Isramart :Taxpayer funds increased for carbon-capture project

Isramart news:
Taxpayers are being called on to expand a project intended to demonstrate how emissions from a coal-burning power plant can be captured and injected underground for long-term storage, in an effort to keep them from adding to air pollution.

This month, the U.S. Department of Energy approved $334 million in funding to support an expansion of the American Electric Power Co.’s demonstration project, to make it a commercial-scale effort that would start up in 2015. It would use a chilled-ammonia process to capture at least 90 percent of carbon dioxide from 235 megawatts of the West Virginia plant’s 1,300 megawatts of capacity, treat the substance and then inject it about 1.5 miles underground for permanent storage.

Locally, Dayton Power and Light Co. engineers are watching the AEP project and others like it around the nation to see whether the same process could be used locally. The new technology could reduce pollution from coal-burning plants like those that DP&L relies on to generate electricity.

American Electric Power, a Columbus-based utility which serves customers in 11 states, said it has invested $73 million in the existing demonstration project, begun in early October at its 29-year-old Mountaineer power plant at New Haven, W.Va. The company hopes to persuade regulators in West Virginia and Virginia, whose customers are served by AEP’s network, to allow AEP to pass the project’s costs along to consumers.

The American Electric Power project, and other clean-coal technologies that the utility industry is developing, are aimed at demonstrating reduced-pollution methods of burning coal, an abundant American energy resource.

Utility executives said they believe coal must be part of the nation’s approach to its energy needs, along with energy-efficiency programs and development of alternative energy sources, to satisfy the demand from business and residential consumers. Environmentalists counter that the government should focus on energy conservation programs and alternative energy production from wind, solar and other renewable, clean resources.

The federal funding will help reduce AEP’s cost of demonstrating new technology, company spokesman Pat Hemlepp said.