State’s Energy Future Lies in Burying CO2
Energy expert says the state can sequester more than 17.6 billion
metric tons of carbon in its oil and natural gas fields and deep coal
seams.
The State Journal
30 September 2010
By Walt Williams
HUNTINGTON -- West Virginia is like a computer hard drive when it
comes to burying carbon emissions from coal-fired power plants: It has
plenty of storage capacity.
At least that’s the view of Richard Bajura, director of the National
Research Center for Coal and Energy at West Virginia University. Using
geologic data gathered by a host of agencies, he said the state could
sequester more than 17.6 billion metric tons of carbon between its oil
fields, natural gas fields and deep coal seams, and that’s not counting
the deep saline aquifers that inflate those figures dramatically.
“West Virginia has a large carbon storage potential,” he told attendees
at the third annual Science, Technology and Research Symposium at
Marshall University Sept. 27.
Bajura was one of three panelists who took part in a forum about the
state’s energy future on the first day of the two-day symposium. The
picture panelists painted was an optimistic one based on the assumption
that carbon capture and storage technology would prove both
economically and technologically feasible.
CCS — also known as carbon sequestration — is a catchall term for
technology that removes carbon dioxide from power plant emissions and
buries it underground so it won’t contribute to global warming. It is
seen as the only way the nation could continue to burn coal on a large
scale if the U.S. adopts strict limits on CO2 emissions.
The technology has its share of critics, who point out it is still
years — if not decades — away from widespread use. CCS currently is
cost-prohibitive at the scale needed to sequester the emissions from
good-sized power plant. It consumes a lot of energy. Researchers still
can’t say with great certainty that carbon pumped into the ground will
stay there or if it will leak out.
Researchers are studying ways to bring down the cost and ensure the
carbon will remain in the ground once buried there.
As far as cost, Bajura noted the gas could be used to extract oil and
natural gas from geologic formations by pumping it into the ground and
forcing the energy resources out. Such oil and gas recovery results in
a profit for carbon producers, which are paid for the carbon they
provide.
A test project in Marshall County is studying the feasibility of
coalbed methane extraction, according to Bajura. Some 20,000 tons of
CO2 will be pumped into the ground while the site is monitored for
methane extraction and carbon leaks.
While enhanced oil recovery and other extraction techniques may show
promise in the short term, many experts believe the cost of CCS must be
lowered if it is to prove practical in the long term.
All the panelists said coal would remain one of the leading sources of
energy for the world for the next few decades. Joseph Kozuch, interim
director of WVU’s Advanced Energy Initiative and the forum moderator,
noted worldwide fossil fuel consumption was expected to slightly
increase by 2030.
“We don’t expect that to be released into the atmosphere,” he said
about CO2 emissions from coal. “We expect technology programs to be in
place to control that.”
State researchers are hedging their bets on CCS because coal remains a
significant part of the West Virginia’s economy. Jeff Herholdt,
director of the West Virginia Division of Energy, pointed out that
two-thirds of the energy produced in West Virginia was exported out of
state.
But coal is not the only energy producer in the state. Patrick Mann,
WVU professor emeritus of economics and chairman of the West Virginia
Wind Working Group, said studies have estimated the state’s wind power
generation capacity between 1,883 MW and 3,800 MW.
While clean, wind power is not without its drawbacks. Concerns range
from windmills destroying viewsheds to killing birds and bats. But Mann
said the biggest thing holding wind power back from becoming a major
power source is the lack of quality lines to transmit the energy.
“One of the problems is the transmission,” he said. “We have to build
the transmission for that to happen.”