The FutureGen Clean Coal power plant is a Department of Energy project that hopes to establish the technical and economic feasibility of producing electricity from coal, while capturing and sequestering the carbon dioxide generated in the process. Image courtesy of the D.O.E.

Everyone, it appears, is in favor of carbon capture and sequestration (CCS). Governments from around the globe, from the U.S., China, Australia, Canada, the 27-member European Union, along with the International Energy Agency, environmental groups and some of the biggest energy companies in the world, continue calling for more investment in CCS despite the fact that the technology has not yet been implemented on a truly commercial scale.

Targets have been set, funds have been earmarked, and laws have been written to implement CCS because many people see it as an essential strategy in the effort to avert a future climate catastrophe. But then come the questions: who will pay? and just as important, will CCS work?

The IEA recently declared that the cost of mitigating climate change will be 70 percent higher by 2050 without CCS. The IEA also claims that about 20% of the needed reduction in greenhouse gas emissions could be achieved through CCS. Earlier this month, the agency laid out an ambitious roadmap that calls for 100 CCS projects globally by 2020 and over 3,000 by 2050.

As much as $3 trillion will be needed to achieve that goal. OECD countries will need to spend as much as $4 billion annually by 2020 to build demonstrations projects, plus as much as $2.5 billion more they will need to provide to developing countries.

Earlier this month, members of the Carbon Sequestration Leadership Forum (CSLF) a group that includes most industrialized nations and the world’s biggest greenhouse gas emitters, endorsed CCS as an integral solution to fight climate change.

CSLF member countries account for approximately 60% of the world’s population, 76 percent of its CO2 emissions, 75 percent of its energy consumption, 70 percent of its energy production, and 76 percent of its economy. The members of the forum called on world leaders that will gather in Copenhagen in December to officially recognize CCS’s “importance in mitigating climate change and in achieving the convention’s ultimate objective of stabilization of greenhouse gas concentrations.”

But the agenda in Copenhagen is already pretty crowded and it’s not at all clear that the developing countries, including China and India, will agree to any limits on carbon emissions. “We agree there is no possible solution in Copenhagen without CCS as part of it,” Norwegian Energy Minister Terje Riis-Johansen said recently.

Perhaps the biggest gap between rhetoric and action exists in the EU, for years a leader in promoting wide scale deployment of CCS. In 2007, European leaders agreed on the need to support the construction of 10 to 12 large-scale demonstration plants by 2015 to make the technology commercially available by 2020. But few believe the target will be met. “We’ve been talking for a long time about these projects, and we’re still wrangling about how they will be financed,” said Jeff Chapman, chief executive of the London-based Carbon Capture and Storage Association, a lobby group.

Currently there are only four commercial scale CCS projects in operation globally, all linked to oil and gas production, instead of power generation. Several pilot projects are under way, including one in Germany and another in the US that will be officially inaugurated this week.

Next month, the EU Parliament is expected to approve six CCS industrial-scale projects that will be awarded nearly $1.6 billion to build demonstration plants in Germany, Spain, the UK, Italy, the Netherlands, and Poland. The Polish project will get more than $150 million, while the others while the others will each get more around $270 million. But will only cover a fraction of the total cost of the projects. Member countries will have contribute additional funding for each of the projects to be viable, with each plant costing at least $1.5 billion to build. The EU also earmarked 300 million carbon credits that will be auctioned to help finance the projects, but the final allocation will depend on the market price of the credits in 2013.

“What good is awarding the six projects if they won’t be financed sufficiently, and we don’t know if member states will put up the rest?” Chapman asked. “I’m optimistic but it’s very, very frustrating that things are not happening fast enough.”

On top of financing, CCS in Europe still needs to overcome growing public opposition to burying the CO2 close to populated areas. Germany, for example, has cooled its support as communities around possible CCS sites have launched protests. In addition, most countries lack proper regulations. And utilities, which would be the first to demonstrate CCS, remain uncommitted to invest until government rhetoric is followed by concrete financial and regulatory support.

Chapman believes the first commercial-scale CCS facility will likely be built in China. “They’re really committed to CCS because they know it’s going to be a huge market and they realize they must do something to decarbonizes their power stations.” The US is also a big CCS supporter. Analysts expect the Obama Administration to condition its commitment for greenhouse gas emission reduction commitments in Copenhagen on support for CCS from other global players. The US has earmarked $2.4 billion to research CCS.

Later this week will be the official inauguration of a CCS pilot project in the Mountaineer Power Plant in West Virginia. A 20-megawatt capture system has been installed in the 1,300 MW coal-burning plant operated by American Electric Power to test a process developed by French Alstom. The captured CO2 will be buried deep along the Ohio River.

The US National Academy of Sciences strongly endorsed CCS in its recent report on America’s energy future, saying that CCS has the biggest potential to address CO2 emissions. It called for the construction and retrofitting of 15 to 20 demonstration plants by 2020.

But many of the advocates for CCS are ignoring the fundamentals. Capturing CO2 from the flue gas in an electric power plant adds “parasitic load” of up to 28%. Parasitic load is additional power that must be generated at the site but never gets sold to consumers. Meeting such additional loads would be a Herculean effort, regardless of whether the fuel in question is natural gas or coal. Given that the global energy sector is already straining to meet growing electricity demand, the idea of increasing power demand by more than one-fourth for the sole purpose of attempting CCS appears unlikely.

In short, CCS may be a popular idea, but turning it into reality will be extraordinarily difficult.