Climate and energy

Stop! Before you read any further, go to this link and download “KGS Public Information Circular No. 27: Geological Sequestration of Carbon Dioxide in Kansas”  from the Kansas Geological Survey.

I hesitate to call it the dummies version, but. It is. Four easy-to-read pages – plus a very interesting map of potential CO2 sequestration sites in Kansas – and the last page includes a very helpful glossary section.

You will probably need that glossary to make it through the following. (I did!)

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Over the river and through the woods and through blowing snow, to the KCC we went. Yesterday morning. Wrecks on I-70 abounded, the weather was clearly less than delightful – and yet the Geological Sequestration Roundtable boasted a packed house, with probably over 100 attendees. Sponsors of the event included KGS, the KCC, and Westar Energy.

Why the interest in geological sequestration? Let’s back up a minute – in this context, “sequestration” is a term used to mean “take the greenhouse gas carbon dioxide out of a waste stream and put it  somewhere where it will not re-enter the atmosphere and further contribute to climate change.”

Practically, there are two major ways to sequester CO2 from industrial waste streams – (1) soil sequestration via plants, through agricultural practices (this approach is more indirect, thus it is considered an offset), and (2) carbon capture and sequestration (CCS), via geological sequestration – basically that means sticking the CO2 underground.

For many, geological sequestration is the Holy Grail of fossil fuels. If you figure out a way to do it – affordably, without using exorbitant amounts of water or energy in the process, and on a big enough scale to actually remove significant amounts of CO2 emissions – then conceivably you can keep burning some amount of fossil fuels for electrical generation.

That’s why GS matters generally. Now, why does it matter to KS? Well, between natural rock formations (saline aquifers, coal seams, etc.) and oil and gas wells, KS has enormous underground storage capacity.

Capacity suitable for GS?

Could be.

NOTE: I edited this because I realized that I had not defined an important term – CCS, or carbon capture and sequestration. Capture technologies are one thing, sequestration is another.

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I”l say it again – go back up and download that circular. All I will list here are a few major points of fact that I noted during the several presentations:

• There are three phases to CCS – (a) capturing the CO2 at the point source, (b) transporting it, probably through a pipeline, and (c) storing it in a reservoir, and/or using the pure CO2 for enhanced oil recovery (EOR). (In the EOR example, the CO2 transforms from waste product into a commodity.) What’s EOR? A technology that pumps pure CO2 underground to force up the oil that can’t be pumped up by any other means. The CO2 acts as a solvent and washes the oil out of the rock, and then stays locked in the pore space.
• The second C in “CCS” stands for capture of carbon – and capture techniques under development include amine process, integrated gasifiation combined cycle (IGCC), oxycombustion (which sounded coolest), chilled ammonia, etc.
• CO2 is usually thought of as a gas, but when stored deep underground the pressure can turn it into a solid, or “psuedo-liquid,” which may eventually crystallize, depending on the compression. The way GS works – the CO2 is injected into wells that go very, very deep.
• CO2 is stored  far below the water table – but a major concern is keeping the CO2 “plume” from migrating and escaping into the drinking water, or even escaping into the atmosphere. Reasons: CO2 acidifies water and acidified water can dissolve yucky things into it (yes, that’s a technical term) – metals, etc., things you really don’t want to drink or spray on crops.

• CO2 captured from ethanol plants, gasification processes, etc., is a lot cleaner than that captured from coal plants. The CO2 from coal plants has many other pollutants that also have to be removed, which causes increased expense, more use of energy, etc.
• GS takes an ENORMOUS amount of underground storage. The KCC did a test case analysis: For two 750 MW coal-fired power plants that emitted 10 million tons of carbon dioxide per year, how much storage would it take to sequester those emissions?
  • In a coal seam, the 10 year output would cover 48 square miles of pore space (7×7 miles). The 50 year output would be 241 square miles (approx. 15×15 miles). This would take HUNDREDS of injection wells.
  • In a sandstone reservoir, the 10 year output would cover 177 square miles (13×13). The 50 year output would be 885 square miles (30×30). Again, a huge project with hundreds of injection wells.
• EOR is an ongoing process, but CCS/ GS technologies will not be affordable and/or market-ready on a big enough scale for at least 10-15 years. The phrase “clean coal” was very notably not mentioned at any point, and I know people fight like crazy over what that word means. However, if it means removing the pollutant CO2 from power plant emissions, then as a technology GS can’t do that yet.
• “Pore space.” These are not the pores on your face. Pore space refers to where CO2 is stored underground. I was a little gobsmacked when no one seemed to know the answer to what is a fairly simple, and critical, question: “Who owns the pore space?” Is it a subsurface right? Is it a mineral right? Can it be severed from the land? That’s pretty important to know.
• Note – Kansas is already beleagured with wind speculators – so, folks, watch out, because now there are “pore space” speculators. Not kidding. If someone comes and tells you they own all your pore space, smile politely and go find a lawyer. If GS ever does work out, that pore space will be worth $$$ to someone. Ideally that someone is you.

And one of the reasons we don’t know legal details about pore spaces is because GS is very new.

Well – there were mixed messages on this amongst the speakers. On one hand, it’s so new that no one is really sure at all how the regulations will work out, and they don’t know the answer to basic concerns of resource and property law – like, “who owns the pore space?” On the other hand, the message is that there are several CCS/GS test projects going on and success is pretty much around the corner. Then the same people say – but OMG it is EXPENSIVE (especially the capture stage). Really really expensive. And it uses a colossal amount of water, and it is not at all energy efficient yet. Etc.

Other issues – is storing CO2 underground safe? As one participant pointed out, this CO2 has to be stored forever. It’s a fluid that loves to move around, we don’t know much about the subsurface it will be stored in, and underground fractures happen all the time. Is this really a good idea?

Both the KCC presenter and the EPA presenter discussed the risks. Some of the highest risks are when CO2 is being added to the reservoir, when pressure is building up after the first 10-30 years. The risk decreases over time, after the reservoir is closed.

The EPA currently has a rules and regs process going on to regulate GS re groundwater contamination. Some of the problems that worry them are:

• GS sequesters CO2 in extremely large volumes, and the accumulation becomes very buoyant, viscous, and corrosive
• underground CO2 escaping to create carbonic acid out of water sources
• contamination of CO2 with other pollutants (you should really only sequester pure CO2)
• faulty injection wells
• abandoned injection wells
• unplugged oil and gas wells, where CO2 could escape
• faults or fractures in the geologic strata, seismic activity, issues with geochemistry of the reservoir
• Etc.

Other presenters mentioned the risks of sudden releases, which could possibly asphyxiate humans and animals in the area – and probably wouldn’t do plants many favors either.

Basically, GS is a long-term environmental stewardship issue. There are short-term risks, but also extremely long-term ones. Within the limited human framework – can we really manage storage that lasts thousands of years? Humans tend to have much shorter attention spans.

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At any rate. How to regulate CCS/ GS? And why regulate it in the first place?

The KCC just finished a rules and regs process regarding CO2 sequestration. It is one of only seven states to attempt it – the EPA hasn’t even finished its version. Reason for the KCC process: In 2007 the Kansas legislature passed a bill directing the KCC to engage in this process, as well as authorizing certain incentives for companies that engage in these technologies.

What GS regulation involves: holy cow. The list makes building a nuclear plant look easy. I’m kind of joking – but not really. There’s the permits, the survey, the closure plan, the storage facility safety plan, provisions for permit transfer, a financial assurance guarentee, provisions for permit suspension or calculation, injection well specifications, I couldn’t even begin to jot it all down.

Financial assurances – this is important. If something goes wrong, if the bad things happen, who pays to fix it? That’s where the financial assurances come in. The KCC will levy a five cents per ton of carbon fee on the process, and (oops, can’t read my handwriting, so sorry) either 2 or 3 cents of that will go to a financial assurances fund. Like Superfund, I suppose, but hopefully a lot more solvent.

An interesting difference I wondered about, between the difference in the KCC’s proposed rules, and EPA’s proposed rules – public comment, and when it enters the process.

Will the EPA rules, when passed, supersede the KCC rules? Good question. No one asked or answered it. I would assume they would overlap to some extent, and if KS wants to make their version more stringent they probably could. But I’m making it up so that guess is not worth much.

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Note: In his presentation, Energy and Committee Chairman Rep. Carl Holmes expressed frustration with the KCC. The GS rules and regs  were originally due out in July – but this December meeting was the first time they were introduced, and it will probably be at least a few months before the regs become official.

As he pointed out, this delay hurts KS businesses. Two Kansas companies (an ethanol plant, and a gasification/ fertilizer plant, wanting to sell pure CO2 for EOR in TX) were on the ground and ready to go with their projects this summer. However, they couldn’t comply with regs that didn’t exist, so they had to go ahead anyway.

That was the first element of the Chairman’s frustration, as I understood it. Second, he mentioned that he had never yet seen a copy of these rules, and in his memory in no way was the legislative intent to shift the liability for GS process to the state of KS. (I didn’t know what this meant, exactly, but possibly it referred to the financial assurances fund?) Regardless, the liability associated with GS very much worries him and he doesn’t want the state taking that on.

Liability. That became a theme in the Q&A as well.

KCC Chairman Tom Wright kicked off with the observation that the CO2 plume sizes (underground footprints) for the two 750 MW coal plants in the hypothetical example were giant – that was a sizeable piece of ground. Exactly what happened to the CO2 – how did it degrade? A: It doesn’t degrade, it crystallizes.

I don’t know that that answer got to the core of the KCC Chairman’s concern. The vagueness of the whole GS process also became apparent when Rep. Sloan asked what the well spacing was for injection wells. A: None is specified yet, there is still testing going on.

Another issue for KS is our high number of unplugged wells – KS is very deeply drilled, and a lot of that drilling occurred long before regulatory days, and many old wells are uncapped. CO2 could thus escape.

Commissioner Harkins asked another tough question – he noted the pervasiveness of “experimental” – “testing” – etc., this sort of language used in the presentations, and noted that CCS is not feasible in the near term. Given the limited knowledge currently available, can we even develop effective rules and regs for the sequestration part of it?

The answers to that broke down in two ways. Reasons for: OK, so we don’t know what will happen with the CO2, but we need to at least take a first step so CCS/GS pilot projects can get under way in Kansas. Since that first step needs to be a safe one, thus we need rules and regs.

Reasons against: Given the unknowns, here… that may be too much risk to manage.

An interesting answer that also was mentioned – the ground is where the CO2 came from in the first place, we’re just putting it back. A little ahead of schedule, admittedly, and we are interfering with and accelerating the carbon cycle to do it – and that’s not to say there won’t be leaks and accidents, because there will be – but most of the CO2 will stay under the ground most of the time.

The question, I suppose, is whether Kansas is okay with that.

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Some interesting stats from a presentation by Tom Gross of KDHE, who is leading the Kansas greenhouse gas inventory as part of the KEEP process.

• In 2005 Kansas ranked 26th in total greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions
• It ranked 12th in the nation, though, in terms of per capita GHG emissions
• In Kansas, coal is responsible for 95.6% of the GHG emissions of the electricity sector (natural gas is 2%, oil is 2.2%)

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Would have liked to stay for the nuclear energy financing roundtable that followed that afternoon, but the weather was starting to scare me so I headed home to hot chocolate and the woodstove.

Everybody drive safe!

— Maril Hazlett, www.climateandenergy.org