The Obama administration wants states to cut back on carbon emissions - but doing that has always been a thorny problem.
While carbon is a byproduct of almost everything we do, capturing and storing it is expensive. For years, the goal has been to figure out how to make that process cheaper. More recent efforts take a different approach. As Inside Energy’s Stephanie Joyce reports, focus has shifted now from storage to use.
In her lab at the Western Research Institute on the outskirts of Laramie, Karen Wawrousek digs around in a fridge for a sample of bacteria.
“So, like, that’s one.”
Wawrousek holds up a glass flask, filled with an off-white liquid.
“If you’re going to take a picture, let me just rub this off.”
“This” is a name, scrawled in wax pen on the glass, identifying the strain of bacteria. She doesn’t want it in a picture, because that information could be worth a lot of money someday. The bacteria in the flask eats carbon dioxide and produces biodiesel, which can be blended with regular diesel to run cars and trucks and trains. That means instead of carbon emissions going up the smokestack at a power plant, they can be captured and converted into a marketable product.
“You’re using the carbon twice, basically, before you release it.”
That should mean that less carbon ends up in the atmosphere… while at the same time, making capturing carbon much more attractive to utilities.
“We need to have more options available to manage carbon. We think that carbon can be viewed not as a waste, but as an asset.”
Lee Boughey is a spokesman for Tri-State Generation and Transmission, which supplies power across the West. He says hundreds of companies are already researching new ways to utilize carbon. Tri-State would like to see even more. To that end, it’s sponsoring a competition focused on “carbon recycling” … with a $10 million prize.
"What we’re really interested in is: what are the biological, catalytic, other processes that are available to be able to take carbon emissions, carbon dioxide, and turn that into products that people use every day?”
Some might cringe at the idea of buying our way out of climate change. But Boughey says cleaning up carbon for its own sake hasn’t worked: companies have never been interested in spending money to lock away carbon underground for the rest of eternity. Chris Elrod agrees that new ideas are necessary.
“In the United States, absolutely, one hundred percent, use of the CO2 has to occur.”
Elrod is the director of finance for Sargas, a Norwegian company that specializes in power plants with built-in carbon capture. He says viewing carbon as a commodity changes the game.
“There’s billions and billions, if not trillions, of dollars of market share to be had in this business.”
Sargas has built several test facilities, both in the US and abroad, to demonstrate its carbon capture technology. It’s currently working on a full-scale commercial plant along Texas coast. Elrod says that plant will capture more than 90 percent of its carbon emissions, which will then be sold to a nearby oil field. Pumped underground, carbon dioxide boosts oil production and, in the process, some of it gets trapped, effectively sequestering it.
“It’s not completely, sort of, energy neutral, but we think it’s actually a very efficient way to utilize energy.”
Exactly how efficient is an open debate. Capturing and re-using carbon — “carbon utilization” - is all the rage - but at least when it comes to enhanced oil recovery, some projects might actually emit more carbon than burning conventional fossil fuels. Elrod agrees it’s not the final answer…
“This is a bridge, this isn’t a global solution that’s going to be the sort of panacea here… This is actually something that’s going to get us to a future where we have low-carbon intensity power generation and efficient use of energy.”
Getting there is a race, and an experiment, that much of the world is counting on.
