Moving coal forward requires a clear path to CCS.
Jeffrey P. Price is managing partner with Bluewave Resources LLC in McLean, Va. Email him at jprice@bwres.com.
Researchers are developing carbon capture and storage (CCS) technology as a means of reducing CO2 emissions from coal-fired power plants and other large stationary sources. CCS isn’t yet commercially viable for coal-fired power plants, but some coal-plant developers claim their plants are capture ready; that is, these plants can be retrofitted to implement CCS at a later date when it’s commercially viable. This claim has created a controversy about what it means to be capture ready and whether being capture ready is an adequate approach to mitigating CO2 emissions. The capture-committed power plant is an alternative to the capture-ready concept that should resolve some of the controversy.