Frank Alix
Taking Out the CO2
Powerspan Helps Utilities
Capture Carbon at the Source
Innovations Case Narrative:
Powerspan Corp.
As indications of global climate change and its inherent risks have become more
apparent, the urgency to limit emissions of carbon dioxide (二氧化碳) and other green-
house gases (GHGs) has grown. 同时, rising worldwide demand for
活力, driven by growing populations and improving living standards in the
developing world, and by our increasingly electrified homes and businesses in the
industrial world, has led to a steady growth in the use of fossil fuels. 今天, fossil
fuels account for 81% of the world’s energy supply,1 resulting in the release of 28
billion metric tons of CO2.2
One of the largest sources of CO2 emissions is coal-fueled electricity generat-
ing plants. Coal is the source of 49% of the electricity generated in the U.S.3 and
大约 40% worldwide.4 Economic, geographic, and political forces favor
increasing use of coal as the most abundant fossil fuel, particularly in the US,
中国, 和印度; it also has the lowest cost, typically less than half of the cost of
oil and natural gas per unit of energy.5
Experts agree that the only way to reconcile our increasing use of coal with
needed CO2 emission reductions is to deploy CO2 capture and storage (or seques-
翻译) 系统 (CCS) on coal-fueled electricity plants. The May 2007 MIT study,
“The Future of Coal,” concludes that CCS “is the critical enabling technology that
would reduce CO2 emissions significantly while also allowing coal to meet the
world’s pressing energy needs.”6 The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change
(IPCC) estimates that CCS will be needed to create at least 15%, and perhaps as
much as 55%, of the GHG emission reductions needed to stabilize the climate over
the next century.7
Despite the recognized need for CCS, there are only a few commercial-scale
CCS installations in the world today, and none are operating on a conventional
Frank Alix is co-founder and CEO of New Hampshire-based Powerspan Corp.
成立于 1994, Powerspan is engaged in the development and commercialization of
proprietary carbon capture and multi-pollutant control technology for the electric
power industry.
© 2009 Frank Alix
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Frank Alix
coal-fueled electricity plant. The few existing CCS projects capture and store
之间 500,000 and three million tons of CO2 per year.8 This stands in stark con-
trast to the scale of CCS deployment needed to address climate change: the IPCC
estimates that between 220 billion tons and 2,200 billion tons will need to be
sequestered in the 21st century.9 This scale is challenging for all three major aspects
of a CCS system: CO2 capture, pipeline transport, and geological storage.
The challenge is not only to
commercially demonstrate
CCS on the scale required,
but also to develop a more
economical approach to
CO2 capture for
conventional coal-fueled
electric generating plants.
The Powerspan story involves the most difficult and expensive aspect of CCS:
CO2 capture. The commercial CO2 capture technologies that exist today are not
well suited to conventional pulverized
coal-fueled (PC) electric generating
plants for several reasons: they are
challenged by impurities normally
present in the flue gas of the plant,
they require up to 30% of the total
plant output energy to capture and
compress CO2 for storage, 和他们
add up to 80% additional cost to an
already substantial capital invest-
蒙特. CCS costs are estimated to
increase the cost of electricity from
coal-fueled generating plants by 50%
到 80%.10 所以, the challenge is
not only to commercially demon-
strate CCS on the scale required, 但
also to develop a more economical approach to CO2 capture for conventional coal-
fueled electric generating plants. This objective is the focus of Powerspan today,
but the road to this destination was anything but direct.
WHAT MAKES CO2 CAPTURE SO DIFFICULT?
It’s hard to get your mind around the enormity of the task of CO2 capture without
some idea of the scale of a pulverized coal-fired electricity plant. A typical existing
PC plant produces 600 megawatts (MW) of electricity at 35% thermal efficiency,
while a new, state-of-the-art, supercritical PC plant (SCPC) would operate at near
40% efficiency. A supercritical plant would normally use between 200 和 300 吨
of coal per hour, with flue gas flow resulting from coal combustion between 2,500
到 3,000 tons per hour, 或者 1.5 到 1.8 million cubic feet per minute. To give some
看法, the cross section of the ductwork carrying flue gas is nominally 15 X
30 feet and carries flue gas flowing at approximately 45 miles per hour. 其他
indication of scale is that the flue gas flow of a PC plant is roughly 20,000 次
greater than the exhaust from a typical automobile.
The flue gas from a PC plant contains from 12% 到 15% 二氧化碳, with the balance
mostly nitrogen, 水, oxygen, and small concentrations of pollutants such as
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Taking Out the CO2
Approaches for Capturing CO2
The favored approach for capturing CO2 from PC plants is thermal swing
absorption, in which the flue gas makes contact with a solution that has an affin-
ity for CO2 and therefore absorbs the CO2. Then that CO2-rich liquid solution
is taken away from the flue gas and heated, driving out the CO2. 下一个, the heat-
ed solution is cooled back to flue gas temperature and returned so it can absorb
additional CO2. 最后, the CO2 gas released from the heated solution is puri-
fied and compressed for transport and sequestration.
The cost of thermal swing absorption depends on several factors; the three
most important are the speed with which the CO2 is absorbed into solution, 这
amount of CO2 absorbed into the solution (IE。, the capacity), and the amount
of energy required to drive the CO2 out of solution. The speed of absorption is
important to minimize the size of the tower used to contact the solution with
flue gas (大约 70 feet in diameter and 150 feet tall for a 600 MW plant).
It is vital to increase the amount of CO2 absorbed into the solution and mini-
mize the energy needed to release CO2 from the solution, as that energy would
otherwise go toward producing electricity.
Powerspan’s process utilizes ammonia in the CO2 absorbing solution.
Ammonia provides several benefits, including a high rate of CO2 absorption, A
high capacity for absorbing CO2 into the solution, and a low energy requirement
for releasing CO2 from the solution. These benefits provide cost advantages.
第一的, a high absorption rate minimizes the size of the equipment needed for CO2
capture and the energy costs associated with moving large amounts of flue gas
and liquid through that equipment. 第二, because it can absorb more CO2
and needs less energy to release CO2 from the solution, ammonia reduces the
heat requirements to approximately of half what is needed in conventional
amine-based capture solutions.
nitrogen oxides and sulfur oxides. The challenge of CO2 capture is to economical-
ly remove and recover a large percentage (IE。, 90%) of the CO2. 那是, 我们需要
to reduce the CO2 concentration to around 1% in a large gas stream moving at a
substantial rate, then recover the removed CO2 for sequestration. And since CO2 is
not a very reactive or soluble molecule, its capture becomes even more challeng-
英.
今天, most efforts to develop CO2 capture are focused on thermal swing
absorption, which has been used in the oil and gas industry to reduce CO2 concen-
trations in natural gas streams. The most popular solvents have been amine based;
they offer rapid absorption of CO2, but require great amounts of energy and the
solvents degrade in the flue gas. Powerspan has focused on developing new sol-
vents that retain the rate and capacity advantages of amines, but reduce the ener-
gy costs and solvent losses.
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Frank Alix
数字 1. Power Plant with Integrated ECO-SO2 and ECO2 System Installed.
OVERCOMING TECHNICAL CHALLENGES
At this point, our ECO2 process is pretty well defined, but we faced several obsta-
cles along the way. Our major technical challenge was to identify a CO2 scrubbing
solution and process conditions that maintained the benefits of ammonia in solu-
的, did not overwhelm our ability to control the release of ammonia vapor to the
flue gas, and did not produce a corrosive scrubbing solution as a result of the high
concentrations of ammonia and CO2. A secondary challenge was to develop a
scheme for releasing the captured CO2 from the solution while minimizing the
heat input and the amount of gas processing needed to recover ammonia and
water from the CO2 gas stream.
我们的 10 years of experience using ammonia for sulfur dioxide (二氧化硫) capture in
our ECO process enabled us to identify the process conditions where we could
control the ammonia vapor release from CO2 capture by integrating the process
with the sulfur dioxide removal process. Early patents for SO2 removal using
ammonia required that the pH be controlled low enough to minimize the forma-
tion of ammonia vapor, which could limit the efficiency of the SO2 capture.
Powerspan’s innovation was to increase the pH to maximize the SO2 capture effi-
ciency, and then devise a means for controlling ammonia vapor, which earlier
patents had considered too difficult or expensive. Our resulting expertise in con-
trolling ammonia vapor would become an important part of our CO2 capture
过程. Ammonia is a volatile compound and its vapor is released when the CO2-
absorbing solution is brought into contact with flue gas. We choose process condi-
tions that will minimize the ammonia release, but some release is unavoidable and
we need a way to capture the ammonia to keep it from escaping into the environ-
蒙特. Our process integrates CO2 capture with the removal of sulfur dioxide,
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Taking Out the CO2
which is also present in coal-combustion flue gas and must be removed before we
capture CO2.
In our ECO process, sulfur dioxide is removed through absorption into an
ammonia-water-sulfate solution, forming ammonium sulfate. When SO2 is
absorbed, the pH of the solution drops and more ammonia is needed to sustain the
过程. Rather than directly adding ammonia into the solution to raise the pH for
additional SO2 removal, in this process the low-pH solution makes contact with
the flue gas exiting the CO2 capture process that contains ammonia vapor (看
数字 1). The low-pH solution captures the ammonia vapor, removing it from the
flue gas while increasing the pH of the solution so it can remove more sulfur diox-
ide. This integration between the processes that capture SO2 and CO2 allows us to
control ammonia vapor cost effectively and avoids the production of waste streams
that require further processing.
Once we had established the basic process approach, we conducted extensive
laboratory testing to identify and optimize the composition of the solution, 和
the conditions for capturing CO2 and releasing it from the solution. As part of the
testing, we developed data on physical properties, including information on the
vapor-liquid equilibrium and the reaction rate data we needed to establish the
requirements for contacting flue gas with the scrubbing solution. We built, 和
rebuilt, several test beds as we proceeded with the laboratory testing and gathered
process information.
An equally important effort in the experimental work was developing sam-
pling procedures and analytical techniques for accurately measuring the composi-
tions of the scrubbing solutions, the treated flue gas, and the CO2 product gas. 我们
found that the available measurement equipment and techniques were inaccurate
and inadequate, so we developed our own procedures and techniques to measure
the compounds responsible for CO2 capture, ammonium carbonate and bicarbon-
吃, as well as undesirable compounds such as ammonium carbamate, and impu-
rities that exist in and are picked up by the scrubbing solution when it makes con-
tact with flue gas. This development work required several man-years of effort and
included the testing and rejection of multiple measurement techniques, 或者, 在
也就是说, a lot of failure.
Throughout the research and development work, we kept our focus on pro-
ducing a process that could be deployed in commercial power plants using avail-
able commercial equipment and construction techniques, and that could be con-
trolled using measurement equipment that can survive in the power plant environ-
蒙特. Our initial pilot test results indicate that we are very close to achieving these
目标.
Overcoming the various technical barriers to CO2 capture at conventional PC
plants required the collaborative efforts of a strong, experienced, and cohesive
team. The factors that went into building our company and the team behind it are
as important as the evolution of the technology itself, and a story worth telling.
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Frank Alix
HUMBLE BEGINNINGS
After obtaining a degree in nuclear engineering from the University of
Massachusetts at Lowell in 1979, I began my career building and testing nuclear
submarines at Electric Boat in Groton, 康涅狄格州, then moved to work on the
maintenance and refueling of nuclear submarines at the Portsmouth Naval
Shipyard in Kittery, Maine. 20世纪90年代初, after the end of the Cold War, 这
我们. Navy began to downsize the nuclear fleet, and what started as an exciting
career path at the forefront of technology innovation moved into a slow decline. 在
1991, hoping to find an alternative career path, I entered the executive MBA pro-
gram at the University of New Hampshire (UNH).
Early in my MBA studies, I had the good fortune to meet Bill Wetzel, who was
my financial accounting professor. Bill had founded the Center for Venture
Research at UNH, where he pioneered research into the role of “angels,” or self-
制成, high-net-worth individuals who provide seed capital and street smarts to
the early-stage ventures that drive innovation and economic growth. Bill’s passion
for early-stage venture formation ignited a fire in me.
I decided to get directly involved in facilitating angel investments in new ven-
特雷斯. After a year of working diligently at this task as a “second job,” I found that
angel investors and entrepreneurs are generally not looking for a middleman to
facilitate the venture process, particularly one with no experience. Despite my lack
of success at this venture and the admonition of several advisors to “not give up
my day job,” I decided the next best thing to facilitating venture formation would
be to start my own venture. 所以, 和 $10,000 of personal funds and a great deal of optimism, I founded Zero Emissions Technology in 1994 along with Ed Neister, a physicist, and Nat Johnson, an electrical engineer. This company would eventually become Powerspan. I had met Ed through a friend of Bill Wetzel and he was looking for an angel investor. He and Nat had come up with an innovative electrical filter for the power supplies of electrostatic precipitators (ESPs), which they called an “Arc Snubber.” ESPs were being used by over 90% of PC plants to remove smoke particles from the flue gas. An ESP operates by slowing down the flow of flue gas and passing it between large grounded plates with high-voltage electrodes suspended in the cen- 特尔. The high-voltage electrodes charge the smoke particles and set up an electric field to attract them to the plates, which remove them from the gas stream. Our innovation was to filter the high-voltage power supply to remove high-frequency noise and reduce sparking; because this improved the characteristics of the electric field, it made the ESP collection more efficient. Ed had convinced Public Service of New Hampshire to give the Arc Snubber filter a try on its local PC plant, and on the strength of this $50,000 命令, I decid-
ed to jump on board, but kept my day job for the time being. The initial Arc
Snubber modification was successful, which led to a second job, and finally to our
first outside investment by a real angel investor, Mort Goulder. Mort had founded
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Taking Out the CO2
a local angel investing group called the Breakfast Club, named after the breakfast
meetings his group held at the Nashua Country Club to grill entrepreneurs and
make its investment decisions. Mort was a 1942 MIT graduate with a degree in
Applied Physics. He was one of the engineering managers who left Raytheon in
1951 to form Sanders Associates, where he was Director and Vice President for 22
年, growing the business to over $1 billion in annual sales. After our first meeting, Mort decided to invest $50,000 and joined our board
of directors. He didn’t perform any due diligence, other than asking questions to
see if we knew what we were talking about. He trusted us. The deal was document-
ed on a single page, part typewritten, part in his handwriting. Mort had made a lot
of money as an entrepreneur and then spent the last 30 years of his life helping
“give others a shot,” as he would say. He definitely saw angel investing as part
投资, part philanthropy; lucky for us, because what we were doing probably
would not have held up under the intense scrutiny of a disciplined investment
评估.
Mort’s investment led to more angel investment and helped us grow the busi-
ness to $2 到 $3 million in annual sales and achieve profitability. 然而, after a
few years, we recognized that the Arc Snubber business was limited, and we would
have to expand our product line if we wanted to build a meaningful company. 我们
were faced with the reality that we needed to “go big or go home.”
BIGGER IDEAS REQUIRE VENTURE CAPITAL:
WHAT DOESN’T KILL YOU MAKES YOU STRONGER
We thus began a series of development initiatives with the goal of expanding our
proprietary product line in the air pollution control business using different gas-
processing techniques. We initially looked to expand further into ESP performance
enhancement by developing a flue gas conditioning system based on sulfur triox-
ide (SO3) injection. SO3 injection had been shown to improve ESP performance in
plants burning low-sulfur coal, and the two companies that were selling commer-
cial SO3 injection systems had done quite well in the market. Our particular inno-
vation was to create SO3 in situ from SO2 in the flue gas stream, using a non-ther-
mal plasma oxidation device. We called this product the “SOx Converter.”
In order to fund our new R&D initiative, it was clear we would need venture
capital because our existing products were not sufficiently profitable. We turned to
Zero Stage Capital of Cambridge, 马萨诸塞州, where I had had the good fortune
to work part time over the two previous years while I had also been part-time CEO
of Zero Emissions Technology. Based on our initial success with the Arc Snubber,
and a personal relationship that I had developed with Gordon Baty, a Zero Stage
founder, we were able to raise our first million dollars of venture capital.
然而, we were never successful in persuading any potential customers to
buy our SOx Converter, because they considered our approach too risky—a refrain
we would hear again and again from prospective utility customers. But that didn’t
stop us. 反而, we saw the potential for our non-thermal plasma oxidation device
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to oxidize nitrogen oxides (氮氧化物) as well as SO2, which would facilitate their down-
stream capture in an ESP or scrubber. This provided the opportunity to treat flue
gas to remove multiple pollutants in a completely unique and innovative way:
when nitrogen and sulfur compounds in flue gas are converted to higher oxides,
they form aerosols that can be captured in particulate collection equipment. 我们的
approach was to remove several gaseous pollutants in the same control device by
first converting them to aerosols. Thus was born our multi-pollutant control tech-
科学, Electro-Catalytic Oxidation, or ECO.
The ECO story would have been just another great idea with no commercial
future if not for the interest of Ohio Edison in Akron, 俄亥俄州 (later named
FirstEnergy). Ohio Edison had a reputation for technology leadership as one of the
first U.S. utilities to deploy SO2 scrubbers on its Bruce Mansfield Plant in
宾夕法尼亚州. People there had also pilot-tested a number of unique air pollution
control technologies and were intrigued by the potential of ECO. Two of their
principal pollution control engineers, Dale Kanary and Morgan Jones, visited our
lab test facility and became believers. Their CEO at the time, Pete Burg, met with
us and was persuaded to invest, committing $5 million to fund ECO pilot testing at their R.E. Burger Plant near Shadyside, 俄亥俄州. The ECO pilot test program did not go well initially, as most of the equipment we designed for this application was not sufficiently robust. That’s a polite way of saying our plasma power supplies blew up and our plasma reactor bodies melted, but fortunately no one was hurt. 然而, we were able to “make a lot of mistakes fast,” which became something of a mantra for us, and we eventually modified the pilot system to meet our performance objectives at just about the time we ran out of money. This resulted in the company’s first layoff and what we now refer to as a “near death experience,” which is common among venture-backed companies. Inventors and company founders are by necessity quite optimistic and in some cases even naïve. We certainly were both at the start. But R&D is difficult to sched- ule and venture investors have limited patience. And therein lies the structural con- flict that weeds out the weak and makes the survivors stronger. If we had known how hard this would be at the beginning, it’s unlikely any one of us would have undertaken the journey. But once you start down the path, you end up doing everything possible not to fail. In late 1999, when the emerging energy technology market was experiencing great investor interest (some call it a “bubble”), we were fortunate to catch the attention of Jeff Miller, one of the managing partners of the Beacon Group. He was one of the few in the energy investing space who still believed in the future of coal, and he made a bet on Powerspan as an emerging leader in the pollution control technology market for coal-fired plants. It helped that FirstEnergy and American Electric Power, two large potential customers, joined in the $26 million investment
round. The purpose of the investment was to build a commercial demonstration
facility for our ECO technology at FirstEnergy’s Eastlake Plant. But once again, 这
didn’t work out as we had planned.
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Taking Out the CO2
桌子 1. Venture Capital Funding Timeline
After we had spent a good deal of money on design work for the ECO com-
mercial demonstration unit (CDU), we realized that our pilot design was not read-
ily adaptable to commercial-scale equipment. At about the same time, FirstEnergy
reached an agreement to sell the Eastlake Plant, so we had to move the project.
再次, we had to move fast to come up with a new design that we could show
was commercially viable, along with a new location to build the CDU. 幸运的是,
we were able to accomplish both at just about the time we ran out of money again,
which led to layoffs and near death experience number two.
The next funding round was a “down round,” which means the price per share
was lower than the price in the previous round. These are very unpleasant things.
Completing this round would not have been possible but for the continued com-
mitment of FirstEnergy, along with NGEN Partners, a new investor led by Steve
招架. This money was sufficient to build the ECO commercial demonstration unit
and largely achieve the performance results we had promised. 然而, this did
not immediately lead to commercial success.
Our next challenge was to overcome the risk aversion of this market. 有
good reasons why power plant owners are so cautious. The power industry is the
most capital-intensive business in the world, as measured by the ratio of invested
capital to sales. Power companies only make money when their costly plants are
running and meeting all requirements for air emissions. So in order to sell a new
air pollution control technology, you not only have to be much better and cheap-
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Frank Alix
er than the competitors; the buyers also need a good reason to take on the technol-
ogy risk. Providing that reason was much harder than we anticipated. That brings
us to CO2 capture.
GOOD FORTUNE PLAYS A ROLE
One myth I have come to reject is that of the great company founder or CEO who
must have had a brilliant plan to create an amazing company, and then brought it
forth with tremendous vision, courage, 领导, tenacity, ETC. That’s not how it
really happens. Individual leadership is important, but the make-up and contribu-
tions of the whole team are far more critical to success. Having a plan is important,
but the objectivity and flexibility to adjust the plan quickly matters more. 最后,
circumstances that are completely out of your control play such a critical role in
成功. When you look at it all objectively, the reality is quite humbling, compared
to the conventional view of CEO as hero in the case of success, or loser in the case
of failure.
So where have we experienced good fortune? In early 2004, 美国.
能源部 (DOE) National Energy Technology Laboratory contacted
us to discuss research they were doing on CO2 capture using ammonia. We were
the only company in the U.S. developing wet scrubbing technology using ammo-
nia as a reagent. They were wondering how we controlled the ammonia vapor and
asked to visit our demonstration plant. We agreed to share our knowledge as long
as they shared theirs. This meeting led to a cooperative research and development
协议 (CRADA) with the DOE to develop and commercialize their ammonia-
based CO2 capture technology; 之后, Powerspan acquired a license for the DOE
patent once it was issued. We named this new process ECO2.
With that, we embarked on a multi-year R&D effort to develop the ECO2
process in our labs. It would be four years before we were ready to build the ECO2
pilot test unit in Ohio. Although we believed that at some point limits on GHG
emissions would be imposed that would jumpstart the supplier market, 它会
be three years before we saw any meaningful movement on this front, despite peri-
odic attempts by key members of Congress to garner majority support for federal
climate legislation.
On April 2, 2007, 美国. Supreme Court made a landmark decision. It ruled
那, under the Clean Air Act, the EPA has the authority to regulate GHG emissions
from automobiles, and that the agency could not abdicate its authority to regulate
these emissions unless it could provide a scientific basis for refusing to do so.
Although the court did not require the agency to regulate GHG emissions, 这
agency would face legal action if it did not. At the time, observers generally agreed
that this decision marked the beginning of GHG regulation in the U.S.; apparent-
ly if Congress did not act, the EPA surely would.
所以, it would be difficult to observe the confluence of events that led Powerspan
to this moment and not feel fortunate. We thought we were way ahead of our time
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Taking Out the CO2
when we entered into the CRADA with DOE to develop CO2 capture technology.
Little did we know back then that we would be in exactly the right place at the right
时间, which is where we find ourselves today in the emerging market for commer-
cial CCS systems.
As the interest in CO2 capture technology grows, we find ourselves well posi-
tioned for a few important reasons. 第一的, this is one air pollution control technol-
ogy that no one has installed on a PC plant, so there are no entrenched competi-
tors or established technologies to overcome, which as we learned with ECO is no
small thing. 下一个, the skill set needed to bring a technology from the lab to com-
mercial scale is one we have developed and mastered over the last 15 年. To our
知识, none of our competitors has this skill set. 最后, the ECO system we
developed as an integrated, multi-pollutant control system ended up as the perfect
complement to an ammonia-based CO2 capture system, though we had no idea it
would become that when we started.
WHY POWERSPAN?
The rush to develop a cost-effective CO2 capture technology for coal-fired electric
plants has been compared to our nation’s effort to put a man on the moon in the
1960s. On the campaign trail, President Obama compared development of clean
coal technology to that famous effort: “This is America. We figured out how to get
a man on the moon in 10 年. You can’t tell me we can’t figure out how to burn
coal that we mine right here in the United States of America and make it work.”
Several large companies are involved in this effort, including G.E., Siemens,
and Alstom. The resources available to these companies for R&D total in the bil-
lions of dollars annually, with G.E. alone committing $1.5 billion annually to clean energy research. By comparison, Powerspan’s average annual engineering and R&D expense over the last five years was $6.5 百万, orders of magnitude less
than our competitors. So a reasonable question would be, with the tremendous
importance of CCS as a climate mitigation tool, and with the anticipated world-
wide CCS market of $1.3 到 $1.5 trillion from 2010 到 2050, how could a compa-
ny like Powerspan develop a leading technology position for post-combustion CO2
capture? There are some important reasons why, some perhaps more obvious than
其他的.
The first reason is that large companies generally make decisions based on con-
ventional wisdom, which is often wrong. The innovations they bring to market are
usually incremental improvements to existing product lines. Breakthrough inno-
vations require one to think outside of convention and take risks, acting in ways
that could threaten a profitable business line. As Clayton Christensen points out in
The Innovator’s Dilemma, the actions required to create disruptive technologies are
nearly impossible for the well-established company to undertake.
A good example of conventional wisdom gone awry was the early rush to
Integrated Gasification Combined Cycle (IGCC) power plants as the future of
coal-based electricity production in a climate-constrained world. IGCC plants
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Frank Alix
The Makings of a Team
In venture capital, there is a saying that you “bet the jockey, not the horse.” That
means that the assumptions one makes about how a specific technology or mar-
ket (i.e. horse) may evolve are invariably wrong. As the Nobel Prize winning
physicist Niels Bohr stated, “Prediction is very difficult, especially of the future.”
然而, the right team (IE。, jockey) will adapt to unexpected challenges and
find a way to succeed.
How did we build the right team? It started with connections we made
through the U.S. Naval Nuclear Propulsion Program (NNPP) and the University
of New Hampshire (UNH). Powerspan’s top technical leaders (Phil Boyle, Chris
McLarnon, Dave Bernier, and myself) all started our professional careers in the
NNPP, working together at Portsmouth Naval Shipyard through the 1980s and
1990s. The legendary Admiral Hyman Rickover, who founded the NNPP and
served in its leadership role for over 30 年, established a well-deserved repu-
tation for technical discipline. The program’s tough standards are ingrained in
participants at all levels, and the resulting culture of constant and sometimes
pointedly direct questioning, 具有挑战性的, and checking becomes second nature.
Having this common background and approach to technical work and problem
-solving has been a key to our technical success. It has also helped us stand up
well under the constant scrutiny of prospective customers and investors.
The UNH connection also facilitated building up the team. Our first direc-
tors of sales and manufacturing were MBA classmates of mine. Our Vice
President of Communications and Government Affairs, Stephanie Procopis, 曾是
an MBA student referred by Bill Wetzel, who started with Zero Emissions
Technology as our Director of Marketing. Our CFO, Lynn Friedel, was a gradu-
ate of Plymouth State College in New Hampshire and came to us from the
Breakfast Club (Mort Goulder). So the principal connections that brought the
team together were from the Naval Nuclear Program and the local business
school/angel investing network. What keeps the team together is harder to
understand.
produce electricity by first gasifying the coal and then running the synthesis gas
(syngas) through a combustion turbine.
Although coal gasification by itself is a well-established technology, 有
only three commercial-scale IGCC plants in the world, each with about 250 MW
容量, and the consensus is that these plants are more costly, less flexible, 和
less reliable than conventional pulverized coal (PC) 植物. 然而, despite these
drawbacks, conventional wisdom held that IGCC plants would be able to capture
CO2 more easily than PC plants, and therefore they would be the low-cost option
for coal-based electricity production when the cost of CO2 capture was included.
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All the members of the management team had been very successful in their
prior careers and had good employment opportunities outside the company. 我们
recently sat down as a team to answer the question of what has held us together
for so long. We recounted the occasions in our past when we had nearly run out
of money. Twice we had to withhold a portion of employees’ salaries while we
awaited new financing. It so happens that in both cases, we obtained financing
just before the end of the year and paid employees their back salary around
Christmas. So we nicknamed this event the Powerspan “Christmas Club” (在-
vival requires humor!). We also went through two substantial layoffs, a signifi-
cant down round in venture financing that nearly killed us, and even a some-
what hostile takeover attempt by a large energy company, during which the
board and management team split on the best path forward.
So what holds a team together through such turmoil when much safer and
more rational employment alternatives exist? For one, our common back-
grounds in the Naval Nuclear Program and UNH created a bond that went
beyond common employment. 下一个, as we had weathered the storms, we had
lost our false confidence based on ignorance or naiveté, and had gained real con-
fidence based on surviving another battle and learning from it.
Most of us had come from modest, blue-collar backgrounds and worked our
way through college, so the work ethic and commitment was deeply ingrained in
us all. I was the middle child of 13 (not a typo) and my father had a garage where
he repaired cars. I started working for him at age 12 and continued until I went
to college. I was never paid for it and was not encouraged to go to college. I just
wanted something different for myself. Most of the Powerspan management
team had similarly modest backgrounds, which led to a common drive to create
something better, and a work ethic that never allows you to quit. This motiva-
tion is apparent not only in our leadership, but throughout the organization,
and has enabled Powerspan to compete with, and in some cases surpass, 这
work of industry giants.
Because of this assumption, much of the early CCS research focus and funding was
directed toward IGCC.
然而, more recent studies have called this conclusion into doubt, as the full
cost of CO2 capture in IGCC plants becomes better known and companies like
Powerspan drive down the anticipated cost of CO2 capture from PC plants.
Another more obvious consideration is that over 99% of existing coal-based elec-
tricity production comes from conventional PC plants. These plants represent tril-
lions of dollars in asset value and could not be readily replaced. 所以, 从
the perspective of climate change mitigation, the primary need is for cost-effective
CO2 capture from PC plants, but it took conventional wisdom a few years to come
back around to this obvious point.
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Another reason for Powerspan’s leading position in this market is that for
几十年, the suppliers of air pollution control equipment have not been in the
technology development business. The basic technologies used to capture SO2 and
NOx from commercial PC plants—calcium-based scrubbing for SO2 and ammo-
nia-based selective catalytic reduction for NOx—were first developed and com-
mercialized in Europe and Japan over 30 几年前. The process engineering know-
how and R&D skills needed to develop such technologies have largely disappeared
from contemporary equipment suppliers. 今天, the market for air pollution con-
trol equipment is a commodity market dominated by large companies with very
little product differentiation.
By comparison, during all of the 15-plus years of Powerspan’s existence, 我们
have been in the product development business. As we moved to larger visions of
our product offering, particularly our ECO technology, which we designed as an
integrated system to compete directly with the best available control technologies
for capture of SO2, 氮氧化物, mercury (Hg), and particulate matter, we necessarily had
to develop critical skill sets in order to succeed. It is not easy to develop or acquire
these skills: (1) a disciplined approach to lab testing, measurement, and analysis;
(2) sophisticated process modeling, including the development of new models
based on proprietary empirical data; 和 (3) critical thinking skills, 包括
ability to find innovative solutions when the inevitable road blocks appeared. 我们
believe this skill set is unique in our industry, and we’ve been at it long enough to
become quite proficient, easily surpassing the well-known 10,000-hour rule for
mastering a profession (see Malcolm Gladwell’s Outliers: The Story of Success).
HOW IMPORTANT IS CCS?
The importance of CCS cannot be overemphasized with respect to climate change
减轻. The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) 估计
that CCS will be needed to supply at least 15%, and perhaps as much as 55%, 的
the GHG emission reductions needed to stabilize the climate over the next centu-
ry.11 According to the International Energy Agency (IEA), CCS is the only technol-
ogy that can control CO2 emissions from large-scale fossil fuel usage, and it will
need to provide at least 20% of the reductions in GHG emissions required to meet
the IPCC goal of cutting global emissions 50% 从 2005 levels by 2050.12
The IEA has put forth a scenario that explores the least costly solutions to
achieve the IPCC goal. Under this scenario, 经过 2050, 30% of all power will be gen-
erated by plants equipped with CCS.13 In order to achieve this ambitious goal, CCS
installations would be required in 55 fossil-fueled power plants every year between
2010 和 2050. 更远, this same IEA scenario without CCS would have the high-
est emissions and would also have an annual incremental cost of $1.28 trillion in 2050, A 71% increase over the base scenario with CCS.14 This underscores the importance of CCS in climate policies from the perspectives of reducing both costs and emissions. 158 创新 / fall 2009 从http下载的://direct.mit.edu/itgg/article-pdf/4/4/145/705368/itgg.2009.4.4.145.pdf by guest on 08 九月 2023 Taking Out the CO2 As an alternative, many see renewable energy as the most important climate mitigation tool. 然而, a recent study conducted for a large California public utility estimated the levelized cost of avoiding CO2, using solar power, 在 $230 每
吨, while the cost for avoiding CO2 using CCS was estimated at $59 到 $63 每
吨. 此外, renewable energy sources such as solar and wind power suffer
from regional resource limitations, interruptions in supply, and transmission con-
菌株.
Although no region has developed the comprehensive legal and regulatory
framework necessary to effectively guide CCS, last year the G8—an economic and
political organization consisting of Canada, 法国, 德国, 意大利, 日本, 俄罗斯,
the U.S., and the U.K.—endorsed the IEA recommendation that 20 大规模
CCS demonstration projects need to be committed by 2010, with broad deploy-
ment beginning in 2020.15 The IEA believes that up to $20 billion will be needed to fund these near-term CCS demonstrations. 最后, CCS is needed to help sustain our lowest-cost electricity supplies and move us toward energy independence, since approximately half of the electricity in the U.S. is generated from domestically sourced coal. According to the DOE’s Energy Information Administration (EIA), 36% of our CO2 emissions in 2006 came from coal consumption.16 Broadly deploying CCS with 90% capture efficien- cy could potentially reduce those emissions to 4% 或者 5%. EIA predicts that CCS will have to provide at least 30% of the CO2 emission reductions needed world- wide in order to stabilize GHG concentrations in the atmosphere. Since the trans- portation sector accounts for another 34% 我们. CO2 emissions,17 transforming this sector with electric vehicles powered by low-carbon electricity sources could reduce U.S. CO2 emissions by another 20% 到 30%. 所以, CCS could poten- tially provide over half of the emission reductions required to meet the nation’s goals for climate change mitigation. WHEN WILL CCS BECOME A COMMERCIAL REALITY? CCS technology will be commercially available soon, based on successful comple- tion of ongoing pilot-scale test programs. The term “commercially available” means that qualified vendors are willing to sell commercial-scale CCS equipment with industry-standard performance guarantees. 然而, despite broad recogni- tion of the pressing need for CCS technology, plant owners are not motivated to get large-scale CCS demonstrations up and running because they are very costly to build and operate, and the early projects carry considerable technology risk. It’s the classic chicken-and-egg scenario. Most plant owners do not want climate regula- tions to force CCS installation until the technology is commercially proven. But owners will not proceed with early CCS installations to prove out the technology in the absence of either regulations or financial incentives. 所以, the timing of when commercial CCS systems will begin operating depends on when the legal requirements, regulatory drivers, and financial incentives are established to moti- 创新 / fall 2009 159 从http下载的://direct.mit.edu/itgg/article-pdf/4/4/145/705368/itgg.2009.4.4.145.pdf by guest on 08 九月 2023 Frank Alix vate plant owners to proceed with the initial CCS installations. I discuss this issue in more detail later on. 现在, a limited number of CO2 capture pilot tests are being conducted at power plants worldwide to demonstrate ammonia-based, amine-based, and oxy- gen-fired technologies on a small scale. Pilot-scale testing of our ECO2 technology began in December 2008 at FirstEnergy’s Burger Plant in southeastern Ohio. The ECO2 pilot was designed to treat a 1-MW flue gas stream and produce 20 tons of CO2 per day. Testing to date has demonstrated over 90% CO2 capture efficiency, with energy use in the range of our estimates. Future testing is focused on increas- ing CO2 output and finalizing design parameters for our first commercial systems. The ECO2 pilot plant was built using the same type of equipment that we will use in commercial systems. 所以, successful operation of the pilot unit will confirm our design assumptions and cost estimates for large-scale CCS projects. Although commercial-scale projects still have some risk, that risk is manageable because the major equipment used in the ECO2 process—large absorbers, pumps, heat exchangers, and compressors—has all been used in other commercial appli- cations at the scale required for CCS. The advanced technology in ECO2 is inno- vative process chemistry. Commercial application of this unique technology involves no special challenges and therefore is highly likely to succeed. Our experience in the emerging market for commercial-scale CCS projects supports our optimism. 在 2007, Basin Electric Power Cooperative conducted a competitive solicitation for a post-combustion CO2 capture technology to retrofit its Antelope Valley Station, a coal-fired power plant located adjacent to its Great Plains Synfuels Plant in Beulah, North Dakota. The synfuels plant currently hosts the largest CCS project in the world; it annually captures three million tons of CO2, which it sells for enhanced oil recovery (EOR) in the Weyburn fields of Saskatchewan. The Antelope Valley project will install CO2 capture equipment on a 120-MW flue gas slipstream taken from a 450-MW unit. Basin Electric has tar- geted a 90% CO2 capture efficiency rate in order to provide an additional one mil- lion tons of CO2 annually for EOR. Six of the leading vendors of CO2 capture tech- nology responded to the Antelope Valley solicitation, and after a detailed evalua- 的, Basin Electric selected Powerspan. This commercial CCS project is scheduled to start up in 2012. Since Powerspan was selected for the Antelope Valley project, a feasibility study has confirmed that there are no technical limitations to deploying ECO2 at the plant. The study estimated ECO2 costs of less than $40 per ton for 90% CO2 cap-
ture and compression (in current dollars, 和 +/- 30% 准确性). A similar study
of ECO2 recently conducted for a new 760-MW supercritical pulverized coal plant
estimates CO2 capture costs of under $30 每吨, including compression. A third engineering study focused on the scaling risk of ECO2 determined that the ECO2 pilot plant will provide enough design information so we can confidently build commercial-scale systems up to 760 MW, indicating that the ECO2 technology scaling risk is manageable. Independent engineering firms led the feasibility, 成本, 160 创新 / fall 2009 从http下载的://direct.mit.edu/itgg/article-pdf/4/4/145/705368/itgg.2009.4.4.145.pdf by guest on 08 九月 2023 Taking Out the CO2 and scaling studies for our prospective customers. As a sign of our confidence in the commercial deployment of ECO2 systems, we will back our installations with industry-standard performance guarantees. 全世界, large-scale CCS demonstration activity is concentrated in the European Union, 澳大利亚, 加拿大, and the U.S. In the European Union, the European Parliament has approved a demonstration program of 10 到 12 大的- scale CCS projects to be operational by 2015 in order to kick-start its urgent, 宽的- scale deployment.’ Three hundred million European Union Allowances (EUAs) have been authorized to fund this initiative with an anticipated value of $6 到 10
十亿.
In April 2008, the State Government of Victoria, 澳大利亚, announced a round
of funding of AUD$182 million, of which AUD$110 million is available to support
large-scale CCS demonstration projects. In December 2008, it issued a solicitation
for proposals to be submitted by the end of August 2009. Selections are to be made
早在 2010 and demonstrations are to be completed in the 2014-2015 timeframe.
In Canada, the provinces of Saskatchewan and Alberta are leading the effort to
demonstrate CCS. SaskPower is currently evaluating three finalists, 其中
Powerspan is one, for a 140 MW CCS project (1.2 million tons of CO2 capture
每年) at its Boundary Dam Power Station in Saskatchewan. The final technol-
ogy selection is scheduled for the end of 2009, with construction starting in 2011.
The captured CO2 will be used for enhanced oil recovery operations. Canada’s fed-
eral government previously announced $240 million in support for this project. In July 2008, the government of Alberta announced a $2 billion fund to accel-
erate the development of the province’s first large-scale, commercial CCS projects,
and in February 2009, legislation was passed that provides the legal authority to
administer the $2 billion in provincial funding. The Carbon Capture and Storage Funding Act will enable the province to administer funding to support three to five large-scale CCS projects. The selected projects were announced in July 2009; the government expects that by 2015 the projects will be reducing CO2 emissions by five million tons each year. In the U.S., a limited number of large-scale CCS projects have been announced, including the Basin Electric project at Antelope Valley in North Dakota. The Troubled Assets Relief Program (TARP) bill, signed into U.S. law on October 3, 2008, contained provisions for investment tax credits and production tax credits for the capture and storage of CO2. The American Recovery and Reinvestment Act (ARRA), signed into law on February 17, 2009, also includes unprecedented funding of $3.4 billion for CCS. While the rules for applying for
我们. government CCS funds continue to be promulgated, these steps are encour-
老化.
On March 30, 2009, Representative Henry Waxman, Chairman of the U.S.
House of Representatives Energy and Commerce Committee introduced a com-
prehensive climate bill, the American Clean Energy and Security Act of 2009
(ACES, 人力资源. 2454). On May 21, the committee approved the bill, and on June 26,
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the House passed it by a vote of 219 到 212. The bill includes a greenhouse gas
emissions cap-and-trade program to reduce emissions by 83% 从 2005 levels by
2050. The bill also contains standards for renewable electricity and energy efficien-
赛, along with provisions for clean transportation. At the projected allowance
价格, ACES will invest over $190 billion through 2025 in clean energy and ener- gy efficiency, $60 billion of which would be invested in carbon capture and seques-
tration technologies. Of that $60 十亿, $10 billion would be generated through a
small “wires charge” on electricity generated from fossil fuels. 后 2025, 5% 的
allowances would be devoted to carbon capture and sequestration. The bill also
creates a new carbon dioxide emissions performance standard for coal-based
power plants.
WHAT IS NEEDED TO GET CCS DEPLOYED COMMERCIALLY?
CCS installations are expensive. In some regions, the use of captured CO2 in
enhanced oil-recovery operations offers opportunities to offset a portion of the
成本, but a power plant owner would still face a significant shortfall in covering
the cost of this investment. Without a high enough price on carbon or adequate
early incentives to cover the cost of projects, power plant owners cannot assume
the financial risk of large-scale CCS demonstrations. 所以, strong govern-
ment action is needed to ensure timely deployment of CCS technology to support
climate change mitigation goals. Government actions should focus on three areas:
(1) a strong, market-based cap on GHG emissions; (2) a CO2 emission perform-
ance standard for new coal-based power plants; 和 (3) incentives for early deploy-
ment of commercial-scale CCS systems. Incentives are needed to ensure the early
deployment of CCS because CO2 capture technology is not yet commercially
proven, and early CO2 prices will not be high enough to offset CCS costs. Six
aspects are most critical to the success of a CCS incentive program.
Competitive Award
CCS incentives should be awarded competitively based on a reverse auction
(incentives awarded to the lowest-cost bidders per ton of CO2 captured and
sequestered) because this would preserve the primary objective of a cap-and-trade
程序, which is to minimize the cost of compliance, while also providing a mar-
ket signal on the real costs for early CCS installations. Knowing the actual costs for
CCS is extremely important to plant owners, technology developers, investors, 和
regulators as they evaluate future investment and regulatory decisions.
Funding the lowest-cost CCS projects will also favor those associated with
enhanced oil recovery, since those projects pay for the CO2 and avoid the added
cost of geological sequestration. This will have the additional benefit of producing
more domestic oil and reducing oil imports. It will also produce more jobs and the
tax revenue associated with domestic oil extraction and sales.
In promoting early deployment of CCS through financial incentives, 美国.
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could assume a leading position in this critical technology sector and create a
thriving, high-tech export business, and the quality jobs that come with it.
然而, to make such an outcome likely, CCS incentives will have to be awarded
competitively; otherwise we could not ensure that the lowest-cost technologies
would be awarded incentives, and no clear signal would be sent on technology
winners or actual CCS pricing.
Competitively awarding CCS incentives is consistent with the way that renew-
able portfolio standards are normally administered. Market participants—power
suppliers, regulated distribution companies, and state regulators—understand this
过程. States set a standard for the amount and type of renewable energy desired,
and the potential suppliers respond to competitive solicitations to provide the
renewable energy. The federal government could effectively implement the same
type of approach for CCS projects and associated incentive awards.
Long-Term Price Certainty
CCS incentives must provide long-term price certainty and factor in the value of
CO2 emissions allowances, because CCS projects will likely be financed over 15 到
30 年. Current climate legislation proposals award CCS incentives over a fixed
一段的时间 (IE。, 10 年) that is too short to finance most projects.
CCS incentives would be most economical for the government if they factored
in the increasing value of CO2 emission allowances over time. As the value of these
allowances rises over time, less government funding will be needed to support the
CCS incentives. Current climate legislation proposals do not account for the added
value of CO2 emission allowances created by the CCS project, or for the fact that
emission allowance values would be increasing over time. This approach creates a
potential windfall profit opportunity for the early CCS adopters and unnecessari-
ly increases the cost of CCS incentives to the government.
CCS Project Size
The primary objective of CCS incentives is to demonstrate CCS technology at
commercial scale to accelerate market acceptance and deployment. In order to
demonstrate CCS as commercially viable, minimum project size criteria should be
已确立的. Experts such as those at MIT and the DOE have established a mini-
mum size of one million tons of CO2 per year for CCS projects to be considered
“commercial scale.”18 Once the minimum CCS project size is met, preference
should be given to larger projects.
CO2 Capture Rate
In order to meet the objective of stabilizing GHG concentrations in the atmos-
phere, large stationary CO2 sources will need to capture and sequester a high per-
centage of their CO2 emissions (IE。, greater than 90%). 所以, CCS incentives
should establish a minimum standard for CO2 capture and should favor projects
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that capture higher percentages of CO2. Available technology from leading suppli-
ers has shown the ability to capture 90% 二氧化碳. 所以, establishing a minimum
CO2 capture rate as high as 80% 到 90% is technically feasible and commercially
acceptable.
CCS projects will normally require at least four years to implement. An incen-
tive program that encourages CCS to be demonstrated in sequential steps (例如,
50%, 然后 80%) would unnecessarily delay deployment of the high-capture-rate
CCS projects needed to combat climate change; it would also increase the cost of
CCS incentives to the government.
Amount of CCS Incentives
The amount of CCS incentives in tons of CO2 should be based on the need to
demonstrate CCS at commercial scale in a number of different configurations for
both plant type and geological storage type. All large industrial sources of CO2
should be considered equally. 然而, the government should not try to pick
technology winners and losers. The primary driver in CCS incentive awards should
be the lowest cost per ton, with at least three different CO2 capture technologies
selected to promote technology diversity. This would facilitate the creation of a
competitive supplier market of the most cost-effective technologies.
The amount of CCS incentives should be established to avoid early market
responses to a CO2 emission cap, such as a rush to gas-fired power generation,
which may not be sustainable after CCS is commercially proven and CO2
allowance prices rise to a level where CCS would be deployed without incentives.
CCS incentives should also be spread out so that multiple CCS projects are award-
ed each year for at least five years, given the current fast pace of technology evolu-
的; the CCS incentive program should take advantage of and benefit from this
rapid pace of improvement.
Sequestration Issues
Several sequestration issues need to be addressed, such as legal and permitting
requirements for geological sequestration, including standards for site selection
and requirements for measurement, 监控, and verification. Although sever-
al states have been active in this area, a strong and consistent national approach
would be beneficial. Among the issues to be addressed should be long-term liabil-
ity for sequestered CO2.
It is also important to create incentives for constructing CO2 pipelines at opti-
mum scale. CO2 pipelines benefit from economies of scale up to about 24 inches
in diameter. This size would provide CO2 capacity for three to four large-scale CCS
项目 (nominally about 15 million tons per year; equivalent to about 2,000-MW
capacity at 90% CO2 capture). Therefore preference should be given to CCS proj-
ects that create extra capacity by constructing pipelines or other infrastructure that
could be used by multiple projects.
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SUMMARY
Climate change is a very real threat to our world. But carbon capture and storage
(CCS), possibly the most important tool for climate change mitigation, is not in
commercial operation on any coal-fired electricity plant. Subject to successful
completion of ongoing pilot scale test programs, technology suppliers like
Powerspan will be ready to provide needed equipment to implement CCS at com-
mercial scale. CO2 transport and storage needs further research, demonstration,
and regulation, but over 20 years of experience in the U.S. with CO2-based
enhanced oil recovery, which currently injects over 40 million tons of CO2 per year
into depleted oil fields, has demonstrated that CO2 transport and storage can be
accomplished safely.
Independent studies show that early commercial installations of CO2 capture
technology are likely to succeed. The cost of widespread deployment of CCS tech-
nologies appears manageable, particularly when compared to the cost of other
low-carbon electricity solutions. And once we gain commercial CCS experience,
future costs will no doubt decrease substantially.
然而, initial CCS installations will be expensive and the technology still
carries substantial commercial risk. Without a price on carbon and adequate
incentives to cover the cost of early CCS projects, power plant owners will be
unable to assume the financial risk of building and operating large-scale CCS
demonstrations. 所以, strong government action is needed to ensure timely
deployment of CCS technology to support climate change mitigation goals.
A benefit of early CCS deployment will be creation of jobs and economic
生长. CCS projects require three to four years to implement and create signifi-
cant economic activity over their duration. 例如, a single CCS project
would cost between $250 million and $750 million in capital expense and create
最多 500 jobs at its peak, with the majority of materials and labor sourced domes-
抽搐地. But the government would not have to pay for the CCS incentive program
until the project is completed and CO2 sequestration begins. 此外, 经过
adding incentivizes to the early deployment of CCS, 美国. can assume a leading
position in this critical sector and create a thriving, high-tech export business, 和
the quality jobs that come with it.
The most important reason to promote early deployment of CCS is that post-
combustion CO2 capture technologies will preserve the huge investment in exist-
ing coal-fired power plants and allow us to effectively use abundant low-cost coal
reserves in the U.S. and developing nations, even in a climate-constrained world.
If we do not succeed in commercializing CCS technology in the near term, it will
be difficult for the world to meet its long-term goals for climate change mitigation.
1. 国际能源署 (IEA), Key World Energy Statistics (巴黎: Stedi Media, 2008), 6.
2. IEA, Key World Energy Statistics, 44.
3. 能源信息管理局 (EIA), Electric Power Monthly August 2009, DOE/EIA-0226
(2009/08) (华盛顿, 直流: EIA, 2009), 13.
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4. The World Coal Institute, Coal Facts 2008 (伦敦: WCI, 2008), 2.
5. EIA, Electric Power Annual, DOE/EIA-0348(2007) (华盛顿: EIA, 2009), 48.
6. 麻省理工学院 (和), The Future of Coal: Options for a Carbon-
Constrained World. 剑桥, 嘛: 和, 2007,
http://web.mit.edu/coal/The_Future_of_Coal.pdf (p. X).
7. 政府间气候变化专门委员会 (IPCC), IPCC Special Report on Carbon Dioxide
Capture and Storage. Prepared by Working Group III of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate
改变, 编辑. 乙. Metz, 氧. 戴维森, H.C. de Coninck, 中号. Loos, 和L. A. 迈耶 (剑桥, 英国
and New York: 剑桥大学出版社, 2005), 12.
8. The MIT study, The Future of Coal, provides capture and storage data for the world’s three large-
scale CCS projects: Sleipner (Norway), Weyburn (加拿大), and In Salah (阿尔及利亚). 还, 数据来自
Basin Electric Power Cooperative’s 2007 Annual Report supports an increase in Weyburn’s CCS
figure to three million tons of CO2 per year.
9. IPCC, Special Report, 12.
10. Electric Power Research Institute (EPRI), Frequently Asked Questions on CO2 Capture and
Storage (帕洛阿尔托: EPRI, 2007).
11. IPCC, Special Report, 12.
12. IEA, CO2 Capture and Storage: A Key Carbon Abatement Option (巴黎: IEA, 2008), 15.
13. IEA, 能源技术观点 (巴黎: IEA, 2008), 134.
14. IEA, 能源技术观点, 90.
15. IEA, CO2 Capture and Storage, 15.
16. EIA, Emissions of Greenhouse Gases in the United States 2007, DOE/EIA-0573(2007)(华盛顿:
EIA, 2008), 13.
17. EIA, Emissions of Greenhouse Gases, 14.
18. 和, The Future of Coal, 53.
166
创新 / fall 2009
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