New analysis shows that adding carbon capture and storage technologies to a new coal-fired generator could increase the levelised cost of electricity by between $90 and $125 per MWh.
With new coal and gas already more expensive than new wind and solar projects, the cost of storing the emissions from the fossil fuel technologies would further raise the costs, to the extent that it would be cheaper to build wind, solar, and storage to achieve similar levels of dispatchability while producing zero-emissions electricity.
Our analysis suggests carbon capture and storage is likely to cost at least six times as much as wind generation plus storage, with comparable dispatchability,”
Bruce Mountain, Victorian Energy Policy Centre, Victoria University
Read the full story here in Renew Economy. The research was commissioned by the ACF.
Back in July the Institute for Energy Economics and Financial Analysis published a piece by Clark Butler in which he said there wasn’t one example of a CCS project anywhere in the world that offers a financial justification for investing in CCS.
He says the Federal Government’s pursuit of CCS – it gets 30 mentions in the September Technology Investment Roadmap – is all about reputation, not economics. Ironically the only way CCS could be financially viable is if there was a hefty price on carbon.
We say government investment of $50 million in the current budget for CCS is a reckless waste of public money.
Photo by Yaroslav Maltsev on Unsplash