Google’s newest pledge to assist a brand new clear power know-how is… a fuel challenge? To be exact, it’s a gas-fired energy plant outfitted with filtering units to seize its planet-heating carbon emissions. Is that this only a polluting fossil gasoline challenge in sheep’s clothes?
Google simply inked an settlement to assist the event of a brand new gas-fired energy plant in Illinois referred to as the Broadwing Energy Center. It’ll be paired with carbon capture and storage (CCS), know-how meant to filter carbon dioxide from smokestack emissions after which retailer it underground in order that the greenhouse fuel doesn’t construct up within the environment.
Is that this only a polluting fossil gasoline challenge in sheep’s clothes?
In idea, that’s supposed to assist the planet from heating past the purpose at which rising sea ranges render whole coastal communities unlivable and ocean warming kills off the world’s coral reefs, amongst different disasters introduced on by local weather change. In actuality, CCS is mired in doubts about its technical and monetary feasibility. There’s additionally a wholesome quantity of skepticism over whether or not CCS will solely extend dependence on fossil fuels somewhat than encouraging a transition to extra sustainable sources of power, like photo voltaic and wind energy.
Google says it has agreed to buy “most” of the facility that the brand new 400MW-capacity energy plant at Broadwing produces as soon as it begins working in 2030. “Our aim is to assist convey promising new CCS options to the market whereas studying and innovating rapidly,” Google says in its announcement at this time.
To this point, CCS has a reasonably checkered observe report within the US. The US Division of Vitality (DOE) has burned through hundreds of millions of dollars on failed CCS initiatives, in line with a 2021 report by the Authorities Accountability Workplace. Of practically $684 million spent on CCS initiatives at six coal vegetation, solely considered one of them ever got here on-line. The opposite initiatives suffered from “components affecting their financial viability,” the GAO report says.
The price of electrical energy from energy vegetation mixed with carbon seize is at the very least 1.5 to 2 times more expensive than that from photo voltaic, wind, or conventional coal and fuel energy vegetation with out CCS, in line with a 2023 report based mostly on amenities in Australia. Already, rising electrical energy demand from knowledge facilities have contributed to climbing utility bills within the US.
The one CCS project that moved forward within the US with DOE assist got here on-line in 2017 earlier than shuttering for a couple of years beginning in 2020, when the covid-19 pandemic despatched oil costs crashing. Why was it so delicate to grease costs when the plant burned coal? It equipped captured CO2 to an “enhanced oil recovery” challenge, a course of involving taking pictures the CO2 deep into the bottom to drive out hard-to-reach reserves, as a way of staying financially viable.
The challenge that Google is backing differs in a pair key methods. The plant burns fuel, which has turn into a cheaper method to generate energy than burning coal within the US. And the CO2 shall be sequestered a mile underground in a effectively close to the facility plant, somewhat than offered as a product for enhanced oil restoration. Google claims Broadwing will be capable to completely retailer about 90 % of the carbon dioxide emissions the plant generates, a determine higher than many other CCS projects have been capable of obtain up to now.
That doesn’t account for different issues related to gas-fired energy vegetation. Although the business prefers the term “natural gas,” they primarily burn methane, which is a greenhouse fuel much more potent than carbon dioxide. Methane routinely leaks from oil and fuel wells and pipelines, an issue that merely capturing CO2 at an influence plant fails to unravel. Fuel vegetation additionally produce other air pollutants that pose well being dangers to close by communities.
Photo voltaic and onshore wind power farms don’t include the identical local weather air pollution issues and are usually cheaper to deploy than fossil fuel-fired energy vegetation today. Google has been one of many biggest corporate purchasers of renewable power for years now, helping wind and solar turn into the fastest-growing sources of new electricity generation.
Google doesn’t point out that in its announcement at this time, nonetheless, maybe reflecting the political tide turning in opposition to renewables within the US underneath the Trump administration. Donald Trump has put in fossil gasoline executives to steer the Department of Energy and other key posts in his administration whereas clawing back beforehand allotted federal funds for renewable power initiatives and issuing stop work orders to offshore wind farms underneath development.
Republicans are sunsetting tax incentives for photo voltaic and wind initiatives, however not for CCS, by the way. CCS has wanted the monetary assist to assist it get off the bottom, and now it has one other backer in Google. Google is attempting to satiate energy-hungry knowledge facilities because it scales up its AI ambitions, and its carbon footprint has grown in the process.
