American Electric Power Chairman, President and CEO Mike Morris said the surprisingly successful carbon capture and storage project at the Mountaineer plant had led him to estimate the company could use the technology at 75 percent of its current plants by 2025, the Wall Street Journal reported. The remaining quarter of AEP's coal-based plants would be shut down. Morris projected that carbon capture and storage costs could force rates for coal-based power to double to $0.08 per kWh, but he expected that rate to still beat the cost of new nuclear generation.
Morris said the Mountaineer project was successfully sequestering under 2 percent of CO2 from the 1,330-MW plant and using half the energy AEP had expected it to require. He added that his company will aggressively pursue further federal subsidies for carbon capture and storage. Morris declared: "This still is an extremely expensive undertaking, but the answer is near at hand."
