This Power Plant Has Cracked Carbon Capture
NET Power figured out how to burn fossil fuels without releasing greenhouse gases, a critical step in the fight to slow climate change.
Carbon capture probably gets the least respect of any technology proposed to slow climate change. The basic idea—trapping emissions from fossil fuel-power plants before they’re released into the atmosphere—seems sound. But attempts to build carbon-capturing plants have all run into the same problem: the process makes the plant less efficient, and thus more expensive to operate.
A company called NET Power hopes to change that. At their 50-megawatt demonstration plant outside Houston, the company is testing a way of drawing power from natural gas that (they say) is at least as cheap as traditional methods—and captures 100 percent of the resulting carbon emissions. Instead of using steam to push a turbine, as in a traditional power plant, Net Power uses pressurized CO2, which increases efficiency while keeping the CO2 contained.