tagged w/ Carbon Sequestration
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And yet, this administration pushes for the oxymoron 'clean coal' which is a non existant technology that will not be anywhere near functionally effective for the next twenty years, if it is even possible. This is just another scam coal companies can use to continue spewing the same amounts of CO2 while getting free credits under cap and trade for doing virtually nothing to effectively decrease carbon emissions as they must be decreased by 2020 to avoid a tipping point. And who will ultimately foot the bill? It won't be them. What a racket.
Excerpt:
Harvard University researchers have issued a new report that confirms what many experts already feared: Stopping greenhouse gas emissions from coal-fired power plants is going to cost a lot of money.
Electricity costs could double at a first-generation plant that captures and stores carbon dioxide emissions, according to the report from energy researchers at the Harvard Kennedy School's Belfer Center.
Costs would drop as the technology matures, but could still amount to an increase of 22 to 55 percent, according to the report, "Realistic Costs of Carbon Capture," issued this week.
These projections "are higher than many published estimates," but reflect capital project inflation and "greater knowledge of project costs," wrote researchers Mohammed Al-Juaied and Adam Whitmore.
Coal is the nation's largest source of global warming pollution, representing about a third of U.S. greenhouse emissions, equal to the combined output of all cars, trucks, buses, trains and boats.
In the U.S., coal provides half of the nation's electricity. Many experts believe that, because of vast supplies, coal will continue to generate much of the nation's power for many years to come.
Climate scientists, though, recommend that the nation swiftly cut carbon dioxide emissions and ultimately reduce them by at least 80 percent below 2000 levels by mid-century to avoid the worst consequences of climate change.
Industry supporters say the key is for scientists to perfect technology to capture carbon dioxide emissions from coal-fired power plants and pump those gases safely underground. But such technology has never been deployed on a commercial scale. Critics worry about the expense, safety and a host of technical hurdles.And yet, this administration pushes for the oxymoron 'clean coal' which is a... more
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Climate scientists have written directly to the chiefs of the country's main coal companies and users, warning them that coal-fired power stations are doomed and that the Federal Government's carbon capture and storage plans are likely to be a waste of time and money.
"The unfortunate reality is that genuine action on climate change will mean that coal-fired power stations cease to operate in the near future," says the letter, posted yesterday to the heads of Rio Tinto, Alcoa and Delta Electricity, and more than 20 other companies and organisations.
The group of seven signatories, who include three lead authors of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change and a former director of the World Climate Research Program, said they took the step because of misinformation being spread by the coal industry.
One signatory, Professor David Karoly of Melbourne University, said he had decided to appeal directly to company chiefs because he felt they needed to be advised that their companies were contributing to climate change, and could be exposed to any future legal action brought against heavy polluters.
"Evidence is mounting that climate change is occurring faster than previously predicted and we are perilously close to a number of tipping points which, if passed, would amplify the effects of climate change and make it much more difficult to bring further warming under control," the letter says.
"We cannot emphasise enough just how serious the situation has become."
Carbon capture and storage, in which emissions from coal-fired power stations are compressed and buried, is probably not going to help Australia make the necessary greenhouse gas cuts, the letter says.
end of excerptClimate scientists have written directly to the chiefs of the country's main coal... more
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This story on Clean Coal from The Center For American Progress hits the nail on the head in respect to what needs to be done. Carbon Capture and Sequestration can work and does work for at least one pilot program in the Black Sea area. But to date American coal companies are all talk and no go when it comes to developing and implementing such technologies. Why do they need 20 years to develop something which is already in use elsewhere?
In addition I think that this technology could become a crucial part of our future if the somewhat nightmare scenario of melting methane hydride in the permafrost of the arctic becomes a reality.
Establishing a carbon cap sets the bar for energy production companies to meet and until we establish that bar the economic incentive to develop new, clean technologies just isn't there. If the coal companies want to compete in the green energy economy then they have to meet these standards and they can do it, that much is obvious.This story on Clean Coal from The Center For American Progress hits the nail on the... more
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We have all probably heard of Carbon Sequestration by now as it is the method most often connected with efforts by the coal industry to stay relevant in a green energy economy. As I said last night in my post on methane hydrate, carbon sequestration may prove to be necessary in the long run in order to deal with the release of methane from thawing permafrost areas.
With that in mind I thought I would provide this resource for people who would like to learn more about it. The storage method within the umbrella of sequestration that I find the most interesting is where the CO2 is pumped underground into deep saline deposits.
Salt water can hold a great deal of carbon dioxide because when seawater absorbs CO2 chemical reactions occur. According to wikipedia; "When CO2 dissolves, it reacts with water to form a balance of ionic and non-ionic chemical species : dissolved free carbon dioxide (CO2 (aq)), carbonic acid (H2CO3), bicarbonate (HCO3-) and carbonate (CO32-).
This is already happening in the world's oceans with negative consequences for marine life. But what will be the consequences (if any) of pumping the CO2 into underground saline deposits where the same process will take place? I think it is important to thoroughly understand all of our options before we commit to a specific pathway for our future.
For more info on ocean acidification see: http://www.ocean-acidification.net/We have all probably heard of Carbon Sequestration by now as it is the method most... more
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Now the experimentation is more elaborate, designed to tailor the concrete to the need. Increasingly, that need includes the environment. Aesthetic considerations aside, concrete is environmentally ugly. The manufacturing of Portland cement is responsible for about 5 percent of human-caused emissions of the greenhouse gas carbon dioxide.
“The new twist over the last 10 years has been to try to avoid materials that generate CO2,” said Kevin A. MacDonald, vice president for engineering services of the Cemstone Products Company, the concrete supplier for the I-35W bridge.
In his mixes, Dr. MacDonald replaced much of the Portland cement with two industrial waste products — fly ash, left over from burning coal in power plants, and blast-furnace slag. Both are what are called pozzolans, reactive materials that help make the concrete stronger. Because the CO2 emissions associated with them are accounted for in electricity generation and steel making, they also help reduce the concrete’s carbon footprint. Some engineers and scientists are going further, with the goal of developing concrete that can capture and permanently sequester CO2 from power plants or other sources, so it cannot contribute to the warming of the planet.Now the experimentation is more elaborate, designed to tailor the concrete to the... more
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A Man With A Plan
Inventor Gerald Garrison's World Food Plan.
His strategic plan is to create thousands (if not millions) of huge indoor gardens to serve communities with fresh, nutritional produce. These highly efficient, local food production factories are capable of growing food indoors using his state-of-the-art and sustainable technologies. Most importantly, these food production centers can generate crops 365 days a year, regardless of how harsh the outdoor environment becomes.
The idea is to take an environmentally controlled room – well insulated from the outside world – and grow food under his digital light delivery systems. The energy required to power the factories will come from wind and solar power generation sites.
Some cynics scoff that taking food production indoors is tantamount to admitting defeat. “Have we really screwed up the climate so much that we have to grow plants indoors now?”, is the most common question. And the idea of using solar and wind power to generate artificial sunlight is a difficult concept for many people to accept. However a growing number of people, especially within the indoor gardening industry, are starting to switch on to his ideas.A Man With A Plan
Inventor Gerald Garrison's World Food Plan.
His strategic... more
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For years, scientists have had a straightforward idea for taming global warming. They want to take the carbon dioxide that spews from coal-burning power plants and pump it back into the ground.
President George W. Bush is for it, and indeed has spent years talking up the virtues of "clean coal." All three candidates to succeed him favor the approach. So do many other members of Congress. Coal companies are for it. Many environmentalists favor it. Utility executives are practically begging for the technology.
But it has become clear in recent months that the nation's effort to develop the technique is lagging badly.
In January, the government canceled its support for what was supposed to be a showcase project, a plant at a carefully chosen site in Illinois where there was coal, access to the power grid, and soil underfoot that backers said could hold the carbon dioxide for eons.
Perhaps worse, in the last few months, utility projects in Florida, West Virginia, Ohio, Minnesota and Washington State that would have made it easier to capture carbon dioxide have all been canceled or thrown into regulatory limbo.
Coal is abundant and cheap, assuring that it will continue to be used. But the failure to start building, testing, tweaking and perfecting carbon capture and storage means that developing the technology may come too late to make coal compatible with limiting global warming.
"It's a total mess," said Daniel Kammen, director of the Renewable and Appropriate Energy Laboratory at the University of California, Berkeley.
snip
Plans to combat global warming generally assume that continued use of coal for power plants is unavoidable for at least several decades. Therefore, starting as early as 2020, forecasters assume that carbon dioxide emitted by new power plants will have to be captured and stored underground, to cut down on the amount of global-warming gases in the atmosphere.
Yet, simple as the idea may sound, considerable research is still needed to be certain the technique would be safe, effective and affordable.
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This is exactly why I have criticized and will continue to criticize the presidential candidates. They are lying to the American people about this. All of them have given campaign stump speeches intimating that this technology is already perfected and only a couple of years away.They use this lie to validate the fact thar they will allow coal companies to continue to spew their toxic and climate change causing garbage into our atmosphere for the next twenty years without real penalty under the guise of a "cap and trade" system that I am almost certain will be manipulated to benefit them.
We don't need carbon sequestration, and i personally believe it would be detrimental to underground water systems and acquifers. What we need is AGGRESSIVE action regarding bringing solar, wind, and other alternate energies to market.
I feel as though I type this over and over and over again, and still see nothing happening. We have deserts in this country that could hold enough solar arrays on them to power the homes of hundreds of thousands of people, and here they sit in Congress and on the campaign trail talking about "clean coal."
Like nuclear plants and desalination plants, carbon sequestration is a risky expensive bandaid to allow busniness as usual with the illusion of moral courage. That is all. I will not believe this Congress is serious about tackling climate change until they stand up to these toxic industries to wean us OFF of them and give the people what they want and what this planet must have in order to adequately sustain us and our children: CLEAN, affordable, SAFE alternate energies.For years, scientists have had a straightforward idea for taming global warming. They... more
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Greenpeace and more than 100 other environmental groups denounced projects for burying industrial greenhouse gases on Monday, exposing splits in the green movement about whether such schemes can slow global warming.
Many governments and some environmental organisations such as the WWF want companies to capture heat-trapping carbon dioxide from the exhausts of power plants and factories and then entomb them in porous rocks as one way to curb climate change.
But Greenpeace issued a 44-page report about the technology entitled "False Hope".
"Carbon capture and storage is a scam. It is the ultimate coal industry pipe dream," said Emily Rochon, climate and energy campaigner at Greenpeace International and author of the report.
Greenpeace and 112 green groups from 21 nations said governments should invest in wind, solar and other renewable energies rather than in capture technologies that would allow coal-fired power plants to stay in operation.
In a statement linked to the report, Greenpeace and allies including Friends of the Earth International said the "false promise" of carbon capture and storage (CCS) "risks locking the world into an energy future that fails to save the climate".
But some other environmental groups accept carbon capture as a way to slow rising temperatures and avert more powerful storms, heatwaves, droughts, disrupted monsoon rains and raised world ocean levels.
"Carbon capture and storage is not an ideal solution, but it buys us time," said Stephan Singer, head of the WWF's European Climate and Energy Programme in Brussels. "We believe it is part of the solution -- an emergency exit."
The UN Climate Panel has said CCS could be one of the main ways for slowing climate change by 2100 -- contributing a bigger share of greenhouse gas cuts than energy efficiency, a shift to renewable energy or a push for nuclear power.
Greenpeace and more than 100 other environmental groups denounced projects for burying... more
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In a word, yes. There is no such thing as "clean coal" and pumping the Co2 into the ground at the pace it would have to be pumped in order to truly make an impact is simply not feasible based on future population increases, electricity usage per person, and the fact that the more this government claims it wants to fund alternate energies, we NEVER SEE THEM. What of Solar? Wind? Geothermal? Where are their subsidies in Congress? And of course, the Bush administration and I am sure the next one will continue to push for carbon sequestration knowing this to make people think they care while actually giving the coal industry more time to pump more of their sewerage into the atmosphere. It is time for a bold new vision to go beyond coal and nuclear. Unfortunately, leaving the solution up to politicians will only doom it every time. And also, Co2 is not the only GHG we have to worry about, and there is not nearly enough attention being paid to that.In a word, yes. There is no such thing as "clean coal" and pumping the Co2... more
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I am sure that carbon sequestration will play a role in how corporations deal with the climate crisis. And while I do agree that we need some way to scrub carbon industrially I do have questions regarding pumping it into the Earth. How deep could we go without causing earth quakes? Would it hurt groundwater supplies? Just where would it be buried and how would that effect living space? And would it eventually become a bandaid to corporations which would only permit them to continue to spew out millions of tons of GHGs daily knowing that they could just bury it underground? Should not the sole purpose of changing mindsets be to actually cut down on the amount that is actually emitted to begin with, with or without sequestration? Of course, there are also economic questions that go with this and just how corporations would make up for using such techniques in either passing on the cost to consumers, or in cutting other unnecessary operating costs without it affecting the cost of goods. On the whole I think it is one method that is viable but not as a sole way to mitigating carbon. In my view carbon caps and placing a monetary value on carbon would assure that levels would be kept in check to begin with. What do you think?I am sure that carbon sequestration will play a role in how corporations deal with the... more
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