WATERLOO -- LS Power recently announced it is involved in a long-term research project aimed at reducing greenhouse gas emissions at coal-fired power plants, such as the one it is proposing for Waterloo.

LS Power, based in New Jersey with offices in St. Louis, along with several other power companies, is providing funding and LS Power has become a "strategic partner" in pilot plant initiative with the University of Texas at Austin.

The project involves "carbon capture" technology -- extracting carbon dioxide emissions from coal flue gas -- in a way "so it can be demonstrated on a commercial scale at coal-fired power plants," LS Power said in a release.

Carbon dioxide emissions resulting from petroleum and natural gas, represent 82 percent of total U.S. human-made greenhouse gas emissions, according to the National Energy Information Center. Greenhouse gases are believed by many to contribute to climate change and global warming, according to the National Climatic Data Center.

It is a long-term project, longer than the anticipated time frame for LS Power's proposed Waterloo plant to come on line, Waterloo power plant project manager Mark Milburn said.

But he said the project is aimed at demonstrating a way to make the technology "commercially viable, so it could be retrofitted to existing plants.

"Not just the new plants being proposed, but all the existing plants that have the largest portion of greenhouse gases," Milburn said, indicating those emissions would be lower at the Waterloo plant because it would be more modern and burn more efficiently.

"What we don't know is how long it is going to take," Milburn said. "We don't know what the economics look like. In the meantime, our customers want baseload power. We can't sit and wait on the research, but we can pursue both at the same time.

"The reason why we selected (to participate) is because it's a promising technology," Milburn said. "We have a real interest in finding solutions to this."

He said LS Power and other companies are putting up a total of about $1 million a year toward the project.

An opponent to the LS Power plant questioned the project's practicality and suggested it is a ruse.

"According to the leading experts on carbon capture and sequestration there is no reason to expect that plants built without CCS will be economically capable of retrofitting to use that technology -- which doesn't yet exist," said Mark Kresowik Iowa organizer of the Sierra Club's national coal campaign.

"The estimated costs are simply exorbitant," Kresowik said. "Energy efficiency and renewable energy are more than capable of reliably meeting projected demand at a lower cost than building a new coal plant, and they are far less expensive than any 'pie-in-the-sky' approach to 'someday' capture carbon dioxide."

Milburn said the first part the project would explore the most efficient way to extract the carbon dioxide from flue gas emissions; the next step would be how to dispense with it. He said the LS Power-funded research at Texas would complement other research initiatives to determine the most efficient way to do that. Company officials also have said they are researching wind and solar power and other renewable technologies.

LS Power's Waterloo proposal still requires state regulatory approvals.

Contact Pat Kinney at (319) 291-1484 or Pat.Kinney@wcfcourier.com .