Coal news and updates

In spite of the Indian government’s international commitments to clipping greenhouse gas emissions (driven home by the country’s ratification of the Paris climate agreement earlier this month), coal will still, for the foreseeable future, occupy a dominant place in the country’s energy mix. Whereas the average country generated 39 percent of its power by burning coal in 2014, Indian coal was responsible for a full 72 percent--rivalling the world’s largest coal consumer, China, in proportion if not in volume. India thus finds itself caught in a dilemma: where environmental responsibility calls for greener energy sources, economic development seems to mandate exploiting fossil fuels.

 

To strike that balance, India can seek a transitional alternative to support a clean growth path until renewables such as wind, solar, and hydropower become economically competitive. One potential option is to develop carbon capture and geological storage (CCS) technology that minimizes the negative impact of coal.

 

In theory, CCS can trap and store up to 90 percent of carbon dioxide emissions from electricity generation and industrial processes in selected geological reservoirs such as depleted oil and gas fields and unmineable coal seams. CCS consists of three steps: capturing the carbon dioxide, transporting it, and storing or utilizing it securely. Each of these stages can be carried out through different systems, and carbon capture can be realized either before or after combustion.

 

Critics mainly dismiss CCS’s viability on economic grounds. It is expensive to retrofit the technology on existing plants, while new plants with built-in CCS capacities require multi-billion-dollar investments. For instance, Canada’s SaskPower (the world’s first large-scale power plant equipped with CCS) cost $1.5 billion to build.

 

In India’s case, however, the accumulated benefits of implementing CCS at a large scale, given careful planning and prudent execution, could outweigh the one-time cost. After all, both economic necessities and political will are pulling India toward the development trajectory of every other industrial nation in the world: one powered by dirty fossil fuels.

SOurce: OILPrice.com