Coal Power Plants: Opportunities Exist for DOE to Provide Better Information on the Maturity of Key Technologies to Reduce Carbon Dioxide Emissions
Released: 2010-07-16T00:00:00

Letter

Although DOE Does Not Systematically Assess the Maturity of Key Coal Technologies, Consensus among Stakeholders Is That CCS Is Less Mature Than Efficiency Technologies

DOE’s Office of Fossil Energy oversees research on key coal technologies, but DOE does not systematically assess the maturity of those technologies. Using TRLs we developed for these technologies, we found consensus among stakeholders that CCS is less mature than efficiency technologies.

DOE Does Not Systematically Assess the Maturity of Key Coal Technologies

Although federal standards for internal control require agency managers to compare actual program performance to planned or expected results and analyze significant differences, we found that DOE’s Office of Fossil Energy does not systematically assess the maturity of key coal technologies as they progress toward commercialization. While DOE officials reported that individual programs are aware of the maturity of technologies and DOE publishes reports that assess the technical and economic feasibility of advanced coal technologies, we found that the Office of Fossil Energy does not use a standard set of benchmarks or terms to describe or report on the maturity of technologies. In addition, DOE’s goals for advancing these technologies sometimes use terms that are not well defined. The lack of such benchmarks or an assessment of the maturity of key coal technologies and whether they are achieving planned or desired results limits: DOE’s ability to provide a clear picture of the maturity of these technologies to policymakers, utilities officials, and others; congressional and other oversight of the hundreds of millions of dollars DOE is spending on these technologies; and policymakers’ ability to assess the maturity of CCS and the resources that might be needed to achieve commercial deployment.

Other agencies similarly charged with developing technologies, such as NASA and the Department of Defense (DOD), use TRLs to characterize the maturity of technologies. Table 1 shows a description of TRLs used by NASA.

DOE has acknowledged that TRLs can play a key role in assessing the maturity of technologies during the contracting process. The agency recently issued a Technology Readiness Assessment Guide, which lays out three key steps to conducting technology readiness assessments during the contracting process.

Identify critical technology elements that are essential to the successful operation of the facility.

Assess maturity of these critical technologies using TRLs.

Develop a technology maturity plan which identifies activities required to bring technology to desired TRL level.

Although use of the Guide is not mandatory, DOE’s Office of Environmental Management uses the Guide as part of managing its procurement activities––a result of a GAO recommendation––and its Office of Nuclear Energy has begun using TRLs to measure and communicate risks associated with using critical technologies in a novel way. Furthermore, the National Nuclear Security Administration has used TRLs recently as well.

Consensus among Key Stakeholders Is That CCS Is Less Mature than Efficiency Technologies

In the absence of an assessment from DOE, we asked stakeholders to gauge the maturity of coal technologies using a scale we developed based on TRLs. Table 2 shows the TRLs we developed for coal technologies by adapting the NASA TRLs. for EOR use. However, this plant does not produce electricity. plants have already been demonstrated commercially. For example, a number of ultrasupercritical plants ranging from 600 to more than 1,000 MW have been built or are under construction in Europe and Asia, and there are five IGCC plants in operation around the world, including two in the United States.

Commercial Deployment of Key Coal Technologies Is Possible, but Contingent on Overcoming Economic, Technical, and Legal Challenges

Commercial deployment of CCS within 10 to 15 years is possible according to DOE and other stakeholders, but is contingent on overcoming a variety of economic, technical, and legal challenges. Many technologies to improve plant efficiency have been used and are available for commercial use now, but still face challenges.

Commercial Deployment of CCS Is Possible within 10 to 15 Years, but Faces Major Challenges According to Reports and Stakeholders

injection wells can be permitted as Class I (injections of hazardous wastes, industrial nonhazardous wastes, municipal wastewater) or Class V wells (injections not included in other classes, including wells used in experimental technologies such as pilot CO for geologic sequestration. endangerment of underground sources of drinking water until the operator meets all the closure and post-closure requirements and EPA approves site closure of the well. According to EPA, once site closure is approved, well operators will only be liable under the SDWA if they violate or fail to comply with EPA orders in situations where an imminent and substantial endangerment to health is posed by a contaminant that is in or likely to enter an underground source of drinking water. EPA plans to finalize the geologic sequestration rule in fall 2010. Neither the proposed rule nor the final rule will address liability for unintended releases of stored CO emissions in lieu of more efficient coal plants.

In addition, some higher efficiency plant designs also face technical challenges in that they require more advanced materials than are currently available. For example, “advanced” ultrasupercritical plants require development of metal alloys to withstand steam temperatures that could be 300 to 500 degrees Fahrenheit higher than today’s ultrasupercritical plants according to DOE. From a legal perspective, most stakeholders reported that making efficiency upgrades to the existing fleet of coal power plants was limited by the prospect of triggering the Clean Air Act’s New Source Review (NSR) requirements––additional requirements that may apply when a plant makes a major modification, a physical or operational change that would result in a significant net increase in emissions.

CCS Offers More Potential to Reduce CO

emissions than efficiency improvements alone but could raise electricity costs, increase demand for water, and could affect the ability of individual plants to operate reliably. Technologies to improve plant efficiency offer potential near-term reductions, but also raise some concerns.

CCS Could Help Meet Emissions Limits but Raises Key Concerns

According to key reports and stakeholders, the successful deployment of CCS technologies is critical to helping the United States meet potential limits in greenhouse gas emissions. In addition, CCS could allow coal to remain part of the nation’s diverse fuel mix. IEA estimated that CCS technologies could meet 20 percent of reductions needed to reduce global CO This report also noted that the cost of meeting this goal would increase if CCS was not deployed. Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) researchers called CCS the “critical enabling technology” to reduce CO emissions while allowing continued use of coal in the future. In 2009, NAS reported that if CCS technologies are not demonstrated commercially in the next decade, the electricity sector could move more towards using natural gas to meet emissions targets. Our past work has also found that switching from coal to natural gas can lead to higher fuel costs and increased exposure to the greater price volatility of natural gas.

On the other hand, most stakeholders told us that CCS would increase electricity prices, and key reports raise similar concerns. MIT estimated that plants with post-combustion capture have 61 percent higher cost of electricity, and IGCC plants with pre-combustion capture have a 27 percent higher cost compared to plants without these technologies. Similarly, DOE estimated that plants with post-combustion capture have 83 percent higher cost of electricity, while IGCC plants with pre- combustion capture having a 36 percent higher cost. DOE has also raised concerns about CCS and water consumption. Specifically, DOE estimated that post-combustion capture technology could almost double water consumption at a coal plant, while pre-combustion capture would increase water use by 73 percent. Some utility officials also said CCS could lead to a decline in the ability of individual plants to operate reliably because a power plant might need to shut down if any of the three components (capture, transport, and storage) of CCS became unavailable. In addition, more electricity sources would need to make up for the higher parasitic load associated with CCS. The National Coal Council has also reported temporary declines in reliability during past deployments of new coal technologies.

Plant Efficiency Improvements Offer More Potential for Near-Term Emissions Reductions but Also Raise Concerns

Emission Goals with 21st Century Technologies (Washington, D.C., December 2009).

Agency Comments and Our Evaluation

We provided a draft of our report to the Secretary of Energy and the Administrator of EPA for review and comment. In addition, we provided selected slides on reliability of electricity supply to NERC for comment. We received written comments from DOE’s Assistant Secretary of the Office of Fossil Energy, which are reproduced in appendix III. The Assistant Secretary concurred with our recommendation, stating that DOE could improve its process for providing a clearer picture of technology maturity and that it planned to conduct a formal TRL assessment of coal technologies in the near future. The Assistant Secretary also provided technical comments, which we have incorporated as appropriate. In addition, EPA and NERC provided technical comments, which we have incorporated as appropriate.

As agreed with your offices, unless you publicly announce the contents of this report earlier, we plan no further distribution until 30 days from the report date. At that time, we will send copies of this report to the appropriate congressional committees, Secretary of Energy, Administrator of EPA, and other interested parties. In addition, the report will be available at no charge on GAO’s Web site at http://www.gao.gov.

If you or your staffs have any questions regarding this report, please contact me at (202) 512-3841 or gaffiganm@gao.gov. Contact points for our Offices of Congressional Relations and Public Affairs may be found on the last page of this report. GAO staff who made major contributions to this report are listed in appendix IV.

Appendix I: Briefing Slides to Congressional Staff

Technologies to Reduce Carbon

all U.S. emissions of COCO2 is the most prevalent greenhouse gas (GHG)

Scope and Methodology

Scope and Methodology (cont’d)

Reviewed DOE budget documents and program goals for its RD&D

program and interviewed senior DOE staff on these Visited coal power plants and research facilities in three selected states—AL, MD, and WV4 We conducted this performance audit from July 2009 through May 2010, in accordance with generally accepted government auditing standards. Those standards require that we plan and perform the audit to obtain sufficient, appropriate evidence to provide a reasonable basis for our findings and conclusions based on our audit objectives. We believe that the evidence obtained provides a reasonable basis for our findings and conclusions based on our audit objectives.

We selected this nonprobability sample of states because they contained projects involving advanced coal technologies.

Appendix II: Scope and Methodology

To conduct this work, we reviewed key reports including those from the Department of Energy’s (DOE) national laboratories, the National Academy of Sciences, International Energy Agency (IEA), Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, Global CCS Institute, the National Coal Council, and academic reports.

To identify stakeholders’ views on these technologies, we conducted initial scoping interviews with power plant operators, technology vendors, and federal officials from the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) and DOE. Following this initial round of interviews, we selected a group of 19 stakeholders with expertise in carbon capture and storage (CCS) or technologies to improve coal plant efficiency and asked them a set of standard questions. This group of stakeholders included representatives from major utilities that are planning or implementing projects that use these technologies, technology vendors that are developing these technologies, federal officials that are providing research, development, and demonstration funding for these technologies, and researchers from academia or industry that are actively researching these technologies.

During these interviews, we asked stakeholders to describe the maturity of technologies in terms of a scale we developed, based on Technology Readiness Levels (TRL). TRLs are a tool developed by the National Aeronautics and Space Administration and used by various federal agencies to rate the extent to which technologies have been demonstrated to work as intended using a scale of 1 to 9. In developing TRLs for coal technologies, we consulted with the Electric Power Research Institute (EPRI), which had recently used a similar approach to examine the maturity of coal technologies. Specifically, EPRI developed specific benchmarks to describe TRLs in the context of a commercial scale coal power plant. For example, they defined TRL 8 as demonstration at more than 25 percent the size of a commercial scale plant. We applied these benchmarks to a commercial scale power plant, which we defined as 500 megawatts (MW) and emitting about 3 millions tons of carbon dioxide (CO) annually. We based this definition on some of the key reports we reviewed, which used 500 MW as a standard power plant, and stated that such a plant would emit about 3 million tons of CO emissions from a power plant can vary based on a variety of factors, including the amount of time that a power plant is operated. We also reviewed available data on the use of key coal technologies compiled by IEA and the Global CCS Institute.

Appendix III: Comments from the Department of Energy

The following are GAO’s comments on the Department of Energy’s letter dated June 4, 2010.

GAO Comments

Appendix IV: GAO Contact and Staff Acknowledgments

Staff Acknowledgments

In addition to the contact names above, key contributors to this report included Jon Ludwigson (Assistant Director), Chloe Brown, Scott Heacock, Alison O’Neill, Kiki Theodoropoulos, and Jarrod West. Important assistance was also provided by Chuck Bausell, Nirmal Chaudhary, Cindy Gilbert, Madhav Panwar, and Jeanette Soares.