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Coal has become a dirty word in the clean tech industry, but a pair of local companies are hoping to change the dusty fuel’s public image.
Cambridge-based Great Point Energy Inc. and Marblehead-based Wormser Energy Solutions Inc. have drastically different approaches to making coal a cleaner, more efficient power source, but they agree that, with a reported 7,474 coal-fired power plants expected to be operating worldwide by 2012, coal, and the cleaning of coal-fired plants, present a substantial opportunity.
Wormser is the newer entrant to the effort. Founded in late 2007 by Alex Wormser, a former engineer at General Electric Co. and a career-long evangelist of new coal technologies, Wormser has developed a combination of existing technologies and processes for coal-fired plants that officials say can drastically improve the power output of plants while decreasing the output of CO2 and other noxious gases.
According to officials, the process, which is a “partial gasification” system, can yield 60 percent more power with the same amount of coal going in and the same amount of CO2 coming out by reducing the airflow and requiring significantly smaller equipment. And if the plant wants to — or is mandated to — reduce CO2 emissions, the process will still yield more power than just burning coal.
“It is a huge irony, but our theme has been ‘the solution to coal is coal,’” said Wormser. “Coal is the biggest source of CO2, but there is also a huge amount of (coal) capacity coming online, and if we don’t have a solution for coal now, we don’t have a solution for global warming.
Andrew Updegrove, a partner at Boston law firm Gesmer Updegrove LLP, has worked with Wormser for 20 years, including with Wormser’s previous consulting venture where he helped tackle the problem of sulfur production in coal-fired plants that contribute to acid rain. According to Updegrove, Wormser is a rare breed — a serial entrepreneur in the coal energy space, with an eye on stopping global warming.
Wormser Energy has won a positive response for its plans from governments and multi-national energy providers, according to CEO Wormser. In November, Wormser addressed the British Parliament on the virtues of clean coal, and the company has partnered with a “major player in the industry” to sponsor third-party testing on its system. It is also in the process of raising its first round of funding. So far, the firm has brought in $150,000 of an estimated $300,000 round from undisclosed individual and angel investors.
Great Point Energy, on the other hand, has been very active on the fundraising circuit, having brought in $140 million in funding since its inception in 2004.
Great Point Energy’s approach to coal is different. According to vice president of public affairs Sarah Webster, the company’s coal gasification process — which turns coal into methane — is “past” the clean coal debate.
“Clean coal is focused mostly on combustion technology, and we don’t ever burn coal, we use a catalytic process,” she said.
The two companies’ business approaches differ as well. Great Point Energy is focused on building plants to convert coal (or other carbon-based feedstocks) to methane gas. The company’s first plant, a $30 million pilot operation in Somerset called the Mayflower, is expected to be commissioned later this month, and go online in early 2009.
Wormser, on the other hand, is interested in selling his platform to existing coal plants, retrofitting them to operate cleaner and more efficiently.
Both, however, believe that coal needs to have a significant role in the clean energy movement.
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