DUSTIN BLEIZEFFER Star-Tribune energy reporter | Posted: Saturday, February 9, 2008 12:00 am
Wyoming coal might not need a FuturGen-type of project to slide its coal under California's greenhouse gas emissions standard.
There are plenty of companies busily working at capturing carbon from coal, according to one state official.
"Vendors we've talked to said that is an achievable goal," said Gov. Dave Freudenthal's energy policy adviser, Rob Hurless. "One of the benefits of the California standard is that it is a performance standard. They're focused on the power meeting that standard, and they're a bit agnostic about what technology meets that standard."
In the wake of the U.S. government pullout on FutureGen - a project to develop a near-zero-emissions coal plant - and PacifiCorp's recent decision to shelve two planned coal projects in Wyoming, officials here still are not giving up on serving one of the "greenest" customers in the world: California.
Construction of new electrical generation in the West is projected to grow by 6 percent, while demand for electricity is projected to increase by 19 percent over the next 10 years, according to the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission. Most of that demand comes from California.
Freudenthal recently visited with California energy officials. He was joined by state Rep. Tom Lubnau, R-Gillette, House Speaker Roy Cohee, R-Casper, and Senate President John Schiffer, R-Kaycee.
"We were there to open a dialogue with California about how Wyoming can best position itself," Lubnau said this week. "The ultimate goal is to turn Wyoming's economy from that of a colonial economy to that of an added-value economy."
Hurless and Lubnau insisted that officials from both states are not getting involved in any specific projects. The Wyoming delegation brought with it a legislative measure that would clearly define underground voids where carbon dioxide might be stored as property of the surface estate.
The bill is expected to go before the Legislature this month.
"Our goal is not to interfere with the market, but create an environment in which the market can work," Lubnau said.
California's "greenhouse gas emissions performance standard" requires that baseload electric generation facilities serving California customers may not exceed CO2 emissions greater than a combined-cycle natural gas turbine plant. Numerically, the limit is 1,100 pounds of CO2 per megawatt hour.
The technology to fit Wyoming coal into that standard is not coal-fired boilers, or "critical," or even "super-critical" coal-fired boilers. It is only coal-gasification, according to Eric Redman, environmental attorney with Seattle-based Heller Ehrman.
"If you burn the coal, currently there is no commercially available technology to separate CO2 from the flue gases going up the stack," Redman said.
Although Wyoming officials are aiming for the "value-added" component of processing coal into electricity within the state, its first coal gasification might not involve power lines, but pipelines instead.
Peabody Energy recently announced plans to develop a number of coal-to-natural gas facilities in the Powder River Basin using a process developed by GreatPoint Energy.
"That's a technology that a lot of people are attracted to," Redman said.
Energy reporter Dustin Bleizeffer can be reached at (307) 577-6069 or dustin.bleizeffer@trib.com.