Xcel may build first U.S. plant to store emissions in ground

http://www.denverpost.com/business/ci_5878309

Xcel Energy could break ground by 2010 on the nation's first power plant that converts coal to gas and captures carbon emissions for underground storage.

In proposing that time frame, Xcel chief executive Dick Kelly said Friday that the utility hasn't decided to proceed with a plant, which would take five years to complete.

Xcel is moving ahead with feasibility studies and negotiations with potential partners, Kelly said.

Two other power plants in the U.S. successfully use coal-gasification technology, but Xcel's proposal would be the first to capture produced carbon and bury it in a process known as sequestration.

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tubes, we could just send it "out" as in out of this world. Imagine twentymile long vertical pipes spewing carbon dioxide and other sundry items into the galaxy. Question is, who's gonna pay the fine?

The only way to separate the carbon from the CO2 is to consume a great deal of energy -- to "unburn" the carbon. Coal is mostly carbon, so going from coal to carbon fiber should be *in principle* energetically approximately neutral. In practice, converting coal to carbon fiber is a way to consume energy. There's no way a power plant can burn coal (carbon) to produce CO2 and energy, then get the carbon back for other uses. That's having your cake and eating it too.

"Sequestering" CO2 = sweeping it under the rug, and the rug has limited capacity. Only the projects that involve feeding CO2 to plants (or microbes) will reduce atmospheric CO2, and will do so only if biomass is allowed to accumulate.

n/t

Five years for an unproven technology that may not work, (and may not be built)?

Does anybody rationally (and we know all about what irrational people think) believe that this 330 MWe plant is going to arrest climate change.

thanks to the 'carbon offset' foolishness

Pollute all you want with a Terapass.