BISMARCK – The American public is not as well-informed as it may think on energy and trimming greenhouse gases, energy experts said Monday.
That means the energy industry, Congress and policymakers have a chore ahead of them in getting citizens to understand the financing and technology needed to clean coal-fired plants, they testified during a U.S. Senate field hearing.
Sen. Byron Dorgan brought fact-finding to the state Capitol on Monday for his Energy and Water Development Appropriations Subcommittee.
Carl Bauer, director of the National Energy Technology Laboratory of the U.S. Department of Energy, said the U.S. has a 250-year supply of coal and its use will increase, but it depends on cost-effective technology to make coal more environmentally friendly.
There is a way to get rid of carbon dioxide and enhance oil production at the same time, he and others at the hearing said. It’s not yet cost-effective to do this on a large scale, Bauer said.
"While we can capture CO2 today, the economics around it are prohibitive," he said. To cut carbon dioxide from coal-fired power plants by 50 percent would raise the average cost of electricity from $25 per megawatt to $80, Bauer said.
"I don't think that's comprehended" by the public, Bauer said. He said the public needs to understand there is a balance between cutting greenhouse gases and having affordable energy.
Ron Harper, general manager of Basin Electric Power Cooperative in Bismarck, testified because Basin’s Dakota Gasification Co. plant at Beulah is the only commercial-scale seller of carbon dioxide gas for enhanced oil recovery. Dakota Gas’ carbon dioxide is piped to Saskatchewan oil fields, where it is injected into wells to stimulate production and permanently sequester the carbon underground.
But Harper joined Bauer in saying public education is needed. People believe from watching TV and movies that the nation has all the technology it needs to cut pollution and use alternative, green energy sources.
"Taking it from the (lab) bench to full scale or up-scale is a tremendous challenge," he said. "People don't understand what’s going on. The everyday person really doesn’t understand what that's really going to do to the cost of electricity, and we have to work on public knowledge. If we don't, we're going to fail."
An official at the Electric Power Research Institute, Charlotte, N.C., said the market for carbon dioxide gas for oil recovery is so great that all CO2 from 180 500-megawatt coal power plants could be used.
"If we did this, we would double the domestic oil production," Jeffrey Phillips said.