Europeans Targeting Commercial, Clean, Efficient Power Production Technologies

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Researched by Industrial Info Resources (Sugar Land, Texas)--Electrabel (Brussels, Belgium) has announced that it is looking at an 800-megawatt (MW) gas-fed power plant project in Germany with a thermal efficiency rating of more than 57%. It is worth noting that efficiencies of this level can now be specified, as it was not long ago that projects rated in the high 40%s were considered to be on the leading edge of power technology. This incremental advance in basic power production specifications and the concentrated efforts of major power companies in the areas of CO2 sequestration and emissions cleansing add up to significant advances in the quest for cleaner energy.

Electrabel is looking at one site in Bavaria and two in Saxony-Anhalt for the construction of a $735 million plant in one or all of the sites depending on the results of site feasibility studies. The company will employ state-of-the-art technology in the project(s), which will consist of two 400-MW units. In addition to the CCGT project the company is also planning two coal fired plants in northern Germany and is considering investments in renewable energies.

Siemens (NYSE:SI) (Munich, Germany) and E.ON Energie (Munich, Germany) have agreed to jointly develop climate-friendly power plant technology using a solvent with special characteristics to provide the basis for a new process to capture CO2 from the flue gases of power plants. A pilot installation at an E.ON site in Germany will be operational by 2010, and development will continue through 2014. The midterm target is to develop the new CO2 capture process ready for large scale commercial application by 2020. E.ON will contribute experience as a leading energy supplier and as an operator of fossil-fueled plants and sites to the venture, and Siemens will provide extensive engineering and power plant execution plus chemical process development from Hoechst.

The project is being funded by Germany's Federal Ministry of Economics and Technology. The new process will be available for retrofitting existing plants in addition to installation in new projects which would give it global potential.

Norway's Aker (Oslo, Norway) will invest $160 million in a CO2 emissions-capture project, which the company claims will be the first and biggest of its type. The primary purpose of the project at Kaarstoe in western Norway is the development of construction methods and effective execution models to make carbon sequestration so inexpensive that it becomes cheaper to clean emissions than to pollute. This follows the company's intensive work on the technology of CO2 capture. The new plant is designed to capture 100,000 tons of CO2 from the gas-fed generation plant and the gas processing plant. Aker sees the new plants as its future market as the building of carbon capture facilities becomes an industry similar to oil platform construction today.

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