News & Events Archive

• January 02, 2010

  Alberta expert sets record straight on carbon capture

  Alberta's Edmonton Journal reported that Stefan Bachu, who was recently honored with the Alberta Research Council's top award by being named a "Distinguished Scientist" and one of the world's leading experts on carbon sequestration, believes that there is "more demanding work to do on the surface of the Earth than deep underground." Said Bachu, "My biggest challenge is to convince the public, politicians and green NGOs (non-governmental organizations) that carbon capture and storage (CCS) is not a ploy by the oil industry -- seen as the villains -- to extend the life of fossil fuels." Bachu, who was one of the winners of the Nobel Peace Prize as a lead author to the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change special report on CCS, said in a recent interview, "Not too many politicians and others understand that even if they make these decisions on carbon capture, they won't have the capacity to deliver [without more research]," adding, "CCS is part of the global solution to CO2 emissions, and not the only one. But without it we will not attain the targets."

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• June 28, 2009

  Algae Farm Aims to Turn Carbon Dioxide Into Fuel

  Dow Chemical and Algenol Biofuels, a start-up company, are set to announce Monday that they will build a demonstration plant that, if successful, would use algae to turn carbon dioxide into ethanol as a vehicle fuel or an ingredient in plastics. The process also produces oxygen, which could be used to burn coal in a power plant cleanly, said Paul Woods, chief executive of Algenol, which is based in Bonita Springs, Fla. The exhaust from such a plant would be mostly carbon dioxide, which could be reused to make more algae.

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• September 11, 2009

  CO2 Capture Pilot Facility Dedicated

  WOWK-TV reports on its website that “West Virginia's first carbon capture pilot plant was dedicated Thursday morning.” Alstom partnered “with Dow Chemical to design and build [the] pilot plant,” which will capture carbon dioxide from the flu gas of a coal-fired boiler at the Dow facility in South Charleston.” According to the AP, “the new technology could have a major impact on energy, environment and business.”

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• December 18, 2009

  Alstom, AEP partner to capture CO2

  The Wall Street Journal provides an online slideshow of American Electric Power’s Mountaineer plant in West Virginia, which recently started operations at the world’s largest carbon capture and sequestration facility. One of the pictures shows Alstom President Philippe Joubert at the opening of the plant in October.

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• July 21, 2009

  Alstom CEO Discusses Future Of Coal, CCS

  In an interview on E&E TV’s OnPoint, Pierre Gauthier, the US president and CEO of Alstom, said because coal is almost utilized worldwide, you will not be able to remove it. So the best thing to do is to be able to capture those emissions like we do today on the nitrous oxides and the sulfur oxides and we don't think twice about it. And if we go back 20 years ago everybody thought the cost would be unbearable for that. Maybe in 20 years we won't think twice about removing the CO2.” Gauthier said of his company’s CCS projects, “We Energy has been a success. It's what we call a pilot project. … It has achieved over 90 percent capture of CO2. … We're still hoping that by 2015 we'll be able to offer commercial technologies to capture CO2.”

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