal plant. But
again, CCS from an IGCC plant has never been taken to commercial scale
-- there are just two small demonstration IGCC plants in the U.S.
today (near Tampa, Fla., and West Terra Haute, Ind.) and neither of
them captures its CO2 emissions. Commercial scale IGCC (500 megawatt)
plants are not expected until around 2020. (p.16)

Either way, capturing carbon, compressing it into liquid CO2, then
transporting it and pumping it deep underground requires a lot of
expensive equipment and energy. The GAO report says, "The cost of
electricity production would increase by 35 percent for newly
constructed IGCC plants with CO2 capture, compared to a 77 percent
increase for newly constructed pulverized coal power plants equipped
with CO2 capture." (pg. 19) Perhaps because the DOE has largely
ignored existing pulverized coal plants, the GAO report doesn't give
specific costs for adding CCS filters to existing power plants.

With the exception of the two small IGCC plants mentioned above, all
U.S. coal-fired power plants burn pulverized coal; and one new
pulverized coal plant is being built each week around the world
today. So the GAO report strongly encourages the DOE and industry to
stop focusing so much attention on IGCC plants and to get serious
about capturing carbon from pulverized coal plants: "The outlook for
widespread deployment of IGCC technology is questionable and the
agency's funding related to IGCC technology has substantially exceeded
funding for technologies more applicable to reducing emissions from
existing coal-fired power plants," the GAO report says. (p. 31) In
other words, the DOE has essentially ignored the biggest part of the
problem.

Legal and Regulatory Barriers

As we have seen, to make a difference in the global warming problem,
CCS would require creation of a major new waste disposal industry
devoted to CO2. The GAO report says government needs to develop rules
governing all aspects of this new industry -- transporting, injecting
and storing vast quantities of CO2. And government needs to clarify
what existing laws apply to stored CO2. GAO says, "Key regulatory and
legal issues will need to be addressed if CCS is to be deployed at
commercial scale. Among these issues are (1) confusion over the rules
for injecting large volumes of CO2, (2) long-term liability issues
concerning CO2 storage and potential leakage, (3) how property
ownership patterns may affect CO2 storage." (p. 23)

The Safe Drinking Water Act says the EPA (U.S. Environmental
Protection Agency) should protect public health by preventing waste-
injection wells from endangering underground sources of drinking
water. "However," the GAO report says, "the injection of CO2 for long-
term storage raises a new set of unique issues related to its relative
buoyancy, its corrosiveness in the presence of water, and large
volumes in which it would be injected." (p. 23)

The "new set of unique issues" arises from the main CCS plan, which is
to bury CO2 in places where the deep earth is comprised of sandstone
saturated with water not suitable for drinking. CO2 pumped into the
ground will push the water aside and fill the pores in the sandstone
with liquid CO2. In these situations, the injected CO2 will be
"buoyant" -- meaning it will constantly be trying to move upward. The
plan is to select underground locations where an impervious layer of
rock, or "caprock," prevents CO2 from rising back to the surface.
However, any water in contact with CO2 will turn into carbonic acid
and begin to eat away minerals in the rocks. Finally, to make a dent
in the global warming problem would require burial of tremendous
quantities of CO2. The GAO report says "it is likely that thousands or
tens of thousands of injection wells would need to be developed and
permitted in the United States." (pg. 40)

Each of these burial wells would need to be approved by government,
but the well owners would be liable for any harm their well might
cause. In July of 2008, the EPA issued a 'proposed rule' under the
Safe Drinking Water Act, which says in part "that well operators
remain responsible indefinitely for any endangerment of underground
sources of drinking water." (p. 39)

The EPA is clearly concerned about the safety of underground storage
of CO2. But it is still unclear whether U.S. hazardous waste laws will
apply to CCS. The GAO says, "RCRA [Resource Conservation and Recovery
Act] and CERCLA [Comprehensive Environmental Response, Compensation,
and Liability Act] could pose similar complications for CCS projects.
RCRA authorizes EPA to establish regulations governing the treatment,
storage, and disposal of hazardous waste. A hazardous waste is
generally defined as a solid waste that either (1) exhibits certain
characteristics (ignitability, corrosivity, reactivity, or toxicity)
or (2) has been listed as a hazardous waste by EPA." (p. 41)

CERCLA established the Superfund program to clean up hazardous waste
dumps. But CO2 is not listed as a hazardous substance under CERCLA.
"However," GAO says, "the [EPA] rule's preamble cautions that injected
CO2 streams could contain hazardous constituents that would make these
streams 'hazardous.'" (p. 41)

One might ask, if CO2 is not hazardous, why go to all the trouble of
burying it deep in the ground?

According to the GAO, the federal government and other parties might
be held liable if CO2 stored below public lands leaked onto adjoining
property. "If CO2 was injected for geologic storage and it migrated
underground into neighboring mineral deposits, for example, it could
interfere with the adjacent mineral owners' abilities to extract those
resources, and the injection well's operator could be held liable for
nuisance, trespass, or another tort." (p. 25)

An even bigger concern, according to the GAO, is the absence of a
national strategy to reduce CO2 emissions, "...without which the
electric utility industry has little incentive to capture and store
its CO2 emissions." (p. 3) This really cuts to the heart of the
matter. Why would any coal power executive invest in expensive and
experimental technology to capture and store CO2 when all it's going
to do is hurt their bottom line?

Public Opposition

The GAO report touches on an important issue for toxics and climate
justice activists. A 2005 study of the general population of the U.S.
found that just 4 percent of respondents were familiar with carbon
capture and storage. And, "Thus far at least, there has been little
public opposition to the CO2 injections that have taken place in
states such as Texas to enhance oil recovery." (p. 48) But the GAO
warns that the public health hazards and public opposition to large
scale CCS could stifle its progress. Hazards like suffocation from
leaking CO2, contamination of drinking water, or increased risk of
earthquakes are just some of the concerns associated with CCS. So the
GAO recommends that public agencies "immediately develop, in
consultation with other agencies, a public outreach effort to explain
carbon capture and sequestration." (p. 49)

In sum, the coal industry's future depends upon rapid development of a
large new CCS industry. If the goal is to reduce U.S. CO2 emissions by
something like 80% by 2030, just 22 years from now, then existing
power plants -- most of which would still be functional in 2030 --
will need CCS to eliminate the bulk of their emissions, or they will
need to be replaced by solar, wind and geothermal plants. The present
slow pace of development of CCS for existing coal plants is probably
keeping coal and electric utility executives awake at night. On the
other hand, if CCS were deployed more rapidly and something went
seriously wrong in an early demonstration, you could forget the grand-
scale deployment of CCS that the coal and electric power industries
are counting on.

==============

[1] A metric ton = 2200 pounds. According to the U.S. Energy
Information Administration (EIA), in the U.S. in 2006, CO2 emissions
totaled 5890.3 million metric tons (mmt). Of this, the electric power
industry emitted 2343.9 mmt, or 39.8% of the total; of this 2343.9
mmt, coal accounted for 1937.9 mmt, or 82% of the electic power
sector's total CO2 emissions and 32.9% of the nation's total CO2
emissions. See the Excel spreadsheet tab labeled "All,ElecPwr_CO2" at
http://www.eia.doe.gov/oiaf/1605/gg rpt/excel/hi storical_co2.xls

[2] International Energy Agency, Near-term Opportunities for Carbon
Dioxide Capture and Storage; Global Assessments Workshop in Support of
the G8 Plan of Action (Paris, France: International Energy Agency,
2007), pg. 7. Available at http://www.precaution.org/li
b/iea_global_assessments_wkshop.070601.pdf

[3] See page 9, but also see pg. 39 where the GAO acknowledges the
need for "site closure and emergency and remedial response."