密歇根公用事业公司 DTE 拟用碳捕集封存新燃气电厂 CO2 的计划存疑

The financial and industry analytics firm S&P Global notes in a report that carbon capture and sequestration ​“is a mature and scalable technology for decarbonizing hard-to-abate sectors. However, despite over 50 years of operations, CCS remains at early stages of deployment.” 

The report cites cost, financial risk, market uncertainty, and the complexity of constructing and monitoring the infrastructure as reasons that the technology is used in only a small number of sites worldwide. Most of those are related to enhanced oil recovery, in which the carbon dioxide is used to push oil out of waning reservoirs, providing an additional revenue stream. 

The one commercial power plant in the U.S. to use carbon capture — the Petra Nova project at a Texas coal plant — has had a rocky history, including a three-year shutdown and missed targets. The Environmental Protection Agency last year reported that ​“it is extremely unlikely that the extensive infrastructure for CCS can be deployed” by the 2032 compliance date set under the Biden rule,” as E&E News noted.

Carbon capture equipment on power plants is expensive in part because it takes a considerable amount of electricity to operate, and that electricity must be clean if the goal is zero emissions.

DTE estimates it will take $6.4 billion to build the two new gas plants. The cost of carbon capture and sequestration is hard to predict, so the plants’ price tag could balloon higher. 

“It’s incredibly expensive,” said Charlotte Jameson, chief policy officer of the Michigan Environmental Council, which has intervened in the regulatory process for DTE’s long-range plan. 

“When we’re talking about carbon capture and sequestration, we’re not just talking about the actual capture technology on the smokestack, which is expensive in and of itself, but also building out infrastructure to pipe the carbon dioxide to a place where it can be sequestered. I think it would be really easy at this juncture to undervalue what it would cost. That’s a huge, risky bet for ratepayers and Michigan as a whole.”

In recent months, regulators have been hashing out how much data centers will pay to help build the generation they need. While these proceedings are separate from DTE’s long-range plan, advocates see them as related — and worry that residents will wind up shouldering too much financial burden. 

On October 30, the Michigan attorney general requested that the public service commission reexamine DTE’s contract with Google to power its planned data center, citing the risk that ratepayers will be charged unfairly. 

Clean energy implications

While some advocates would prefer not to see new data centers at all, they argue that if the facilities must be built, their need for electricity could be met without increasing emissions or relying on carbon capture.

“We are looking to ensure that DTE is maximizing the full suite of clean technologies — renewables, storage, demand response, transmission, et cetera,” Earthjustice’s Li said, ​“rather than defaulting to more fossil generation, for meeting the needs of its ratepayers and serving AI new data center load.”

Nationwide, experts and regulators have indeed called on data centers to be flexible with the amount of power they use at a given time, so utilities don’t have to build extra capacity to meet periods of peak demand.

The Michigan Environmental Council’s Jameson is worried that the state’s clean energy law won’t force DTE to ensure that the gas plants capture their emissions. The law allows for multiple extensions to the deadlines for reasons including grid reliability, feasibility of installing renewables, and other factors.

“Those off-ramps are written pretty broadly,” Jameson said, noting that they were adopted before the data center boom. ​“So if data center load makes it too difficult to meet renewable energy standards, there is a lot of risk we just blow through our renewable energy standards and clean energy targets and those become effectively meaningless.” 

Mark Templeton, director of the Abrams Environmental Law Clinic at the University of Chicago, has represented community groups in other proceedings involving DTE. He noted that the utility’s 2022 long-range plan ​“was critically important in establishing the schedule for closing significant coal-fired power generation.”

“This is equally important in terms of figuring out what the replacement is,” he said. ​“Locking in continued use of gas is better than coal, but that’s not saying much.”