This is interesting and pretty exciting:

… the Department of Energy has finally brought a large-scale integrated demonstration project online. Capture and storage operations recently kicked off at Air Products and Chemicals’ Port Arthur project in Texas’ Gulf Coast, DOE confirmed this week. The $430 million industrial capture retrofit onto a hydrogen production facility owned by Valero Energy Corp. is officially the first project in DOE’s CCS demonstration portfolio to begin full-scale operations, according to the Department.

Capture at the hydrogen facility’s second steam methane reformer is expected to begin in April, and the two units together are expected to capture roughly one million metric tonnes of CO2 annually, ultimately helping produce up to three million additional barrels of oil annually for Denbury, according to DOE. The Department allocated $284 million in stimulus funding to the project.

I googled to get a notion about what a 1 million metric tonnes savings would scale too. According to This aashe.org page ” 4.6 million metric tons of CO2 […] the same as the annual energy use of 422,542 homes”. So, that would mean 1 million tons is the CO2 generated by approximately 91,900. homes. The retrofit to achieve the CO2 capture cost $430 million which comes out to about $4700 per household. (Bear in mind: this is a first deployment of a demonstration. Costs for such things tend to be much higher than for future commercial systems.)

Port Arthur is the first of eight CCS projects within DOE’s demonstration portfolio to move into the operations phase. In a release, the Department touted the project for demonstrating the commercial viability of carbon capture, utilization and storage (CCUS) via enhanced oil recovery. “This milestone is significant because now we can start looking back at things like timelines and construction costs and begin to understand how those particular data points might apply to future CCUS endeavors,” Michael Knaggs, director of the National Energy Technology Laboratory’s Office of Major Demonstrations, said in an interview this week. “We can also start collecting actual operations information to see what it’s actually costing to capture and deliver the CO2.”

The Port Arthur project starting operations first is indicative of a larger trend in the CCS industry that has seen industrial capture projects come online far before power generation efforts. All of the CO2 used in the world’s first carbon storage projects, including Statoil’s Sleipner, Dakota Gasification’s Great Plains synfuels plant and BP’s In Salah, originated from gas processing facilities. Given that many industrial processes require CO2 to be separated in order to properly operate anyway, adding transport and storage components to the back end are often far cheaper and easier than starting a power generation capture facility from scratch. In the case of the U.S., permitting is also easier for industrial projects in some cases since most processes already separate the CO2.

On the other hand, commercializing CO2 capture for industrial operations is seen as particularly critical in the eyes of organizations like the International Energy Agency. While power generators can choose to pursue other lower-carbon options for generating electricity instead of CCS to meet emissions reduction goals, CO2 capture is considered the only path currently available for reducing emissions from industrial operations. IEA estimates that in order to limit the effects of climate change to a manageable level, 82 industrial capture projects must be in operation by 2020. But in its most recent technology report, IEA finds that while that goal is technically feasible, current investment patterns are “woefully off pace.”

I tend to think that some controversies over climate change will calm down a bit as engineers develop and deploy systems that permit CO2 reductions while maintaining industrial capacity. While I have nothing in particular against the concept of using wind and solar, they aren’t particularly suited toward industry. In contrast, CSS could potentially help out– provided it can be deployed economically and effectively.

For more visit ghgnews.com.

Hat tip @Roddy_Campbell

I’m writing up a story to help dispel some peak oil doomsday silliness, and was looking up various estimates of global hydrocarbon occurrences. I quickly came across the seminal Rogner 1997 paper, which I recall reading back in grad school, that serves as part of the basis of the IPCC’s SRES scenario energy use projections among other things. It tells a rather convincing story:

(Click to embiggen. Also, while consumed is too small to see on this chart, its about half oil and half coal with a sliver of natural gas added in.)

However, a lot has happened in the world since 1997, including the discovery of just how large the North American shale gas formations are and various reassessments of oil, coal, and gas availability. I’m trying to figure out if anyone has produced an updated estimate of global hydrocarbon availability. An updated estimate of cumulative consumption to date (Rogner’s data stops in 1994) would also be handy.