How Will Xcel Achieve Carbon-Free Emissions By 2050?

ACROSS COLORADO – By Allen Best, Energy News Network. As Xcel Energy executives announced their vision of delivering zero-carbon electricity by 2050 in Denver on Tuesday, they may have also revived a long debate over the viability of technology to capture carbon emissions from power plants.

Xcel, which in 2004 fought a 10 percent renewable energy mandate in Colorado, says it now sees a pathway using existing technology to achieve 80 percent carbon-free energy by 2030 in Colorado and the seven other Midwestern states in which it operates.

Falling prices and improved technology have allowed the utility to incorporate vastly more renewable energy onto the grid than was once thought possible. Early last Saturday afternoon, Xcel set a new record of 72.2 percent of load being served to its Colorado customers by renewable generation. For the day, renewables were 65.3 percent.

And while renewables will continue to be a major part of the conversation, Ben Fowke, Xcel’s president and CEO, stressed that to fully decarbonize the grid, all tools need to remain available — including, possibly, carbon capture and sequestration (CCS).

“It could be carbon capture,” he said, noting several existing power plants in Colorado and Minnesota that he doesn’t want “retired prematurely.” But the technology, he said, “has a long ways to go.”

Carbon capture is essentially the process of removing carbon dioxide, the primary contributor to global warming, from power plant exhaust and sequestering it into underground formations. The federal government has spent more than $7 billion on research into the technology, and a handful of projects are operating in the U.S., mostly piping carbon dioxide to inject into oil fields to improve production.

READ MORE in The Colorado Independent

The Comanche 3 smokestack, far left, at the Comanche Generating Station near Pueblo (Photo by Allen Best)