Game Changer: Announced Construction of Four New Zero-Emission Gas Plants
The success of its zero-emissions natural-gas power plant has opened the way for NET Power to plan the construction of four similar plants around the world, according to NET Power Chief Executive Officer Bill Brown.
The four new plants will be game changers in the carbon capture industry because of the company's innovative technology known as the Allam-Fetvedt Cycle (Allam Cycle), which converts natural and renewable gas into zero-emissions power.
"We have multiple vendors wanting to build all the equipment that we have," Brown told participants at the fifth annual Atlantic Council Global Energy Forum in January 2021. "So, we have multiple vendors and those plants will be announced in due course."
NET Power's pilot plant in the United States has successfully captured carbon dioxide that conventional power plants discharge, and used that CO2 under pressure – when the gas acquires some of the qualities of a liquid – to capture heat from the plant. The CO2 replaces water used in traditional plants.
"The process of carbon capture and utilisation and storage (CCUS) opens up mitigation opportunities while also advancing clean energy technologies such as those employed by NET Power," says Joseph McMonigle, Secretary General of the International Energy Forum (IEF). "The NET Power concept is an important development and already pointing the way toward the future of CCUS."
The IEF has advanced efforts to deploy CCUS to reduce emissions while creating value-added products to make building materials or enhance oil and gas extraction. More about the commercial-market opportunities stimulated by this innovation can be found in IEF Insight: The Circular Capture Economy.
Brown says that while the United States and other western countries have grown less enamored of coal, China and India remain committed to coal-fired plants. The NET Power process opens up opportunities in commercial-energy markets in general and in those two major countries in particular.
"We need to take people where they sit," said Brown at the conference. "We need to make the economics (of carbon capture) work. I truly believe we can make the economics work for China."
NET Power, LLC is a technology company that doesn't build plants but rather licenses its technologies. It is based in Durham, North Carolina and owned by Exelon Generation, McDermott International, 8 Rivers Capital, and, subject to regulatory approval, Oxy Low Carbon Ventures, LLC, a subsidiary of Occidental Petroleum Corporation.
During the Atlantic Council conference, NET Power was even called out by His Royal Highness Prince Charles of Wales for the transformational impact of the Allam Cycle on CCUS.
"I was most inspired to learn about NET Power's breakthrough technology, the Allam-Fetvedt Cycle, that converts natural and renewable gas into zero-emissions power using carbon dioxide, whilst at the same time lowering the price of energy," said Charles. "Such a remarkable and ingenious feat of engineering is exactly the news we need here at one of the most critical and difficult times in the world's history."
