Print this pageA New 
Energy
System for the Intermountain West – Built on
Domestic Primary Resources and Negative Carbon Emissions
Dag Nummedal, Colorado Energy Research Institute, Colorado
School of Mines,
Global energy security, anthropogenic climate change, and
high energy prices combine to harness market forces and ingenuity like never
before to design a fundamentally different energy supply and distribution
system in our nation. The Intermountain West and adjacent
Such a new system could be built around coal gasification combined cycle power plants (CGCC plants), combined with gasification of biomass such as the high-yield prairie switchgrass. This system would produce methane for conventional power generation, as in today's pulverized coal plants and at a lower cost than current use of natural gas, and allow co-generation of hydrogen, biofuels, dimethyl ethylene or any other ‘designer fuel' (polygeneration), plus CO2. Separation of the CO2 from other gases would occur at the pre-combustion stage, making the task more efficient and much cheaper than current attempts at post-combustion separation of CO2 from power plant flue gas.
The associated production of moderately priced CO2 would act as a stimulus
for expansion of CO2 enhanced oil recovery (and gas recovery?); an industry
that currently is supply-limited in the energy sources for such a system would be domestic, a
blend of fossil and renewable
, and in enormous supply throughout the region.