Is carbon capture and storage a pipe dream? Who pays for research into those technologies?

Question from audience members at the StateImpact event “Can we get to a zero carbon future,” January 2019, Pittsburgh

Amy Sisk

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Amy Sisk reports for StateImpact Pennsylvania and WESA, Pittsburgh's NPR member station. She comes to Pennsylvania from another energy-rich state, North Dakota, where she told stories from coal mines, wind farms and the Bakken oil patch for Inside Energy and Prairie Public Broadcasting. Amy's stories often air on NPR, including those from the eight months she spent following the Dakota Access Pipeline protests. A reporting trip to the Bakken during its boom years sparked her interest in energy. Ever since, she's covered the industry -- from the way it is regulated to its influence on policy to its impact on people and the environment.

Michael Bell / Associated Press/The Canadian Press

Visitors tour a carbon capture and storage facility during its official opening at the Boundary Dam Power Station in Estevan, Saskatchewan in 2014. SaskPower said the $1.4-billion facility is to take carbon dioxide released by the Boundary Dam power plant near Estevan and release the gas deep underground using a steel pipeline for storage.

February 4, 2019 | 10:30 AM

Over one-fourth of the greenhouse gas emissions in the United States come from generating electricity, as facilities like coal- and natural gas-fired power plants release carbon dioxide into the atmosphere. If we could find a way to capture those emissions and store them somewhere, it would go a long way toward curbing the nation’s carbon footprint.

This so-called “clean coal” technology is already in use in a few limited places, but it’s pricey and has yet to be rolled out on a large scale. One of the most prominent examples is the Petra Nova facility in Texas, which captures CO2 from an existing coal plant. Another notable project in Mississippi was scrapped after it ran billions of dollars over budget.

Researchers throughout the world are working to develop better, more affordable technology. Some of that research takes place at Pennsylvania universities and at the U.S. Department of Energy’s National Energy Technology Laboratory south of Pittsburgh.

In the United States, the DOE has funded a lot of that work. States have also contributed, as have private dollars from the coal and natural gas industries.

Getting out of the research and development phase and putting a project on the ground often results in a partnership between government and industry. For example, a company that operates a coal-fired power plant in North Dakota is looking to retrofit the facility to capture its emissions, then pipe the gas underground for storage. Minnkota Power is hoping for a federal grant, in conjunction with state money and private dollars, to fund the $1.3-billion project.

Congress recently approved a more robust tax credit for storing carbon dioxide underground and piping it into old oil fields to squeeze out more crude, a process known as enhanced oil recovery. Storing CO2 in the earth presents some uncertainties that researchers continue to study, like whether the gas will migrate into aquifers or escape into the atmosphere.

Experts say more research needs to take place to develop cheaper, more efficient ways to capture and store carbon dioxide. Some say that’s only likely with tougher environmental policies that impose penalties for emissions or offer incentives for reductions. Those policies could be a cap-and-trade program, a carbon tax, or something like the Obama-era Clean Power Plan that would have given each state a limit on greenhouse gas emissions. The Environmental Protection Agency under President Donald Trump has proposed an alternative to that plan, letting states set their own emissions goals.