The Economics of Co2 Separation and Capture

Carbon management and sequestration offers an opportunity for reducing greenhouse gas emissions that can complement the current strategies of improving energy efficiency and increasing the use of non-fossil energy resources. When most people think of sequestering carbon, they think of planting trees. However, the focus of this paper is the capture of CO 2 from large stationary sources, primarily power plants. In this paper, we first present an overview of CO 2 separation and capture technology, followed by a detailed analysis of costs associated with today's technology for CO 2 separation and capture followed by a discussion of opportunities to lower costs in the future. Based on this cost analysis, we develop a composite model for costs from several types of power plant, followed by a sensitivity study. For coal, new technologies like gasification show the most long-term promise. By 2012, incremental costs for CO 2 sequestration could be less than 1 ¢/kWh from advanced coal plants and less than 1.5 ¢/kWh from gas plants.