Publications

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The Water, Energy, and Carbon Sequestration Simulation Model (WECSsim) is a national dynamic simulation model that calculates and assesses capturing, transporting, and storing CO₂ in deep saline formations from all coal and natural gas-fired power plants in the U.S. An overarching capability of WECSsim is to also account for simultaneous CO₂ injection and water extraction within the same geological saline formation. Extracting, treating, and using these saline waters to cool the power plant is one way to develop more value from using saline formations as CO₂ storage locations. WECSsim allows for both one-to-one comparisons of a single power plant to a single saline formation along with the ability to develop a national CO₂ storage supply curve and related national assessments for these formations. This report summarizes the scope, structure, and methodology of WECSsim along with a few key results. Developing WECSsim from a small scoping study to the full national-scale modeling effort took approximately 5 years. This report represents the culmination of that effort. The key findings from the WECSsim model indicate the U.S. has several decades' worth of storage for CO₂ in saline formations when managed appropriately. Competition for subsurface storage capacity, intrastate flows of CO₂ and water, and a supportive regulatory environment all play a key role as to the performance and cost profile across the range from a single power plant to all coal and natural gas-based plants' ability to store CO₂. The overall system's cost to capture, transport, and store CO₂ for the national assessment range from $74 to $208 / tonne stored ($96 to 272 / tonne avoided) for the first 25 to 50% of the 1126 power plants to between $1,585 to well beyond $2,000 / tonne stored ($2,040 to well beyond $2,000 / tonne avoided) for the remaining 75 to 100% of the plants. The latter range, while extremely large, includes all natural gas power plants in the U.S., many of which have an extremely low capacity factor and therefore relatively high system's cost to capture and store CO₂.

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Despite economic, political, legal, and technical challenges, carbon dioxide (CO2) capture and storage (CCS) holds promise as a means to substantially reduce anthropogenic atmospheric emissions of carbon dioxide. One of the technical challenges to CCS is an accurate quantification of the potential geologic storage resource. This analysis uses the publically available national-scale, systems-level Water Energy and Carbon Sequestration simulation model (WECSsim), to show that, depending on assumed boundary conditions, the majority of storage associated with large-scale CCS in the U.S. (on the order of 90-100GT of total reduced emissions) would occur at a small number of well-located sites with favorable geologic properties. WECSsim, through the use of marginal abatement cost curves, shows that under such a scenario, added costs associated with resident saline water extraction, transport, and treatment (SWETT) are justified by resulting increases in carbon dioxide storage efficiency in the geologic formation. This argument is strengthened when geologic uncertainty is taken into consideration. Like an insurance policy, the enhanced carbon dioxide storage efficiency that comes from SWETT adds well-defined costs to reduce potential economic risks associated with overestimates of the available geologic storage resource. © 2014 Elsevier Ltd.

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People save for retirement throughout their career because it is virtually impossible to save all youll need in retirement the year before you retire. Similarly, without installing incremental amounts of clean fossil, renewable or transformative energy technologies throughout the coming decades, a radical and immediate change will be near impossible the year before a policy goal is set to be in place. Therefore, our research question is, To meet our desired technical and policy goals, what are the factors that affect the rate we must install technology to achieve these goals in the coming decades? Existing models do not include full regulatory constraints due to their often complex, and inflexible approaches to solve for optimal engineering instead of robust and multidisciplinary solutions. This project outlines the theory and then develops an applied software tool to model the laboratory-to-market transition using the traditional technology readiness level (TRL) framework, but develops subsequent and a novel regulatory readiness level (RRL) and market readiness level (MRL). This tool uses the ideally-suited system dynamics framework to incorporate feedbacks and time delays. Future energy-economic-environment models, regardless of their programming platform, may adapt this software model component framework or module to further vet the likelihood of new or innovative technology moving through the laboratory, regulatory and market space. The prototype analytical framework and tool, called the Technology, Regulatory and Market Readiness Level simulation model (TRMsim) illustrates the interaction between technology research, application, policy and market dynamics as they relate to a new or innovative technology moving from the theoretical stage to full market deployment. The initial results that illustrate the models capabilities indicate for a hypothetical technology, that increasing the key driver behind each of the TRL, RRL and MRL components individually decreases the time required for the technology to progress through each component by 63, 68 and 64%, respectively. Therefore, under the current working assumptions, to decrease the time it may take for a technology to move from the conceptual stage to full scale market adoption one might consider expending additional effort to secure regulatory approval and reducing the uncertainty of the technologys demand in the marketplace.

Carbon capture and sequestration (CCS) has important implications relative to future thermoelectric water use. A bounding analysis is performed using past greenhouse gas emission policy proposals and assumes either all effected capacity retires (lower water use bound) or is retrofitted (upper bound). The analysis is performed in the context of recent trends in electric power generation expansion, namely high penetration of natural gas and renewables along with constrained cooling system options. Results indicate thermoelectric freshwater withdrawals nationwide could increase by roughly 1% or decrease by up to 60% relative to 2009 levels, while consumption could increase as much as 21% or decrease as much as 28%. To identify where changes in freshwater use might be problematic at a regional level, electric power production has been mapped onto watersheds with limited water availability (where consumption exceeds 70% of gauged streamflow). Results suggest that between 0.44 and 0.96 Mm3/d of new thermoelectric freshwater consumption could occur in watersheds with limited water availability, while power plant retirements in these watersheds could yield 0.90 to 1.0 Mm3/d of water savings.

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