Managing the Carbon Footprint
Though Congress has not yet defined what carbon dioxide legislation will look like, utilities are, in some cases, moving forward to address the issue before legislation is passed.
Dakota Gasification Company - January 27, 2010
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by Andrea Blowers, staff writer/editor
Though Congress has not yet defined what carbon dioxide legislation will look like, utilities are, in some cases, moving forward to address the issue before legislation is passed. They know a bill to curb greenhouse gas emissions is coming. President Obama has made it clear it’s high on his list of priorities, and more than a handful of Congressional leaders have taken the task of proposing climate change legislation.
Mike Eggl, Basin Electric senior vice president of External Relations and Communications, says utilities are weighing their options. “The environmental community is largely expecting utilities to change their resource mix to try to reduce their carbon footprint.” In addition, there are other potential ways to approach coming CO2 regulation. “Utilities can engage with governmental programs that are looking at direct CO2 reduction, such as the PCOR process; they can try to work with others who are doing the same thing; or they can financially try to address the issue with carbon credit purchases.”
A rainbow of possibilities
From a generation resource perspective, Eggl says it’s best to take a broad approach and think in layers. “There’s no silver bullet when it comes to finding a solution for reducing or offsetting carbon emissions. We have to consider all options. … Look at EPRI’s (Electric Power Research Institute) Prism analysis. It lays out a number of ways to reduce carbon dioxide emissions from a technology standpoint.”
| EPRI and the Prism |
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Institute is an independent, |
The Prism assessment covers eight key technology areas of the electricity sector - end - use efficiency, transmission and distribution efficiency, renewables, nuclear power, fossil efficiency, carbon capture and storage, plug-in electric vehicles and electrotechnologies.
EPRI explains its Prism analysis in its 2009 report, “The Power to Reduce CO2 Emissions: The Full Portfolio.” The Prism graphic (shown to the right) builds from the top down. “The top line represents the U.S. Energy Information Agency’s 2009 Annual Energy Outlook reference case estimate of CO2 emissions from the U.S. electricity sector. Each color represents the incremental reduction in emissions projected as feasible for a given technology under a given set of assumptions. The Prism illustrates the overall reductions achievable using The Full Portfolio of technologies,” the report states.
Eggl says a number of utilities have taken the EPRI analysis and applied it to their resource models. “They’re bringing in more renewables, switching to natural gas, increasing efficiencies both within the transmission system and within the general generation system, and are changing technologies, looking at carbon capture and storage, nuclear, the whole mix.”
More than 100 projects are being planned or permitted, or are operating across the globe; they focus on coal gasification, both pre-combustion and postcombustion, and carbon dioxide capture and storage pilot projects. “We’re attempting to do it here at Basin Electric with the Antelope Valley Station carbon capture demonstration,” Eggl says. In December, the cooperative’s board passed a resolution authorizing staff to move forward with the Front-End Engineering and Design (FEED) study.
Some utilities, like Whetstone Valley and Minnesota Power, have boosted the biomass component of their resource portfolios. According to its Web site, in 2009 Minnesota Power in Duluth, MN, finalized the purchase of boilers and wood handling facilities at its Hibbard Energy Center to increase the company’s production of energy fueled by biomass wood waste. With a retrofit, the system will increase its biomass energy generation from 70,000 megawatt-hours to 200,000 megawatt-hours.
Investing in biomass is one way to reduce a utilities’ carbon footprint, and wood is the most common form of biomass. Others include crops, some garbage and manure.
“One of our members assisted on a project using manure waste as a fuel,” Eggl says. A few years ago, Basin Electric Class C member Whetstone Valley Electric Cooperative in Milbank, SD, teamed up with Midwest Dairy Institute to connect a generator from an anaerobic methane digester at a 2,000-cow dairy farm to the co-op’s system. The generator is powered by gases from a concrete digester containing 1.2 million gallons of animal waste solution. The digester is turning animal waste into electricity.
Putting teamwork to work
Utilities are developing projects on their own, but they’re also creating partnerships – with each other, with the government and with others. One partnership is working to advance carbon sequestration. More than 90 United States and Canadian stakeholders, like Basin Electric, Nebraska Public Power District, Otter Tail Power Company and Xcel Energy, are working together in a government program called PCOR (The Plains CO2 Reduction Partnership). PCOR is one of seven regional partnerships under the U.S. Department of Energy.
“PCOR is developing infrastructure and regulations for implementing large CO2 sequestration in our region,” says Curtis Jabs, Basin Electric senior legislative representative.
The project is currently in Phase III, focusing on implementing two commercial-scale geologic carbon sequestration demonstration projects in the region.
Another government program, the Clean Coal Power Initiative (CCPI),is a cost-shared direct partnership between the government and private industry. CCPI’s objective is to provide financial assistance for developing advanced coal technologies, providing up to 50 percent of funding for selected projects.
In July 2009, U.S. Secretary of Energy Dr. Steven Chu announced the selection of Basin Electric as a recipient of a $100-million cooperative agreement under the
CCPI program to help fund the Antelope Valley carbon capture demonstration.
Offsets = $$$
| What's an offset? |
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An offset is an activity other |
| What's biomass? |
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Biomass is organic material |
Through the Exchange, farmers and ranchers are making money. In 2009 nearly a million new acres were enrolled in the National Farmers Union Carbon Credit Program, bringing the total to 5.5 million acres nationwide. Farmers Union has sold nearly $10 million worth of soil carbon offsets through the Chicago Climate Exchange, and it is currently the largest aggregator of carbon credits on the Exchange. The Chicago Climate Exchange is one of a handful of markets established to trade carbon credits. Others include the European Union Emission Trading Scheme, which is the largest multi-national greenhouse gas emissions trading scheme in the world, and the Regional Greenhouse Gas Initiative (RGGI), which launched in January 2009 and covers 10 Northeastern and mid-Atlantic states.
According to its site, the Chicago Climate Exchange is an “international rules-based greenhouse gas emission reduction, audit, registry and trading program based in the U.S.” “Membership to the Chicago Climate Exchange is voluntary,” Eggl says. “Members meet emission reduction goals three ways – internally at their own facilities; purchasing allowances from other members who’ve reduced their emissions by more than was required; and through offsets from emission reduction projects like the Farmers Union’s Carbon Credit Program.” One example of a utility participating in the Chicago Climate Exchange is American Electric Power (AEP). The utility, based in Ohio, is one of the Exchange’s 13 charter members. “Through this affiliation, AEP committed to reduce or offset its greenhouse gas emissions from an established baseline each year through 2010,” AEP states on its Web site. Between 2003 and 2010, AEP expects to have reduced or offset about 46 million metric tons of CO2 equivalent emissions.
Getting creative
| Plains CO2 Reduction Partnership (PCOR) |
| The PCOR Partnership is led by the Energy & Environmental Research Center at the University of North Dakota and is one of seven regional partnerships under the U.S. Department of Energy (DOE) National Energy Technology Laboratory’s (NETL) Regional Carbon Sequestration Partnership (RCSP) Program. NETL and RCSP are part of DOE’s Office of Fossil Energy. The PCOR Partnership region includes all or part of nine U.S. states and four Canadian provinces within the central interior of North America. The U.S. portion contains 8 percent of the U.S. population and 16 percent of the U.S. land area. The Canadian portion contains 17 percent of the Canadian population and 20 percent of its land area. The PCOR Partnership region has significant potential to reduce man-made CO2 emissions by storing the carbon at the surface or in the subsurface. Storing carbon in soils and plant materials at the surface of the Earth is called terrestrial sequestration. Storing carbon dioxide in geologic layers deep beneath the surface of the Earth is called geologic sequestration. (PCOR) |
“Some utilities and others - specifically universities – have tapped into and are looking at more unique ways of handling CO2 emissions, such as with algae and mineral sequestration,” Eggl says.
In early 2009, Associated Electric Cooperative and Central Electric Power Cooperative in Missouri began a collaborative effort with Lincoln University and Missouri University of Science and Technology to study the feasibility of using carbon dioxide in flue gas from Central’s Chamois Power Plant to feed algae. The Demonstration project features algae growing in five large pools. As the CO2 bubbles up through the water, the algae feed on it using the energy from sunlight.
In addition, the algae contain an oil that can be processed into biodiesel. Other algae components can be used to make products, including ethanol and livestock feed.
Another more unusual option being studied by universities and scientists is mineral sequestration. “As a utility, we’re investigating technology options to capture and sequester carbon. What if it can be done with a rock?” Eggl says. He’s talking about peridotite. It’s the most common rock found in the Earth’s mantle and may be capable of storing large amounts of CO2, according to a study published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences in November 2008 titled, “In situ carbonation of peridotite for CO2 storage.”
Peridotite naturally reacts at high rates with carbon dioxide to form solid minerals, and scientists claim the process could be enhanced up to one million times or more through drilling and injection methods.
In addition to being found directly below the Earth’s crust, peridotite also appears on the surface in areas like the Middle Eastern nation of Oman.
“These are obviously more unique prospects, but I don’t think we should close the door on any option. We need to do what we can in all areas, developing and expanding our generation portfolios and creating partnerships as well as understanding the emissions trading markets,” Eggl says.
“Without firm legislation, it’s difficult to know the right path to choose. But the legislation is coming. Whether a utility is proactive or defers on making decisions, carbon dioxide emissions will be regulated; that we can be sure about.”
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