I was talking to a friend the other day. He was reflecting on his long career spent trying to give birth to the kind of technology that could still make clean coal a prevalent reality. He was clearly frustrated. Even suggested it might be time to give it up and get a real job. Neither of us spoke. I watched him silently consider the uncomfortable thought of throwing in the towel.  Wondering if this “thing” that he’d poured his life into might still be sitting on the launch pad as he faded into his sunset years.

Left unasked was the question of why. Why, after untold $100’s of millions spent in development, decades of recurring DOE grants, numerous subsidized demonstration plants, endless conferences attended by the 1000’s, acquisition and development of core technologies by the likes of GE, Siemens, and Shell, plus the voluminous rhetoric from all corners extolling the virtues of superior clean coal technology (including even the grudging support from the environmental community), is this stuff still sitting on the launch pad waiting for ignition?

The “stuff” I’m talking about is IGCC – Integrated Gasification Combined Cycle. A hopelessly awful name for an ostensibly sensible technology caught in an endless cycle of ready, set, ….  but never go. To be fair, a few plants have been built worldwide including 2 in the US. But we’re talking about a real launch here. One that can achieve self-sustaining orbit, not just test flights.

Conceptually simple enough, IGCC is the marriage of a gasifier with a gas turbine to make electricity. Instead of running the gas turbines on conventional natural gas, in IGCC they’re run on a hydrogen rich synthetic gas produced by gasifying (rather than burning/oxidizing) carbonaceous fuels like coal or refinery wastes (petroleum coke and  heavy residual oils).  For obvious reasons, it’s easier to market “clean coal” rather than the alphabet techno-soup of IGCC so the power industry co-opted “clean coal” around the same time the coal industry started getting antsy at the  prospects of a carbon constrained future.

Thus, for all practical purposes,  IGCC is synonymous with clean coal today.

The promise of IGCC is the trifecta of low emissions (almost on par with natural gas fired turbines – considered the cleanest fossil fuel technology), low cost solid fuel flexibility (compared to conventional coal power plants), and the ability to capture a significant percentage of carbon economically (as pre-combusted CO2) for subsequent geologic sequestration. IGCC today is viewed by environmental authorities and activists alike as being superior to even the most advanced pulverized coal plant. And unlike an advanced conventional coal plant, you stand a very good chance of successfully permitting an IGCC project today. Maybe even skip the obligatory lawsuits by the Sierra Club et. al.  But at a price.

Before climate change and the prospects of a carbon tax (or cap and trade) entered the picture, IGCC was an also ran for two basic reasons: it cost too much and was too damn complicated (or if you like – too risky). But with carbon constraints on the horizon, IGCC moved to the head of the line because it could be configured to capture carbon far more economically than conventional coal plants. You could almost feel the pulse quicken in those who’d labored so long to bring IGCC to the forefront of power generation technology.  At last, IGCC would lift off and have its day in the sun.

Not so fast. Turns out the price tag for getting IGCC through the permitting process is a steep one.  And that price is committing to costly carbon capture and permanently sequestering the captive CO2 deep underground – forever! Notwithstanding that IGCC can pull this off more economically than with conventional coal technology, the bottom line is it can easily add 50% to the final cost of electricity produced. To get more specific, an IGCC project with carbon capture and sequestration will require a wholesale power price in the range of 10-15 cents/kwh; way above current market.  And I wouldn’t bet on the lower end of that range. Few utilities, and even fewer utility commissions, are going to do the heavy lifting needed to get that beast off the ground.

I could elaborate on complexity and risk which are usually obligatory topics when discussing IGCC but why bother? If the numbers don’t work, IGCC isn’t going anywhere outside of one or two subsidized demonstration project (see recent post regarding NeverGen).  The numbers haven’t worked before. They don’t work now.

And now comes the bad news for my friend….and for IGCC generally. The safe bet is the numbers on IGCC will never work. Blame it on natural gas. Or more specifically, unconventional natural gas. Turns out we have more natural gas than previously thought. A lot more. And while it may cost more to extract than conventional gas, the current view is this cost won’t rise to the level needed to put IGCC into the black. And when solar reaches true grid parity sometime in the next few years, it’ll be renewables backed by natural gas long into the future. Less complex. Less costly. Less coal. And meanwhile, IGCC will continue to sit on the launch pad waiting for liftoff. It may be a long wait.