Limitations of CCS For Power Stations
Critics say large-scale CCS deployment is unproven and decades away from being commercialized. They say that it is risky and expensive and that a better option is renewable energy. Some environmental groups say that CCS technology leaves behind dangerous waste material that has to be stored, just like nuclear power stations.
Another limitation of CCS is its energy penalty. The technology is expected to use between 10 and 40 percent of the energy produced by a power station. Wide-scale adoption of CCS may erase efficiency gains in coal power plants of the last 50 years, and increase resource consumption by one third. Even taking the fuel penalty into account, however, overall levels of CO2 abatement would remain high at approximately 80–90%, compared to a plant without CCS. It is possible for CCS, when combined with biomass, to result in net negative emissions. Though, all of the currently (as of Feb 2011) operational BECCS (Bio-energy with carbon capture and storage) plants operate on point emissions other than power stations, such as biofuel refineries.
The use of CCS can reduce CO2 emissions from the stacks of coal power plants by 85–90% or more, but it has no effect on CO2 emissions due to the mining and transport of coal. It will actually "increase such emissions and of air pollutants per unit of net delivered power and will increase all ecological, land-use, air-pollution, and water-pollution impacts from coal mining, transport, and processing, because the CCS system requires 25% more energy, thus 25% more coal combustion, than does a system without CCS".
Another concern regards the permanence of storage schemes. Opponents to CCS claim that safe and permanent storage of CO2 cannot be guaranteed and that even very low leakage rates could undermine any climate mitigation effect. In 1986 a large leakage of naturally sequestered CO2 rose from Lake Nyos in Cameroon and asphyxiated 1,700 people. While the carbon had been sequestered naturally, some point to the event as evidence for the potentially catastrophic effects of sequestering carbon artificially.
On one hand, Greenpeace claims that CCS could lead to a doubling of coal plant costs. It is also claimed by opponents to CCS that money spent on CCS will divert investments away from other solutions to climate change. On the other hand, CCS is pointed out as economically attractive in comparison to other forms of low carbon electricity generation and seen by the IPCC and others as a critical component for meeting mitigation targets such as 450 ppm and 350 ppm.
Read more about this topic: Carbon Capture And Storage
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