POWER June 2015 - 84

COMMENTARY
10 Million Tons of CO2
Christopher A. Smith
O
ur country's energy landscape is rapidly changing. For the
first time in decades we're producing more barrels of oil
in the United States than we import from other countries,
thanks in part to shale oil production. Newly developed natural
gas resources have enabled the U.S. to begin transitioning from
a modest net importer of natural gas to a net exporter by 2017.
Increased use of natural gas in the power sector has helped
reduce carbon dioxide (CO2
) emissions from electricity generation
by more than 200 million metric tons since 2000. And when
it comes to renewables, the reduced cost of photovoltaic solar
is driving new projects-solar provided 32% of new domestic
power generation capacity in 2014.
This is all good news for America's energy security in a carbonconstrained
future. But we still have work to do. We need to
push the envelope to develop renewable energy sources, and
the Department of Energy (DOE) is working hard at that task. At
the same time, to advance our goals of environmental sustainability,
energy security, and economic competitiveness, we will
need all of our domestic energy sources. That's why we need to
continue refining technologies to reduce the carbon intensity
of coal-fired power generation-which provides nearly 40% of
our electricity-by capturing and storing the CO2
these plants
would otherwise emit. So for the past decade, the DOE has been
partnering with industry, academia, and state governments to
demonstrate the readiness of carbon capture and sequestration
(CCS) technologies.
CCS Milestones
CCS is not a technology that may work in some distant future-
it's working now. And there's no better proof than this: In April,
DOE-funded projects surpassed 10 million metric tons of CO2
stored. That's the equivalent of taking more than 2 million passenger
vehicles off the nation's roads for one year.
While we're safely and permanently storing large quantities of
CO2 underground, we're also working on beneficial CO2
utilization.
Enhanced oil recovery (EOR)-storing CO2 in depleted oil fields
into useful products. For
to produce incremental barrels of oil-is one important pathway.
We're also exploring ways to convert CO2
instance, Skyonic's " Skymine " project began operations last year
to convert CO2
from a cement plant into commercial products like
baking soda and hydrochloric acid.
Projects like these are providing valuable information needed
to commercially deploy CCS, and not just for coal and industrial
facilities; we're also looking to leverage existing research and
development (R&D) to apply CCS to natural gas-based systems.
Any transformational endeavor will face difficulties, and the
drive to commercialize CCS is no exception. In February, the DOE
withdrew federal support for the FutureGen 2.0 project in Illinois
because it was unable to meet statutory schedule constraints.
Still, we're making important strides. The 10 million metric
tons of CO2 stored is just the start. In 2013, Air Products commenced
operation of a DOE-sponsored CO2 capture project that
84
will result in 1.6 to 3.1 million barrels of additional oil recovered
through EOR. In 2014, NRG started construction on another DOEsponsored
project, the world's largest post-combustion capture
retrofit demonstration project, which will capture 1.6 million
metric tons of CO2
per year and produce an additional 60 million
barrels of oil through EOR. And though it has faced cost
and schedule challenges, Southern Company's Kemper integrated
gasification combined cycle project is expected to begin operations
in 2016.
Commitment to CCS
Going forward, the DOE's commitment to CCS is clear. Of the $560
million that the president requested for DOE fossil energy R&D
in FY 2016, $369 million is geared toward our CCS and Power
Systems R&D. That's on top of the $6 billion we've invested in
CCS since 2009 and the $8 billion in the DOE's loan guarantee
program dedicated to fossil energy projects. Moreover, the president's
budget includes two new refundable tax credits totaling
$2 billion for new and existing power plants that employ CCS.
What we're doing in the U.S. is critical, but the nature of our
energy and climate challenges requires a global response. The
good news is there are 22 large-scale CCS projects in operation
or under construction around the world. Still, the U.S. has more
major CCS demonstration projects than any other country, and
the DOE is taking a leadership role to achieve commercial deployment
of these technologies globally.
To do that, we're working with international partners to share
the expertise and lessons learned that will help us overcome
the technical, regulatory, and policy challenges to CCS commercialization.
Most recently, we announced our intention to
collaborate with Shell Canada to validate advanced monitoring
technologies at Shell's industrial CCS project in Saskatchewan,
which will capture 1 million tons of CO2
annually. Additionally,
we and China will lead an international consortium to establish
a major new project in China that will monitor the storage of
industrial CO2
. We'll also work with China to demonstrate a new
pathway for CO2 utilization through a project that will capture
and store CO2 while producing freshwater.
We're also engaged in multinational efforts on CCS, including
our leadership of the Carbon Sequestration Leadership Forum's
Policy Group and the International Energy Agency's Working Party
on Fossil Fuels. And through our work on the U.N. Economic
Commission for Europe, we helped develop a recommendation
for CCS parity that will be considered at the U.N. Climate Change
Conference in Paris this year.
Storing 10 million metric tons of CO2
is an important achievement,
but we still have work to do. And the DOE's robust R&D and
international outreach is laying the groundwork to ensure that
CCS will help us meet our energy and climate challenges-and
secure U.S. leadership in the global clean energy economy. ■
-Christopher A. Smith is the assistant secretary for fossil
energy in the U.S. Department of Energy.
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