Process would make coal burn cleaner

Brian McPherson, director of the Southwest Regional Partnership for Carbon Sequestration and an associate professor at the University of Utah, said coal-powered generating facilities produce most, though by no means all, of the electricity generated in the West.

Suddenly, the market is limited for electricity derived from coal. The biggest consumer in the region, California, has set strict new standards on greenhouse gases. Any new source must be no more polluting than plants that burn natural gas, he said — "on average about 1,100 pounds per megawatt-hour of CO2."

Coal-fired plants emit 2,300 pounds to 2,400 pounds of CO2 per megawatt hour, McPherson said. Even if a California consortium builds a new plant in another state and transmits electricity to California, the plant "has to adhere to that 1,100 pounds per megawatt-hour standard," he said.

If existing coal-burning plants were converted to nuclear, geothermal or wind-powered facilities, he said, "you're looking at several decades. Even to set up one nuclear power plant, permitting alone is 15 or 20 years."

The question is, what can be done quickly to provide electricity and reduce emissions?

Removing carbon dioxide from emissions of coal plants "can be done right now," he said. "But it's not commercially ready."

The technique is called carbon capture and sequestration.

Two types of sequestration are under study. Terrestrial sequestration would be carried out by protecting the environment so that vegetation could absorb more carbon dioxide, or by manipulating land to encourage more growth. Geological sequestration would be done by capturing carbon greenhouse gases and pumping them into geological structures deep underground.

Geological sequestration is the subject of experiments carried out by the partnership. If it were used commercially, the technique would take carbon dioxide from smokestack emissions of power plants and pump the pollutant into a geological repository deep underground.

McPherson has studied capture and sequestration since 1997. A program of field research began in 2003, with McPherson as principal investigator, under the Energy and Geoscience Institute at the U. The project seeks to discover if sequestration can be carried out on a large scale, safely disposing of carbon dioxide emissions from major power plants.

The Southwest Regional Partnership for Carbon Sequestration is funded by the U.S. Department of Energy and private backing, with many groups participating: geological surveys of Utah, Colorado, Oklahoma, Arizona and Kansas, as well as the Western Governors' Association and private energy companies.

McPherson estimated that 60 or 70 researchers are working on the project, including about 20 from the University of Utah and at least 12 from Brigham Young University.