After getting the fundamentals of geological carbon storage through classroom and group exercises, it was finally time for the RECS group to go out into the field and see CCS in action.

Along with RECS, our team went into the field with the U.S. Department of Energy’s Southwest Regional Partnership (SWP) on Carbon
Sequestration.

At New Mexico's Pump Canyon, our team toured SWP's test project site, where researchers are injecting carbon dioxide (CO2) into the ground.

For years, the Cortez Pipeline has been bringing pure CO2 from the McElmo Dome (a natural geological formation located in southwestern Colorado) to west Texas for use in enhanced oil recovery (EOR) projects.

The effort at Pump Canyon is to take a stream of that CO2 and bury it — permanently — in the New Mexico bedrock 3,000 below ground level. Injection at Pump Canyon began July 31, 2008.

Measuring what happens to the sequestered CO2 is the responsibility of the crew at Pump Canyon.

They measure the surface temperature and surface pressure. They use tilt meters and air flux meters. They do seismic profiling and drop geophones down wells. Being 100 percent certain is their business, and
they take it seriously.

As we've often said, the next generation of clean coal technology will include the eventual capture and safe storage of CO2. And now we've seen with our own eyes that when the technology is ready, it will not only be a clean technology, it will be a safe one.

The Research Experience in Carbon Sequestration began with a presentation from Dr. Revis James, the director of the Electric Power Research Institute’s (EPRI) Energy Technology Assessment Center. EPRI is an independent non-profit R&D foundation that provides technology, policy and economic analyses in emerging energy technologies.

Dr. James set the table for why coal will continue to play an important role in meeting America’s energy needs, especially with the capture and safe storage of carbon dioxide (CO2).

Later that day, Dr. Klaus Lackner talked about how to ensure that the CO2 stays in the ground in a safe manner.

Dr. Lackner, the director of the Earth Institute at Columbia University, talked about the best way to monitor underground CO2 injection, including the advantages of using C-14 tagging, which involves a harmless carbon isotope.
Adding one microgram of C-14 to every ton of CO2 would be a safe way of alerting detectors that the carbon present at the storage site is the very same carbon that was injected in the CCS process.

Dr. Sally Benson, director of the Global Climate Energy Project at Stanford University and an expert on how carbon dioxide flows through rocks, also gave us her recommendations on making carbon capture and sequestration safer and more efficient.

The next day, Dr. Mark Holtz of Praxair talked about enhanced oil recovery (EOR) and carbon storage optimization.
We also talked with Dr. Michael Celia of Princeton University who studies “injectivity and leakage” in CO2 storage in deep saline aquifers. That is, it’s important to make sure geology can handle the rate at which the CO2 is injected—as well as to ensure that the CO2 does not leak out.

With so many talented individuals working toward the same goal, it’s all the more evident that clean energy technologies like CCS can and will reduce emissions while allowing us to use our most abundant and affordable energy source: coal.

You’ve probably heard us say we can reach our long-term global emissions reductions goals while protecting American families and businesses from higher energy costs.

How can we be so sure?

Well for one thing, some of America’s smartest people are working around the clock on the next generation of clean coal technology, which includes the capture and safe storage of carbon dioxide.

ACCCE staffers spent time with the Research Experience in Carbon Sequestration (RECS) –a 10-day research program that advances scientific research and professional training in the field of carbon capture and storage (CCS).

The faculty consisted of experts from companies, labs and academic institutions such as Alstom Power, American Electric Power, Columbia University, Harvard University, Princeton University, Stanford University and the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency. We were with RECS all week to share stories directly from the men and women behind clean coal technology.

Be sure to check out our videos and photos from the trip!

Indiana hasn't seen a new major power plant built in more than 20 years. As you might imagine, the Hoosier State has a growing electricity demand like everywhere else and can't wait to have a boost to its supply of affordable energy.

Duke Energy's Edwardsport IGCC project Duke Energy's Edwardsport IGCC project

The Factuality Tour dropped by a small town in southwest Indiana to see the work taking place to build the largest facility in the world to use integrated gasification combined cycle (IGCC) technology to produce electricity.

The advanced IGCC technology is a way to gasify coal, strip out pollutants, and then use the cleaner gas to produce electricity. As a result, the new large-scale facility, being built adjacent to the existing Edwardsport Generating Station, will be one of the cleanest coal-based power plants in the world - and when it's ready for commercial operations in 2012, it will produce nearly 10 times as much power as the existing plant with dramatically less environmental impact.

As an added bonus, the geological conditions at the new plant's site along the White River between the towns of Edwardsport and Bicknell are ideal for IGCC technology - and the eventual addition of permanent CO2 storage.

To meet Indiana's growing energy demand, Duke Energy began planning to build a new generating facility a few years ago. To help things along and ensure access to an affordable supply of electricity, the community rallied around Duke Energy's proposal. In fact, during the permitting process for the project, rows of "IGCC Yes" signs filled front yards all over Indiana's Knox County.

Community Support for Clean Coal Duke Energy's Edwardsport IGCC project

Thanks to steadfast support from the local community, the Edwardsport project took important steps to becoming a reality:

• Indiana Senate Bill 29 -enacted in 2002 - encouraged clean coal and authorized mechanisms for timely recovery of costs.
• Indiana Senate Bill 378 - enacted in 2005 - provided an investment tax credit for integrated gasification combined cycle (IGCC) projects using coal.
• Local tax abatements approved by Knox County gave further support for the project.
• The Energy Policy Act of 2005 provided a federal investment tax credit.

Thanks to the support of the community, southwest Indiana will have a new power plant with significantly fewer emissions than its existing generating facilities.

During previous Factuality Tour stops, we have visited existing power plants where has been undertaken to retrofit their facilities to adopt technologies to capture carbon dioxide (CO2) from the post-combustion process.

Given the size of America's coal-based electricity fleet, technology like we've seen at these plants will play an important role in reducing CO2 emissions.

Duke Energy, however, gave us a chance to learn about a different side of the CO2-reduction world: new power plants that can separate CO2 from the fuel prior to combustion.

Duke's Edwardsport plant will be the largest facility in the world to use integrated gasification combined cycle (IGCC) technology to produce electricity. This technology will result in CO2 emissions that are 45 percent less per unit of energy produced than the current units at Edwardsport.

In addition, Duke has committed to installing selective catalytic reduction equipment to remove nitrogen oxide, which would make it the cleanest IGCC plant in the nation.

Our question as we arrived in Mattoon was: what do people in town think of FutureGen?

We Support FutureGen

The answer became obvious nearly every storefront we passed in Mattoon had a sign in the window saying: "We Support FutureGen."

This town understands what a great boost the plant will be to the local economy - it will provide clean energy jobs and attract the best and brightest students to nearby colleges and universities who want to be a part of it. They also understand what this technology will mean to the rest of the world.

Why did we come to Mattoon? Well first of all, our car broke down. But our stop here was a perfect way to end the trip, since this city is a symbol of the future of clean coal technology.

Mattoon, Ill.: Site of FutureGen

As we've seen, coal-based electricity facilities have made great strides in reducing nitrogen oxide, sulfur dioxide and other pollutants from ever being emitted into the air. In fact, when it comes to all regulated pollutants, coal plants are 77 percent cleaner in terms of emissions currently regulated under existing Clean Air Act programs per unit of energy produced.

But what about carbon dioxide and other emissions?

One answer (there are many!) is FutureGen, a public-private partnership to build the world's first near-zero emissions coal-based power plant. Mattoon is the best site in the entire country to build the plant, according to the U.S. Department of Energy, due to the surrounding geology.

Power plants are not required to capture their carbon dioxide (CO2) emissions, but they are working hard on the technology anyway.

Alstom's Carbon Capture Pilot Project Carbon Capture at work

The pilot facility at the Pleasant Prairie Power Plant takes about 1 percent of its flue gas for use in the carbon capture demonstration project.

Using a chilled ammonia process developed by Alstom Power Inc., the test project captures 90 percent of the carbon emissions. The demonstration project began in March 2008 and will last for two years.

Later on the Factuality Tour, we'll see this technology in action elsewhere in the country, including one that will come online as the nation's first commercial-grade power plant to capture and sequester its own emissions.

We arrived in this small town near Lake Michigan to visit the power plant that has the lowest emission rate of any coal-based electricity plant in Wisconsin: the Pleasant Prairie Power Plant (dubbed P4 by the workers we met), owned by We Energies.

We Energies Pleasant Prairie Power Plant

Since being built about 30 years ago, P4 installed a retrofit system that has resulted in a 90 percent reduction in nitrogen oxide and a 95 percent reduction in sulfur dioxide emissions.

Here at P4, we got a first-hand look at the latest generation of clean coal technology: efforts to reduce carbon dioxide emissions by capturing the carbon as it escapes in the flue gas.