World’s First Carbon Capture Plant to Begin Operations
The world’s first retrofit of a power plant with carbon capture and storage (CCS) technology will begin operating this month in the south of France. By Alok Jha of the Guardian.
At a power plant at Lacq, energy company Total has upgraded an existing gas-fired boiler with CCS technology – a crucial step towards reducing carbon emissions from fossil-fuel power plants worldwide.
With renewable energy sources a long way from covering the world’s increasing demand for energy, many experts believe that developing reliable technology to allow countries to burn fossil fuels without releasing dangerous amounts of CO2 into the atmosphere is essential to avoid the worst impacts of climate change.
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Experts welcomed Total’s achievement but added that it highlighted how Britain was being left behind in the development of an important technology to head off climate change.
“CCS remains the most important initiative that needs to be implemented both here and around the world in reducing emissions from coal, gas and oil-fired power stations,” said Environment Agency chairman Chris Smith.
“[But this project] re-emphasises the importance of making sure that Britain takes an early opportunity to put itself in the lead worldwide in taking the technology forward.”
Stuart Haszeldine, professor of geology and an expert in CCS at the University of Edinburgh, was more scathing. “The UK has been first to stoke up interest in CCS, in the 1990s. But since then, CCS has not received any significant government support to make any real projects happen.”
He said the technology was essential for the UK to meet its climate change targets. “We have to completely clean up CO2 emissions from gas as well as coal by 2030, if the UK is to meet the legally binding decreases set by the climate change committee,” said Haszeldine. “Projects like Lacq will help to make cleanup cheaper and bring that reality closer.”
The 60m euro Lacq project will transport and store 60,000 tonnes of carbon dioxide every year in the nearby depleted gas field at Rousse – once the biggest onshore natural gas field in Europe, but which is now almost empty. It is the first to link together all parts of the carbon capture chain from burning natural gas to isolating CO2 from flue gases and burying it underground.
Reusing an existing pipeline that has been transporting natural gas from Rousse to Lacq for 50 years, Total engineers plan to push the carbon dioxide from the power plant in the other direction, injecting the gas into the Rousse reservoir at a depth of around 4,500m. The Lacq project will run for two years, after which engineers will monitor the Rousse gas field to demonstrate that the carbon dioxide remains safely trapped inside.
Last year, the Schwarze Pumpe power station in north Germany became the first demonstration experiment to build a a 12MW fossil fuel-fired boiler from scratch with full CCS – it will bury 100,000 tonnes of CO2 a year 3,000m below the surface of the depleted Altmark gas field.
CCS is seen as the technolology that could save the planet from the expected increased use of coal in power stations around the world. At its best, it could trap up to 90% of a power plant’s carbon emissions and, though each element of the capture, transportation and storage process is already proven and in use, only the Schwarze Pumpe plant has put the chain together until now.
GLOBAL ALLIANCE AGAINST IGNORANCE
THE INTERNATIONAL FOUNDATIONS OF A GLOBAL POLITICAL MOVEMENT THAT WILL SWEEP THE CHARLATANS AND THEIR POLITICAL/INSTITUTIONAL/EDUCATIONAL AND CORPORATE PLANET DESTRUCTIVE ECONOMIC GROWTH/BOOM AND BUST BUBBLE IDEOLOGIES AND THEIR VESTED INTERESTS OFF THE PLANET TO RESTORE LONGTERM SOCIO-ECONOMIC-FINANCIAL-ENVIRONMENTAL STABILITY FOR ALL
ECONOMIC GROWTH IS IN FACT NOTHING OTHER THAN INFLATION:
Every year existing human overpopulation now standing at 6750 million inflates by a net 80 million after deduction of all deaths and 50 million abortions which are necessitated because of the religious nazis/dunces anti free contraception policies/enforcement.
In purely economic terms real inflation of the underlying cost of living exceeds the annual economic growth in all countries; hence economic growth only serves the racketeers because it represents inflated sales/profits that drive asset price inflation that make the poor poorer and the asset laden rich richer. That’s what the political charlatans and their sponsors/paymasters/cronies want to reignite with trillions of dollars of global bailout/stimulus packages!
Economic growth/inflation was the originator of climate change/natural habitat/rain forest/ozone layer destruction/biodiversity extermination and global pollution/acid rain/smog/ground level ozone contamination that’s wiping out the global ecological life support system for all.
This is a call for every responsible citizen to start right now contributing to the movement by refusing to sell, promote or buy unnecessary, inessential hardware/software and services to put a spanner into the planet destructive debt financed stimulus packages that will have to be paid by future generations on a wastelaid planet.
MAKE A START BY AVOIDING ANYTHING THAT’S ADVERTISED BECAUSE IF IT NEEDS ADVERTISING IT’S COMPLETELY UNNECESSARY
What a great initiative this is, i hope it would make our life easier by reducing global warming!
This is a step in the right direction. But only because Renewable Energy is not at a large enough scale to cover our energy needs right now. Hopefully, the world can switch (the sooner the better) to renewable energy. I am not sure of the implications yet but storage of the captured carbon emissions must have negative consequences. And nuclear helps at providing energy to us for now but the risks scare me. Anyhow, lets hope we can get away from nuclear and coal / fossil fuels soon.
If one bothers to look - The US gov has been spending billions on CCS over the past 40 years. That is one function of government - basic research to make it feasible for private industry to pick it up if it looks possible. The costs are tremendous in bringing new technology to market.
The information is available on line. It is doable and has been done.
Oxy combustion is again old technology though this may be a new application. O2 enriched oxidizer supplied for combustion has been used in numerous applications.
Take a green to get excited about it. Maybe this guy just learned to read?