A former Energy Department official is warning that the government may not be prepared to assess the effectiveness of new clean energy projects, pointing to what she called serious errors in a recent analysis of a major carbon capture and storage proposal in North Dakota.
The errors came in what’s called a life cycle assessment, or LCA, published by the department last month for a $1.4 billion effort that would remove and store millions of tons of carbon dioxide annually from the smokestacks of a coal plant.
The assessment is meant to help estimate and compare all the ways a project could increase or decrease pollution. In this case, however, it was riddled with mistakes, said Emily Grubert, an associate professor of sustainable energy policy at the University of Notre Dame and former deputy assistant secretary of carbon management at the Department of Energy, where she oversaw certain carbon capture programs until last year.
“The overall point that I came away with was that whoever did this LCA did not know what they were doing,” Grubert said.
The life cycle assessment, which was part of a larger draft environmental assessment, was performed not by department scientists but by a consultant hired by Minnkota Power Cooperative, the company that runs the coal plant, which is seeking funding for the carbon capture project. Grubert said it was equally concerning that the department did not catch the errors before publishing them last month for comment, a process that is meant to help the public understand potential impacts of development and weigh in on the proposal.
Grubert said she finds those deficiencies troubling because the federal government will have to rely increasingly on similar assessments as it prepares to help transform the nation’s energy system with a massive coming wave of subsidies. In the case of a new federal clean hydrogen tax credit, similar assessments could be used to determine how much money to provide to specific projects. Many environmental advocates have questioned the degree to which some of these clean hydrogen and carbon capture projects will actually help reduce emissions.
“Nobody caught these very, very basic problems,” Grubert said. “I have concerns for what that means when we get into the much more complex things that actually determine hundreds of billions to trillions of dollars of money being sent out.”
Some of the errors Grubert found were simple and obvious, like a calculation error which led to a determination that the power plant’s transmission systems release more climate-warming pollution than its smokestacks. Others were more systemic, she said, like improperly accounting for emissions from the carbon capture operations’ electricity consumption.
Surprisingly, Grubert said, the errors added up to make the carbon capture process’ climate footprint look far worse than it likely would be: It determined the operation would release more than three times more climate pollution than it would store underground, which is probably not true. Despite that finding, the environmental assessment recommended proceeding with an estimated $38.5 million in funding for the proposal, called Project Tundra.
“The analysis basically suggests this is not a good project for carbon management,” Grubert said, “and you are recommending to move ahead anyway.”
The draft assessment was completed as part of an Energy Department grant for Minnkota Power, which runs the Milton R. Young coal plant that would house the carbon capture operations. The company has also applied for a separate $350 million grant from the department to help fund Project Tundra.
An Energy Department spokesperson declined to comment on the details of the life cycle assessment, but noted in an emailed statement that the environmental assessment that it was part of was still in draft form and open for public comment through September 19. The statement added that the department “will continue to process comments, which includes analysis to determine the need, if any, for amendment to the final” environmental assessment. If any “material amendments” are made, the spokesperson said, the department would post a revised draft with an additional 30-day comment period.
Grubert submitted comments to the department last month outlining her concerns, concluding that the life cycle assessment “does not provide accurate and meaningful information to the public.”
Life cycle assessments are complex tools that aim to examine the full range of impacts from a given development. In the case of a carbon capture proposal, they could look at how a project might affect…
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