We’re well and truly into 2011, but as we continue to ramp up into the year, we’d just like to take one last review of 2010. This time the good folks at the Carbon Capture Journal have put together a summary of milestones in CCS in 2010.
The full report is available
here. We’ve extracted and condensed the key events with further information hyperlinked.
January 2010
Total’s Lacq oxyfuel project in south-western France, Europe’s first end-to-end carbon capture, transportation and storage demonstration facility is
inaugurated.
Powerspan demonstrates 90 percent CO
2 capture from flue gas of a 1 MW coal-fired power plant in a real world operating environment, at ‘less than $50 per ton for CO2 capture and compression.’
February 2010
President Obama creates an
Interagency Task Force on CCS. The US President called for five to ten commercial demonstration projects to be up and running by 2016.
March 2010
A University of Calgary-led
study found Alberta could readily geologically store half the emissions of its coal plants for 30 years.
The UK government set up an
Office of Carbon Capture & Storage (OCCS) and published a
CCS Industrial Strategy. This outlines how the country can become a centre for CCS innovation and business with an industry worth up to £6.5 billion and sustaining up to 100,000 jobs by 2030.
April 2010
Canada opens the
CanmetENERGY CO2 Research Facility (CanCO2) located at the Natural Resources Canada Ottawa Research Centre.
DNV develops a comprehensive guideline for safe and sustainable geological storage of carbon dioxide,
CO2QUALSTORE.
May 2010
The
International Performance Assessment Centre for Geologic Storage of Carbon Dioxide (IPAC-C02) establishes a global network linking organisations in eight countries which conduct research into the geological storage of CO
2.
A GISS
paper outlines a way to phase out US CO
2 emissions from coal use by 2030. It argues that economic tools – eliminating subsidies and a carbon price, are the root requirements for a clean, emissions free future.
June 2010
The International Energy Agency, Carbon Sequestration Leadership Forum, and Global CCS Institute
report to G8 leaders that CCS is 'crucial' to mitigating climate change.
July 2010
At the world's first
Clean Energy Ministerial, U.S. Energy Secretary Steven Chu announces that the U.S. is helping launch more than 10 international clean energy initiatives, including
one for CCS. The overall aim is to eliminate the need to build more than 500 mid-sized power plants world-wide in the next 20 years.
The U.S. announces funding of more than U
S$1.25 billion for five new projects in the third round of the
Clean Coal Power Initiative program. $106 million also being invested in converting captured CO
2 emissions into
useful products. $67 million was also dedicated to research on reducing the energy penalties associated with CCS.
August 2010
The US Interagency Task Force on CCS concludes there are
'no insurmountable barriers' to deploying CCS worldwide as an effective measure to mitigate climate change.
The DOE allocates $21.3 million over three years for
15 projects to develop technologies aimed at safely and economically storing CO
2 in geologic formations.
Doosan Power Systems completes around 100 successful individual tests on a full-size 40 MWth burner.
September 2010
RWE, BASF and Linde claim a flue gas CO
2 capture
‘breakthrough’ as new technology is shown to save 20 percent on energy input and reduce solvent consumption.
The DOE announces a further $575 million from the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act for
22 R&D projects to complement the industrial demonstration projects already being funded.
The EU founds the
European CCS Demonstration Project Network, the world's first network of CCS demonstration projects.
$855,000 in
additional funding is awarded for two carbon dioxide capture projects developed by the Cooperative Research Centre for Greenhouse Gas Technologies (CO2CRC) in Australia.
October 2010
B9 Coal, develops
a novel project capturing 90% of emissions produced from alkaline fuel cells run from Underground Coal Gasification (UCG) syngas.
The
Global CCS Insititue (GCCSI) announces the
first set of projects to receive support as part of its information and knowledge sharing brokerage efforts.
The first tonne of CO2 is captured at the
14 MW pilot plant that ELCOGAS has built in its Integrated Gasification Combined Cycle (IGCC) power plant at Puertollano, Spain. [
PDF]
EON
pulls out of the UK CCS demonstration competition saying its Kingsnorth plan cannot meet competition timescales. [
YouTube] This effectively means that ScottishPower's
Longannet project in Fife is effectively the winner as the only entrant left.
November 2010
A new
GCCSI paper helps to define and explain the intricacies around carbon capture and storage ready policy.
Shell
cancels its Barendrecht project mainly because of the local opposition to the plan.
The UK Government opens its extended CCS demonstration programme to projects on
gas-fired power plants as well as coal-fired power plants.
The EU launches a €4.5 billion
fund for clean energy. Eight CCS projects will receive financing of up to 50%.
December 2010
CO2CRC and industy-government consortium host Australia’s first
National CCS Week. At the conference, Federal Minister for Resources, Energy and Tourism releases the
National Low Emissions Coal Strategy as well as the
Carbon Storage Taskforce report.
Tarong post-combustion capture demonstration project commences in Queensland, Australia.
The UN accepts
CCS in the Clean Development Mechanism calling for rules and questions around CCS projects to be finalized at the next climate talks in December 2011.
Queensland state government withdraws financial support for the
Zerogen project but commits $50 million for CO
2 storage exploration in Queensland to support future CCS demonstrations.
Image courtesy of Scientific American.