With a nearly $200 million investment from the Department of Energy, the project captured CO2 emissions at a rate of approximately $55 to $60 per ton, he said. , said Petra Nova has also proved to be a more cost-effective proposition than some other policies aimed at curbing CO2 emissions.Įven if the facility never resumed operations, Powell said, the project is less expensive than some other programs aimed at lowering emissions. , executive director of conservative nonprofit ClearPath "I think it has already delivered a lot for the future application of this technology," she said. Still, he suggested that "if oil was $75, they’d still be running" Petra Nova.ĭeepika Nagabhushan, program director of decarbonized fossil energy at the Clean Air Task Force (CATF), said Petra Nova is successful in the sense that it demonstrated carbon capture technology on a commercial scale - capturing 92.4% of CO2 over its life span - and has brought down costs for other projects in the works. Instead of 60 million barrels over a decade, it may take 20 or 30 years to produce that, he said. The oil field did not react to CO2 the way backers had hoped, according to Greeson. Greeson recalled that oil hit $100 a barrel before the financial close of the Petra Nova deal in 2014, and he said plans factored in a potential $75 oil price. Oil prices have been on a roller coaster since, with oil benchmarks recently trading around $40 a barrel. Greeson now consults on a carbon capture project in North Dakota, and he noted the lack of a targeted federal tax credit to help Petra Nova as he worked to develop its revenue stream.Ĭongress adopted an expanded 45Q tax credit in 2018, over a year after Petra Nova got started ( Greenwire, Feb. But he said it was a "raging success" at capturing carbon. The project remains a pioneer in carbon capture, utilization and storage, which is commonly referred to as CCUS.ĭavid Greeson, a former vice president at NRG who helped develop Petra Nova, said he doesn’t consider the project a commercial success. While Petra Nova’s capture facility is still offline, carbon capture supporters say it is not because of faults with the technology. Pat Hammond, an NRG spokeswoman, did not say if NRG has a specific oil price range in mind to make the economics of Petra Nova work. The company, which is based in Houston and New Jersey, told E&E News in July that a drop in the price of oil - which sat above $60 a barrel at the start of the year but briefly went negative in April - was the culprit ( Energywire, July 31). halted delivery of CO2 to an off-site oil field, where it was being used for enhanced oil recovery in which NRG has an interest. Roughly 3 ½ years after it began operating, Petra Nova hit pause on May 1 and co-owner NRG Energy Inc. "We would love to provide the decarbonized baseload power to keep the lights on in California," said Peter Mandelstam, chief operating officer of Enchant Energy Corp., which is pursuing a carbon capture project in New Mexico. And the West Coast fits into that discussion. "Carbon capture, in terms of being economic, I don’t really see it for coal-fired power plants just simply because there’s no federal carbon regulation in place," he said.īut supporters of the industry see a place for their efforts, which are backed by a federal tax credit known as 45Q. 20).Īkshaya Jha, an assistant professor of economics and public policy at Carnegie Mellon University’s Heinz College, said coal isn’t what he’d think of as a fill-in technology - typically, that’s natural gas, which can be used to ramp up more quickly. Recent rolling blackouts in California have served as a point of discussion for carbon capture and whether coal could help solve issues in a renewable-heavy portfolio ( Energywire, Aug. While the economics of Petra Nova give reason for caution, a number of coal plants and project developers are still considering carbon capture to offset their emissions, especially in a power sector that is increasingly focused on natural gas and renewables. "As long as we now admit the need for that, that means we need to make sure that the business model that can enable carbon capture to participate in the portfolio of technologies is as risk-free as possible." "We are clear that we need carbon capture in a comprehensive decarbonization strategy by midcentury," said Mahmoud Abouelnaga, solutions fellow at the Center for Climate and Energy Solutions (C2ES). With Petra Nova’s carbon capture on hold until economies improve, some onlookers say the need to safeguard projects in development from pitfalls is increasingly important. Yet even before Petra Nova went offline, the capture capacity of the two large-scale power projects in operation was "well off track," according to a June report from the International Energy Agency. Boosting the number of coal plants with carbon capture is seen as one way to battle climate change.
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