How will carbon capture affect your utility bill?

I know, I talk a lot about the need to keep the compliance costs of reducing greenhouse gas emissions affordable, and there is really some promising news on that front.

At George Washington University’s Accelerating Greenhouse Gas Reductions symposium, Professor Ed Rubin from Carnegie Mellon University gave attendees an update on carbon capture and sequestration technologies, including cost estimates and the overall importance of the technology in our low-carbon toolkit.

From the outset, Professor Rubin stated that “coal will not go away for many decades” and that alternative sources would not easily be able to achieve the large CO2 reductions needed to stabilize CO2 concentrations.

“[CCS] would allow continued coal use as a bridge to a more sustainable future,” said Professor Rubin, noting that CCS was also a potential link to carbon-free transportation, as the cheapest way to make hydrogen was from coal (hydrogen, of course, is seen as a possible alternative to traditional gasoline).

Moreover, Professor Rubin said that economic models show that including CCS in a portfolio of low-carbon energy options significantly reduces the costs of mitigating climate change. If we were talking about needing to hit smaller reduction numbers, he said, we’d be talking about a different type of solution.

But just how much will carbon capture technology cost? And how will it affect your utility bills?

Professor Rubin said that if we apply today’s carbon capture technology to a gasification plant, the initial capital and generating costs would increase 30 to 50 percent. However, these are not increases consumers would immediately see in their monthly utility bill, as utility bills reflect costs from a mix of electricity generation.

In the long-term, CCS has great implications for the cost of electricity, said the professor, who cited DOE figures that CCS could potentially reduce the total cost of electricity by 19-28 percent.

While the benefits of commercial-scale CCS are many for the economy, climate and our national security, Professor Rubin along with the other panelists noted that we need to start walking the walk—and that government action is needed to help us remove legal and regulatory impediments that slow our technological success.