August 28, 2015
BY Anna Simet
This week, I learned of an operating project by Hoosier Energy that converts coalbed methane into electricity. The company has it listed in its renewable energy project portfolio and titles it thusly—the Osprey Point Renewable Energy Station. It’s an interesting concept that I don’t know a lot about, but my initial reaction was to question whether or not it is generally considered a renewable energy resource, leaning toward no.
And overall, the consensus seems to be…sort of.
As we all know, to be considered biogenic, something must be produced or brought about by living organisms. That’s a cornerstone of our industry—its biogenic nature.
From what I have read, some kinds of coal seam gas (CGS) are also biogenic. Instead of me trying to explain this, I’ll refer you to this simple explanation:
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CSG forms by either biological or thermal processes. During the earliest stage of coalification (the process that turns plants into coal) biogenic methane is generated as a byproduct of microbial action (similar to the mechanism which generates methane in council landfills). Biogenic methane is generally found in near-surface low rank coals such as lignite. Thermogenic methane is generally found in deeper higher-rank coals….
So looking in Indiana specifically, in 2011, it passed a bill that added coal bed methane to its list of eligible technologies under its voluntary renewable energy standard, so that explains the project I mentioned above. And several other states have added CGS. coal bed, or coal mine methane as qualifying technologies under their renewable or alternative portfolio standards—Colorado, Pennsylvania, West Virginia, Ohio and Utah.
Further arguing that case, was a study done quite a while ago by the Alberta Research Council and Alberta Geological Survey, which suggested coalbed methane is a renewable resource because the bacterial action that formed the methane is ongoing. I couldn’t find any recent studies.
It seems the debate lies in the fact that the rate of which methane is produced can be altered or destroyed altogether, and this has been a highly argued issue in Alberta, where nonrenewable resources are owned by the province, which collects royalties from them (landowners have pointed to the above findings).
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Is it clean, alternative energy source? It is. Is it really renewable? Add that to the list of stories we’ll be looking into soon. At the very least, a comparison of the nature and use of methane from landfills vs. coal mine methane would be interesting.