Coal power plants can utilize solar to produce 15%-60% of the electricity. A higher quantity is possible, but requires significantly more modifications to be made to the coal boilers.

Solar Interface

Mirrors, called fresnal reflectors capture the sun’s rays and heat water in the tube above. Steam lines deliver the solar energy to the adjacent coal power plant where existing coal turbines are used to produce an electric current.

The ideal situation for retrofitting a coal power plant with solar includes:

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In a paper that is available online and will be published in an upcoming issue of The Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, Goldberg and his colleagues write about how a basalt formation off of the coast of Oregon and Washington could potentially store anywhere from 120-150 years of carbon produced by the United States in its cavities (assuming current U.S. emission rates do not increase).

While initially I was extremely skeptical of this idea (because I thought that it might cause all kinds of unintended ecological havoc), by the end of the interview, I was somewhat more optimistic.

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Last week, Wyoming Gov. Dave Freudenthal signed a bill that recognizes that surface owners control the underground pore spaces where carbon dioxide could be stored or sequestered. A companion bill, gives the Wyoming Department of Environmental Quality the authority to regulate the long-term storage of carbon dioxide.

“With the signing of these two bills today, Wyoming puts itself in the forefront of carbon sequestration legislation. This is a forward-thinking approach to protect both Wyoming’s economy and Wyoming’s environment.” Gov. Freudenthal called the legislation a “groundbreaking” framework for carbon capture and sequestration

Earlier this year, Freudenthal told the Joint Judiciary Interim Committee that the Wyoming Legislature had an opportunity to lead the nation in regulating long-term carbon capture and sequestration.

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The foundation teamed up with RPM Ecosystems, a wholesale native plant nursery in Dryden, New York, to sell year-old trees grown with a root production method (RPM) that helps them grow three times faster than normal … meaning they can sequester carbon dioxide from the atmosphere three times faster than conventional young trees.

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Carbon sequestration will be used in this new coal-fired power plant to reduce the carbon footprint of electricity.

The town of Mattoon, Illinois rejoiced when the developers of a $1.8 billion low-pollution power plant announced the selected location. This rust-belt town will no longer be primarily known as the bagel capital of the world. The 275-megawatt prototype plant will generate both electricity and hydrogen. Carbon dioxide emissions will be captured and pumped deep into the ground.

The Department of Energy quickly issued a warning about the experimental plant, stating that it might cost too much and urging a reassessment of the design. The public-private partnership between FutureGen and the DOE entails the DOE providing 74% of the required funds. This plant will provide information on the feasibility of carbon sequestration.

Matthew Wald of the New York Times explained the technology that will be implemented by the plant on All Things Considered: “They take the coal, and instead of grinding it up and burning it, the way you do in a conventional plant, they cook it, and it gives off two gasses: hydrogen, which is benign — when you burn it you get nothing but water — and carbon monoxide, which we think of as a pollutant, but here as a fuel gas. You mix the carbon monoxide with water; it grabs hydrogen out of the water, so you then end up with carbon dioxide, nicely separated, and more hydrogen. You burn the hydrogen to make power, and then you have this nice clean flow of CO2 that you can dispose of.”

In 2006, coal power plants generated about 50% of the nation’s electricity, while emitting roughly 40% of the total carbon dioxide. The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change considers capturing carbon and pumping it underground to be a likely solution for slowing climate change. Although carbon sequestration has the potential to significantly decrease emissions, the word clean perhaps can never accurately be used to describe coal.

Putting the carbon emission aside, coal mining is responsible for extensive environmental damage. Forests and streams are destroyed, impacting water quality and wildlife habitat.

Despite the environmental impacts of coal mining, the low-emissions plant in Mattoon, IL is certainly an improvement from business as usual. This prototype plant will help answer some of the questions that surround carbon sequestration and its feasibility for mitigating climate change.

What if I told you the Federal Government would be paying to experimentally inject 1 million tons of carbon dioxide into the ground under Illinois? And what if I said the CO2 would by supplied by an ethanol plant owned and operated by Archer Daniels Midland (ADM)?

You’d say I was crazy, right?

On Tuesday, the Department of Energy awarded $66.7 million to investigate large-scale carbon sequestration programs in Illinois. The money was awarded to the Midwest Geological Sequestration Consortium, one of seven regional carbon sequestration partnerships funded by the DOE and consisting of private businesses, state entities, and local universities in the Illionois-Kentucky-Indiana geographic region. This is all part of the DOE’s 10-year initiative to establish and commercialize carbon sequestration.

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