Pilot Carbon Capture Facility at Coal Plant Opens

French firm Alstom says a pilot carbon capture facility – the world’s largest – is operating at an American Electric Power coal plant.  

The carbon capture facility is at West Virginia’s Mountaineer coal plant – it captures and stores 20 MW of carbon dioxide from coal production, a small fraction of the plant’s 1300 MW capacity.

The carbon capture facility captures the carbon and buries it 7200 feet underground. 

Alstom says the technology can be scaled for any size coal plant. The company plans to have a full-scale commercial carbon capture and storage (CCS) facility operational by 2015.

"Mountaineer is the first example of carbon capture that you can feel and touch. It works," says the head of Alstom’s power division, Philippe Joubert.