Four-"E" Bridge to the Carbon-Free Energy Future
In last issues State-of-the-Art article, PTTC focused on DOE’s carbon sequestration partnerships. This resulted in inadequate coverage of the Gulf Coast Carbon Center, an industrial-academic consortium in Texas.
Excerpts in PTTC Network News, 2nd Quarter 2005

The Gulf Coast Carbon Center (GCCC) merges expertise in four key areas—Energy, Environment, Economics, and Education—to find optimal ways to provide sustainable energy in the future. The GCCC is an industrial-academic consortium led by the Bureau of Economic Geology at The University of Texas at Austin and partly funded by the Jackson School of Geosciences, electric power producers Entergy and NRG, gas handler Praxair, CO₂ pipeline and EOR specialist Kinder Morgan, and international energy companies BP and Chevron.

In the near term we need the process of carbon capture and storage (CCS) to reach the environmental goal of reducing risks resulting from buildup of CO₂ in the atmosphere. Fossil fuel usage is increasing, and the greatest opportunity for quickly reducing the impact of this increase is to capture CO₂ at large point sources such as electricity generators and industrial sites and inject it into the subsurface underlying many of these facilities.

Strong collaboration with energy businesses is key to successful implementation. Beneficial use of captured CO₂ to enhance oil production, coalbed methane  generation, and possibly gas production will speed implementation. Expertise in reservoir characterization and multiphase flow modeling available in the hydrocarbon production industry is needed to identify geologic storage sites where CO₂ will be retained in the reservoir for long enough periods to influence atmospheric concentrations.

An economic plan for CCS is critical for rapid and widespread implementation. Credit trading, penalties, or incentives are needed to motivate a market. The new Center for Energy Economics, a group led by Michelle Michot Foss who recently joined the Bureau of Economic Geology, will assess commercialization issues.

Education supported by research is a critical role of the GCCC. Exchange of information within a diverse group of industries, the research community, other stakeholders, and the public is required to build this industry. For example, oil producers need to know where and when CO₂ capture will become feasible to plan for CO₂ floods, and capture experts need insight into the economics of using reservoirs in decline. Policy makers need to consider how commercialization could benefit or harm private- and public- sector employment and tax bases. Regulators need to explore the synergy between waste disposal and commercial use of the CO₂ in the subsurface and the ways existing regulation can be used to support the process on an unprecedented scale.

The initial U.S. experiment in geologic storage, the Frio Pilot test, merges expertise in energy, environment, economics, and education. The Bureau of Economic Geology drew on experience provided by 16 research and service organizations, including 4 national labs (LBNL, ORNL, NETL, and LLNL), the U.S. Geological Survey, Schlumberger, Praxair, Paulsson Geophysics, Sandia Technologies, the Alberta Research Council, and the Australian CO₂ CRC. The Frio Pilot tested the efficiency of the subsurface in storing CO₂ in nonproductive sandstones to assure that the process would reach environmental goals. The project was leveraged by data and infrastructure from five decades of hydrocarbon production in the host site at South Liberty field, including donation of 3-D seismic, historical well logs, and well access by Texas American Resources.

The figure shows the favorable relationship between point sources of CO₂, shown as bars above the land surface, and the thickness of the sedimentary wedge in North America.