In addition to the high legal fees and exposure to potentially hefty damages payouts that accompany allegations of intellectual property infringement, such lawsuits can also be dark clouds over defendants, hampering their ability to do business.

A salient example of this in cleantech is the news that Mainstream Renewable Power (MRP) has ditched Chinese wind turbine maker Sinovel and is looking to alternative turbine suppliers for the 1GW of wind farm projects it has planned in Ireland.

The move by MRP comes in the wake of two IP infringement lawsuits filed by American Superconductor (AMSC) against Sinovel in China.

In that litigation AMSC has accused Sinovel of copyright infringement and theft of trade secrets in connection with allegedly stolen wind turbine control source code.

This Recharge News piece notes that an MRP spokesman said the company is “fully aware” of the legal dispute, and the article attributes the switch by MRP to the litigation:

MRP’s decision is the clearest evidence yet of the potential damage Sinovel faces in Western markets as a result of its legal battle with AMSC, which is pursuing the turbine supplier in several Chinese courts for $1.2bn in compensation and damages over alleged intellectual property (IP) infringement and unpaid bills.

This is the not the first time allegations of IP infringement have hurt the business of a wind turbine supplier. Mitsubishi has claimed that GE’s accusations of infringement of several variable speed wind turbine patents virtually shut down its U.S. business.

According to Mitsubishi’s court filings (mitsubishi_antitrust_complaint.pdf), its $2 billion in annual U.S. sales of variable speed wind turbines dropped to zero after initiation of the first patent infringement suit by GE in early 2008.

Mitsubishi may have begun to recover, however. Windpower Monthly recently reported that utility Duke Energy has ordered 202 MW of the accused 2.4 MW turbine from Mitsubishi for a wind project in Texas (see my previous post here).

The article says the Duke order is the first since the advent of the patent dispute with GE.

But it’s clear that even before any ultimate infringement verdict, pending green patent litigation can have serious ramifications outside the courtroom.

Eric Lane is a patent attorney at Luce, Forward, Hamilton & Scripps in San Diego and the author of Green Patent Blog. Mr. Lane can be reached at elane@luce.com.

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I’ve written extensively about the patent infringement and antitrust litigation between wind power rivals GE and Mitsubishi (see, e.g., previous posts here and here).

While that legal battle spans multiple venues, encompasses several different patents, and includes many patent and antitrust issues, the heart of the dispute is the allegation that Mitsubishi’s 2.4 MW turbine infringes GE’s patented technologies.

More particularly, GE has asserted infringement of its patented variable speed technology, particularly as claimed in U.S. Patent No. 5,083,039, a seminal patent relating to methods for enabling turbines to efficiently feed power from wind of variable speeds into the utility grid.

Another key patent asserted by GE is U.S. Patent No. 7,321,221, relating to low voltage ride through technology for stabilizing the supply voltage to a wind turbine after voltage drops without jeopardizing the electrical components of the turbine.

In its antitrust case against GE, Mitsubishi has alleged that GE’s patent infringement claims are baseless and are intended to intimidate Mitsubishi’s potential customers.

According to Mitsubishi, its $2 billion in annual U.S. sales of variable speed wind turbines has dropped to zero since initiation of the first patent infringement suit in early 2008.

In a glimmer of good news for Mitsubishi, Windpower Monthly recently reported that at least one customer is undeterred by the cloud over Mitsubishi’s 2.4 MW turbine.

According to the article, the utility Duke Energy has ordered 202 MW of the controversial turbines for its Los Vientos II wind project in Texas. The article says it is the first order since the advent of the patent dispute with GE.

It will be interesting to see if this vote of confidence by Duke clears away the cloud over Mitsubishi’s 2.4 MW turbine and leads to more orders.

Eric Lane is a patent attorney at Luce, Forward, Hamilton & Scripps in San Diego and the author of Green Patent Blog. Mr. Lane can be reached at elane@luce.com.

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Duke Energy is a large energy company with headquarters in Charlotte, North Carolina. Duke Energy has assets in the United States as well as Canada and Latin America. This energy company has been providing businesses and residents with gas and electric services that are reliable, clean, as well as affordable. It is currently one of the largest electric power companies in the United States, serving over four million customers. Because of its close work with renewable energy and energy efficiency, Duke Energy offers a number of highlights in the clean technology field.

1) Duke Energy Partners with ITOCHU to Develop Strategies to Reuse Electric Car Batteries. Duke Energy partnered with ITOCHU a Tokyo-based company in November of 2010 and signed an agreement for collaboration on advanced energy technologies, starting with the evaluation as well as testing of second-life applications for electric vehicle batteries. While the batteries eventually become unsuitable for cars, these two companies believe that they can be utilized in other applications. The first part of the collaboration is to gather and then analyze data to see how the batteries perform on their “second life” in homes, neighborhoods, as well as commercial buildings.

2) NC Green Power. NC Green Power is provided to homeowners that what to use renewable energy sources for their main energy source in an effort to reduce reliance on fossil fuels and lower carbon footprints. Individuals can sign up for NC Green Power and buy a 100 kilowatt hour block of green, renewable energy for $4 a month. This equals approximately 20 percent of the average homeowner’s electricity use and will assist in avoiding around 2,400 pounds of carbon dioxide emissions annually. The green power is delivered to the North Carolina grid and then sent straight to the home.

3) Landfill Gas to Electricity Projects. Duke Energy is involved in a number of landfill gas to energy projects for their customers. Landfill gas consists of mainly methane and is more potent than carbon dioxide at trapping heat. By capturing the methane gas and using it as fuel, it becomes a green alternative rather than burning it and causing harm to the environment. One of these projects is located in Durham, North Carolina and it supplies electricity to around 1,900 residential customers. In Greenville County, South Carolina, the same project is providing electricity to approximately 2,000 homes annually.

4) Hydroelectric Energy Projects. Duke Energy has a number of hydroelectric power plants throughout the United States which are providing roughly 3,200 megawatts of renewable energy to many customers. Today, Duke Energy is the second largest investor-owned hydroelectric operator in all of the United States. The electric company started this endeavor by harnessing water power from the Catawba River in the Carolinas.

5) Solar Energy Projects. Duke Energy has been recently making a number of large investments into the solar power industry. The company is primarily focused on photovoltaic solar technology because of its low cost and maturity. It a number of Duke Energy’s retail states, it is developing a number of innovative solar programs and projects to aid the company and customers in benefiting from the renewable source of energy. For example, in 2009 Duke Energy received permission from the North Carolina Utilities Commission for a $50 million program to install a number of solar panels along the grounds and rooftops of a number of warehouses, manufacturing facilities, and schools in the service area. This was to assist North Carolina in meeting the 2021 goal of have 12.5 percent of all electricity from renewable sources.

6) Duke Energy Plans 202 Megawatt Wind Farm in Texas. In September of 2011, Duke Energy started plans to create a 202 megawatt wind farm in Willacy County, Texas, increasing wind power capacity to approximately 1.8 gigawatts. Known as the Lod Vientos II Wind Power Project, it will provide electricity as well as renewable energy credits to Austin Energy throughout a 25 year agreement that will take effect once operation begins toward the end of 2012.

7) Duke Energy Buys Kansas Wind Farm to Increase Clean Energy Portfolio. In July of 2011, Duke Energy purchased 131 megawatt wind power farm located in Kansas from CPV Renewable Energy to aid in increasing its clean energy portfolio. Construction on this project began in the fall of the same year and will likely be up and running by June of 2012.

8 ) Duke Energy Looks to Build Wind Farm in Pennsylvania. In September of 2011, Duke Energy started plans to build, own as well as operate a 69 megawatt Laurel Hill Windpower project in Lycoming County, Pennsylvania. The farm will consist of 30 wind turbines from Siemens that will aid in providing enough electricity for over 20,000 homes per year. Commercial operation of the wind farm should begin by September of 2012.

9) Duke Energy Partners with AREVA to Develop Biomass Power Plants in the United States. In September of 2008, AREVA and Duke Energy partnered up to create an innovative joint venture known as ADAGE. ADAGE is devoted to the research and development of green biopower energy solutions for electricity customers in the United States. ADAGE is going to facilitate in the development of biopower plants that will be utilizing wood waste in an effort to produce electricity. AREVA is going to design and build the biomass power plants while Duke Energy Generation Services will manage operations. “This project comes at exactly the right time as Americans face soaring energy prices and look to meet rising electricity demand with green energy sources. The ADAGE biopower facilities will respond to our nation’s need for new baseload energy alternatives,” said Duke Energy CEO Jim Rogers.

10) Duke Looks to Purchase Green Energy Credits. Duke Energy announced that it would be purchasing green energy credits from two companies in North Carolina that are looking to utilize solar power to create hot waste as well as cool and heat buildings. The agreements were created to assist Duke Energy in meeting its renewable energy goals.

Article by Shawn Lesser, Co-founder & Managing Partner of Atlanta-based Watershed Capital Group – an investment bank assisting sustainable fund and companies raise capital, perform acquisitions, and in other strategic financial decisions. He is also a Co-founder of the GCCA Global Cleantech Cluster Association ”The Global Voice of Cleantech”. He writes for various cleantech publications and is known as the David Letterman of Cleantech for his “Top 10″ series. He can be reached at shawn@watershedcapital.com

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Duke Energy has announced its intention to build a large-scale wind farm in Willacy County.

When the 200-megawatt facility comes online, it will generate enough electricity to power roughly 60,000 homes.

Duke Energy’s Los Vientos I wind power project, roughly 20 miles inland from the Gulf of Mexico, will sell its electricity to San Antonio-based CPS Energy, the nation’s largest municipally owned energy utility.

Duke Energy Renewables will start construction later this year and bring the project online by December 2012, The Brownsville Herald reported.

Willacy County Precinct 1 Commissioner Eliberto “Beto” Guerra called the wind farm a “win-win” for the county, commenting that taxes from the wind farm will benefit local school districts and create jobs.

Walter Kittelberger, co-founder of the Lower Laguna Madre Foundation, said that wind farms have a bigger footprint than natural gas, which he said was the best energy alternative for Texas, commenting, “Wind turbines are very destructive to surrounding habitats. They are not a good idea for America.”

Duke Energy spokesman Greg Efthimiou said, “The wind resource in the area is terrific. The wind blows strongest and most consistently during peak demand during the day, particularly in the afternoon when people are coming home and turning on their TVs and turning on their ovens. The wind is blowing pretty strong.”

Article by Joao Peixe, appearing courtesy OilPrice.com.

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In August of 2007, North Carolina because the first Southeastern state in the United States to adopt the Renewable Energy and Energy Efficiency Portfolio Standard. In this, all investor- owned North Carolinian utilities are mandated to meet a minimum of 12.5 percent of their energy requirements via renewable energy resources and/or measures of energy efficiency. For rural electrical cooperatives, as well as municipal electric suppliers, the standard is only ten percent. Since the signing of the standard, North Carolina has taken great steps in becoming a leader in the cleantech industry, not just in the South but throughout the entire nation.

1) North Carolina Sustainable Energy Association. North Carolina Sustainable Energy Association, or NCSEA, is a nonprofit organization consisting of government personnel, businesses, and individuals interested in bolstering the sustainable energy future of the state. It is the only nonprofit throughout the state that is dedicated to leading policy change and driving the development of the market in such a ways that it will produce green jobs in a new, alternative energy economy. The mission of NCSEA is “to ensure a sustainable future by promoting renewable energy and energy efficiency through North Carolina through education, public policy, and economic development.”

2) Ability to Apply for Financial Incentives to Switch to Renewable Energy Sources. To further enhance the desire for businesses and homeowners to switch to renewable energy, the state has created a number of financial incentives to assist individuals in making the more toward alternative sources of energy. Some of the incentives offered include corporate tax credits, green building incentives, industry recruitment and support, local loan programs, PACE financing, performance based incentives, personal tax credits,, property and sales tax incentives, state grant, loan and rebate programs, and utility loan, discount, and rebate programs.

3) The Research Triangle Regional Partnership (RTRP) is a public-private partnership whose mission is to market a 13-county region and the Research Triangle Park (RTP) for the economic benefit of its communities and to direct strategic and tactical efforts to maintain global competitiveness.
The Research Triangle Regional Partnership recently launched the Research Triangle Cleantech Cluster to market and grow the Research Triangle Region’s potential in smart grid, alternative energy and advanced transportation. Cluster members benefit from the triple helix economic development approach by convening partners from academia, industry, and government into a synergistic group, who work together to accelerate market opportunities, advance beneficial policy, provide networking opportunities, and provide a pathway for strategic collaboration to strengthen the cluster and its members. Members draw from the resources within the cluster to create marketing and business opportunities as well as expedient pathways to partner and collaborate.

4) North Carolina State University Solar Center. Through its programs and facilities, the North Carolina Solar Center attracts, trains, and sustains the innovative energy businesses throughout the state. The center provides workforce training, new product demonstration and testing, technical assistance, industrial recruitment services, and financial analysis to assist those in the renewable energy industry. The center’s mission “Is to advance the use of renewable energy, energy efficiency, green building, and clean transportation resources to ensure a sustainable economy that protects our natural environment, encourages energy independence, and lower energy costs for consumers.”

5) Duke Energy Research and Development. The increase in renewable energy projects has been what is leading the way for North Carolina. Duke Energy has been responsible for numerous projects within the last few years. Though a majority of its power output has been done with fossil fuel and nuclear plants, they are looking to assist in the renewable energy field. For example, Duke partnered with other organizations to research biomass conversion viability in electricity plants. Another project has Duke partnering with the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill to research the practicality for renewable energy produced by wind turbines located on the coast of the state’s Outer Banks. Duke Energy also has plans to create efficient charging stations for electric vehicles across both North and South Carolina.

6) Increase in Job Opportunities throughout the Green Sector. Because of the recession, numerous individuals faced increased unemployment. However, in North Carolina, employment opportunities in the renewable energy and energy efficiency sectors increased by 22 percent from 2009 to 2010, according to the North Carolina Sustainable Energy Association. By 2011, the 546 renewable energy and energy efficiency companies are expected to further increase employment opportunities by another 20 percent.

7) North Carolina Wind Energy. North Carolina Wind Energy, housed by Appalachian State University, looks to promote the use of wind as a viable source or renewable energy in the state. It has a multitude of programs aimed at providing further understanding into wind energy. One of their largest programs is the North Carolina Small Wind Initiative, which looks to increase awareness about the feasibility and benefits of wind power in the region. Another program is Wind for Schools. It seeks to install small-scale wind turbines for educational use at numerous North Carolinian schools. The program is to encourage incorporation of renewable energy education in K-12 science curriculums. There is also the Wind Working Group which is a group of environmentalists, policymakers, educators, citizen action groups, and industry members who are currently pursuing wind power options by elevating supportive legislation.

8 ) Farm Energy Efficiency Project. The North Carolina Tobacco Trust Fund Commission and the North Carolina Farm Bureau Federation joined together based on a vision of assisting farmers in becoming more energy efficient. The Farm Energy Efficiency Project educates farmers about the importance of energy efficient throughout all farming operations and aids them in acquiring necessary tools to make improvements toward energy efficiency. Audits are conduced on-site and farmers use the information to determine where they need to be more energy efficient and how to increase it. FEEP also assists in cost-share grant opportunities. One assists farmers offset any costs incurred through the implementation of energy efficiency improvements, and the second is for farmers interested in the implementation of on-farm renewable energy technologies, such as wind, energy, and biofuel.

9) Charlotte Energy Solutions. Charlotte Energy Solutions is a one-stop-shop for renewable energy and energy efficient products. It is a self-run business that assists individuals in finding energy efficient products, including heaters, stoves, or even car conversion.

10) Jackson County Green Energy Park. The Jackson County Green Energy Park (JCGEP) is known as a landfill recovery program offering environmental protection, increased community-wide economic development, and educational opportunities through the use of landfill gas as a resource for clean, renewable energy. Visitors are encouraged to visit JCGEP as there are tours where individuals will learn about the park’s mission and what it does, including a visit to the landfill gas system, greenhouses, and glassblowing studios. There are also classes on-site that use the energy produced for art projects, including pottery and glass blowing.

Article by Shawn Lesser, Co-founder & Managing Partner of Atlanta-based Watershed Capital Group – an investment bank assisting sustainable fund and companies raise capital, perform acquisitions, and in other strategic financial decisions. He is also a Co-founder of the GCCA Global Cleantech Cluster Association ”The Global Voice of Cleantech”. He writes for various cleantech publications and is known as the David Letterman of Cleantech for his “Top 10″ series. He can be reached at shawn@watershedcapital.com

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The industry has been abuzz this past week over the announced acquisition (ahem – merger) of Progress Energy by Duke Energy. The combined entity will become the largest electric utility in the U.S. by revenue and generation capacity if approved by the various regulatory bodies, which is no sure thing. Like most mergers, the promised benefits, for shareholders and ratepayers alike, are to be derived from improved economies of scale. In this case, the focus has been on reduced risk associated with large generation projects, as well as better generation dispatch and fuels purchasing power. But as their employees are certainly wondering, such savings also come from reducing “redundancies”. Will their various smart grid programs be one of these redundancies?

Both Duke and Progress are smart grid innovators, and both were big-time recipients of ARRA Smart Grid Investment Program (SGIP) stimulus funds, to the tune of $200M each. Their approaches are different however. Progress has been a leading advocate of advanced distribution automation systems, even using dynamic Volt/VAR control as a demand response tool. They also have a successful and extensive pager-based residential direct load control program, with up to 25% of their Florida customers participating. Their SGIP grant is focused on accelerating and upgrading these programs, though it also includes a relatively small 160,000 unit smart meter rollout and some PEV infrastructure, which was likely included to make their SGIP application appear sexier to the Department of Energy.

Duke, on the other hand, has been a leading proponent of smart meters with an aggressive rollout ongoing in Ohio. Even so, they’ve bucked the trend in the U.S. by using PLC-based AMI systems from Echelon without HAN interfaces. These are aggregated at the distribution transformer level by generalized grid routers from the likes of Ambient, Echelon, and SmartSynch, opening the door to innovative distribution management applications.

Will the merger mean a merger of smart grids as well? Or does this portend an internal battle?

At this point it is hard to say, but with so many different state regulators involved, it is hard to imagine a smooth merger that could leverage any true economies of scale, despite the technical opportunities. Duke’s vision is already hampered by skeptical regulators in Indiana, who have dramatically slowed smart meter rollouts, and the Carolinas where relatively fresh AMR meters are still being paid for.

In this sense, this merger may be seen as a microcosm of the difficulties in achieving a consensus implementation of the U.S. smart grid. While there are certainly strengths that come from diversity, and one size does not fit all, the fragmentation of the industry and its regulators will likely continue to be an obstacle to harvesting the full benefits even within the same company. We are eager to see.

Article by Bob Gohn, appearing courtesy the Matter Network.

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The drive to extract and store CO2 from coal-fired power plants is gaining momentum, with the Obama administration backing the technology and the world’s first capture and sequestration project now operating in the U.S. Two questions loom: Will carbon capture and storage be affordable? And will it be safe?

On a placid bend of the Ohio River in West Virginia sit two coal-fired power plants. The Philip Sporn Plant boasts four boilers from the 1950s, surrounded by mountains of coal and a series of man-made lakes to contain the toxic residue of its coal-burning.

A faint haze emanates from its main smokestack, the only visible sign of the thousands of tons of acid-rain-forming sulfur dioxide, smog-forming nitrogen oxides, and climate-warming carbon dioxide it emits each day, a consequence of the plant’s complete lack of pollution-control technologies. The 1,100 megawatts of electricity it produces will never benefit from such controls, as they are too expensive to install on the multiple small boilers, according to the plant’s owner, American Electric Power.

But just beyond Sporn’s waste ponds stands the steaming cooling tower of American Electric’s Mountaineer Power Plant, which burns 12,000 tons of coal a day to produce steam in a single massive boiler and generate up to 1,300 megawatts of electricity. Roiling white water vapor billows out of its 100-story smokestack, a visible sign of the scrubbers and other technology that remove as much as 98 percent of the plant’s sulfur dioxide emissions and 90 percent of its nitrogen oxides.

And to top it off, since October, an oversized chemistry set employs baker’s ammonia (ammonium carbonate) to strip more than 90 percent of the CO2 from a small portion of the Mountaineer plant’s waste gas and turn it into ammonium bicarbonate. Heat and pressure in another part of the carbon-capture machine turn that back into baker’s ammonia, delivering a nearly pure stream of CO2 gas that is compressed into a liquid and pumped into two wells that drop 1.5 miles beneath the earth. There, the captured CO2 is stored permanently between grains of rock.

If Sporn represents the dirty past of coal-fired electricity generation, Mountaineer is the future — the first power plant in the world to both capture and store underground any part of its CO2 emissions. At this point, Mountaineer stores less than 2 percent of the more than 500,000 metric tons of CO2 pumped out each month by the power plant, which generates enough electricity for 1 million American homes.

So does Mountaineer mean that coal has a future?

President Barack Obama seems to think so, even as he continues to push for reducing emissions of greenhouse gases by more than 80 percent by mid-century. To meet that goal, Obama said during his State of the Union address in January, the U.S. must not only develop renewable sources of energy but must also invest in clean coal technologies. A week later, the Obama administration created an interagency task force to develop a federal strategy by August for carbon capture and storage (CCS), the underlying principle of so-called “clean coal.” The goal is to make carbon capture and storage widespread within a decade.

In fact, the administration wants at least five demonstration projects to be in operation by 2016. After all, the U.S. gets more than 50 percent of its electricity from burning coal. “If we can develop the technology to capture the carbon pollution released by coal, it can create jobs and provide energy well into the future,” Obama said in a speech to the nation’s governors on Feb. 3.

The technology exists to extract CO2 at coal-burning power plants. The main questions now are cost and safety. Storing liquid CO2 far below the ground provokes a deep unease in some people, who worry that a sudden release could end in asphyxiation as the liquid turns to gas when it rises to the surface. It’s also not necessarily easy to find a geologic formation — or abandoned oil and gas wells — that will safely store the greenhouse gas.

And, ultimately, CCS will do one thing for sure: raise electric bills. In some regions, adding today’s CCS technology would double the cost of electricity and stretch the financial resources of utilities.

Nevertheless, Mountaineer represents the first small-scale demonstration project to integrate both carbon capture and storage, and American Electric Power may receive $334 million in federal funds to scale up the project to capture 20 percent of the plant’s CO2 emissions.

The Obama administration also has resurrected a planned CCS project known as Futuregen, abandoned by the Bush administration in 2008. A consortium of countries, utilities, and companies with an interest in CCS — ranging from China to coal giant Peabody Energy — has pledged $400 million to build the plant in Mattoon, Ill., with the federal government covering the rest of the $1.5 billion cost.

The proposed plant would first turn coal into gas, and the gas combusted to spin a turbine to produce electricity. The result of this technology — known as integrated gasification combined cycle (IGCC) — is expected to be the removal of roughly 90 percent of the CO2 and almost all of the sulfur dioxide and nitrogen oxide from the power plant’s emissions.

The U.S. Department of Energy estimates that such an IGCC plant would produce electricity at a cost of $103 per megawatt-hour, compared to just $63 per megawatt hour for a pulverized coal-fired power plant without CO2 capture. That math would change if the U.S. Congress one day places a price on carbon dioxide. Various U.S. national laboratories and research universities — as well as the companies commercializing the technology — are striving to reduce that cost further, to as low as just $10 per metric ton of CO2 captured, says CO2 sequestration project leader Rajesh Pawar of Los Alamos National Laboratory in New Mexico.

Despite the costs, utilities are moving forward with carbon capture and storage at existing and new coal-fired power plants. The primary driver seems to be the reality of governments eventually placing a cost on carbon dioxide emissions, both in the U.S. and throughout the world. Duke Energy has partnered with China’s Huaneng Group to develop carbon capture and storage technology and is considering a plan to capture 18 percent of the CO2 from its planned 630 megawatt, $2.35 billion IGCC plant in Edwardsport, Ind.

Carbon capture and storage “is going to cost us money,” says Monte Atwell, general manager of General Electric’s gasification group, which designed the IGCC technology at Edwardsport. But, he added, “That plant is going to work. Failure is not an option.”

Oklahoma-based Tenaska aims to build a $3.5 billion IGCC power plant in Taylorsville, Ill. that would capture 50 percent of its CO2 emissions, and the Erora Group is planning a similar power plant in Henderson County, Ky. Existing power plants are also getting into the act, including the Southern Company, which plans to add its own chemistry set — known as amine scrubbers, which employ a different compound to capture the CO2 — to a power plant near Mobile, Ala.

CCS projects also are moving ahead in Europe. In the vineyards of Jurancon in southeastern France, a project to integrate both CO2 capture and storage is now complete. Last month, an old oil-fired boiler there was converted to burn natural gas in pure oxygen — so-called oxyfuel — and thereby create a relatively pure stream of CO2 that can be siphoned off and stored. The Lacq project will transport roughly 60,000 metric tons of CO2 per year 17 miles to a depleted natural gas field for storage.

The engineering firm, Alstom, which supplied the technology at Lacq, has installed an oxyfuel boiler for a coal-fired power plant in Germany, known as Schwarze Pumpe. That plant also demonstrates, however, one of the main challenges of carbon capture and storage: acceptance from the people who would have to live over the stored CO2. Plans to store the greenhouse gas from Schwarze Pumpe in a nearby natural gas field have foundered on resistance from the local government.

A similar CO2 storage effort by Shell in the Netherlands has also been stopped by public resistance from the town of Barendrecht. Residents there fear a leak or declining property values as the ground deep beneath their feet literally fills up with CO2.

Nor are those concerns confined to Europe. “It’s supposed to be better down there than in the air,” says Mayor Scott Hill of the town of Racine, Ohio, directly across the river from the Mountaineer and Sporn power plants. “I wonder what happens long-term…You know, they just tell you what you want to hear.”

Nevertheless, experts from the U.N. Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change to the International Energy Agency have identified carbon capture and storage as a necessary technology to combat climate change, particularly in developing countries like China, which meets most of its growing demand for electricity by building coal-fired power plants.

The Chinese government, for its part, is partnering with its largest coal supplier, Australia, to build several demonstration projects, including one in Beijing that uses an amine scrubber to capture CO2 from a power plant that produces both heat and electricity. And ground has been broken on China’s version of FutureGen, dubbed GreenGen. The 650-megawatt, IGCC power plant is now under construction and could begin storing CO2 in depleted oil fields near the city of Tianjin as soon as 2015.

“Even with the most optimistic [projections] on renewables and nuclear, you still have 60 percent fossil fuels by 2030 with massive emissions,” said Philippe Paelinck, director of CO2 business development at Alstom. “If CCS technology is not accepted by the public, we will not be able to arrive at the necessary levels of emissions — and those are zero for the power sector by 2050.”

The coal industry, politicians and some environmentalists have high hopes for the concept of carbon sequestration, which takes carbon emissions from coal plants and buries them underground. But so far, this new technology does not live up to the hype.

Of the various geoengineering schemes being proposed to cool an overheated planet, one approach — extracting carbon dioxide from the atmosphere using “artificial trees” — may have the most potential. But both questions and big hurdles remain before this emerging technology could be widely deployed.

After all, the coal-fired power plants already built or planned in just the first 10 years of the 21st century would end up emitting more carbon dioxide in the next 25 years — 660 billion metric tons — than the 524 billion metric tons that have been emitted since the dawn of the Industrial Age in 1751, notes George Peridas of the Natural Resources Defense Council. And the U.N. Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change estimates that a properly selected storage site would safely stow away 99 percent of the CO2 generated by a coal-burning power plant for at least 1,000 years.

But even if all that CO2 is captured and stored, coal will not be entirely clean, whether because of the impacts of the mountaintop removal mining that provides some of the fuel or the toxic ash that burning coal leaves behind. The ash ponds at the Sporn power plant, just over a grassy berm from Mountaineer, have been identified as a “high hazard” by the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency.

Mountaineer has captured and stored more than 3,000 metric tons of CO2 in the Copper Ridge dolomite formation since Oct. 1, and the company aims to capture as much as 100,000 metric tons a year in the future. “As with any new technology, it’s had its ups and downs,” says Gary Spitznogle, the project’s manager at AEP. “[But] it’s run long enough that we’re confident it works.”

Article by David Biello appearing courtesy Yale Environment 360.

photo: Pacific Northwest National Laboratory

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The US EPA and Duke Energy have reached a settlement in another New Source Review enforcement action.

Duke Energy, one of the largest electric power companies in the nation, will spend approximately $85 million to significantly reduce harmful air pollution at an Indiana power plant and pay a $1.75 million civil penalty, under a settlement to resolve violations of federal clean air laws, the Justice Department and the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) announced today. The settlement also requires Duke to spend $6.25 million on environmental mitigation projects.

The agreement, filed in federal court in Indianapolis, resolves violations of the Clean Air Act’s new source review requirements found at the company’s Gallagher coal-fired power plant in New Albany, Ind., located directly across the Ohio River from Louisville, Ky.

The settlement is anticipated to reduce sulfur dioxide emissions at the Gallagher Plant by almost 35,000 tons per year, an 86 percent reduction when compared to 2008 emissions. This is equivalent to the emissions from 500,000 heavy duty semi trucks, which is more than all of the trucks registered in Indiana, Illinois, Kentucky, and Ohio combined. Sulfur dioxide harms the environment and human health.

Duke is required to spend $6.25 million on environmental mitigation projects, including $250,000 for the U.S. Forest Service to address acid rain in downwind national forests, $5 million for one or more additional projects such as conversion to hydro generation or hybrid vehicle fleets, and $1 million for environmental mitigation projects to be allocated among the states that joined the settlement.

The settlement requires Duke to either repower Units 1 and 3 at Gallagher with natural gas or shut them down to remove all sulfur dioxide pollution. This natural gas repowering will also reduce other air pollutants, including nitrogen oxides, particulate matter, mercury, and carbon dioxide. The combined nitrogen oxide emissions from Units 1 and 3 are expected to decrease by about 2,198 tons per year as compared to 2008 emissions. By using natural gas rather than coal, Duke will eliminate emissions of particulate matter and mercury from the units. The switch from coal to natural gas will also decrease these units’ carbon dioxide emissions by roughly half per unit of electricity.

The settlement also requires that Duke install new pollution controls for sulfur dioxide at the other two units at the plant, Units 2 and 4.

This is the 17th settlement secured by EPA and DOJ as part of a national enforcement initiative to control emissions from coal-fired power plants under the Clean Air Act’s New Source Review requirements.

For more information, visit the EPA.

Article by Roger Greenway, appearing courtesy of ENN

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Last week the EPA proposed that carbon dioxide be considered one of six greenhouse gases which endanger the public health and welfare of US citizens. Well, it’s about time! The EPA is now seeking public comment on the proposed ruling, which consists of two parts: that the six greenhouse gases contribute to a litany of climate-related problems, and that motor vehicle emissions send four of those gases into the atmosphere.  What could this mean for CO2-intensive energy sources, and what are some implications for clean energy?

In the US, the largest emitting sectors of CO2- equivalent emissions are electric power generation (34% of US emissions), transportation (28%) and industry (19%), and the proposed rule could have severe implications for those sectors. While the US may or may not achieve CO2 emissions regulation this year, at a minimum the EPA’s proposed rule and Congressional debate on the Waxman-Markey bill will increase public awareness on the topic. With so much ongoing discussion, major players in the energy sector have initiated strategic planning efforts to adapt to possible emissions regulation.

The skinny: Coal-dependent regions and industries will need to brace for increased energy costs, including considerable electricity price hikes. States in the Southeast and Midwest, this means you (see chart below). Ameren UE, a Missouri-based utility company, estimates their costs of generating electricity could double. American Electric Power, an Ohio-based utility, is evaluating plant closures and rate increases of 25-50% in the event of emissions regulation.

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The upside: these same coal-dependent regions and industries will be the next boom opportunity for adoption of proven but relatively expensive renewable energy technologies, such as wind and solar power. Last year, DOE highlighted a swath of Midwest and Great Plains states as the US’ best onshore wind resource. A few Southeast utilities are already adding solar power to their generation portfolios (Duke Energy, Florida Power & Light), though some projects have stalled. Look for more wind and solar projects as capital unfreezes and talk of carbon legislation continues.

Utilities, businesses and residents across the Midwest and Southeast should seriously consider solar power as well. Solar in the Midwest? Believe it. Most states along the Ohio and Mississippi Rivers average 4.5 to 5.5 kWh/m² of sun each day – a useless factoid until you realize that’s a full hour per day more than Germany, the world leader in installed solar capacity. To be sure, Germany’s solar binge has been fueled by lucrative feed-in tariffs and not by a sudden discovery of gloriously sunny weather. But, couple the Midwest’s slightly better solar radiation with federal carbon legislation, and electricity prices in coal-dependent regions could rise dramatically enough to drive aggressive solar adoption.  A doubling of power prices (not a completely unlikely scenario for the historically cheap power sold in the Midwest and Southeast) could drastically reduce the payback time on solar power projects.

Will the Midwest and Southeast lead US growth in wind and solar power projects? Tell the EPA and your Congressperson to regulate carbon dioxide emissions and it just may happen.

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