By Wally Kennedy

wkennedy@joplinglobe.com

A research experiment under way at the Southwest Power Station in Springfield could help power plants across Missouri capture and then store carbon dioxide in a deep underground rock formation.

In theory, the gas would dissolve in water in the formation and form solid carbon minerals. Whether the sequestration of the carbon works would be verified by months of geotechnical analysis.

Why is the Missouri Carbon Sequestration Project important? Missouri Sen. Christopher “Kit’’ Bond, a Republican, who helped secure a $2.4 million grant from the U.S. Department of Energy for the three-year project, believes it could help shield Missouri utility customers from the financial downside of proposed Senate legislation that would tax carbon emissions.

The Lieberman-Warner Climate Security Act of 2007 would impose a cap-and-trade program for reducing carbon emissions. Critics, including U.S. Sen. Claire McCaskill and U.S. Rep. Roy Blunt, believe the cap-and-trade idea forces industries to spend money and that the costs would be passed on to electricity users who rely on coal-generated energy.

“The part of me that worries about our environment says ‘yes’ on this bill while my good government taxpayer watchdog side has lots of sirens going off,” said McCaskill. “But this is an important symbolic vote to send the message that we need to focus on global warming, we need to do it in a fair and responsible way, and we need to do it soon.

“I’m committed to making sure that whatever policies eventually become law protect lower-income and middle- class Missourians from being hit with higher costs.”

Bond said he believes the bill would impose a costly carbon tax on consumers if a way cannot be found to capture and reduce carbon emissions. Putting carbon in the ground would reduce carbon emissions and lower the financial impact on energy consumers.

“A law will be passed to reduce carbon emissions. The Missouri Carbon Sequestration Project is designed to develop the technology and demonstrate how to reduce carbon emissions,” said Bond.

“The Lieberman-Warner bill would take $6.7 trillion out of the economy over a period of years,” he said. “The energy companies and utilities will simply put it in their cost basis. It will come back to the consumers because the technology is not there.”

Bond said the petroleum industry would also pass along costs to consumers in the form of higher fuel prices.

“A cap-and-trade program without the technology is nothing but a tax increase that will drive business overseas and be a huge burden on the economy,” he said. “Reducing carbon emissions is an objective we all share, but Lieberman-Warner is the wrong way to get there.”

Atmospheric scientists believe carbon dioxide emissions from power plants, cars and industry is making the world warmer.

Bond said City Utilities in Springfield soon will have the ability to either gasify or liquefy coal, which will permit the company to separate out the carbon in the coal.

“What do you do with it? What do you do with the carbon?” he asked. “City Utilities is exploring the possibility of putting it underground if the geology is acceptable. This would take two to three years. We would find out how much carbon the ground can hold.

“If we can’t store the carbon here, Missouri consumers will have to build very expensive pipelines to ship the carbon to carbon sequestration sites in other states.”

The Missouri Carbon Sequestration Project is being supported by five utility companies and three research partners. The Empire District Electric Co., of Joplin, and the other utilities have each contributed $98,000 to the research. The research is being led by Missouri State University, the Missouri University of Science and Technology in Rolla, and the Missouri Department of Natural Resources.

If the experiment works in Springfield, it could also work with the coal-fired power plants operated by Empire and those operated by the other utilities in the state.

“This is an important project for Empire for a couple of reasons,” said Julie Maus, spokeswoman for Empire. “Future regulation of carbon dioxide emissions will add significantly to the cost of producing electricity. We have geology that is similar at many of our own plant sites. The results of this pilot project could be applied at many of our facilities.

“We feel that carbon sequestration needs to be researched and investigated because it has the potential for significant cost savings for our customers in dealing with future carbon regulation.’’

Getting results could take some time. Maus said the initial research and testing will last about two years. It will include drilling and coring, and pumping tests.

“If all of that proves successful, a test injection would take place using food-grade CO2, which is what they use to carbonate beverages,” she said. “The limited test injection would be followed by another long-term monitoring period for two years or so to see how the mineralization occurs.”

Maus said there is a direct link between the Missouri Carbon Sequestration Project and the Lieberman-Warner bill

“It’s a direct connection in that we are trying to find a more cost-effective solution for lowering carbon-dioxide emissions,” she said.

The goal is to find an economical way to capture and store carbon in preparation for congressional action on a carbon tax on utilities and industries that release carbon dioxide.

Bond said a carbon tax would be a tremendous financial burden for Americans if an economical way to remove and store carbon dioxide is not found. A carbon tax, he said, could cost the average Missourian $6,852 more a year if a way is not found to manage the greenhouse gas.

Bond said a carbon tax bill could add $1.44 to cost of a gallon of gasoline and could increase electric bills by 153 percent.

The experiment will measure how much carbon dioxide gas the Lamotte Formation, a highly mineralized zone of rock 2,000 below the surface, will be able to absorb. If that formation absorbs the gas, then Missouri’s utility companies could avoid the cost of building costly pipelines to carry the gas to deeper injection sites in northern states.

Data from a 2006 study of a core sample from a well north of Springfield suggested that carbon sequestration in the formation might work.



Observed increase

Atmospheric levels of carbon dioxide have risen from preindustrial levels of 280 parts per million (ppm) to today’s level of 375 ppm. The evidence indicates the observed increase is due primarily to expanding use of fossil fuels for energy. Predictions of global energy use in the next century suggests a continued increase in carbon emissions and rising concentrations of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere unless major changes are made in the management of carbon, according to the U.S. Department of Energy.



Bill summary

The Lieberman-Warner Climate Security Act of 2007, according to a summary of the bill, would “prescribe the annual emissions cap, or emissions allowance account, from 2012 to 2050. Starting at 5.755 billion metric tons in 2012, this cap is reduced by approximately 1.8 percent each year from the 2012 level to 1.732 billion metric tons in 2050.”

The program creates a system that forces large emitters of greenhouse gases to buy the right to emit a prescribed amount of the gases annually by buying allowances or carbon credits. The amount of allowable emissions goes down each year. The program would allow businesses to trade credits on the open market.