Rising Cost of Carbon Capture is Killing the Great Green "Hope"

[depakid]

Longannet in Fife is earmarked for a pioneering CCS scheme. A report from two universities in Texas has argued that the difficulties in storing carbon deep underground have been hugely underestimated. It concluded that burial was "a profoundly non-feasible option for the ­management of carbon dioxide emissions.
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Rising costs have prompted new fears for one of the central planks of the ­Scottish ­Government's strategy for cutting climate pollution. cottish ministers want to keep ­burning coal in power stations by ­developing technology to capture and store the carbon dioxide they belch out. But new evidence from Norway suggests that this could cost nearly three times more than expected.

This comes on top of recent expert reports casting doubt on the ­feasibility of carbon capture and storage (CCS) - the great green hope of the energy industry. But technology is strongly defended by its backers in Scotland.

One of Norway's flagship CCS projects is run by the state-owned gas company, Gassco. But it has revealed that the ­estimated costs have rocketed from £0.4 billion in 2007 to £1.2bn now.

"The CCS costs are big and higher than we initially thought," said Sigve Apeland from Gassco. The company is trying to capture, transport and store 1.1 million tonnes of carbon dioxide a year from the Naturkraft gas-fired power plant at Kårstø.

Gassco told the environment company, ENDS, that the escalating costs were mostly due to the ­difficulties of actually capturing the carbon. It is a process that absorbs a lot of energy, which makes it expensive.

"This is only one example, but these kind of cost increases could kill off the prospect of having full-scale carbon capture working any time soon," said Dr Richard Dixon, director of WWF Scotland.

There is a pioneering scheme aimed at developing CCS at the Longannet coal-fired power station in Fife, run by ScottishPower. Both the ­Conservative and Labour parties have promised four CCS plants, but neither has said when.

A report from two universities in Texas has argued that the difficulties in storing carbon deep underground have been hugely underestimated. It concluded that burial was "a profoundly non-feasible option for the ­management of carbon dioxide emissions".

Patrick Harvie, the Green MSP, said: "The doubts about carbon capture and storage are growing week by week, and it looks increasingly like an ­impractical and unaffordable ­technology.

More: http://www.commondreams.org/headline/2010/05/09-0

[wtmusic]

1. No one ever considered CCS a "great green hope"

but it is, and always has been, a coal-industry marketing lynchpin.