Once the billion-dollar (including $195 million in taxpayer money from the Department of Energy) Petra Nova project to test carbon dioxide capture and storage (CCS) from coal-fired power plants shut down in Texas in 2020, many analysts proclaimed the technology was a dead end.
A report last year from the Institute for Energy Economics and Financial Analysis (IEEFA) after Petra Nova shut down concluded, “Using carbon capture as a greenlight to extend the life of fossil fuels power plants is a significant financial and technical risk: history confirms this.” Bruce Robertson, one of the report’s authors, told Chemistry World, “Many international bodies and national governments are relying on carbon capture in the fossil fuel sector to get to net zero, and it simply won’t work.”
Now Petra Nova is back. Bloomberg last week (Feb. 8) reported, “The world’s largest carbon capture plant gets a second chance in Texas.” The restart represents “a test case for a nascent industry that experts believe is essential in achieving climate goals,” Bloomberg wrote. JX Nippon plans to restart the stalled project once NRG Energy, owner of the coal-fired unit in Thompsons, Texas, finishes repairs, expected in June.
The amine-based absorption carbon capture technology at Petra Nova went into service in January 2017. It was designed to capture a third, or about 1,600 tonnes, annually from one boiler at the plant. The CO2 captured was injected for enhanced oil recovery at an oil field some 82 miles away, greatly increasing production from old, inefficient wells.
Citing low oil prices and the Covid pandemic, along with problems in the energy side of the project, NRG shut the project down. At the time of the 2020 shutdown, NRG said, “From initial start-up in December 2016 to the end of the three-year demonstration period, the facility captured 92.4 percent of CO2 from the slipstream of flue gas processed. Petra Nova has been impacted by the effects of the worldwide economic downturn, including the demand for and the price of oil. Given the state of oil markets, in May 2020 the carbon capture facility was placed in reserve shutdown status to allow it to be brought back online when economic conditions improve.”
Economic conditions – that is, oil prices in the wake of Russia’s invasion of Ukraine – improved the prospects for the project. Last September, NRG sold the project to the carbon capture technology partner, JX Nippon, for $3.6 billion.
Capturing CO2 from power plant emissions has long generated both supporters and opponents. When the project cratered in 2020, San Francisco-based Energy and Policy Institute, which describes itself as “a watchdog organization that exposes attacks on renewable energy and counters misinformation by fossil fuel and utility interests,” said, “As the only coal carbon capture project in the U.S. and the largest post-combustion carbon capture project in the world, the failure of the Petra Nova project represents a major setback for proponents of coal carbon capture projects.
“While supporters of coal carbon capture proposals have often pointed to the Petra Nova project as a success story, a technical report submitted by Petra Nova to the Department of Energy shows that the project actually experienced so many outages that it wasn’t operating for one of out every three days over the last three years. Filings with the Securities and Exchange Commission also reveal how the carbon capture project led to unexpected financial losses for NRG.”
Anticipating the restart announcement in the aftermath of the Biden administration’s “Inflation Reduction Act” and its funding for all kinds of climate-related technologies, Washington, D.C.-based Food and Water Watch last September said, “Carbon capture cannot be the centerpiece of any serious climate plan. Its track record makes it appear to be a handout to fossil fuel corporations, publicly financing their attempts to keep their harmful product viable. The truth is we need to move to 100% renewable energy by 2030, and no half-baked schemes are going to replace that course of action.”
On the other hand, Boston-based Clean Air Task Force (CATF), which calls itself “a non-traditional, fact-based, environmental organization,” has long supported CCS. CATF says its “work in carbon capture aims to achieve global net-zero emissions by midcentury. CATF works towards this goal by developing and advocating for policies aimed at making carbon capture, removal, and storage technologies cost competitive with using unabated fossil fuels for power generation and for use in the industrial sector, globally. Our goal is to rapidly accelerate the adoption of carbon capture technologies to prevent the emission of millions of tonnes of CO₂ from power generation and industrial sources around the world.”
–Kennedy Maize
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