The demonstration unit will capture CO₂ emissions from the Barry Electric Generating Plant, or Plant Barry, and will be the largest such demonstration facility connected to a pulverized coal-fired energy generating plant in the world once completed, said a release by the companies.

“We applaud the decision by Southern Company and its partners to build a CCS demo in Alabama,” said Bellona USA Director Jonathan Temple. “This will build momentuum for further CCS deployment in the USA.

In another development in the opposite direction, the World Bank voted to loan $3.75 billion to South Africa’a Eskom for the contruction of a coal-fired power plant in the city of Medupi, which will become the world’s largest CO₂ emitting plant. The loan represents the largest ever given to a coal plant by the World Bank.

The loan decision is among the most controversial in recent history, and environmental activists have leaned hard on the Obama administration to oppose it. At issue is the 25 million tons of CO₂ that the 4,800-megawatt Medupi plant will emit.

Environmentalists have pressured the Obama Administration over the vote, saying the United States must stand behind a recent guideline discouraging U.S. board members of multilateral banks from approving coal plant loans because of the impacts of climate change.

The US will therefore abstained from the vote, as did Britain, the Netherlands, Italy and Norway.

In a statement, the US treasury department said the loan was incompatible with the World Bank’s stated commitment to promoting low carbon economic development.

“We expect that the World Bank will not bring forward similar coal projects from middle-income countries in the future without a plan to ensure there is no net increase in carbon emissions,” the statement said. 

Bellona: Abstention not good enough

But even abstention was not good enough for Bellona President Frederic Hauge.

“I am glad that Norway is not taking part in it, but I am dismayed that it does not have the balls to vote ‘no,’” he said Tuesday.

Indeed, all abstention allows is putting the Norwegian and US Administrations’ objectons to the project on record while still allowing it to move forward. The abstentions also sidestep diplomatic tensions had Norway, the United States or others moved to outright block the loan.

Solheim in the frying pan

Erik Solheim, Norway’s minister of environment and development explained his contries neutral path by saying Norway – paradoxically an enormous supporter of green energy – has to negotiate two competing interests: providing modern electricity to South Africa at the expense of raising CO₂ emissions.

“How much renewable energy could be arranged through alternative uses of this loan?” said Bellona’s Soeyland.  “Secondly, is this not in effect a fossil fuel subsidy which the G20 group of countries have stated they want to rule out?”

Calls to the environment and development ministry yielded no further explanation of Solheim’s decision as responsible parties were unavailable for comment.

Will Plant Barry offset World Bank damage?

Environmentalists are hoping the damaging ballot by the World Bank’s Board to fund Medupi’s CO₂ polluting plant will be at least slightly offset by Alabama’s Plant Barry CCS demonstration project.

Earlier this year, the administration of US President Barack Obama had pledged to fund five to 10 CCS demonstration plants online by 2016.

The Plant Barry project had been green-lighted to the tune of $295 million in federal stimulus in December last year to retrofit a carbon capture facility. At the beginning of March, however, the high price tag of the project – some $700 million – caused Southern Company, the Plant Barry’s owner, cool its feet on the demonstration project.

But according to Southern Company spokesmen, the project is now back on, with a new allocation of $65 million from the company itself, something Bellona applauds.

The CCS retrofit at Plant Barry is expected to 1 million metric tons of CO₂ annually from a 160-megawatt flue gas stream and then store the CO₂ in underground rock formations.

Bellona pleased by US progress…

“It is encouraging that Southern Company – one of the laggards when it comes to CCS and climate constraints – after some bickering will break the ground for building a capture unit on an existing traditional coal plant. One million tons of CO₂ captured annually equals the Sleipner project.” said Svend Soeyland, Bellona’s international director, referring to Norway’s offshore Sleipner gas field, in the middle of the North Sea, which has been injecting 1 million tons of CO₂ per year since 1996 without leakage into the Utsira Formation.

“We need rapid deployment and scaling up of CCS to get realistic prices on the technology and increased pressure on point source emitters,” said Soeyland, adding, “The finance sector in US has already sent a clear signal that they are reluctant to invest in unabated coal. The Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC)
in New York has requested companies to disclose their future carbon footprint.”

…But withering criticism rains on World Bank

CCS has been a signature project of Bellona for years, and now that the United States will be on board has caused the organisation and many other environmental groups to rejoice.

But the mood has definitely been dampened by the announcement of the World Bank loan to South Africa for its new unabated coal-fired power plant.

“The people behind the World Bank vote are climate criminals,” said Bellona’s Hauge. “This completely damages the reputation of the World bank and its leadership needs to be replaced.”

“This is one of the biggest climate scandals of our time,” said Hauge.

South Africa has been pushing the Obama Administration and Congress, arguing the loan to the country’s state-owned utility Eskom is critical to the national economy. The power plant is South Africa’s first in more than 15 years. The World Bank’s vice president for Africa, Obiageli Ezekwesili, told the Guardian newspaper that: “Without an increased energy supply, South Africans will face hardship for the poor and limited economic growth.”

US Democratic Senator John Kerry of Massachusetts, and co-author of the US climate and energy bill now in the US Senate, also expressed dismay at the World Bank loan to Eskom.

“The Eskom project and America’s decision to abstain must mark the end of the era of abundant international subsidies for dirty coal-fired power plants,” said Kerry in a statement on his Senate website.

“There are better ways to promote urgent energy access in the developing world without exacerbating the looming threat of catastrophic climate change which will ultimately hit Africa and the developing world the hardest,” he said, adding, “Moving forward, the World Bank should be leading the way by leveraging its funding and broad expertise to promote new, low carbon footprint energy sources that mitigate climate change.”

Kerry, however, attempted to put a diplomatic spin on the World Bank decision by saying that it had at least spurred constructive debate.

“The good news is that this project triggered a debate that already resulted in improvements since South Africa’s submission,” said Kerry. “South Africa, working with the World Bank and (US) Treasury, has included additional renewable and energy efficiency components. Perhaps most importantly, South Africa has now publicly declared its intent to devote $1.25 billion of the remaining funding opportunity to emission reduction efforts.”

Jake Schmidt, international climate policy director at Natural Resources Defense Council wrote in his blog that, “This was a challenging and complicated project and was less about South Africa than about the World Bank’s role in helping (or hindering) the world’s efforts to address global warming.

“We support the efforts of developing countries to alleviate their energy poverty, but dirty coal power is not the pathway to a sustainable economy, “ Schmidt wrote.

“The World Bank must do much more to help countries meet their energy needs in a manner that protects them from disastrous climate change. Today’s decision is a failure by the World Bank to meet those needs. They must do better!”