President Obama mentioned clean coal in his 2011 State of the Union Address when he brought up his plan for a clean energy standard. "So tonight, I challenge you to join me in setting a new goal: By 2035, 80 percent of America's electricity will come from clean energy sources,” said Obama. "Some folks want wind and solar. Others want nuclear, clean coal and natural gas. To meet this goal, we will need them all.”
The United States generates almost half of its electricity from coal. Worldwide it is the most plentiful fossil fuel. The U.S. Energy Information Administration estimates that there are 4 trillion short-tons of coal in the United States, of which only about 261 billion short tons are recoverable with current technology. Coal, however, is by far the dirtiest fossil fuel. It generates 81 percent of carbon dioxide emissions and 94 percent of sulfur dioxide emissions in the United States.
Enter "clean coal.” The term refers to the process of limiting the amount of carbon released into the atmosphere when a power plant burns coal. This is accomplished by removing carbon dioxide from the flue gas, i.e. the exhaust produced after combustion. This carbon is then pumped deep underground to prevent it from leaking into the atmosphere. The process is known as carbon capture and storage.
First, notice that Obama's promise is to enter partnerships to develop (not build, which takes several years) five "commercial” plants. Such plants are broadly defined as those that produce from 50 to 1,300 megawatts of electricity. According to Steve Miller, chief executive of American Coalition for Clean Coal Electricity, there are no functioning commercial scale plants yet in the United States. The plants that have been utilizing coal capture and storage thus far have been what is known as "pilot plants.” These are essentially research facilities designed to test various methods of capturing CO2 from coal emissions.
To date, the Obama administration has taken several steps to promote the incipient clean coal industry. In December 2009, the Department of Energy announced its selections for the Clean Coal Power Initiative Round 3. This is the third part of a larger project to, as the name suggests, develop commercial-scale power plants that use carbon capture and storage through public co-financing. The Department of Energy chose six projects for the third round of this program.
The Obama administration also resurrected FutureGen, a planned clean coal power plant in Illinois. The Bush administration dropped funding of the project after it foresaw cost overruns. The new project, dubbed "FutureGen 2.0” costs approximately $1.3 billion. The Department of Energy is responsible for $1 billion, largely from the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act. Private partners are financing the remainder. Construction is slated to begin in the second quarter of 2012 with a planned completion in late 2015. Upon construction it will, according to its designers, store 90 percent of carbon dioxide produced. The plan at FutureGen 2.0 is to transport carbon emissions 30 miles via pipeline to a storage site one mile underground.
In recent months, the administration has experienced setbacks in fulfilling this promise. Of the six projects from the Clean Coal Power Initiative Round 3, three have been cancelled. Most recently, the utility American Electric Power announced that it will suspend its plan to build a commercial plant at its Mountaineer facility in West Virginia. Ultimately, a weak economy and a lack of federal climate legislation explain the project's closure. "(A)s a regulated utility, it is impossible to gain regulatory approval to recover our share of the costs for validating and deploying the technology without federal requirements to reduce greenhouse gas emissions already in place. The uncertainty also makes it difficult to attract partners to help fund the industry's share,” said AEP chairman and chief executive Michael G. Morris in a press release about the project's cancellation.
"When we applied for DOE funding to take CCS (carbon capture and storage) to commercial scale, we fully expected that greenhouse gas rules would be in place by now. That hasn't happened. So we are putting the project on hold,” added Pat Hemlepp, AEP's Director of Corporate Media Relations in an e-mail interview.
Southern Company cancelled its project in Mobile, Ala. for similar reasons.
A climate change bill passed the passed the House of Representatives in 2009, but it failed to become law. It would have provided owners of coal-fired plans with federal financial incentives to try out the relatively expensive CCS process.
Environmental groups say the failure of that bill makes it harder for such projects to go forward.
"At the beginning of his [President Obama's] term it seemed much more likely that there would be legislation that limits or prices emissions of CO2, and that seems much less likely now. That is the reason that many of these projects are being cancelled. Without a policy to limit CO2 emissions, there really is no business case for investing in CCS,” said Karen Palmer, Senior Fellow at the environmental group Resources For the Future.
All in all, progress on clean coal has had its stops-and-starts. American Electric Power and Southern Company's decision to pull back from upgrading pilot projects to commercial plants is a setback. The lack of environmental legislation reduces the urgency of building more commercial plants and therefore the impetus for private-public partnerships such as those promised by Obama. Given the Republican-controlled House of Representatives' reluctance to pass comprehensive legislation on environmental issues, development of any more coal-fired carbon capture and storage plants is unlikely during the remainder of President Obama's first term.
Currently there are four new clean coal plants in development -- FutureGen and the three remaining projects from the Clean Coal Power Initiative Round 3. That's four of the five Obama promised. Given the unlikelihood of any energy legislation in the 112th Congress, we do not think it is likely that this number will increase. In fact, if history is any indication, more projects may be cancelled, and the number fall well below the promised number. Due to these factors, we rate this promise Stalled.