Entergy and the Environment

Carbon Capture and Coal: The Game Changer and the Elephant in the Room

“An effective strategy for achieving significant and cost effective reductions in CO2 emissions requires the U.S. to lead in the deployment of new technologies to retrofit carbon capture for existing coal plants. We can’t kill coal; we have to save it.” 
- J. Wayne Leonard, Entergy Chairman and CEO

When Congress reconvenes in September, landmark legislation to reduce carbon dioxide emissions in the United States will be on the horizon and could send a wake-up call to the world about the future of environmental protection.

However, absent the technology to address CO2 emissions from existing coal plants, the prospects for accomplishing worldwide emission reduction goals (over 80 percent by 2050 in the Waxman-Markey bill) are bleak. And to address climate change successfully, the U.S. must lead and provide enabling technologies for the developing world. To accomplish this difficult task, an affordable solution that would allow continued use of coal-fired power plants while reducing greenhouse gas emissions is essential.

Even if the U.S. were to zero out the electric sector’s greenhouse gas emissions by 2025, worldwide emissions would continue to grow due to the developing world’s current path.

The technology needed for use in the U.S., as well as for export to the developing world, is one that would clean-up conventional coal plants, which generate 50 percent of the electricity in the U.S. and are being built at a rate of one to two per week in the developing world.

Entergy supports carbon capture and sequestration technology as the most promising research, development and demonstration goal over the next decade. It represents an environmental “game changer.”

Carbon capture and sequestration, widely known as CCS, describes the technology capable of capturing CO2 from emission sources such as power plants and industrial facilities. Once captured, the CO2 is compressed, transported to a suitable location by pipeline and injected back into the Earth’s surface where it is isolated and stored, or sequestered, indefinitely by secure geological formations.

According to a recent Massachusetts Institute of Technology study, post-combustion capture of CO2 at existing coal plants followed by long-term sequestration is the most direct pathway to avoiding nearly all CO2 emissions.

Not only is CCS a key option in the portfolio of solutions for combating climate change, but it also stands to improve U.S. energy independence through continued reliance on coal, while creating a new technology-based export.

"We Can't Kill Coal"

Worldwide, coal-fired power plants produce 40 percent of all electricity and 50 percent of electricity in the U.S.

Why not just get rid of CO2-heavy fuel sources like coal? The MIT study found that a low number of forecasted coal plant retirements provides strong economic incentive to keep existing plants running. It also underscores the importance of retrofitting existing plants with CCS technology.

When it comes to worldwide emission reductions, the “elephant in the room” is China. The significant growth of developing nation economies such as China and India, coupled with their large coal reserves and reliance on conventional coal-fired power generation, will substantially increase CO2 emissions and further strain the world’s capacity to respond to climate change imperatives.

CCS technology must pass what is commonly referred to as the “China test,” that is, whether CO2 emissions mitigation can be accomplished at a sufficiently small incremental cost to motivate China and other emerging economies to implement it.

As the MIT study confirmed, if global efforts to contain climate change are to succeed, the U.S. must dramatically expand the scale and scope for utility-scale demonstrations. Such demonstrations would test the commercial viability of retrofitting or rebuilding existing coal plants with carbon-capture technology and support aggressive research on reducing the technology’s cost.

Quick Facts

• It would cost more than $1 trillion dollars to replace the 400,000 MW of coal plants in the U.S.

• The U.S. Office of Fossil Energy received an additional $800 million from the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act of 2009 to support the Clean Coal Power Initiative’s selection of projects with carbon capture.

• Captured CO2 can be used in enhanced oil recovery.

• China’s coal-fired power plant fleet emits two times the CO2 emissions of the U.S. fleet

• Builds one coal plant per week

• Projected to double their existing 400,000 megawatts of coal by 2015

• Coal consumption is expected to more than double over the next 20 years.