On the carbon capture and storage front, it is a good news-bad news week — and the bad news far outweighs the good stuff. While the U.S. Department of Energy is putting money into 15 projects with the aim of safely and economically storing CO2 in geological formations, the lack of a climate bill is hindering any larger scale carbon storage, federal agencies said this week.

By Ann Rascalli

The  DOE is injecting $21.3 million over three years into initiatives in the hope of developing the technology and infrastructure for large-scale CO2 storage in different geological formations across the US. They will complement existing activities that include injectivity of CO2 into the reservoir, plume migration and containment by caprock and other trapping mechanisms. One of the initiatives involves the Colorado School of Mines, which aims to improve the understanding of CO2 trapping mechanisms affected by formation heterogeneity. It is getting a modest $510,752 over 36 months.

The move is positive step and technologies to trap carbon emissions from coal-fired power plants and store them underground face no “insurmountable” barriers to widespread adoption.

The new report, however, concludes that the lack of climate legislation is a big stumbling block.

A multi-agency task force — led by the Energy Department and EPA — delivered recommendations on carbon capture and storage to President Obama on Thursday. The group aims to knock down barriers to widespread deployment within 10 years.

“While there are no insurmountable technological, legal, institutional, regulatory or other barriers that prevent CCS from playing a role in reducing [greenhouse gas] emissions, early CCS projects face economic challenges related to climate policy uncertainty, first-of-a-kind technology risks, and the current high cost of CCS relative to other technologies,” the report states.

It says that Washington’s inability to approve legislation that mandates emissions limits is slowing progress. Most observers believe climate legislation appears dead for the year — and possibly much longer — on Capitol Hill.

“The lack of comprehensive climate change legislation is the key barrier to CCS deployment. Without a carbon price and appropriate financial incentives for new technologies, there is no stable framework for investment in low-carbon technologies such as CCS,” the report states.

“Significant Federal incentives for early deployment of CCS are in place, including RD&D efforts to push CCS technology development, and market-pull mechanisms such as tax credits and loan guarantees. However, many of these projects are being planned by the private sector in anticipation of requirements to reduce GHG emissions, and the foremost economic challenge to these projects is ongoing policy uncertainty regarding the value of GHG emissions reductions,” it adds.