Pilot project captures 90% of CO2

PLEASANT PRAIRIE, Wis.- (Oct. 8, 2009)
We Energies, Alstom and The Electric Power Research Institute
(EPRI) announced today that a pilot project testing an advanced
chilled ammonia process has demonstrated more than 90 percent
capture of carbon dioxide (CO2) from the flue stream of at a
coal-fired power plant in Wisconsin.

At a press conference at We Energies
Pleasant Prairie Power Plant, which hosted the project, We
Energies Chairman, President and CEO Gale Klappa, Alstom U.S.
President Pierre Gauthier, and EPRI Senior Vice President Hank
Courtright discussed the demonstration of Alstoms patented
chilled ammonia process for carbon capture. Testing at the pilot
facility, using a 1.7-megawatt (electric) slipstream from the
plant, began in early 2008 and will conclude later this year.

The project confirmed the predicted
performance of the chilled ammonia carbon capture system at an
operating power plant. It achieved key research metrics around
hours of operation, ammonia slip, CO2 removal levels, and CO2
purity. In doing so, the project demonstrated the fundamental
viability of the carbon capture technology in real-world
conditions like hot and cold weather, the inevitable starts and
stops of a large power plant, and the environmental challenges
that go along with using any chemical process.

"One of the biggest challenges facing our
industry is the development of cost effective technology that
will allow us to capture carbon from the operation of power
plants around the world," said Klappa. "Today, with the success
we're reporting from the research here at Pleasant Prairie, the
solution is one step closer to reality."

Lessons learned at Pleasant Prairie already
have provided critical information for efforts to scale up
effective carbon capture and storage technologies for new power
plants and for retrofit to existing plants. A scaled-up
20-megawatt (electric) capture system has been installed at
AEPs 1,300-megawatt Mountaineer Plant, where it will
remove an estimated 90% of carbon dioxide emissions from the flue
gas stream it processes, capturing up to 100,000 metric tons of
CO2 per year.

The captured CO2 will be compressed,
pipelined, and injected into two different saline reservoirs
located approximately 8,000 feet beneath the plant site. Battelle
Memorial Institute will serve as the consultant for AEP on
geological storage as an extensive monitoring system will be used
to track the extent of the sequestered CO2 over time.

This project has been a success. It
proved what we needed to know to stay on schedule to
commercialize carbon capture technology for new and existing
power plants by 2015, a necessary step to meet ambitious climate
change targets being proposed by policy makers in the U.S. and
around the world, Gauthier said. Alstom believes
carbon capture, along with energy efficiency and a full portfolio
of low carbon technologies including renewable power, will all be
needed to achieve urgent CO2 reduction goals in a timely
manner.

Alstom, a leader in carbon capture technology,
is pursuing 10 demonstration projects in six different countries,
including the We Energies project and partnership at Mountaineer
with American Electric Power. The Mountaineer project is one of
two current or planned post-combustion carbon capture and storage
(CCS) demonstrations for which EPRI has formed an industry
collaborative to support management of testing and
evaluations.

The EPRI collaborative will support the
integration process/design of CO2 capture technologies and the
monitoring and verification of CO2 storage, and it will assess
the large-scale impacts of CO2 controls and storage on
post-combustion coal-fueled generation. The data collected and
analyzed by the collaborative will support efforts to advance CCS
technologies to commercial scale and provide information to the
public and industry on future electricity generation options.

EPRI is leading or supporting seven Industry
Technology Demonstrations as part of its efforts to help develop
a full portfolio of innovative technology
approaches needed to make substantial CO2 emissions reductions
while minimizing economic impacts. EPRIs Prism and MERGE
analyses (available at www.epri.com) found that deployment of a
full portfolio of advanced technologies, including CCS, could
reduce U.S. electric sector CO2 emissions by 2030 to a level
below 1990 emissions. EPRI currently is working on a global
analysis that is expected to show similar energy mix changes and
significant economic impacts.

We Energies, Alstom, EPRI and 37 other
companies worked together to successfully advance carbon capture
technology to the next step in its development, said EPRI
Senior Vice President Hank Courtright. EPRIs
analyses show carbon capture and storage will be essential to
achieve meaningful CO2 emissions reductions, and do it in a
cost-effective way while meeting demand growth. Projects like
this one, where a company steps up to lead a project and several
more form a collaborative support it, are critical to advancing
the technologies that we need to reduce the industrys
carbon footprint.

• Learn more about the Pleasant Prairie carbon capture project