With the EIA projecting a 50-percent increase in world energy usage by 2050, it's foolhardy to expect the energy grid to cease the use of fossil fuels and still meet projected consumer and business demands.
For the U.S. to cease all fossil fuel usage guarantees, the country will lose its energy independence, and it will compromise the society we've been building since the Industrial Revolution. The International Brotherhood of Boilermakers is only one union among many in the skilled trades advocating for a solution to climate change that maintains and improves North American lifestyles and jobs while also cleaning up the environment - something Boilermakers have been doing for decades.
In 1970, with air pollution increasing, Congress passed the Clean Air Act, which set into motion efforts to improve U.S. air quality. With environmentalists, scientists and unions working together, air quality improved, and it can further improve while maintaining the jobs so many workers in our industry rely on - but only when politicians drop the rhetoric and get down to the business of solving the problem.
Boilermakers can build, fabricate, install and retrofit anything science can imagine.
Fortunately, there is a solution that's gaining traction across the globe: carbon capture, use and storage (CCUS).
According to the IEA Greenhouse Gas R&D Programme, the basics of CCUS, capturing CO2 and preventing it from being released into the atmosphere, was first suggested in 1977, but carbon capture has been around for about 100 years. It's been used since the 1920s for separating the CO2 sometimes found in natural gas reservoirs from the saleable methane gas. CCUS technology can now be applied to existing fossil fuel power plants, petrochemicals, biomass and refineries.
The Carbon Sequestration Leadership Forum (CSLF), an international climate change initiative focused on the development of cost-effective technologies for carbon capture and storage, released its 2021 Carbon Sequestration Roadmap. The report found, "A great majority of climate scenarios show that CCUS will play a crucial role in reducing direct emissions from industrial processes and the use of fossil fuels in power generation, industry and fuel transformation. CCUS is particularly important for hard-to-abate industries."
The report also finds that baseline costs for carbon capture have decreased 15 percent to 20 percent due to research, development and demonstration, making an even stronger case for time-tested CCUS technology. In addition, CSLF found that hydrogen production from natural gas with CCUS has emerged as a method that can contribute to a rapid transition to a hydrogen-based society "with cost and carbon footprint competitive with hydrogen from electrolysis in the short to medium timeframe."
When it comes to implementation, Boilermakers are the workforce with decades of experience in taking existing units and making them cleaner through retrofits and by building new, cleaner energy units.
The Boundary Dam Power Station in Saskatchewan, Canada, is a good example of the Boilermakers' skill and work ethic. The $1.35 billion project represented the world's first use of utility-scale, post-combustion carbon capture and storage, and Boilermakers were the workforce to bring it to life. Boundary Dam's approach to capturing CO2 channels flue gas through a twostage process. In the first stage, Sulphur dioxide (SO2) is absorbed into an amine solution and sent to a stripper, which pulls out the SO2 for additional processing. With the SO2 removed, the flue gas then enters a second absorber, where another amine solution binds with the CO2. A second, larger stripper separates the CO2 into a pure stream for delivery to a compressor room, where the CO2 is converted to a liquid and piped off-site. The process captures an estimated 1 million tons of CO2 annually. Much of it is shipped 41 miles by pipeline to oilfields for enhanced oil recovery. Surplus CO2 is injected two miles deep into a brine and sandstone water formation for geologic storage.
For an older CCUS project, look at American Electric Power's Mountaineer power plant in New Haven, West Virginia, which began capturing CO2 from a slipstream of exhaust flue gas and pumping it deep underground, below the plant for permanent storage in a saline formation. The project required retrofitting an advanced chilled-ammonia system to the existing coal-fired plant, work performed by Boilermakers and other building trades. The chilled-ammonia process absorbs CO2 using ammonium carbonate. The resulting ammonium bicarbonate slurry 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.
CCUS is the broad solution that works across many industries. Carbon capture can mitigate the effect of CO2 on the climate while preserving lifestyles and jobs. CCUS won't reduce noxious emissions alone. The solution needs balance, and an "all of the above" plan utilizing fossil fuels, wind, solar and hydro can accomplish together what they can't standing alone. We support movement to "greener" technologies, but we know those alone won't provide the energy we need.
In addition to fossil fuel retrofits and new builds, Boilermakers have experience in constructing greener energy sources, such as the retrofit of an idle coal-fired power plant that once supported a sugar mill into one that burns eucalyptus trees to generate electricity for Hawaiian residents.
Boilermakers were also part of an innovative first: the Ivanpah Solar Electric Generating System in the Mojave Desert, about 40 miles from Los Angeles. Described as an "inside out" or reverse boiler system, concentric circles of mirrors called "heliostats" reflect sunlight onto boiler tube walls, heating them to about 1,000 degrees Fahrenheit to create superheated steam. During construction, Boilermakers performed boiler work as well as erecting water storage tanks and the air-cooled condenser units that recover water from spent steam.
The International Brotherhood of Boilermakers is a workforce adept at adapting to change, new science and new methods that seek to reduce harmful emissions. Boilermakers understand they have a job to do, and a unique one at that. Only time will reveal what new technologies will be available in the future to clean the environment, but past projects have already proven that Boilermakers can build, fabricate, install and retrofit anything science can imagine. We're ready to meet the challenge.
For more information, visit their website or call (913) 371-2640.