Electricity without carbon dioxide: Assessing the role of carbon capture and sequestration in United States electric markets

Stabilization of atmospheric greenhouse gas concentrations will likely require significant cuts in electric sector carbon dioxide (CO₂) emissions. The ability to capture and sequester CO₂ in a manner compatible with today's fossil-fuel based power generating infrastructure offers a potentially low-cost contribution to a larger climate change mitigation strategy. This thesis fills a niche between economy-wide studies of CO ₂ abatement and plant-level control technology assessments by examining the contribution that carbon capture and sequestration (CCS) might make toward reducing US electric sector CO₂ emissions. The assessment's thirty year perspective ensures that costs sunk in current infrastructure remain relevant and allows time for technological diffusion, but remains free of assumptions about the emergence of unidentified radical innovations.; The extent to which CCS might lower CO₂ mitigation costs will vary directly with the dispatch of carbon capture plants in actual power-generating systems, and will depend on both the retirement of vintage capacity and competition from abatement alternatives such as coal-to-gas fuel switching and renewable energy sources. This thesis therefore adopts a capacity planning and dispatch model to examine how the current distribution of generating units, natural gas prices, and other industry trends affect the cost of CO₂ control via CCS in an actual US electric market. The analysis finds that plants with CO₂ capture consistently provide significant reductions in base-load emissions at carbon prices near 100 {dollar}/tC, but do not offer an economical means of meeting peak demand unless CO₂ reductions in excess of 80 percent are required. Various scenarios estimate the amount by which turn-over of the existing generating infrastructure and the severity of criteria pollutant constraints reduce mitigation costs.; A look at CO₂ sequestration in the seabed beneath the US Outer Continental Shelf (OCS) complements this model-driven assessment by considering issues of risk, geological storage capacity, and regulation. Extensive experience with offshore oil and gas operations suggests that the technical uncertainties associated with OCS sequestration are not large. The legality of seabed CO ₂ disposal under US law and international environmental agreements, however, is ambiguous, and the OCS may be the first region where these regulatory regimes clash over CO₂ sequestration.