While the U.S. has largely given up on building functional carbon capture and storage projects linked to power plants, everyone else is all over it. Whatever your feelings about this technology, it's undeniable that it's one more "clean" energy effort we're falling behind on, reports EnergyBiz.
Canada
Saskatchewan is dropping $1.3 billion to rebuild an existing coal-fired plant, using its captured CO2 to recover crude oil from fields in the area.
Cansolv, a wholly owned subsidiary of Shell Global Solutions, will supply the carbon capture process. Hitachi will supply a state-of-the-art steam turbine, which the company claims is the first in the world designed to fully integrate a coal-fired power plant with carbon capture technology. The carbon capture technology is expected to become operational in 2014.
Europe
The European Union is funding a $148 million pilot carbon capture power plant in Italy.
The pilot plant in Brindisi is the first of its kind in Italy, and one of the first in Europe. It will be able to treat 10,000 cubic meters of exhaust per hour from the Federico II coal plant, separating out 2.5 metric tons of carbon dioxide per hour, up to a maximum of 8,000 metric tons per year. The captured CO2 will be transported to another site where it will be injected and permanently stored underground.
Algeria
This one, ironically, is jointly funded by the U.S. Department of Energy and the EU. An industrial-scale capture and sequestration effort is tied to a gas production facility.
The goal of the project is to store 17 million metric tons of CO2 over the next 20 years.
