Coal, natural gas and oil are known as fossil fuels because they are remnants of plants and organisms that lived some 300 million years ago, the Carboniferous period when vegetation flourished.
Info box
U.S. Energy Secretary Steven Chu will speak at the Forum on Coal
3 p.m., Sept. 8
CHARLESTON, W.Va. -- Coal, natural gas and oil are known as fossil fuels because they are remnants of plants and organisms that lived some 300 million years ago, the Carboniferous period when vegetation flourished.
Those living plants and organisms captured energy from the sun to create the compounds that made up their tissues through photosynthesis. The most important element in these fossilized remnants is carbon, which gives the fuels their stored energy, and which when burned, as in generating electricity, combines with oxygen to produce large amounts of heat and to emit carbon dioxide (CO2).
CO2 has been described as a greenhouse gas because it, along with other gases such as methane, traps in the atmosphere part of the sun's heat as it is radiated from the Earth's surface back into space. They function like panes of glass of a greenhouse. This effect occurs naturally, warming the Earth enough to sustain life. If there were no greenhouse effect, our planet would have an average temperature of minus 22 degrees Fahrenheit.
According to a number of scientists, human-produced emissions cause an increase of CO2 in the atmosphere and an excessive trapping of the sun's heat, which over time causes an increase in the earth's temperature. These increases, according to the same scientists, can be expected to cause climate change that will be detrimental or disastrous to living species, including human beings.
Generating electricity from fossil fuels is the largest single source of human-caused CO2 emissions in the United States, contributing about 41 percent of all such emissions, with coal being the principal fuel source. China is the largest emitter (responsible for 57 percent of the global increase from 2000 to 2009). The United States is second largest, emitting four times China's rate per capita.
Both countries are expected to increase electricity generated from coal between now and 2035, with China's increase projected to be by far the largest from 2,422 billion kilowatt hours in 2007 to 7,795 billion kwh in 2035.
The U.S. Department of Energy acknowledges that "fossil fuels will remain an important part of domestic energy consumption into the 21st century," and that the "availability of these fuels ... is essential for the prosperity and security of the United States." However, the DOE further states that the security provided by fossil fuels needs to be balanced "with growing concerns over global climate change linked to CO2 emissions."
The International Energy Agency also recognizes that coal will continue to play a major role in world energy supply for many decades to come.
Info box
U.S. Energy Secretary Steven Chu will speak at the Forum on Coal
3 p.m., Sept. 8
CHARLESTON, W.Va. -- Coal, natural gas and oil are known as fossil fuels because they are remnants of plants and organisms that lived some 300 million years ago, the Carboniferous period when vegetation flourished.
Those living plants and organisms captured energy from the sun to create the compounds that made up their tissues through photosynthesis. The most important element in these fossilized remnants is carbon, which gives the fuels their stored energy, and which when burned, as in generating electricity, combines with oxygen to produce large amounts of heat and to emit carbon dioxide (CO2).
CO2 has been described as a greenhouse gas because it, along with other gases such as methane, traps in the atmosphere part of the sun's heat as it is radiated from the Earth's surface back into space. They function like panes of glass of a greenhouse. This effect occurs naturally, warming the Earth enough to sustain life. If there were no greenhouse effect, our planet would have an average temperature of minus 22 degrees Fahrenheit.
According to a number of scientists, human-produced emissions cause an increase of CO2 in the atmosphere and an excessive trapping of the sun's heat, which over time causes an increase in the earth's temperature. These increases, according to the same scientists, can be expected to cause climate change that will be detrimental or disastrous to living species, including human beings.
Generating electricity from fossil fuels is the largest single source of human-caused CO2 emissions in the United States, contributing about 41 percent of all such emissions, with coal being the principal fuel source. China is the largest emitter (responsible for 57 percent of the global increase from 2000 to 2009). The United States is second largest, emitting four times China's rate per capita.
Both countries are expected to increase electricity generated from coal between now and 2035, with China's increase projected to be by far the largest from 2,422 billion kilowatt hours in 2007 to 7,795 billion kwh in 2035.
The U.S. Department of Energy acknowledges that "fossil fuels will remain an important part of domestic energy consumption into the 21st century," and that the "availability of these fuels ... is essential for the prosperity and security of the United States." However, the DOE further states that the security provided by fossil fuels needs to be balanced "with growing concerns over global climate change linked to CO2 emissions."
The International Energy Agency also recognizes that coal will continue to play a major role in world energy supply for many decades to come.
Accordingly, there is, and will continue to be, considerable public pressure to reduce CO2 emissions by electricity generators so as to transition from the present coal-based energy to a future low-carbon energy. One such technology for doing so that is being investigated throughout the world is known as carbon capture and storage, the process by which CO2 is isolated (captured) from the emissions stream, compressed and transported to an injection site where it is permanently stored, sequestered, underground.
Analyses performed by the International Energy Agency show that CCS will need to provide almost 20 percent of the total greenhouse gas emission reductions we need to achieve in 2050, and that the costs for achieving 2050 objectives without CCS would be at least 70 percent higher than with CCS.
The role that CCS will play in the future of coal will be the subject of U.S. Energy Secretary Steven Chu's presentation at the Forum on Coal at 3 p.m. Sept. 8 at the University of Charleston.
Making CCS commercially viable and widely deployable may be crucial to the future of coal, upon which the economy of West Virginia and the well-being of so many of its citizens depend. That is why the subject is so important to coal-producing and coal-fired electricity-generating states such as West Virginia, estimated to have America's fourth-largest recoverable coal reserves, and in which some 97 percent of electricity comes from coal.
Carbon capture entails removing CO2 from emissions at stationary sources such as fossil fuel-fired power plants, the largest stationary sources of CO2. Several capture processes are being studied. In general, capture technologies either remove CO2 from the combustion gases before they are exhausted to the atmosphere, or remove the carbon from the fuel before it is burned.
One analysis indicates that carbon capture could increase the cost of electricity by 2.5 cents to 4 cents per KWH, depending on the type of process.
The focus of research on carbon capture is so great that there is a bi-monthly publication dedicated to the subject: Carbon Capture Journal.
Carbon Sequestration (Storage) is the process where captured carbon, or more precisely carbon dioxide (CO2), is transported to an appropriate site for injection into a geologic formation deep beneath the earth's surface.
Challenges confronting widespread deployment of CCS technologies include the high cost of capture: monitoring, verification, accounting technologies to ensure permanent storage; project permitting; long-term liability protection; ownership of geologic spaces deep below the surface; infrastructure needs; and the countering of "not in my backyard" opposition to CO2 storage sites -- a NIMBY resistance as exists for wind and solar sites. Among the greatest of the challenges is to minimize the increase in electricity prices that CCS deployment will require.
American Electric Power is leading the industry and the world in addressing these challenges through an aggressive program designed to push promising CCS technologies toward maturity and catalyze the advancement of CCS science and engineering. At the center of this action is the 1,300-megawatt Mountaineer Plant in New Haven, Mason County, where the world's first integrated coal-plant CCS project is in operation and where a fully-commercial demonstration is being planned for startup in 2015.
McElwee is a Charleston lawyer with the firm of Robinson & McElwee. Spitznogle is with American Electric Power in Columbus, Ohio, where he heads AEP'S CCS Development and Engineering Program.
