German Utility Trolls World for Carbon-Capture Technologies
In a program to reduce its carbon-dioxide emissions to half its 1990 level by 2030, the world’s largest investor-owned electric and gas utility is testing CO2-capture technologies from around the world at seven different sites. The program will run through 2012 on flue-gas streams from 0.1-MW to 7-MW plants. By 2020, the utility expects to be using carbon capture and storage on all its new coal-fired powerplants.
E.ON AG, Dusseldorf, Germany, is investing more than $81.5 million in the projects, says Clemens Tauber, E.ON spokesman. “With these small pilot plants, we will test and improve scrubbing processes. CO2 storage will be the subject in a next step. With a larger pilot plant of several tens of megawatts electric, we will demonstrate the full chain of capture, transport and storage. Startup of this larger plant is foreseen for 2014.”