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SW: →Mountaineer Plant CCS plan cancelled: edit to take CCS closure into language
* '''Electric Power Research Institute (2007):''' "[W]e believe that the greatest reductions in future U.S. electric sector CO2 emissions are likely to come from applying CCS technologies to nearly all new coal-based power plants coming on-line after 2020."<ref>[http://energy.senate.gov/public/_files/hannegantestimony32007FINALrev.pdf "Future of Coal,"] Testimony before the Committee on Energy and Natural Resources, United States Senate by Bryan Hannegan, Vice President, Environment, Electric Power Research Institute, March 22, 2007</ref>
===Mountaineer Plant CCS plan plant cancelled===The One of the nation's largest CCS projects was to have taken place as an add-on unit at the [[Mountaineer Plant]] near New Haven, West Virginia is , owned and operated by [[American Electric Power]] (AEP).<ref>[http://www.canada.com/vancouversun/news/story.html?id=7a85de6b-77c8-4d1f-bebd-2f5ebbebf78e "International Energy Agency issues warning on carbon capture,"] ''The Vancouver Sun'', October 24, 2008.</ref>{{#evp:youtube|mWA3dTTKntQ|Mountaineer Plant Deploys Carbon Capture and Sequestration.|right|200}}In August 2009, AEP announced its application for funding from the U.S. Department of Energy's Clean Coal Power Initiative. The company asked for a $334 million grant to cover about half of the estimated costs of installing carbon capture and storage system at Mountaineer. According to the grant application, the system would attempt to capture at least 90 percent of the carbon dioxide from 235 MW of the plant's 1,300 MW total capacity. The captured carbon dioxide, which is expected to be about 1.5 million metric tons per year, will be injected into geologic formations about 1.5 miles under ground. The company says it will have the system operational in 2015.<ref>[http://www.energycurrent.com/index.php?id=3&storyid=20123 "AEP seeks government money for cleaner coal project,"] Energy Current, August 20, 2009.</ref>
In August 2009, AEP applied for funding from the U.S. Department of Energy's Clean Coal Power Initiative. The company asked for a $334 million grant to cover about half of the estimated costs of installing carbon capture and storage system. According to the grant application, the system would attempt to capture at least 90 percent of the carbon dioxide from 235 MW of the plant's 1,300 MW total capacity. The captured carbon dioxide, which was expected to be about 1.5 million metric tons per year, would have been injected into geologic formations about 1.5 miles under ground. The company could have had the system operational in 2015.<ref>[http://www.energycurrent.com/index.php?id=3&storyid=20123 "AEP seeks government money for cleaner coal project,"] Energy Current, August 20, 2009.</ref> In December 2009, AEP was awarded a the $334 million grant from the Department of Energy for a commercial scale the CCS project that will capture carbon from at its Mountaineer plant.<ref>[http://finance.yahoo.com/news/American-Electric-Gets-Fed-zacks-2387038129.html?x=0&.v=1 "American Electric Gets Fed Funds,"] Zacks Equity Research, December 7, 2009.</ref> The company notes noted that the "Mountaineer Plant CCS projects employ Alstom’s patented chilled ammonia process for post-combustion CO2 capture. The process uses ammonium carbonate to absorb CO2. The resulting ammonium bicarbonate is converted back to ammonium carbonate in a regenerator and is reused to repeat the process. The flue gas, cleaned of CO2, flows back to the stack and the captured CO2 is sent for storage."<ref>[http://www.aep.com/environmental/climatechange/carboncapture/ "Carbon Capture, Sequestration"] American Electric Power website, accessed May 4, 2011.</ref>
On July 14, 2011, [[American Electric Power]] said it had decided to table plans to build the full-scale carbon-capture plant at Mountaineer, saying they did not believe state regulators would let the company recover its costs by charging customers, thus leaving it no "compelling regulatory or business reason to continue the program." The federal Department of Energy had pledged to cover half the cost, but AEP said it was unwilling to spend the remainder in a political climate that had changed strikingly since it began the project. A senior Obama administration official said that the A.E.P. decision was a result of the political stalemate on climate change legislation, which failed to pass the Senate. Public service commissions of both West Virginia and Virginia turned down the company’s request for full reimbursement for the pilot plant, operating since 2009. West Virginia said earlier in 2011 that the cost should have been shared among all the states where AEP does business; Virginia hinted in July 2010 that it should have been paid for by all utilities around the United States, since a successful project would benefit all of them.<ref>Matthew Wald and John Broder, [http://www.nytimes.com/2011/07/14/business/energy-environment/utility-shelves-plan-to-capture-carbon-dioxide.html?_r=2&ref=energy-environment "Utility Shelves Ambitious Plan to Limit Carbon"] NY Times, July 13, 2011.</ref><ref>Scott DiSavino and Timothy Gardner [http://www.reuters.com/article/2011/07/14/us-utilities-aep-carbon-idUSTRE76D34C20110714 "AEP halts carbon capture plan due climate inaction"] Reuters, July 14, 2011.</ref>