News

October 28, 2010

Conference debates coal-fired plants in Pa.

HARRISBURG – Coal is likely to remain a significant part of national energy production, although technology that lessens carbon emissions is still decades off, industry observers said at a recent conference sponsored by the Clean Air Council.

The technology is unproven, hard to police and expensive, several panelists said. Adding it to a coal-fired plant would increase construction costs by more than 80 percent and double costs for a natural gas plant, said Ronald Breault, a manager at the U.S. Department of Energy’s National Energy Technology Laboratory.

Yet that technology would be important in Pennsylvania, where greenhouse-gas emissions have increased 11 percent over the past five years, according to Eric Schaeffer, the executive director of the Environmental Integrity Project advocacy group.

Several federal bills exist to cap emissions, and one is expected to be debated on the Senate floor in early June, according to Tom Dower, the deputy chief of staff for Sen. Arlen Specter, R-Philadelphia.

Quinn Shea, a representative of the trade association Edison Electric Institute, cautioned that the proposed reductions are unattainable with current technology. Shea said power companies will instead use relatively clean-burning natural gas to comply, creating even higher prices for a commodity that many Americans use for heating.

Other technology may reduce energy prices through efficiency, but customers will pay to clean up emissions, either through higher taxes for subsidies or higher prices, he said.

The best way to combat increasing bills and maintain a stable grid is to use less power, other conference attendees said.

“There’s a lot we can be doing with efficiency long before we start stringing transmission lines from Pennsylvania to New Jersey,” said Mark Brownstein of the Environmental Defense Fund.

He was referring the National Interest Electric Transmission Corridor that includes much of Pennsylvania, including Luzerne County, and would allow the federal government to dictate where major power lines run.

That plan would undermine states’ efforts to reduce emissions, Brownstein said, because it would help polluting plants get their electricity into states where emissions standards are more stringent.

Although some experts believe American action would do little to reduce worldwide greenhouse gas emissions if developing countries like China and India don’t follow suit, observers say America should nevertheless assume a leadership role.

“Right now,” Schaeffer said, “a good part of the world is pointing at the U.S. and saying, ‘Until the U.S. does something, since they put so much (carbon dioxide) in (the environment), why should we?’”

Carbon Sequestration

About a third of U.S. carbon emissions come from power plants. The best plan so far to capture and impound carbon emissions is called “carbon sequestration.” The emissions would be captured from the stacks at power plants, or, in rare cases at certain plants, removed before the fuel is burned.

That gas would then be injected into certain places around the world. Rock layers with empty spaces covered by layers without such spaces, such as oil fields that have been pumped dry, are likely injection spots. So are shale, basalt and non-mineable coal seams.

Another potential storage area is deep under the sea. At great depths, pressure turns the gas into a liquid that is denser than seawater, meaning it won’t rise up.

Researchers caution, however, that it’s unknown how the carbon dioxide will act when sequestered. If it moves around and dissipates, it could eventually return to the surface, transition to a gas and get into the atmosphere anyway.

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