If you could apply Carbon Capture and Storage (CCS) to the world's 2,000 largest fossil fuel power plants (about 90% of them coal) you would reduce world CO2 emissions by something like 25%.

I am assuming in this:

- that electric power production is c. 40% of world CO2 output

- that coal is about 7/8ths of that (coal is 1/2 US electric power output, and about 80-90% of CO2 output for the US electric power sector; it is c. 90% of Chinese electricity output, c. 80% I think of Indian, I can't remember the Russian fraction (about 20% I think), about 30% of Canadian, about 60% of Australian, 40% of German, 90% of Polish etc.

- that CCS, including the additional energy costs, would reduce total CO2 emission per plant by about 70%

(sorry for all the handwaiving, I haven't done a good model)

This would cost something between $100-200/tonne of carbon abated (might be as high as $300 or $81/tonne CO2).

Now it's likely that in the early stages, costs would be at the upper end, or beyond, what the IPCC estimates. The IGCC (Intermediate Gasification Combined Cycle) technology is relatively expensive and tricky, compared to Ultra-Critical pulverised coal technology.

The MIT coal study also shows that the technology pathway is not entirely clear: it's not certain that IGCC with CCS is better than conventional pulverised coal (PC) with CCS. We need to build the plants and find out.

As you point out, a systematic programme of improving building efficiency (c. 30% of greenhouse gas emissions) could sharply reduce the demand for electricity at the same time. It's entirely within current technology to double current building efficiency on average (new buildings, 80-90% better ie using 10% of the energy they do now; retrofitting buildings up to 50% better).

It's really quite sad, because that says we could reduce world CO2 emissions by 35-40%, simply by doing what we already know how to do, and by fully developing CCS technology. We could do that in 30 years (time to replace all power plants and bring all buildings up to standard).

By contrast, transport is much, much harder. There is a 'quick win' (US passenger vehicles) but after that, abatement costs per tonne of carbon are quite high.

(saving the rainforests is actually cheapest: as little as £10/tonne of carbon. Even cheaper is stuff like insulating your home or changing to CFLs, which have *positive* costs ie they *pay* you to do them)

Having watched the UK drown this summer (having nearly melted 2 summers ago) and watching Greece burn, and noting the continued disbelief in global warming in the US (and the prevalent belief that GW has something to do with Al Gore's political ambitions ie that it is a partisan issue) my conclusion is things really haven't gotten bad enough. Humans need much bigger threats to make them change their ways.

In 20 years time we'll be ready for these solutions. But we'll do everything to drag our heels in the meantime.

This week's Science Magazine (? couldn't find the cite, it might be Nature) has a debate between Sir Nicholas Stern and William Nordhaus. Nordhaus, the doyen of sceptical environmental economists, basically argues we should concentrate on economic growth, and making the future rich. Then they'll be rich enough to do something about global warming. He doesn't think our obligation runs any deeper than that, ie to do what we would normally have done.

The world, and the IPCC, as James Hansen points out in New Scientist this week, may be massively underestimating the risk of accelerated glacial melt.

Let's hope the earth's climate gives us that time to make up our minds to do something.

I've mounted a few desultory searches for the source of the efficiency loss numbers, and not found them.  How do we know, f'rex, that an IGCC plant would actually become less efficient than a PCC plant with recovery?

An IGCC plant could become far more efficient through the use of a few recent but simple technologies.  Take, for example, Acrion's CO2 Wash process.  This is a fractional distillation system designed to remove CO₂ and contaminants from landfill gas, but it would work equally well to remove CO₂, H₂S, COS, H₂O and the like from a syngas stream.  This leaves mainly H₂, CH₄ and CO.  This in turn could be fractionally distilled (a la air separation plants) to remove the hydrogen.  Carbon monoxide and methane go to solid-oxide fuel cells ($500/kW sometime soon), with the spent fuel gas sent to sequestration.  The air stream for the SOFC's is the combustion air for the gas turbine of an IGCC plant, heated by the hydrogen after exiting the SOFCs (to reach optimum turbine-inlet temperature).

I haven't taken this concept apart far enough to calculate a net efficiency for it, but my SWAG is it ought to be well over 50%.  Nearly all of the carbon, plus 99.9%+ of the sulfur and all the condensible pollutants such as mercury, will be removed from the combustion fuel stream in the two separation steps.  Energy supply for the separation is mostly as low-pressure steam to run the refrigeration system for the first distillation.

All we need is for the sub-$500/kW SOFC to come through, as Delphi and others have claimed they can do.  The rest is mostly re-plumbing a gas turbine.

First CCS will speed depletion. If a world coal peak without CCS was expected by 2025 it will come sooner if extra coal has to shovelled into the furnaces to power the scrubbing, compression and pumping process

This could be mitigated by achieving 20-30% electricity consumption reductions. Say coal burn per kWh increases by 20-30% but electricity consumption reduces by the same amount then coal tonnage burnt remains the same.

The energy costs of CCS are covered in the previous article: CO2 Capture and Storage: The Energy Costs

I go on the basis of how much natural gas do we extract every day, week, month, or year. If we extract 10 trillion cubic feet of natural gas per year, then I would say that is about how much CO2 your could store. I envision an network of pipes, much like natural gas pipes, that go back to extracted wells.

This one I do know. You have to add energy to turn CO2 to methane. If you could do it 100% efficiently [impossible] then you would add exactly as much as you get when you burn the methane to make CO2 - you see the catch??

Co2 is a recognised industrial gas, and piped or shipped long distances for same (packaging, and things like electronics manufacture).

The main use is enhanced oil recovery. The Weybridge project in Saskatchewan pipes CO2 from the US coal gasifier in North Dakota (built during the 70s Energy Crisis as a demonstration project) under ground to enhance oil recovery.

Largely though, CO2 is a waste gas.

There is a problem, which is going to make Carbon Capture and Storage (Sequestration) -CCS a serious political problem.

CO2 is heavier than air, and in concentrations above 10%, AFAIK, lethal. It also *sounds like* Carbon Monoxide, which is lethal in very small concentrations (and kills people with cooking stoves, all over the world, all the time).

Near Lake Cameroon, a CO2 leak (geologic) caused the death of several thousand people.

So you are going to have pipes with a lethal gas (which will leak, from time to time) running hundreds of miles to put the gas back underground, where it might leak.

Now the world accepts this with natural gas (CH4) because natural gas is heat. It accepts that we ship petrol around and store it, even though it is explosive, forms deadly vapour at room temperature, and causes horrific burns.

But humans are not rational in weighting risks. Tell someone of a new CO2 pipeline, which sounds a heck of a lot like a carbon monoxide pipeline and you can bet the NIMBY brigade will be out in force. Unless the government underwrites the industry liability (as it does with the nuclear industry) to an accident, it ain't gonna happen.

I'm a big fan of CCS, but if, as a society, we find it impossible to build windmills because they are ugly, then CSS really will be a tough fight.

If you talk to people on the street, they think:

- global warming is something that is just happening, not something they can do anything about
- global warming is inevitable
- it's something to do with the ozone layer and spray cans
- it's a plot against China
- it's a plot by socialists to stop them driving and enjoying life
- it's something our kids will worry about
- CO2 couldn't cause global warming
- it's another massively overstated environmental panic, a la the Population Bomb or the Y2K
- humans don't cause CO2 to rise in the atmosphere

I've been told these things not just by Daily Mail readers, but by businessmen, with degrees in engineering and geology, people who manage billions of dollars in the City. If you rhyme off scientific facts to them, they just quote you back some sceptic argument they heard on Channel 4.

It's ironic, we're quite capable of polluting the planet with nuclear waste for 10s of thousands of years, but when it comes to something like CO2 (naturally occuring), we are incapable of saving the planet from our CO2, in the next 200 years.

(you'll notice that people love nuclear power: businessmen are quite prepared to overlook the subsidies, and they think it is just Greeny politics that complains about the waste)

That creature that started climbing, at Olduvai Gorge, has more or less reached the limits of his ability, I suspect-- we're so high up in the tree, that when the branch breaks we will finally fall to earth. The brain case just isn't well adapted enough to a global environmental challenge.

It ain't just the consumers energy bills, it's the cost of absolutly everything to some extent... that increase, whether 5% or 20%, would hit every commercial enterprise too - and while electricity might not be the biggest bill companies face, all the other services or materials they have to buy will also cost more.

Ultimatly, the full gross cost of the increase must be bourne by consumers - not just the fraction that is residential power.

I've no idea what percentage of electricity is non-residential use?
--
Jaymax (uber-techno-conucopian-doomer)

That type of response was exactly what the quoted study aimed to achieve. And it obviously succeeds!

The truth is that at this stage CSS is no more solution to obtaining carbon-free energy than controlled fusion is. It is simply damn too hard to do it! The technical difficulties - projecting the equipment, producing it, installing it, building the pipeline infrastructure, handling all those known and unknown problems that will come on the way - this will take 20 to 30 years at least before the technology goes to large scale application. It will take a coordinated government effort (a new Apollo program) and serious investments ($ billions) to do it. Do you see anything like that on the books? I don't.

If your retail electricity bill is 10 c/kwhr it would go to 15 c kwhr.

For ref, I think California retail now is about 13 cents, and some southern US states are about 6. (one of the reason's Al Gore's electricity bill is so high is he is Tennessee Valley Authority, which has some of the highest rates in the US).

So a 1/3rd rise in electricity bills. But for most households, that rise could be offset simply by efficiency measures and investments.

Wind yes (especially onshore), Solar no that's still more then 10 cents per kwh.

My crystal ball tells me more CHP, Hydropower, wind power and nuclear power in Sweden and the nordic grid. I am still unsure about electricity -> hydrogen + oxygen -> biomass gasfication + fuel synthesis but it might work out.

[quote]
The fog around the crystal ball just faded away long enough to tell me there will never be a large (1GW) clean coal power station.
[/quote]

Notwithstanding the US one (FutureGen), I think there will be at least one by 2015, and maybe as many as 20.

We are in a hurry, and it's coming. We need this technology, we have all the building blocks, and we will do it.

Hydrogen cars is a different question-- it depends on fuel cell breakthroughs we don't have. There is lots of mileage (pun ;-) left in hybrid technology.

My own view is we might go back to steam cars: the original choice not to use them was an accident of industrial history, rather than of technological superiority.

I don't believe there is any meaningful world coal peak. And in any case, we'll go into the atmospheric red zone (450ppm) long before then.

People will get serious about low carbon, when enough people, white, rich people in advanced countries, have died.

I have my fingers crossed for the mother of all hurricanes, that rends ferocious destruction. I mean Katrina-squared or cubed. That is a terrible, awful thing to say or even imagine, but until we have that, we do not have public opinion, and political will.

Droughts in Australia can be explained away-- the 1 in 100 year, I mean the 1 in 1000 year. So can record flooding in England, and record heat waves in Europe in 2003 (sorry, 2007) which only kill a bunch of old Greek and French people and burn a few forests.

Psychologists talk about the absence of a 'strong affect' in global warming. People just can't visualise what it means to them. They don't have a tangible set of images and feelings to connect to the reality of global warming.

As your Tim Flannery points out, warm is a nice feeling. People like warm. A warmer world is just not an emotional threat.

What we need is dead rich white people. Then vox populi, vox dei. And God have mercy on my soul for saying that.

I fear by the time we do something substantive, it will be far, far too late. The world's smartest primate may have climbed onto his last branch.

Read Mark Lynas' 'Six Degrees' for a snapshot of what our world is going to look like. Or James Lovelock 'Revenge of Gaia', if you really want to scare yourself.

I had a dream, which was not all a dream.
The bright sun was extinguish'd, and the stars
Did wander darkling in the eternal space,
Rayless, and pathless, and the icy earth
Swung blind and blackening in the moonless air;
Morn came and went--and came, and brought no day,
And men forgot their passions in the dread
Of this their desolation; and all hearts
Were chill'd into a selfish prayer for light:
And they did live by watchfires--and the thrones,
The palaces of crowned kings--the huts,
The habitations of all things which dwell,
Were burnt for beacons; cities were consum'd,
And men were gather'd round their blazing homes
To look once more into each other's face;

.....
The world was void,
The populous and the powerful was a lump,
Seasonless, herbless, treeless, manless, lifeless--
A lump of death--a chaos of hard clay.
The rivers, lakes and ocean all stood still,
And nothing stirr'd within their silent depths;
Ships sailorless lay rotting on the sea,
And their masts fell down piecemeal: as they dropp'd
They slept on the abyss without a surge--
The waves were dead; the tides were in their grave,
The moon, their mistress, had expir'd before;
The winds were wither'd in the stagnant air,
And the clouds perish'd; Darkness had no need
Of aid from them--She was the Universe.

'Darkness' by Lord Byron

You want to talk the sequestration people at MIT, they have a whole group devoted to it.

You could contact someone in the ZEP group. Zero Emission Power plant
http://www.zero-emissionplatform.eu/website/
This is the EU group which is developing the competition for the 12 demo plants to be ready by 2015.
Talk to someone on the advisory council.

I am working on a power project with post combustion (amines) linked to conventional fossil fueled plant - we would be interested in energy savings in this area.

regards. Chris

I agree but also I think its too late to avert the climate change since large natural sources of C02 such as peat beds are now warming so I think C02 from these sources will overwhelm man made sources. Basically we initiated a natural greenhouse cycle that now has to run its course. Uncontrolled man made C02 will increasingly be more a factor in the rate of increase of C02 and less of a source issue as large natural sources become mobile.

Next I suspect we are close to saturation of a lot of the remaining carbon sinks so again even current natural sources will lead to bigger increases in the atmospheric levels.

Its out of our control at this point outside of the rate.

Depends how you cost the nuclear waste disposal.

And the government subsidies the reactor operators require before they will build new plants.

And of course the terrorism and proliferation risks.

Nuclear power has never been cheap, and never will be.

You also can't scale nuclear power on the level we are talking about. It is 8% of world electricity generation now (on about 450 operating reactors). Double the number of reactors (a number which would require numbers of technical people and scarce resources that just don't exist) will take you 40 years at least (that's 22 new reactors a year).

That gets you to 16% of world electricity (your 3rd Gen reactors are bigger, but of course total output is bigger as well).

Britain is talking about new reactors, to the tune of up to 5GW by 2020something, vs. system capacity *now* of 60GW. It'll still be a smaller nuclear sector than we have now.

They can just feed the CO2 to algae, gasify the algae and use the synthesis gas in combined cycle turbines and Combined Heat and Power. Get the most out of every BTU that you have.

Best bet is the MIT study

http://web.mit.edu/coal/

see the appendices. The MIT Sequestration group has a wealth of papers on the subject, and links to the technical journal articles.

The IPCC report also has a chapter on the technologies (Oxy Amyl, gasification etc.).

I've been in contact with some of the CSIRO CCS guys, and that's the first I've heard that it definitely "can't" be done, just that in most cases it doesn't make sense, given the expense, and the average lifetime of those plants.

I do tend to agree with J. Hansen however that all new coal plants must have CCS fitted by law - unfortunately there are way too many people with way too much money invested in existing plans for that to be realistic anytime soon.

I've yet to see anyone really tackle the issue of how to ensure energy-intensive industries like smelting can remain competitive here if there are to be hefty energy price hikes. Having them move to China or India would be counterproductive from an environmental point-of-view (GHG emissions may be no worse - but there's more to environmental damage than GHGs). This is the closest attempt I've found:

http://www.tai.org.au/documents/dp_fulltext/DP44.pdf

But while reasonably thorough and well-researched, it's now a little out of date (2002), and published by a largely left-wing think tank, so is almost certain to contain a certain amount of bias.

Yes, that would be great.  Just two problems:

1. Our current system would collapse if we up and stopped pulling carbon out of the ground.
2. We already have too much carbon in the atmsophere, and emissions during a transition will add even more.

We're ultimately going to stop burning fossil fuels because we'll run out, and we're going to have to pull carbon out of the atmosphere to restore it.  The question is, how do we get there from here?

I like the nuclear waste plus coal mines idea no matter how crazy it is. Two birds in one shot.