Taking the Carbon Out of Coal - Enhanced Transcript
Table of Contents
Making Coal Power Low-Carbon
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- 0:00
- Tim Bauer: The PurGen plant goes on the site right here…
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- 0:02
- Heidi Cullen: Tim Bauer is a man with a plan.
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- 0:04
- Tim Bauer: I can’t tell you how exciting it is to be able to bring new technologies to a business that has really been hide-bound, in my opinion, in doing things the same old way.
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- 0:14
- Heidi Cullen: That same old way, when it comes to generating electricity from coal, is to burn the fossil fuel, releasing climate-changing carbon dioxide into the atmosphere.
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- 0:24
- Tim Bauer: The PurGen plant uses coal as its feedstock, however we don’t burn it in the traditional sense. We make gas out of it, we gasify it, to make hydrogen.
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- 0:33
- Heidi Cullen: Bauer’s plan calls for capturing the carbon dioxide at the plant and carrying it in a 2-foot diameter pipeline 140 miles offshore to where it will be injected into sandstone 8000 feet under the seabed. The process is called carbon capture and sequestration or CCS.
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- 0:51
- Tim Bauer: While of course it is more expensive to create electricity the way we are with the gasification facility and with our carbon sequestration, we are able to cover that capital cost by co-production. When electricity prices are high, we will make electricity out of the bulk of our hydrogen stream. However, when electricity prices are low, we will be making commercial chemicals such as urea, used as fertilizer or in pollution clean up in diesel engines.
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- 1:18
- Heidi Cullen: But not everyone loves the idea. A recently formed coalition group called Stop PurGen doesn’t want the power plant in their backyard.
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- 1:28
- Jeff Tittle: Linden, we are on the front lines in the battle for climate change. The reason that this plant and this facility is really the frontline battle, is because what happens here is really going to affect how we deal with climate throughout the country and throughout the world. Whether we are gong to be putting our money into green resources like renewable energy and energy efficiency or whether we are going to go down the same old failed path saying that technology is going to solve our problems by building very expensive plants.
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- 1:54
- Heidi Cullen: Despite the opposition and the cost, SCS is betting on success, and plans to be generating low-carbon electricity by 2016. I'm Dr. Heidi Cullen with Climate Central.
