https://www.environmentalleader.com/2016/05/16/another-one-bites-the-dust-doe-pulls-carbon-capture-projects-funding/
May 16, 2016
Another One Bites the Dust: DOE Pulls Carbon Capture Project’s Funding
By: Jessica Lyons Hardcastle
Funding for a large carbon capture and storage project in Texas has been
pulled by the US Department of Energy.
This move will effectively kill the Texas Clean Energy Project, the
project’s developer, Summit Texas Clean Energy, told Inside Climate News.
In February the DOE denied Summit Texas Clean Energy’s request for an
$11 million advance. And in the agency’s budget request for the fiscal
year 2017, the DOE asked Congress to suspend the $240 million pledged to
the project.
This is the fifth carbon capture and storage project the DOE has backed
away, according to Inside Climate News.
The Texas Clean Energy Project would capture 2 million tons of CO2
annually — or 90 percent of emissions — from a coal-gasification plant.
The DOE’s inspector general’s office issued a report on the CCS project
last month, sounding alarm bells about the developer’s inability to
secure commercial funding for the long-delayed plant. “Although
construction of the plant was originally planned for completion in June
2014, the Project remains in the project definition phase,” it said.
“Additionally, we found that the Department had taken actions that
increased its financial risk in the Project.”
While carbon capture and storage technology is expected to play a major
role in reducing existing coal-fired power plants’ emissions, the
technology remains expensive and unproven. Government policies that
support carbon capture and storage are the “missing ingredient” in
faster adoption of the technology, according to researchers and NGOs as
well as energy majors. BP and Shell have called for a carbon price,
which they say would make carbon capture economical.
Earlier this month ExxonMobil and FuelCell Energy said they are working
together to advance a carbon capture technology that could
“substantially reduce costs” associated with carbon capture. But
commercial development is still years away.
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