Carbon Capture and Storage (CCS) is thought to be a key technology in our search for ways to reduce our carbon emissions.
Unfortunately, CCS is in it's infancy and has yet to prove itself in terms of costs and scalability. Many a scheme has been abandoned before it has started, even when backed with promises of millions in subsidies from governments.
Yet it has huge potential: The company and/or country that develops a working, cost effective, large scale version of CCS will make a fortune from a world market that is desperate for a technology that means they can still get their energy from fossil fuels without producing carbon emissions.
Could U.S. company Net Power be the ones to do just that? (See here and here).
Their chief technologist, Rodney Allam, believes they can. Instead of focusing his attention on simply capturing waste CO2 from power stations after combustion (i.e. after burning the fuel), his idea is to make stations more efficient by using the CO2 in the combustion process. By doing this, they not get more energy from the same fuel, they also get much purer CO2 emissions that are far cheaper to capture.
End result: Power stations that cost no more than ones without CCS.
Net Power plan to trial the idea in Britain, with construction starting some time over the next year.
Could the revolution start here?
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