Sargas still hoping to promote carbon-capture in Malta using gas

Malta will be able to use gas and capture 85% of its carbon emissions with Sargas's carbon-capture technology, a representative of the Norwegian firm has told MaltaToday.

On the eve of Labour's unveiling of its plan to reduce utility rates - now believed to include the participation of the private sector in electricity generation - Sargas's business development manager Martin Rödén told MaltaToday that Sargas and General Electric had teamed up to deliver clean gas-fired power plants with carbon capture-storage (CCS) technology in the USA.

"This concept has now been launched in North America, and this means that Malta would be able to use gas as fuel and capture 85% of the carbon dioxide, leading to a commercially viable, extremely clean baseload power, with an efficiency of 48% under ISO conditions," Rödén said.

The jury is still out whether Labour wants the novel science of carbon-capture storage in its plan to reduce energy bills, apart from using gas instead of heavy fuel oil to produce energy.

Sargas's plan is to export the carbon that is emitted from a coal-fired steam plant, to be stored into depleted oil wells outside Malta. If a new Labour government does go ahead with the diversification of energy generation through the involvement of the private sector, Sargas may well be interested in advancing its technology in Malta.

"The power market worldwide is a tremendous growth opportunity, as all nations including Malta struggle to reduce their CO2 footprint and emissions while keeping the cost of power production down. The commercial use of CO2 is contributing to cover the cost of clean power, in a yet unseen manner. It is foreseen that Malta may get the benefits of such CO2 use as well," Rödén says,

"Sargas technology is now available with large technology partners such as General Electric for nations that wish to use gas fuel to significantly reduce emissions and generate low cost electricity efficiently."

Roden says Sargas's primary target is the USA, which he has says has "very tough emission limits" for new plants and a demand for carbon dioxide that can be used for 'enhanced oil recovery' - the practice of burying the greenhouse gas underground, usually in exhausted oil and gas reservoirs. This is where - theoretically - Malta would be selling its carbon emissions, and getting money back on its energy production.

But in the rest of Europe, CCS projects have not yet been embraced. In December, the first round of a European Commission contest to fund such projects failed to find a winner because of funding gaps. But one report concluded that CCS can cut the annual cost of meeting the UK's carbon target by €50 billion per year.

"Sargas technology is built around the fact that CO2 capture is much more efficient under pressure, which enables production of power at a low cost, where carbon is capture instead of being released into the atmosphere," Rödén says

The Sargas plant would be composed of a gas turbine and pressurised heat-recovery steam generator, with carbon capture. "The General Electric turbine is the most efficient, simple-cycle gas turbine available in the market, with over 130,000 hours of commercial operation since 2006."

The plant will be dry-docked in concrete, outside the Delimara power plant, equipped to capture carbon emissions and fly-ash which is then carried out by tankers to be stored in depleted oil wells outside Malta.

The ministry for finance's pre-feasibility study by KPMG claims it cannot verify Sargas's claims that it can sell the by-product ash to concrete producers at €40-€60 per tonne.