Bon Dioxide from Coal and Other Fossil Fuel Facilities
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S. HRG. 111–145 RANGE OF INNOVATIVE, NON-GEOLOGIC APPLICA- TIONS FOR THE BENEFICIAL REUSE OF CAR- BON DIOXIDE FROM COAL AND OTHER FOSSIL FUEL FACILITIES HEARING BEFORE A SUBCOMMITTEE OF THE COMMITTEE ON APPROPRIATIONS UNITED STATES SENATE ONE HUNDRED ELEVENTH CONGRESS FIRST SESSION SPECIAL HEARING MAY 6, 2009—WASHINGTON, DC Printed for the use of the Committee on Appropriations ( Available via the World Wide Web: http://www.gpoaccess.gov/congress/index.html U.S. GOVERNMENT PRINTING OFFICE 50–298 PDF WASHINGTON : 2009 For sale by the Superintendent of Documents, U.S. Government Printing Office Internet: bookstore.gpo.gov Phone: toll free (866) 512–1800; DC area (202) 512–1800 Fax: (202) 512–2104 Mail: Stop IDCC, Washington, DC 20402–0001 COMMITTEE ON APPROPRIATIONS DANIEL K. INOUYE, Hawaii, Chairman ROBERT C. BYRD, West Virginia THAD COCHRAN, Mississippi PATRICK J. LEAHY, Vermont CHRISTOPHER S. BOND, Missouri TOM HARKIN, Iowa MITCH MCCONNELL, Kentucky BARBARA A. MIKULSKI, Maryland RICHARD C. SHELBY, Alabama HERB KOHL, Wisconsin JUDD GREGG, New Hampshire PATTY MURRAY, Washington ROBERT F. BENNETT, Utah BYRON L. DORGAN, North Dakota KAY BAILEY HUTCHISON, Texas DIANNE FEINSTEIN, California SAM BROWNBACK, Kansas RICHARD J. DURBIN, Illinois LAMAR ALEXANDER, Tennessee TIM JOHNSON, South Dakota SUSAN COLLINS, Maine MARY L. LANDRIEU, Louisiana GEORGE V. VOINOVICH, Ohio JACK REED, Rhode Island LISA MURKOWSKI, Alaska FRANK R. LAUTENBERG, New Jersey BEN NELSON, Nebraska MARK PRYOR, Arkansas JON TESTER, Montana ARLEN SPECTER, Pennsylvania CHARLES J. HOUY, Staff Director BRUCE EVANS, Minority Staff Director SUBCOMMITTEE ON ENERGY AND WATER DEVELOPMENT BYRON L. DORGAN, North Dakota, Chairman ROBERT C. BYRD, West Virginia ROBERT F. BENNETT, Utah PATTY MURRAY, Washington THAD COCHRAN, Mississippi DIANNE FEINSTEIN, California MITCH MCCONNELL, Kentucky TIM JOHNSON, South Dakota CHRISTOPHER S. BOND, Missouri MARY L. LANDRIEU, Louisiana KAY BAILEY HUTCHISON, Texas JACK REED, Rhode Island RICHARD C. SHELBY, Alabama FRANK R. LAUTENBERG, New Jersey LAMAR ALEXANDER, Tennessee TOM HARKIN, Iowa GEORGE V. VOINOVICH, Ohio JON TESTER, Montana DANIEL K. INOUYE, Hawaii (ex officio) Professional Staff DOUG CLAPP ROGER COCKRELL FRANZ WUERFMANNSDOBLER SCOTT O’MALIA (Minority) BRAD FULLER (Minority) Administrative Support MICHAEL BAIN (II) CONTENTS Page Opening Statement of Senator Byron L. Dorgan .................................................. 1 Statement of Senator Jon Tester ............................................................................ 4 Statement of Scott M. Klara, Director, Strategic Center for Coal, National Energy Technology Center, Department of Energy .......................................... 5 Prepared Statement ......................................................................................... 7 Coal Research and Development Program ............................................................ 7 Carbon Capture and Storage .................................................................................. 7 CO2 Re-use Technologies ......................................................................................... 8 The American Recovery and Reinvestment Act .................................................... 10 Statement of Jeff D. Muhs, Executive Director, Center for Biofuels, USU Energy Laboratory, Utah State University ....................................................... 11 Prepared Statement ......................................................................................... 13 Statement of Brent R. Constantz, Ph.D., Chief Executive Officer, Calera Cor- poration ................................................................................................................. 14 Prepared Statement ......................................................................................... 16 Level the Playing Field for New Technologies ...................................................... 17 The Calera Process: CMAP Technology and Low-voltage Base Production ........ 17 Cost-efficiency .......................................................................................................... 19 Pollutant Removal ................................................................................................... 19 Demonstration Plants .............................................................................................. 19 Beyond Cement ........................................................................................................ 21 Recommendations .................................................................................................... 22 Statement of Marjorie L. Tatro, Director of Fuel and Water Systems, Sandia National Laboratories .......................................................................................... 22 Prepared Statement ......................................................................................... 24 Summary of Key Points .......................................................................................... 24 Thinking Differently About Energy, Carbon and Security .................................. 25 Algal Biofuels ........................................................................................................... 27 Synthetic Fuels From CO2 and Water ................................................................... 29 Extracting CO2 From Air ........................................................................................ 30 Algae Biofuels and Carbon Recycling—A Summary of Opportunities, Chal- lenges, and Research Needs ................................................................................ 35 (III) RANGE OF INNOVATIVE, NON-GEOLOGIC AP- PLICATIONS FOR THE BENEFICIAL REUSE OF CARBON DIOXIDE FROM COAL AND OTHER FOSSIL FUEL FACILITIES WEDNESDAY, MAY 6, 2009 U.S. SENATE, SUBCOMMITTEE ON ENERGY AND WATER DEVELOPMENT, COMMITTEE ON APPROPRIATIONS, Washington, DC. The subcommittee met at 9:04 a.m., in room SD–192, Dirksen Senate Office Building, Hon. Byron L. Dorgan (chairman) pre- siding. Present: Senators Dorgan, Tester, and Bennett. OPENING STATEMENT OF SENATOR BYRON L. DORGAN Senator DORGAN. I am going to call the hearing to order. This is a hearing of the Energy and Water Subcommittee on Ap- propriations in the U.S. Senate. Today, we are going to hold a hearing on the beneficial reuse of carbon dioxide, CO2. The $3.4 bil- lion for carbon capture and sequestration funding that was put in the stimulus program, or the economic recovery program, includes beneficial use in that solicitation. And one of the reasons that we wanted to have this hearing is I am convinced that we will need to continue to use coal in our fu- ture. Fifty percent of the electricity comes from coal. The question isn’t whether we use coal. The question is how. And my belief is that we will continue to use coal, but in a dif- ferent way. We need to make a significant effort to decarbonize coal, and the question is what do you do with that carbon? Perhaps some will be used for enhanced oil recovery. Already that is the case with a project in North Dakota, and that makes a lot of sense. Some will be sequestered somewhere, and some will be used for, we hope, beneficial use. And that is the purpose of this discussion. We need to look at a wide range of options for sequestering CO2 and using CO2. The issues that we will discuss today increase those options. We know that there are benefits that can come from storage in soils of CO2. We have a project in North Dakota, sponsored by the North Dakota Farmers Union, which has established carbon credits on the Chicago Climate Exchange. They are the largest aggregator of agricultural carbon credits on the CCX, with more than 5 million acres enrolled in 31 States. (1) 2 But there has been growing interest and need to support carbon capture and storage on a very large scale, both in this country and around the world. The Department of Energy Technology Labora- tory study shows that if the United States emits about 2 gigatons of CO2 a year from coal-fired power plants, then there could be more than 40 years worth of storage for enhanced oil and gas re- covery, more than 35 years worth of storage in unminable coal seams, perhaps 500 to 1,600 years worth of storage in saline aquifers. And North Dakota, as I said, has played a significant role here with the Great Plains synthetic fuels plant. I was just there a week and a half ago. They strip off 50 percent of the CO2 from the facil- ity. They compress it and put it in a pipeline, shipping it to the Weyburn oil fields in Canada for enhanced recovery. And they are sending about 3 million tons a year for that purpose. This leads us to the issue of beneficial reuse and the primary focus of the hearing. When we talk about beneficial reuse, it is im- portant to make a distinction between the terrestrial offsets that absorb CO2 from the atmosphere and processes that directly cap- ture CO2 from coal and other fossil-burning plant emissions and convert it into usable products. Well, algae biofuels are an example, I think, of beneficial reuse. They have a chart, I think, that shows algae tanks. Algae are the fastest-growing plants in the world. They can double their bulk in very short period of time. They can grow in wastewater and convert CO2 into a liquid fuel that is compatible with our existing fuel structure. This is an algae tank chart. We had stopped research on algae for about 15 years, I believe. And we began in the subcommittee to start that research once again. The