 | The 2008 IEA WEO - The World Energy Model and Energy Demand | The Oil Drum | DrumBeat: November 14, 2008 |  |
Breaking News: EPA Ruling - Coal Plants Must Limit CO2?
Posted by nate hagens on November 13, 2008 - 6:37pm
Tomorrow we continue looking at the IEA WEO 2008. Tonight there is a press release by the Sierra Club. (Hat tip Jerome)
In a move that signals the start of the our clean energy future, the Environmental Protection Agency’s Environmental Appeals Board (EAB) ruled today EPA had no valid reason for refusing to limit from new coal-fired power plants the carbon dioxide emissions that cause global warming. The decision means that all new and proposed coal plants nationwide must go back and address their carbon dioxide emissions.
Huge Legal Ruling Blocks US Coal Development
The ruling in the Bonanza coal plant permitting case (pdf) ruled with the Club’s lawyers that since the Mass. v EPA Supreme Court ruling said Carbon Dioxide is a pollutant under the Clean Air Act, new coal-fired power plants must implement “Best Available Control Technology” (BACT for short) for CO2.
Here is some more mainstream press on this news event:
http://www.usatoday.com/money/industries/energy/2008-11-13-coal-plants-e...
http://blogs.wsj.com/environmentalcapital/2008/11/14/environmental-bonan...
The EPA ruling wasn’t a clear smackdown of the coal plant, but more of a punt. In its ruling, it basically told its regional office to rethink the permitting process, and this time to keep in mind the Supreme Court ruling.
But for all practical purposes, the EPA’s decision does mark a sea change.
http://www.sltrib.com/news/ci_10982551
Despite initial rhetoric from anti-coal and coal friendly blogs (of which we are neither...;-), here is what the actual ruling (pdf) said (thanks Rembrandt):
5. Summation Regarding the CO2 BACT Limitation Issue
Thus we find no evidence of a Congressional intent to compel EPA to apply BACT to pollutants that are subject only to monitoring and reporting requirements. Nevertheless, as explained in detail above, we conclude that the Region’s 2 rationale for not imposing a CO BACT limit in the Permit – that it lacked the authority to do so because of an historical Agency interpretation of the phrase “subject to regulation under this Act” as meaning “subject to a statutory or regulatory provision that requires actual control of emissions of that pollutant” – is not supported by the administrative record as defined by 40 C.F.R. § 124.18. Thus, we cannot sustain the Region’s permitting decision on the grounds stated in the Region’s response to comments
We also decline to sustain the Region’s permitting decision on the alternative grounds it argues in this appeal, that regulations promulgated to satisfy Congress’ direction set forth in section 821 of the 1990 Public Law are not “under” the CAA. As we explain above, this argument is at odds with the Agency’s prior statements regarding the relationship between section 821 and the CAA, including statements in EPA’s Part 75 regulations, and those statements preclude our acceptance of the Region’s argument in this proceeding.
Accordingly, we remand the Permit for the Region to reconsider 2 whether or not to impose a CO BACT limit in light of the Agency’s discretion to interpret, consistent with the CAA, what constitutes a “pollutant subject to regulation under this Act.” In remanding this Permit to the Region for reconsideration of its conclusions regarding 2 application of BACT to limit CO emissions, we recognize that this is an issue of national scope that has implications far beyond this individual permitting proceeding. The Region should consider whether interested persons, as well as the Agency, would be better served by the Agency addressing the interpretation of the phrase “subject to regulation under this Act” in the context of an action of nationwide scope, rather than through this specific permitting proceeding.64 In any event, the Region’s analysis on remand should address whether an action of nationwide scope may be required in light of the Agency’s prior interpretive
statements made in various memoranda and published in the Federal Register and the Agency’s regulations. The Region should also consider whether development of a factual record to support its conclusions may be more efficiently accomplished through an action of nationwide scope, rather than through this as well as subsequent permitting proceedings. (See, e.g., Kenneth C. Davis & Richard J. Pierce, Jr., 1 Administrative Law Treatise at 262-64 (3rd ed. 1994)
Thoughts, implications, discussion?
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It would take a while before the pilot plants prove the concept, but in some areas this might stretch the capacity of the coal and NG plants and give a relatively economic path forward for solar power:
http://www.greencarcongress.com/2008/11/epri-to-evaluat.html#more
Dave, I'm skeptical about the "hybrid" solar/fossil power plants. Assuming capital cost is minimized by using solar steam to displace FF steam, when available, the turbine design parameters must be altered to accept input from either source. My guess is that that would lead to a lowering of thermodynamic efficiency. Hopefully the sun would shine often enough to make up for the reduced efficiency when it isn't. Otherwise it is pure greenwashing. The alternative, separate turbines increases the capital cost, and other then some shared powerlines, and transformers isn't really different from a separately located solar power plant.
Dunno, but I believe at least in the case of natural gas there is already some experience in the field, as solar plants do not have storage on the current designs and NG was used to overcome intermittency.
I haven't managed to dig our full details, but I believe Solar One operates in this way.
Certainly the plans for Solar power from Algeria for Europe could more accurately be said to be for natural gas, supplemented by a bit of solar power - I am very dubious on that one, as the efficiency of piping the gas to the home where it is to be used and then using a modern combined boiler is so high, let alone using fuel cells as they are starting to do in Japan.
I think the critical thing though is the qualification I put in, that it may help in 'certain areas'.
The solar resource would need to be really good.
As a strong supporter of renewables I get a bit irritated when their present state of readiness to run large parts of the economy are grossly exaggerated.
This kind if idea is 5 years away from even beginning to make a substantial contribution, as the pilots are not done yet.
As for people who are gaily planning on rolling out solar etc for base load anytime soon......
The choices at the moment are coal, the old fashioned dirty sort, nuclear, and wind can help a bit.
This may change, likely will, but it will take a fair bit of time.
While you are regularly spot-on on the vast majority of points, I'd like to point out some solar thermal designs with storage. While one is now going operational, others are primarily at the pilot stage, and show promise to being ramped up to commercial levels.
http://www.spectrum.ieee.org/oct08/6851
http://www.nrel.gov/csp/troughnet/thermal_energy_storage.html
http://www.sandia.gov/Renewable_Energy/solarthermal/NSTTF/salt.htm
http://www.nrel.gov/csp/pdfs/34440.pdf
Assessment of Parabolic Trough and Power Tower Solar Technology - Cost and Performance Forecasts - Sargent & Lundy LLC Consulting Group Chicago, Illinois
Apologies for the somewhat loose use of terms.
I should have clarified that there are several systems which have good prospects for the storage of solar thermal energy over the period of a few hours - essentially to compensate for diurnal variability.
Amongst them are molten salt storage, flywheel storage, hot gravel and concrete storage, and pumped water storage.
I compacted the situation to some extent by the use of the term 'current' - by which I meant to indicate that without the additional cost of storage, or the arguable and yet to be proved cost advantages (Ausra) as this precise moment solar power stands or falls on it's performance without storage.
Personally I am optimistic on the potential for diurnal storage.
Emissions rules will be just like the Clean Water Act. The EPA issues a ruling, and immediately gets sued by both the utilities and the environmentalists. Good stuff for lawyers.
Glorious news,
This is the total defeat of the lying, GW denying, lobbyist-infested Bush-Cheney EPA.
The technology has worked for years but utilities are fighting it tooth and nail. There goes thousands of plans for new ultracritical steam cycle plants they've been drooling over. IGCC-CCS will be the standard design and they'll just have to swallow the 25% premium for capturing and burying the CO2.
Coal is no longer cheap energy!
Get used to it!
Unfortunately this seems to only apply to new coal plants.
Obama needs to have this apply to ALL coal plants.
This is the EASIEST way to reduce carbon emissions(~30% of all US GHG emissions are from coal fueled electricity).
I am somewhat stunned that the EPA folks had the courage to do this. They have been such lackeys for so many years. Maybe with the election of Obama they didn't fear internal retribution from on high?
The EPA position has been, since the Reagan era, that since CO2 is naturally occurring in the atmosphere, it is NOT a pollutant. It has been a marvelously Jesuitical position. I don't think courage is involve. They are afraid of Obama and the people he will bring with him.
CO2 is like vitamin A. Not enough and you die. Too much and you die. But within a certain range all is well. We are already above the level of the healthy range (300-350 ppm).
It's likely a ploy to launch industry-favored legislation to blunt more widesweeping rules that the Obama Administration would seek to implement. The industry next year would cry "You're already over-regulating us, what are you trying to do; kill jobs??" I see no other motivation from the Bush Administration, given their rush to set anti-environmental policy on a whole host of issues, including less regulation on coal mountaintop extraction.
Of course they would have a point if they said that.
To be honest the constant "alarm, alarm, alarm, it's already too late !" articles are progressing in turning the entire population against any global warming policies. If those policies start costing jobs (and how can you possibly avoid that ?) everyone, including Obama (perhaps especially Obama, he's a demagogue, and will not go against what people are calling for), will start crying to relieve the opressive co2 legislation.
and what special powers do you have to read the mind of obama and the future of legislation ?
He's pulling your leg. Obviously you don't speak Dutch/Flammish. Oelewapper power of course!:
http://www.woordvandedag.nl/Woord.aspx/Oelewapper
= Useless person, idiot, moron. Well chosen name.
Environmental laws can create jobs building the equipment that cleans the air.
I'm not excited at all about "clean coal". All it does is address the pollution created at the power plant, the greenhouse gasses.
As I understand it, to sequester the CO2, you have to first take the intake air, remove the oxygen from it to use for combustion, use that to burn the coal, then pressurize and cool the resulting exhaust and pump it far underground into some porous rock that will require more pressure every day as it constantly is filling up. To do this, even assuming there is a viable underground formation to take the CO2, (good luck there), requires approximately 33% of the energy output of the plant. That requires the plant to be 50% bigger than it would have been without sequestration and burn 50% more coal, for the entire life of the plant.
50% more coal used means 50% more strip mines, 50% more leveled mountains, 50% more water pollution, etc.
This is progress?
I say we need to move to truly clean technologies. This is not one of them, despite how much spin it's promoters want to give it.
Um, is the technology mature at scale? If not, have we also just entered a new phase of no new coal plants at all, just when we're running short on oil?
The 100% given: electricity prices are going to go up a lot.
The cash value of existing plants just went up, too.
The obvious answer is that the new baseload plants will be nuclear rather than coal. Not a bad thing IMHO, but it will take a decade for us to ramp up the toolset for more rapid nuclear power plant construction.
Electricity has been growing at about 1% per year BEFORE the recession and the wind industry alone growing by
7.6 GW per year just under .8% of nameplate.
Renewable mandates won't slow, so demand for wind/solar will increase.
Energy conservation measures will effect baseload more than peaking and saving energy is 'in'.
Ratepayers would be INSANE to pay for new expensive nuke plants.
There's no POINT in building additional baseload.
(Shakes head)The nuclear industry is all about WASTE(radioactive and excessive electricity).
Its irrelevant weather you think additional baseload is unnecissary or not. If utilities deem new baseload desirable in spite of your objections, new baseload will be nuclear if coal is priced out of reach by CO2 limits.
I disagree with the assessment that there is no need for new power, because these are trends that outlive the cycles of recession and growth, and I also disagree that all new growth can be met entirely by renewables. Either way theres no new coal plants, with nuclear being cheaper than new coal baseload.
Trend is not necessarily destiny. Government, with the right will and the right policies can help reverse this trend. Many of us here on this site have found ways to reverse the trend of our own consumption; so it is doable on a national scale. Regardless, all new baseload should be met by something other than coal. If that be nuclear, so be it.
So you want to replace coal with nuclear.
That would be a big mistake.
The future is renewable solar and wind and uranium is limited.
These sources will need fossil fuel backup.
The world has at least 22000 quads of coal(not to mention 4000 quads of oil shale) versus 4000 quads of LWR uranium(forget seawater stuff), so LWR nuclear can't replace coal.
You can't use nuclear power to provide backup power as it takes weeks to start and stop 'unstoppable' nuclear reactors.
This is where clean coal can help where nuclear cannot.
Clean coal produces syngas which can be converted to natural gas by methanation, to methanol, hydrogen, etc---storable fuels as well as electricity. Then coal is no longer a baseload fuel.
And with carbon sequestration it's no longer a carbon emitter.
PV solar energy is fairly predictable during the day.
Wind connected to a massive smart grid will be more reliable.
For example, let's say that you have 1GWe of wind which would produce 1 GW 33% of the time (2920 Gwh per year)and nothing 66% of the time. It could be paired with 1 Gwe of IGCC-CCS clean coal in hybrid set up.
With clean coal techology, synthetic natural gas would be made during that 33% of the time when wind was active and because gasification is about 50% efficient the 2920 Gwh of electricity would be used to make 4380 Gwh of natural gas.
Gas turbines are more efficient(45%) than steam cycle plants(33%) but about 20% of the energy goes for CCS so it is a wash(45% x .8=36%~=33%); so the surplus of 4380 Gwh could be used to make 1445 Gwh of electricity on demand.
1 GW wind(4380 Gwh/yr in saved syngas)) with 1 GW clean coal(26280 Gwh/yr of fuel) would end up using only 21900 Gwh/yr of coal to make 8760 Gwh/yr of electricity which is 40% efficiency or 21% higher than a steam plant(40/33).
So clean coal IGCC-CCS with wind would have an overall efficiency of 40% over a year versus 33% for nuclear.
If the capital cost of wind is $1 per watt and IGCC-CCS is
$1.5 per watt and nuclear is $2.5 per watt installed, these are really a wash.
The nuclear fuel for a 1 Gwe nuke plant cost $53 million dollars per year($62 per pound fuel ), $109 million with future waste management costs included(1.2 cents per kwh). A 1 Gwe coal plant would require about 4.4 million tons of bituminous coal per year($63 per ton 2006 fuel price) or $277 million dollars(3.1 cents per kwh). With a combination of wind and clean coal we would only need 3.6 million tons costing $229 million dollars or 2.6 cents per kwh.
http://www.wise-uranium.org/nfcc.html
http://www.econstats.com/spot/rt_coal.htm
If a decision is made to go nuclear to reduce GHG, it is likely that the price of uranium will quickly rise and coal will drop and nuclear's cheap energy advantage will be over.
For example if uranium rises to $135 per pound and coal dropped to $50 per ton , IGCC-CCS/wind hybrid would be a half a cent cheaper per kilowatt for fuel.
How in the world you have come out with precise costings for a technology which does not yet exist, clean coal, escapes my understanding.
There is one pilot plant being built in Germany, and that is about it.
The plant in the US was cancelled as it cost too much!
You were critical of fast breeder reactor technology as it has not successfully run to produce economic power. Well, we are a lot more experienced in that than we are in clean coal technology.
Please do not apply dual standards in favour of the technologies you happen to favour.
The future of these technologies is not known in detail. What we can realistically compare and build now are present coal plants, and nuclear.
In view of the desecration of the countryside caused by coal not to mention emissions I much prefer the nuclear option.
DaveMart,
Dakota-Weyburn lignite gasification has been operating for 8 years,producing 54 billion cubic feet of natural gas(15000 Gwh of fuel-4.5 Gw of electricity) and sequestering millions of tons of CO2. CCS is proven also at the Sleipner and Al Salah gas fields where MILLIONS of tons of CO2 has been buried. The technology is PROVEN.
Of course once synthetic natural gas is produced it can be stored underground as 4 trillion cubic feet of natural gas is today. It cost $2.1 billion dollars in 1980s, inflation factor going from 1982 to 2008 is 218, so today the plant would cost $4.6 billion dollars
basically $4.6 billion dollars for 4.6 Gw of electricity---$1 per watt for CCS.
http://www.dakotagas.com/Companyinfo/index.html
http://inflationdata.com/inflation/Consumer_Price_Index/HistoricalCPI.aspx
Natural gas can burn in existing high efficiency gas turbines now rated at 40% efficiency and 60% efficiency in integrated gas combined cycle plants(IGCC). There are thousands of such gas turbines in operation today.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gas_turbine
See Table 1-3,
IGCC gas turbine costs $1.4/watt installed($1400 per KW)w/o CCS.
Gas turbine $.86/watt.
http://esmap.org/filez/pubs/724200833229_power_prices.pdf
LWR nuclear is running over $2.5/watt
IGCC-CCS with wind is an integrated approach to energy,
so a general coordination of power producers is necessary.
Nuclear is a stand-alone option totally dependent on cheap uranium.
That may not be a bad thing. It is akin to a carbon tax or ETS (call it what you will), without the bureacratic nonsense of actully collecting money from the right pocket only to return it to the left. Electricity has to get more expensive so that we start to value it more highly and become more prudent with its use. Efficency first - technology next.
I dunno. Given the phrase about using best currently available technology. It is not a stretch to consider large scale capture as not proven -certainly no tests at scale have been done. Exactly how this in interpreted could make a huge difference. Mature carbon capture is a decade away -or perhaps never, so they might just build the plants, and take the chance that sometime in the future carbon capture will be delevoped, and forced upon them.
At least once a month I have to remind people that we are gasifying, capturing and sequestering almost 5 million tons a year of carbon dioxide over the last 8 years from a plant that produces 54 billion cubic feet of natural gas a year from low BTU lignite coal in North Dakota. The CO2 is pumped to an old dried up oil field about 250 miles away in Weyburn, Saskatchewan where it help extract 21000 bpd of oil. It is expected to work for +20 more years.
http://www.dakotagas.com/
http://www.dakotagas.com/Companyinfo/Gasification_Process.html
http://www.iea.org/textbase/work/2004/zets/conference/presentations/tham...
It works. It's been working for almost a decade.
Now that you know, spread the news.
5 million tons per year. Only 26,995,000,000 tons per year to go.
What part of the technology is not proven? The removing CO2 from exhaust gas part, which I used to do as a summer job 40 years ago? Or the coal gasification part, which was being done 70 years ago? Or maybe it's the pumping CO2 down a hole in the ground part, which has been done for EOR for 20 years?
The part where a new coal plant that does all this on a gigawatt scale is cheaper than a nuclear power plant.
Both tech is very cheap if you ignore the external costs of their pollution.
Sorry, I just had this image of you sitting there in the smoke stack with a net and watching for CO2 and when you see one, you grab it, and putting it in a bag. Or at least, that is how most "summer jobs" work.
"....is the technology mature at scale ?"
what technology ? doesnt the ruling say "available technology" ?
and the cash value of ng just went up too.
This just says you need to use the best available technology. There are ways to cut emissions from coal albeit not enough to do anything significant vis a vis global warming. Hopefully, yes this is a new phase wherein we do what Hansen is calling for --- no new plants and phase out old ones. We don't use a significant amount of oil for electricity so don't know what running out of oil has to do with it.
Good news indeed but most likely a mixed blessing. On one hand, it sets the stage for the USA to demonstrably be doing something to reduce CO2 emissions. This can then, perhaps, be used as leverage when negotiating with other large CO2 emitters such as China. It may also help with humanity's efforts at addressing anthropomorphic climate change -- though I hold out little hope that it will amount to much. On the other hand, if you include the costs of CO2 reduction or mitigation into the overall costs for converting the energy embodied in coal to electricity, then the ERoEI of coal for that particular use will go down. That means that the electricity costs will go up at a time when other costs will already be rising due to increases in the price of petroleum. This will increase overall the economic stresses.
If the resulting regulations are structured to entice use of the waste heat for other purposes, such as cogeneration or as input to other manufacturing processes, then a advances could be made on reducing the overall amount of energy that is simply lost as waste heat.
it sets the stage for the USA to demonstrably be doing something
From 1919 HG Wells Outline of History:
I once read an article that stated how many coal-fired electricity plants Texas has to build to handle their growing population. It was a startling amount. Hopefully with rulings like this we will start to see a light bulb go off in people's heads that tells them that taking in 2 million immigrants (with numbers increasing) each year by the United States is contraindicated. But at this point we still have an incredible paradox - the Sierra Club officially has no problem with immigration.
Isn't (at least illegal) immigration now working in reverse. All those construction jobs that have vanished were primarily manned by immigrants. No job, and most will go back home.
It would if construction jobs were all that immigrants were taking. But they're also taking fast-food, carwash, agricultural labor, janitorial, landscaping/lawn care, low-end factory assembly and shipping - in fact, just about all manual labor and limited-customer-contact service jobs. You might wonder how they could survive with such low wages (how the hell do Americans do it?), but compared to what they could get in their own countries, it's a king's ransom.
No, most will not be going home anytime soon ...
Isn't (at least illegal) immigration now working in reverse. All those construction jobs that have vanished were primarily manned by immigrants. No job, and most will go back home.
I hope there is no truth to your statement. If we have allowed the construction industry to employ illegals almost exclusively ("primarily manned") for the highest paying most desirable blue-collar jobs, that would be criminal. Even if it was true, I have to think the majority of illegals coming here are not going into construction, and the majority of illegals here are not in construction, so returning construction workers would be more than offset by incoming hotel, restaurant, agricultural, ranch, gardening, and factory workers. And I doubt if workers in construction return home. They still have a better income and better chance of employment here than in Mexico. A 2 bedroom apartment with a car is how the middle class lives in Mexico and how the poor live in the US.
If you watch any tv documentaries on reconstruction of N Orleans, one issue that stands out is that almost all the unskilled construction work (concrete, framing, drywall, finishing etc) is being done by "streetside labour", eg. contractors picking up truckloads of workers each morning. Even the electricians and plumbers interviewed were saying they couldn't get any work because the "informal workers" were bidding so low.
But then, everyone wants cheap goods don't they?
Assuming I presume no improvements to existing conservation policy, application of smart infrastructure, "optimistic" economic growth expectations, and no Peak Oil consequences.
They vote "present" on immigration and seek environmental justice for all:
http://www.sierraclub.org/policy/conservation/immigration.pdf
I also expect as the recession/depression deepens, immigration will slow. Who wants to come to a land of less opportunity?
Note that they take no position on immigration, but they do take a position on population:
There is a small but important difference there...
In the long run, I suspect that the population of the planet will have to shift around over time so that the people and the arable land are near each other. For instance, right now the US has 18% of the world's arable land but only 5% of the world's population and China has 9% of the land and 22% of the population. At some point, I suspect 18% of the world's population will live in the US, and 9% will live in China. I don't know exactly how we will get there, but if I had to guess, it will probably involve more people starving, than people moving.
"The Sierra Club advocates stabilization of the population of the United States and the world."
So since the Sierra Club advocates immigration into the US, the Sierra Club implicitly endorses a one-child policy.
Assuming I presume no improvements to existing conservation policy, application of smart infrastructure, "optimistic" economic growth expectations, and no Peak Oil consequences.
This wasn't a projection, this was a historical tally of how many they had to build. Infinite population growth will always cause more fossil fuels to be used regardless of how much wishful thinking and faith-based analysis takes place.
They vote "present" on immigration and seek environmental justice for all:
The Sierra Club, its entities, and those speaking in its name will take no position on immigration levels or on policies http://www.theoildrum.com/comment/reply/4758/433633
The Oil Drum |rning immigration into the United States. The Club remains committed to environmental rights and protections for all within our borders, without discrimination based on immigration status.
However, there are many in the group who see the obvious truth and have the balls to speak out against a sacred cow. It was revealed at one point, that the leadership of the Sierra Club was being told by some enormous donor that he would stop contributing if they ever took a stand against immigration. How could all parties involved be stupid enough to think that the environment isn't damaged by more people?
http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/1487753/posts
I also expect as the recession/depression deepens, immigration will slow. Who wants to come to a land of less opportunity?
Immigration will stop during a depression as it did during the 1930's (and the spigot stayed off with no negative effects until Ted Kennedy turned it on in 1965 because of an initial desire to get in more Irish). However, it won't be because the people of the third world don't want to come here from their lands of even less opportunity. It will be because a depression will cause a change in thinking regarding giving jobs to foreigners.
Price is, in part, a rationing mechanism. As things become more scarce, someone does without, and that someone is the one who is squeezed out from the inability to pay the price. Those on the margin will suffer first as energy becomes more and more scarce. It works that way, no matter what name we place on the various economic systems.
Al Gore may well be able to afford to pay double or quadruple or worse for the large amount of energy he uses, but ghetto Bob may well not even be able to afford electricity to stay warm or cook (even if he can get together the change to buy some food).
Ultimately it does not matter whether government actions hasten the day when people die from starvation or exposure since the end of the energy age will do that anyway eventually to most of us, but it seems somewhat cruel and callous to cheer actions take by government that will lead to more immediate human suffering. And it is especially cruel when the reason for taking that action is based on a politically hyped theory rather than a more objective determination.
I don't agree with businesses using the commons as a dumping ground, and I do agree that there must be some proof of damage before those businesses can be made to cease their "damaging" activities. Were I on a jury deciding a lawsuit against coal power producers for damages from CO2 pollution, I would probably vote in favor of the coal power plant for lack of sufficient proof on the complaining party's part. The burden of proof is always on he who makes a charge or a presents a theory, not the other way around.
Al Gore may well be able to afford to pay double or quadruple or worse for the large amount of energy he uses, but ghetto Bob may well not even be able to afford electricity to stay warm or cook (even if he can get together the change to buy some food).
We also need to provide electrical power for barrio Juan, Chinatown Yao and all the other millions of immigrants who we require in order to keep this country from devolving into a third world nation. It is essential to sustain our immigration and thus essential that we continue to build coal power plants.
One of the weaknesses of the USA is that it doesn't have a rational immigration policy. A guesstimate would be you could probably charge $50 thousand for green cards right now if the guv marketed the program aggressively. 10 million of these initially sold is a quick 500 billion dollars, not to mention that most who could purchase one are going to bring a lot more money into the economy-for all his marketing, I haven't heard Obama voice one radical idea, and you cannot fix structural problems without original thinking.
One of the weaknesses of the USA is that it doesn't have a rational immigration policy.
I would say that the weakness of the USA is that immigration is a sacred cow, romanticized and worshiped.
barrio Juan, Chinatown Yao
The form is [name] the [occupation] not [location] [name].
Did the events of last month teach nothing?
Thank god you have no power to influence public policy.
And you have the power to influence public policy?
So at least you have provided evidence that you buy the god theory also, which puts a little weight on which of us is prone to delusions and which looks for evidence for our thinking.
"... Were I on a jury deciding a lawsuit against coal power producers for damages from CO2 pollution, I would probably vote in favor of the coal power plant for lack of sufficient proof on the complaining party's part. ..."
Sufficient proof that CO2 is a pollutant, or that the coal-fired plant is the source, or ... what?
Your entire argument is one of the best pieces of evidence I've seen in a good while that we need to abjure any economic system that penalizes first and heaviest those least able to defend against those penalties.
"What?"
Sufficient proof of damage; no doubt that burning coal is a source of CO2 in the atmosphere.
A judge would say "So you are telling me what the temperature will be 100 years from now when the weather channel can't get it right three days in advance?" There's just too much you can do with statistics and too many variables in the analysis to prove/disprove global warming due to CO2 emissions for it to hold up in a court of law. I would think it might be a good idea to attack CO2 emissions by putting very strict mercury, sulfur, etc. limits. Wouldn't that indirectly place limits on carbon emissions?
I was at an energy conference a couple years ago and I remember someone said for the coal plants the emissions monitoring for sulfur, I think, depends on a carbon to sulfur ratio. I'm sure someone here can correct me. Removing the carbon is going to change the emissions monitoring process.
Too bad the decision came before Bush leaves office. Now he'll have time to use executive priviledge to reverse that decision. Oops!
I expect there will be suits /countersuits etc. but the writing on the wall is that change is coming in energy industry. I am still unclear how well the environmentalists (which i consider myself one), understand about the precariousness of our energy situation. What will replace coal on any short term time scale, other than doing without?
With economy in dumper, and public coffers already being raided for financial bailouts, the extra cost of CCS might be too much too fast - but we'll see. Times they are a changin....
The end result of all this is we will need new forms of power generation. Can someone check this idea for power generation.
A 2 metre tube attached to the North (Southern Hemisphere) face of a ten story building painted black would create a thermosyphon. Would the airflow be capable of generating an appreciable amount of electricity? Just looking sideways at a problem. Queensland sun has plenty of power.
I doubt it would work very well. But there is an Aussie company that wants to build a solar chimney, essentially a very tall (1 KM high) chimney which takes in hot air -from covered ground surrounding it. Thermodynamic efficiency is roughly proportional to height. A 10KM chimney would be similar or better than a Stirling engine. The real problem is the difficulty and cost of building very tall structures.
There was a small scale pilot project in Spain in the 1980s:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Solar_updraft_tower
One of the things to note is that it takes up a lot of land for the collector. The land is still somewhat usable, (part of the Spanish site was used as a greenhouse,) and in a desert land isn't particularly valuable in the first place and that cost would be minor, but in a city you'd be talking about covering all the streets, which could rather quickly turn deadly unless you banned cars from downtown, (which sounds fine to me,) but it would be rather hot under the glass...
A [whatever] attached to [wherever] building [something else] generating an appreciable amount of electricity
Understand that succsessful buildings are static problems. To generate 'alot of power' would introduce vibration and that vibration is not good for the continuation of the building as a statics problem.
http://scienceworld.wolfram.com/physics/Statics.html
And no, not enough airflow.
Given that, as the AP just noted this may affect as many as 100 power plant applications, the impact on the energy supply down the road could be very significant. Bear in mind that until such a ruling is clarified, not one of these plants is going to take any further steps forward.
Since it is unlikely that the utilities will move to find alternative supplies (and what would they be at that scale), and that the results will not become evident until the opportunity to remediate the situation has passed, the unanticipated consequences of this may be a lot grimmer than people currently realize.
"What will replace coal on any short term time scale, other than doing without?"
Well, there's lots of potential in POC (plain old conservation), especially in the short term. And the increased expense of energy in any form will surely impel (albeit unpleasant and/or involuntary) conservation ...
What's happening is that we really need to sh_t or get off the pot. Delaying this or postponing that or making exceptions for something else to prolong the status quo is only going to make what we can all see has to be done that much harder and more painful. Yes, people are going to suffer. But if we buckle down now, while we still have an inch or two of wiggle room, it will save vastly more suffering down the road.
This statement would have been true any time in the last 30 years. Only the definition, and reality, of 'wiggle' has changed...
We could cut our electricity use significantly with little or no hardship; I know that I was able to cut my use in half without any change in my lifestyle other than now hanging up my laundry. Invest in energy efficient appliances, laundry racks, turning off lights, lap tops not desk tops, CFLs, and insulation for those who use air conditioning and electric heating. Let's do that on a crash program first as part of the stimulus package and then talk about how we have an electric supply problem. We haven't even picked the low hanging fruit yet. And I haven't even touched on renewable energy electric generation.
If it's overruled with an executive order, it can be overturned with another executive order on January 20th. It will just go onto the big pile with the rest of them. I hope our President Elect won't get writer's cramp.
The critically damaging consequence to this CO2 ruling will be the political hindrance to producing alternative fuels from coal - right when we need an all out emergency effort to develop all possible alternative fuels in time to avoid catastrophic shutdown of the economy by the coming rapid decline in exportable fuels. See Khabab's Export Land Model (Figs 16, 17) for -3.8%/year declining peak oil production of the five largest oil exporting countries with 1.8%/year growing domestic consumption. That results in a much faster 6.4%/year decline in oil exports.
That will aggravate skyrocketing oil prices, resulting in severe depression and very high unemployment. That in turn will hit the developing countries the hardest. The consequence will be hundreds of millions of people starving for lack of fuel and fertilizer - all in the name of "saving the planet" from climate change - all over an unknown degree of anthropogenic warming. That based on statistically unvalidated global warming models.
China, India and other developing countries are wisely developing their energy and alternative fuel production using the cheapest possible fuels to get the greatest economic growth to provide the greatest number of jobs. That gives the greatest benefit to the poor.
The degree of global warming may well be unknown but it's likely to hit 'developing countries' especially hard. Indeed many areas are already suffering from changing weather patterns, melting glaciers and rising sea levels (e.g. Bangladesh).
If this is wise, I'd hate to see foolishness. The unrelenting pursuit of growth is one of the major factors that's landed us in our current predicament. Using up remaining fossil fuel reserves as fast as possible is hardly wise. Your simplistic analysis also conveniently ignores all the environmental and social costs of growth, using the plight of the poor to push the coal agenda.
Violinist
While politically correct, please see what evidence there is for your statements.
Logically irrational: If there were no "global warming" there would be no "hit". "Global warming" is projected to have the greatest impact in polar regions. Almost all 'developing countries' are in the tropics!
Increasing Food Supply with CO2 The greatest need in 'developing countries' is to increase food supply to keep up with growing population. CO2 is an ESSENTIAL plant nutrient. Increasing CO2 provides a well documented increase in food productivity. Increasing temperature also increases relative humidity. It is well documented that the Medieval Warm period had very god agricultural productivity leading to prosperity. By contrast, the Little Ice Age caused much lower agricultural productivity causing "The Great Famine" and a substantial drop in population.
From such historical evidence, developing countries will likely grow more crops with rising CO2 and temperature. Conversely, the serious possibility of global cooling, from a very quiet sun combined with Pacific Decadal Oscillation now having gone into the cold phase, could result in substantially lower agricultural productivity.
Historical evidence suggests global warming will be benign while global cooling could result in major famines. Please do a reality check on your statements and reading.
Regional Climate Change: GlaciersWhat objective evidence have you for significant impact by "anthropogenic global warming" on Bangladesh that is different from the steady increase in sea level for the last 11,000 years, and warming vs cooling phases of the PDO?
e.g., The glacier melting in eastern Himalayas around Mt. Everest has been highly publicized. However, the INCREASING glaciers in the western Himalayas are not "News" and have been ignored.
But the region's winter snowfall, which feeds the glaciers, has been increasing. And average summer temperatures, which melt snow and glaciers, have been dropping.
Glaciers are dominated by precipitation rates and thus strongly impacted by the PDO and solar cycles.
Can you show any evidence for your claims that have been statistically verifiably demonstrated to be anthropogenic global warming and not caused by PDO or solar cycles? Both may be a factor - how have they been distinguished?
Peak Oil Famines Of far greater import is the potential for severe economic damage and famines due to fuel shortages from peaking oil and lack of investment into alternatives. See the North Korean Famine with 2-3 million deaths directly due to economic collapse of North Korea and the Soviet Union leading to lack of fuel, fertilizer, tractor parts, causing major reduction in their food supply. See:
Drawing Lessons from Experience; The Agricultural Crises in North Korea and Cuba -- Part 1 by Dale Allen Pfeiffer FTW Contributing Editor for Energy
Jean Laherrère , " Modelling future oil production, population and the economy" ASPO Second international workshop on oil & gas, Paris, May 26-27 2003, Fig 98.
Please reevaluate based on further knowledge.
Statistical probability of droughts vs sunspots compared with Global Warming predictions.
See an excellent discussion of drought vs sun cycles by WJR Alexander:
Global Drought 2009-2016.
For a statistical evaluation of the (lack of) skill of climate model predictions, see:
Tests of Regional Climate Model Validity in the Drought Exceptional Circumstances Report David R.B. Stockwell August 5, 2008
Tests of Regional Climate Model Validity in the Drought Exceptional Circumstances Report Links
Stockwell links & discussion
I.e. a the CSIRO climate models predicted the exact opposite of the historical drought trend record!.
There is no correlation between sunspots and climate. See, for example:
Recent oppositely directed trends in solar climate forcings and the global mean surface temperature
Spencer Weart's excellent history of climate science has a readable summary of attempts to find a correlation:
Changing Sun, Changing Climate?
The warming trend is not caused by variations in total solar irradiance or cosmic rays. It is caused by human CO2 emissions.
Barrett808
Ignorance of evidence does not constitute evidence of absence. Suggest you begin by reviewing:
A brief summary of cosmoclimatology summarizing Henrik Svensmark paper.
Brown, B.H. (2008) Short-term changes in global cloud cover and in cosmic radiation, Journal of Atmospheric and Solar-Terrestrial Physics, Volume 70 (7), 1122 -1131.
Atmospheric Ionization and Clouds as Links Between Solar Activity and Climate, Brian A. Tinsley and Fangqun Yu
Publications Danish National Space Center
Look forward to your scientific critique.
There is no trend in solar activity, no trend in GCR, and no physical mechanism to couple either phenomenon to the warming trend.
Furthermore, to invoke tiny fluctuations in TSI or GCR as the cause of the warming trend, you must simultaneously invoke a magical insensitivity of the climate to enormous carbon fluxes (hundreds of gigatons) into the atmosphere.
Barrett808
The critical issue is the North Korean Famine caused by shortages of diesel fuel and tractor parts. Regardless of climate change issues, the critical issue is how to feed populations and prevent Peak Oil Famines. 2-3 million people starved to death is hard evidence of possible consequences that must be addressed.
We can certainly agree that Peak Oil famines are a very serious risk. But at least as serious is the accelerating desertification of drylands used for agriculture, which is already hitting some nations quite hard. The biggest threat to civilization is agriculture disruption due to changing climate.
Agriculture disruption is indeed a huge threat.
But the most likely cause will be Peak oil resulting in lack of irrigation, fuel for farm equipment and lack of fertilizer - as in the North Korean Famine.
On disruption due to changing climate, any evidence that global warming is more serious than global cooling?
See discussion above and look at WJR Alexander plotting of historical rainfall data vs solar cycles on Global Drought 2009-2016. Alexander shows a very important impact of sun cycles on drought.
Then look at the statistical evaluation of the CSIRO's climate model predicting increasing drought in Australia:
Tests of Regional Climate Model Validity in the Drought Exceptional Circumstances Report David R.B. Stockwell August 5, 2008
Turns out the CSIRO's backcast predictions were the OPPOSITE of the historical trend of decreasing drought. Does not generate confidence in other climate predictions.
Unfortunately, desertification is not theoretical -- it's happening now, especially in Australia, where it's known as "The Big Dry".
Some happy facts about desertification:
UNEP: Land Degradation
Follow your own advice. The solar activity cycle correlates to a variation in total solar irradiance of about 1/10 of 1 percent or 1.4 W / m2 peak to peak at Earth over an ~11 year cycle. The IPCC 2007 WG1-AR4, figure SPM-2, lists the solar forcing for 2005 as .12 (error range .06 to .3) W / m2, that is, a slight upward trend. Solar forcing for just one anthropic greenhouse gas, CO2, for 2005 is 1.66 (range 1.49 to 1.83) W / m2 and increasing as we dump more fossil carbon into the atmosphere.
By contrast, scientists with serious statistical expertise find:
With due respect to Messrs. Scafetta and West, they're not climate scientists. Here's what climate scientists have to say about their work:
How not to attribute climate change
It would be remarkable indeed if S&W had found a correlation between solar cycles and climate, when a century of previous research has failed to do so.
Increasing Food Supply with CO2
The greatest need in 'developing countries' is to increase food supply to keep up with growing population.
Ok. Fine goal. 'Cept CO2 has been 'bout the same back when this happened:
http://www.livescience.com/history/060720_sahara_rains.html
Now if YOU wanna claim that increased CO2 is gonna fix the crop issue, you go right ahead. As I've shown by actual research, and can show by actual production data by actual farmers that water is a bigger issue than CO2. Not to mention that water vapor in the atmosphere helps keep the planet warm and if there are more plants growing that would mean more water vapor.
(Or, perhaps the food supply is constant and population can be the changeable variable to address your concern.)
Reevaluate based on further knowledge.
Is what I DEMAND of you . I look forward to your followup where you say 'Gee, water matters more for plant growth'. Added bonus points if you solve the upcomming Phosporsous shortage.
David L Hagen
Thank you for replying. You said:
True, the poles are warming faster than the tropics. However, this does not constitute evidence that regions closer to the equator will only be mildly affected. Furthermore, it has been established that tropical species are more susceptible to changes in temperature than those from more temperate latitudes. In addition, melting land ice at the poles will accelerate sea level rise on a global scale and changes to sea and wind currents at the poles could also affect weather systems worldwide. Changes in sea temperature and pH due to dissolved CO2 are already affecting marine ecosystems and fisheries through events such as coral bleaching.
The growth of crop plants is influenced by a multitude of factors of which atmospheric CO2 concentration is just one. Other factors include nutrient availability; temperature (warm enough to allow photosynthesis to proceed rapidly but not so warm as to denature the enzymes which catalyse the process); water availability (including the effect of soil salinity on osmotic uptake); availability of sunlight, etc.
Liebig's Law of the Minimum states that crop productivity will only increase when the minimum limiting factor is increased. You have provided no evidence that increases in atmospheric CO2 concentrations will raise crop productivity sufficiently to offset potential losses caused by drought, waterlogging, increasing soil salinity through sea level rise, erosion caused by industrial farming techniques etc.
Evidence for a Medieval Warm Period is sketchy. Agricultural productivity may have declined during the 'Little Ice Age' but this is not evidence that further warming above today's temperatures will increase agricultural productivity. You scorn climate change models yet use a simplistic extrapolation from a single historical event to form conclusions about the effects of future warming. Further warming of several degrees could tip the earth into a new climate regime. Given that human agriculture is designed for the narrow set of climatic conditions experienced since the end of the last ice age it is improbable that a new climate regime would turn out to be much more suitable for agriculture.
I did not claim that all glaciers everywhere were retreating. You have provided no evidence that changing patterns of precipitation in the Himalayas (of which this is a symptom) will be beneficial to agriculture.
Myths about solar cycles and other climate factors have been debunked repeatedly on this site. I will not clutter this thread with a recycling of the rebuttals; they have already been discussed recently here.
Economic damage as a result of peak oil is unavoidable due to the economic systems current reliance on an abundant supply of cheap energy. I agree that investment into alternatives is needed. However, in your original post you claimed that 'developing nations' were wisely pursuing a strategy of maximum growth using alternative fuels (i.e. coal). Pollution aside, you have provided no justification for your claim that drawing down their remaining reserves of fossil fuels as rapidly as possible by pursuing maximum economic growth is wise. I ask you again, why, given your dismay at the potential rapid decline in oil availability, do you believe that depleting other fossil fuel reserves as quickly at possible is wise? Surely it would make more sense for developing nations to ensure that these remaining supplies last as long as possible.
May I respectfully suggest that you do likewise.
violinist
Thanks for the link. See especially Slide 15 in that presentation.
On food productivity, suggest starting with NASA's
Net Primary Productivity - Earth Observatory That shows your comments on productivity constrained by water.
On growth, it is easy to sit back in the lap of luxury and criticize developing countries for wanting optimal economic growth. Consider setting your annual budget at $300/year for your whole family. Then what happens when fuel prices shoot through $4/gallon when you are trying to eek out enough food with a bit of irrigation and fertilizer to keep from starving?
On climate models, they are a noble effort - however what little efforts there are at statistical validation suggests wildly varying results, sufficient to be skeptical on putting any reliance on them. See Stockwell above etc.
Peak Water from mining ancient aquifers faster than replenishment is probably as large if not a larger problem than Peak Oil.
See Fred Pearce, When the River Run Dry: Water-The Defining Crisis of the Twenty-First Century. 2006, ISBN 0-8070-8572-3. He has compiled numerous examples.
On that argument, would it not make equal sense to reduce OECD energy use to that of developing countries to make the hydrocarbons last even longer?
What is critically needed is to use what we have to transition as fast as possible to cost effective renewable fuels.
Weneed both renewable fuels and fresh from brackish water.
This can be done and renewable fuel will eventually cheaper than fossil fuels. Just takes a bit of effort and funds - much more than effort to date.
I must confess, I found the commentary to that slide a little naive. OECD governments talk a lot about reducing GHG emissions, setting targets to reduce emissions by X amount by year Y (usually conveniently far enough into the future that several election cycles will have passed before the targets must be reached), but economic growth almost always takes priority over emissions reductions. See the UK goverment's position on roadbuilding, coal plants and airport expansion.
In an earlier post you accused me of 'political correctness'. Nothing is more 'politically correct' than the assertion that economic growth is always beneficial and will solve the problems of poverty. This is the philosophy which legitimises government policies the world over. Economic growth is an inefficient way of using the earth's resources to reduce poverty (see this New Scientist article). The relationship between energy and economic growth is examined in this paper by Ayres and Warr. Growth will not be a successful strategy in an energy-constrained future. There is no room for complacency and 'sitting back' in the 'developed' world. Peak oil and declining net energy will hit economies and living standards hard, throughout the world. I expect differences in living standards between the 'developed' and 'developing' world to begin converging, mostly via decline in the 'developed' world.
This is a complete misunderstanding of risk. Of course it is impossible to predict exactly what will happen in a complex system with numerous feedback loops, but this does not mean that the risks posed by anthropogenic warming can be ignored. There has been an accumulation of scientific evidence over decades which has persuaded all but the most sceptical that AGW poses a serious risk. To ignore this because one cannot be 100% certain of the outcome of AGW is absurd.
I agree that 'Peak water' is a serious problem. The world faces a multitude of interlinked problems from depletion of resources and damage to the biosphere due to the exponential growth in human activity. Just because water availability may be the greatest problem does not mean that other problems can be ignored.
It would make sense to reduce OECD fossil fuel use. In fact as hydrocarbon reserves become increasingly depleted the OECD will have no option but to reduce fossil fuel usage to that currently used by the 'developing' world. Surely it is sensible to begin that process of adjustment now, in a controlled manner, rather than vainly trying to postpone the inevitable by maintaining current levels of consumption.
Investing in coal is not transitioning to cost-effective renewable fuels. Neither is it sufficient to invest in alternatives whilst hanging on to an obsolete growth paradigm. To run sustainably on renewable energy will be an enormous undertaking for society, requiring huge change to infrastructure and attitudes to the place of human society within the biosphere.
Wouldn't it all be easier to place a huge tax on cheap and nasty appliances - say anything that doesn't have a five-star rating? (Start with the humble electric kettle... What a monster for the environment these things are collectively! And those blasted foot-heaters!).
Regards, Matt B
There are many ways to do things. Just looking at individual appliances isn't a good way to do things. After all, if I have three "efficient" 300W heaters then together they're as wasteful as one "inefficient" 900W heater.
To my mind, looking at individual appliances for waste is like the current water regulations in Australia which prohibit or restrict particular uses of water. For example, I am not allowed to water my garden except on Wednesdays and Sundays 6-8am - but whether I use 20 or 2,000lt at that time doesn't matter. And I can have a 500lt indoor jacuzzi if I want to, each and every day.
So while we should certainly regulate the most wasteful uses of energy and water, it's probably easier to have a tax or pricing regime which looks at the totals. For example, here in Victoria the water minister has suggested that we could be limited to 155lt a day each. Since in my home we use 130lt/day total for a household of 3 I wouldn't find this restriction onerous.
But it suggest that progressive pricing could be useful. Currently water costs about $0.25 per 100lt daily. Higher rates don't kick in until over 880lt/day. Our 130lt/day costs us about $100 a year. Even if we pissed it away at that 880lt/day (most of ONE TONNE daily) it'd only cost us another $700, or a total of a couple of bucks a day. That's not a big incentive to save.
The first 100lt/day could be $0.10, the second 100lt/day could be $0.20, the third $0.40, and so on. This would definitely be an incentive to save water.
Likewise with energy. The average Aussie household uses something like 18kWh/day of electricity and 30MJ natural gas daily. Again we could have progressive pricing - the first 5kWh/day costs $0.20/kWh, the second costs $0.30/kWh, the third $0.40/kWh and so on.
Then people would then have a financial incentive to save energy. They'd find or demand the energy-efficient appliances, and not use them so thoughtlessly.
I would also present the progressive pricing as a carbon tax. So if you buy renewable energy then it's always at the lowest rate. The electricity carbon tax, the extra money raised, would be used to build up renewables, rail and so on.
This is much simpler than endless regulations about individual appliances, inspectors to make sure you're not hosing down your driveway, and so on.
Exactly. And exactly the same philosophy should be applied to all uses of energy (at least electricity, N Gas and water intially). Easy to do just by installing smarter meters. No doubt too much public resistance to metering gasoline and diesel based on total usage per period with service stations given say 2 years to implement smart pumps which would track vehicle usage, though.
I for one am confused as to how this is to occur chemically speaking.
The base reaction at a coal fired plant is this:
C + O2 --> Heat + CO2
Obviously the byproduct, CO2 is a volatile gas that quickly escapes into the atmosphere.
Energy is going to have to be consumed to sequester this CO2. But if the sequestration is not a permanent one, we've wasted energy for nothing. So far I have not seen any scientific paper that assures permanent sequestration.
The alternative might be to change the base reaction so that a non-gaseous byproduct results:
C + O2 + X --> Less_Heat + CXO2 (liquid or solid)
What is the magic "X" factor and how is to be removed from the reaction chamber and safely stored? (Yeah, I know, someone is going to tell me the magic answer is algae from the planet Krypton. Paint me as still holding my breath and waiting to exhale.)
In Australia when the government first floated an emissions trading tax on coal fired
power stations they were informed that if a charge of the size first proposed was levied
it would affect their credit rating as their earnings would be affected and subsequently
their rating. This would put up their interest charges to an extent that would make
them insolvent and the law requires that they cease trading immediately.
There was a mumbled response from government and we are yet to see if a special
allowance will be made for power stations. The greenies are saying no exceptions.
It will be interesting to see what their reaction would be to the lights going out.
Overtime the sequestered CO2 becomes limestone.
CO2 +ground water+calcium--->CaCO3+ H(acid) but a lot will stay locked in saline aquifers as carbonated water under pressure.
In coal fields it replaces methane and water which attaches itself to coal molecules.
It may surprise you that 4 Tcf of natural gas is stored underground in the US at about 1500 psi of pressure.
So you can stop holding your breath.
If CO2 is under sufficient pressure and ambient or cooler temperatures, it will liquify and attain a density greater than that of water under the same pressure. So, you can inject liquid CO2 deep in the ocean or in deep aquifers and reasonably expect it to be limited to diffusion-transport into the sea or groundwater.
The two leading contenders for sequestering CO2 from power plants are (1) scrubbing the flue gas with strong amine solutions which adsorb the CO2, then desorbing the CO2 and compressing it for disposal as described above, or, (2) building a nitrogen / oxygen separation plant next to the coal plant (not necessarily a liquid air plant - I think the cheapest technology is currently a membrane separation technology), and supplying more or less pure oxygen to burn the coal, resulting in a flue gas that's mostly CO2 with some H2O and miscellaneous pollutants.
The only way I know of getting a non-gaseous carbon end product from combustion is by taking the CO2 and forming carbon suboxide:
CO2 + radiation (UV, gamma, electron, particle) => CO + 1/2 O2
3CO + radiation (UV, gamma, electron, particle) => C3O2 + 1/2 O2
C3O2 is a solid, a reddish-orange polymer, supposedly...but it's not a solution, since the energy required to produce sufficient radiation to transform the CO2 output of a coal plant to C3O2 is several times the output of the coal plant itself.
On a different subject, what's with all the AGW deniers suddenly showing up? They seem terribly frightened that Al Gore is somehow out to steal their manhood. Or that the vast conspiracy of all-powerful climate scientists is trying to herd the population into the cold embrace of communism, with only a flimsy rear-guard action by valiant talk-radio hosts and fossil-fuel companies selflessly defending freedom against the red tide of environmentalists. Anyway, I'm puzzled.
On a different subject, what's with all the AGW deniers suddenly showing up?
Many have been here for some time. But as a topic becomes 'up for debate' paid 'bloggers' show up to pitch in addition to the unpaid ones who are idealogues. Examples of the 1st type I've seen tracking on is the GMO/Monsonto efforts. Post something 'bad' about Monsanto and people who've never posted before or will post again show up and 'defend' Monsanto. The 2nd type would be the Ron Paul 'go vote here for Ron Paul' effort back last year. Someone who believed would note something, post a link with a note, and then bam, voting.
So long as AGW policy is being formed (aka up for debate) and this site has traffic - the posts will be here.
Where can I apply for a paid blogger job?
Kornhoer & Eric
Is the ad hominemal "denier" the best logic you have? I happen to know Beer's law on log response to CO2 absorption/radiation gives nominally linear temperature response to exponential CO2 increase. I also know we'd be frozen w/o the greenhouse effect. Convert grass to asphalt and you are guaranteed to change local climate. Besides, global warming has been occurring for 11,000 years.
How about skeptical "show me" with statistical validation as the core foundation of science. How to you explain the divergence between CO2 increase with temperature decrease?
Two quibbles:
There are three ways: the two you said plus out-and-out coal gasification, using the syngas to run a CCP.
Membrane and PSA for smaller usages, cryogenic for big usages, say >2000 tons per day.
Well yeah, it's not as if I'm totally dumb and didn't think of that option ... like for example, a long hose that goes deep under ocean to where pressures are high enough and temp is cold enough. But how much energy is it going to take to pump (compress) CO2 into that storage environment? Will it be no more than 10% of what we get from burning the coal or will it be more than 100%?
For our purposes 100 years would be as good as permanent. After that, where's the fossil fuel coming from?
Natural gas can leak out of the ground through smaller "holes" than CO2 can. And yet, there is natural gas in natural gas fields that has been there for a million years, (obviously without leaking out, or it wouldn't still be there for us to get it out,) so the concept of permanent sequestration is sound. The questions are more about execution, (can it be done at a reasonable price/energy level,) not about the theory.
I always thought the Oil Drum was better than your usual bulletin board and that people here rtfa, but based on the comments above, that's obviously incorrect. From the article itself:
Obviously a huge win for the environment and renewable energy but certainly not the End of Coal.
rtfa?
rtfa?
Read The F___ing Article
I wondered about that, too. What would we do without the net?
http://www.urbandictionary.com/define.php?term=RTFA
(edit) oops... a moment late
Not just a win for the environment/renewable energy. Who would have thought the oil patch would be cheering the efforts of the Sierra Club. Any effort to diminish coal-fired energy generation is a big boom to the oil/NG industry. The increasing use of coal for electrical generation over the last 25 years has been the biggest factor in keeping oil/NG prices surprised. While seq. and switches to alternatives are a good approach it will take decades to implement to any significant degree.
With the recent drop in oil/NG prices the oil patch was in dire need of some good news. Mucho thanks Sierra Club.
that people here rtfa,
Not Reading The Fine Article is a fine tradition in humanity. Why would people here at TOD be different than people otherplaces?
Oh and thanks for signing up just to say TOD sucks like everyone else. Your input is valuable and I'm sure others await your next post as much as I am.
that people here rtfa,
Not Reading The Fine Article is a fine tradition in humanity. Why would people here at TOD be different than people otherplaces?
The Oil Drum was better ... that's obviously incorrect.
Oh and thanks for signing up just to say TOD sucks like everyone else. Your input is valuable and I'm sure others await your next post as much as I am.
Biodiesel from algae
I've seen (Discovery Channel or similar) and read about pilot plants that grow algae in order to absorb the C02 from the exhaust gases.
We can convert algae into biodiesel.
Question: Once the carbon atom has been transferred from the exhaust stream into algae, into biodiesel and then burned in some truck (thus releasing that carbon atom into the atmosphere), then who pays the carbon tax?
Besides this manmade legal issue, this action would certainly help with the liquid fuels crisis that we will be facing in a few years.
Your optimistic assessment ignores:
1) Keeping the strain of algae genetically pure.
2) The material to encase the algae so it can do its work.
3) The land needed to have the algae grow.
4) After the magical oil is created then burned, the result will be CO2. If the goal is to keep CO2 outta the atmosphere - how does your plan work at about this point. point 4)? (Taxing is to change behavior, not keep CO2 outta the air)
The problem with converting coal power plant exhaust into
algae for biodiesel is that you are increasing the amount of CO2 in the air. You might bury dried algae or char it like terra preta and bury the charcoal(carbon) or pyrolyze it to bio-oil and bury that.
Any process that turns fossil fuel emits CO2 increasing atmospheric concentration would pay a carbon tax.
One hopes this leads to a moratorium on new coal plants including the one proposed for Virginia.
Chris
There are a number of ways that the coal industry can and will sidestep the intent of this ruling.
Generous offsets - since no-one can disagree with tree planting and 'clean development' funding these are a cheap way of not actually cutting emissions at source. However I believe one is unverifiable and the other is an accounting fiction.
Grandfathering - permits must be bought not given out, as per the EPA sulphur and nitrogen oxide auctions. Free permits nearly crippled the European CO2 scheme.
Capture ready - IGCC plant with 15% CO2 savings may be approved on the grounds they are a step away from CCS with 85% savings which will never happen on a commercial scale.
Research as a stalling tactic - like Japanese whaling the coal industry can plead 'more time needed', for a CCS database or something.
Compensation - industries like metal smelters will want and probably get big taxpayer handouts for pain and suffering.
Coal exports - being non-domestic the US can easily get Latin America or somewhere to do the dirty work using US sourced coal.
Innocence by association - hybrid solar/coal plant or mixed coal/biomass fuel can look 'green' even if coal use is barely diminished.
Weak politicians and a gullible public will buy all the above.
investors may not though...
Utilities could use their financial advantage to help people buy energy efficient appliances and thereby end up burning less coal. Back in the early 1990s I took advantage of a program offered by the nat gas company to install a more efficient furnace. Financing the widespread installation of ground source heat pumps for home cooling could significantly cut the amount of coal burned each summer.
UN: Clouds of pollution threaten glaciers, health
BEIJING – A dirty brown haze sometimes more than a mile thick is darkening skies not only over vast areas of Asia, but also in the Middle East, southern Africa and the Amazon Basin, changing weather patterns around the world and threatening health and food supplies, the U.N. reported Thursday.
The huge smog-like plumes, caused mainly by the burning of fossil fuels and firewood, are known as "atmospheric brown clouds."
http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20081114/ap_on_sc/as_china_brown_clouds;_ylt=...
Just seems way too early to celebrate. The primary result of this action will be keeping old "very dirty technology" grandfathered coal plants online. Until the CO2 emissions issue is addressed head-on, don't expect much change. Doing things thru th back door of legal rulings is a cop-out.
The Clean Air Act as it is now is really not the right kind of tool for CO2. "Major" facility starts at 250 Tons per Year of a given pollutant. Folks in the CO2 arena start looking at facilities above 10,000 tons per year.
Plus, the BACT regime doesn't allow for trading.
The best possible effect of this ruling might be that it spurs the Congress to add a cap and trade title to the CAA, like it did for Acid Rain (Title IV). The Obama Administration could pick up a few GOP votes buy coupling that CO2 Title with revisions to the NAAQS requirements (like reviewing them every 10 years instead of 5, allowing economic impact to be part of the consideration for revisions, etc.).
Let me weigh-in from a regulatory point of view (particularly since I both teach people these regulations and work in the regulatory framework). If you are regulatory policy wonk, you’ll do just fine. If you aren’t, you’ll have the same reaction that most people have when they find someone like me who actually understand the underlying mechanism: I’m a “sick puppy.” Be forewarned, this is a long post.
Though some will read this as a reason not to do something, I present this from the standpoint and assertion that a completely different regulatory framework is required than the one being pursued by the Sierra Club. The “remedy” that they are seeking will not be to their or your liking.
Let’s start, briefly, with the idea of BACT (Best Available Control Technology). BACT is an emission limit, not a ”control technology.” And BACT is shortened because the final words “Considering Cost” are often not included. Those of us that have been in the environmental business since the beginning know this to be the regulatory (and statutory) definition of BACT. And there is much involved in a BACT determination (which, under PSD rules, is a case-by-case determination that includes “no controls” as one of the regulatory options due to cost considerations). Let me leave this for a moment to deal with some other regulatory issues before returning to the PSD/BACT issues.
The Mass v. EPA ruling from the US Supreme Court essentially directed EPA to treat CO2 as an air pollutant under EPA’s own definitions. The Congress can override that requirement by specifically exempting CO2 in revision to the Clean Air Act statutory language, but it hasn’t thus far.
So, what does it mean to be a regulated pollutant? Well, there are two paths. First, in source specific regulations the EPA can propose and promulgate emission limits specifically for CO2. For example, under the New Source Performance Standards (NSPS), the EPA could revise and amend specific regulations to add the emission limits for specific source categories like fossil-fuel fired steam generators (under the general Subpart D heading of 40 CFR 60), portland cement manufacturing (Subpart F) or kraft pulp mills (Subpart BB), to name but a few examples.
The “problem” would be setting an emission standard for each one of these industries for the NSPS that represented an industry-wide BACT. Once regulated in this manner, the EPA could set a “significance level” that is then used as part of the PSD process. If the EPA did not set a significance level then any increase of a regulated pollutant (under PSD) would have to be considered under the site-specific PSD evaluation.
The other path to being a regulated pollutant would be to follow the path for other criteria pollutants (i.e., to designate CO2 and possibly other GHGs with their CO2e values as criteria pollutants) with National Ambient Air Quality Standards (NAAQS, pronounced “nacks”) established for CO2. The NAAQS values for ambient concentration apply everywhere in the US and are based upon public health and welfare. Primary values of the NAAQS are based upon public health, secondary values are public welfare (they can be one in the same). Under this procedure, a NAAQS value would be set that would be “protective of human health.” The current criteria pollutants are fine particulate matter (PM-2.5 or particulate matter with a mean aerodynamic diameter of 2.5 microns or less), SO2, NOx (as NO2), ozone, carbon monoxide, and lead. Since ozone is a product of the reaction between volatile organic compounds (VOCs) and NOx in the presence of sunlight, control strategies are usually a blend of VOC and NOx controls.
These are all concentration standards set over an averaging time. Some of the standards are more complicated than others (e.g., the “new” ozone standard). The concentration value for the ozone NAAQS is 0.075 ppmv over 8-hrs. Attainment of the standard is demonstrated by taking the fourth-highest reading for each calendar year for three consecutive years and averaging them. If the average is 0.074 or less, an area is deemed to be in “attainment.” Failure to meet these values means that an area is designated as “nonattainment.”
In either case, rules would be required under the State Implementation Plan (SIP) to either maintain the attainment status or to achieve attainment of the standard within a certain time-period. Areas designated as nonattainment operate under somewhat different (and more restrictive) rules than attainment areas that apply to both new and existing sources including both stationary, mobile, and possibly area sources.
Let’s say, for the purpose of discussion, that CO2 is regulated as the first type (source category regulations, not as a criteria pollutant under NAAQS). How would that work?
First, is the nature of the PSD regulations themselves. They apply only in areas and for pollutants that are designated as attainment. If there are no NAAQS standards, then the PSD rules may apply. And entry into the rules is gained as follows (there are some subtleties I’m going to skip over): if the source is a new source (greenfield) AND if the potential to emit of any regulated pollutant is greater than 250 tons per year, then PSD/BACT review is required unless the source category is one of 28 designated categories where the threshold is only 100 tons per year. It does not matter which pollutant it is, any one over threshold gets you into the regulatory program.
Now, once in the program because of any pollutant, you then look at the pollutants for which the emissions levels are “significant.” EPA defines the significance levels. These are the pollutants that are evaluated under PSD for BACT.
It gets considerably more complicated for modifications of existing sources and I won’t attempt to cover that here. If you are really wonky, I can do that later in a separate post.
So, for each one of the regulated pollutants that are greater than their significance level, a level of emissions (an emissions standard) based upon controls and work practices is proposed and evaluated. The current approach is called a “top-down BACT” (I helped develop the top-down BACT approach with EPA back in 1986), where the best level of control (usually LAER or Lowest Achievable Emission Rate) is the first candidate and then the cost justifications for why this can or cannot be used is developed. If this is not feasible from a cost standpoint (something that needs to be justified), the next best control/emission rate is applied until the cost benefit is justified or we get to a “no control” and “no work practice” emission rate. You do that for each pollutant (sometimes control of one pollutant competes with the control strategy for another pollutant and so you have to strike a balance or just let one pollutant control go based upon a technical/cost justification). You eventually end up with a matrix of emission rates for the various regulated pollutants (“I know what you are thinking…why, oh why, didn’t I take the blue pill!”).
For those pollutants with a NAAQS value, the stack and emission parameters must be modeled to demonstrate that no violation of the NAAQS occurs (there are lots of subtleties to modeling which I won’t get into) and for the pollutants where “increments” are published (allowable degradation of the ambient air quality) a demonstration that the aggregate increment levels are not exceeded.
If modeling is successful, then we go to the next steps. If an exceedance occurs then some other (lower) emission rate or different stack parameters (within the limits of GEP stack heights) must be selected. I won’t bore you with all the next steps except one: other environmental concerns (which is a portion of the existing regulations that could have been used for many years). The regulations require this be addressed and it was in this section of the PSD program that EPA first regulated hazardous air pollutants for which no standard existed prior to the 1990 Clean Air Act Amendments.
If you’ve read this far, then I ask you to stay just a little longer.
If CO2 was regulated as if it was a criteria pollutant, then what concentration would be set as protecting the public health and welfare? Is it 350 ppmv on an annual basis? Is it 375? Is it 400? What constitutes protection of public health and welfare for CO2?
As a global and long-lived pollutant we could set (with solid reasoning) a level that is far below the current level (I would argue that we could not set it below the value prior to the industrial revolution), such that the entire US (and most of the global community) is in “nonattainment.” Under those circumstances, PSD would not apply and a combination of LAER and emission offsets (reductions) would be required for any major modification.
Under our current regulatory structure, regulatory implementation plans would be required and you and I could be compelled to lower our emission rates of CO2. Many people would not be happy campers when they were either directly limited to a ration of CO2 output or pay the full environmental cost of CO2 emissions ($$$$/ton).
Of course, the Sierra Club knows as well as I that with enough economic justification, that any power plant operator can go though the requirements, satisfy the bean counters, and end up with no additional control or change in emission rates from the current BAU model. All the “T’s” would be crossed and the “I’s” dotted, but using these rules might end up with no real change or a nightmare of a scenario (calculate the CO2 output of 6.5 billion people globally and 300 million in the US before we do anything else besides fogging a mirror and you’ll see what I mean).
It will take a different regulatory structure and focused national (and international) policy to address this. This ruling (as it goes through the appeals process) may serve to focus this issue.
Good grief!
So many abbreviations and yet still a very long post!
Now that's government level efficiency!
Well, I did warn you.
Besides it isn't a simple set of regs that the Sierra Club (or others) are dealing with. The irony of it all is that the relatively simple regulations we started out with more than 30 years ago were made more complex by...(wait for it) the power companies. Then, a few years ago they sued because the regs had gotten so complex that they were difficult to work with (the very thing they caused in the first place).
There are people in DC whose sole purpose seems to be to condense speech entirely to s series of acronyms.
I'll take simple regulations over untransparent complicated ones based on bubble hysteria any time. A small vanilla carbon tax, no riff-raff, no exceptions, starting in 2010, escalating every year. Revenue gets recycled back into the economy via income tax reductions or rebates. Improves PPP (allows people to buy the more expensive plugin-hybrids and efficient thingies), improves macro economical equity at trivial macro-economic cost. In these turbulent times what we need is simplicity and certainty in markets.
That said I'll also take complicated regulation over no regulation any time.
IEA WORLD ENERGY OUTLOOK
Today the IEA released its World Energy Outlook 2008. Here are some excerpts. First, the IEA comes down clearly on the debate over whether stabilization at 450 ppm (CO2) can be achieved with existing technologies. They say no way:
"The scale of the challenge in the 450 Policy Scenario is immense: the 2030 emissions level for the world as a whole in this scenario is less than the level of projected emissions for non-OECD countries alone in the Reference Scenario. In other words, the OECD countries alone cannot put the world onto the path to 450-ppm trajectory, even if they were to reduce their emissions to zero. Even leaving aside any debate about the political feasibility of the 450 Policy Scenario, it is uncertain whether the scale of the transformation envisaged is even technically achievable, as the scenario assumes broad deployment of technologies that have not yet been proven. The technology shift, if achievable, would certainly be unprecedented in scale and speed of deployment. Increased public and private spending on research and development in the near term would be essential to develop the advanced technologies needed to make the 450 Policy Scenario a reality."
Second, to illustrate the scale of the problem the IEA projects what would happen if every power plant build starting today were to be carbon dioxide free, finding a small impact on future emissions growth:
"The rate of capital-stock turnover is particularly slow in the power sector, where large up-front costs and long operating lifetimes mean that plants that have already been built - and their associated emissions - are effectively "locked-in". In the Reference Scenario, three-quarters of the projected output of electricity worldwide in 2020 (and more than half in 2030) comes from power stations that are already operating today. As a result, even if all power plants built from now onwards were carbon-free, CO2 emissions from the power sector would still be only 25%, or 4 Gt, lower in 2020 relative to the Reference Scenario."
The IEA could even be overly optimistic, with aggressive assumptions about the viability of carbon capture and storage, the political acceptability of a very high price on carbon dioxide ($180 per tonne in the 450 scenario), and the continuing issue of embedded assumptions of spontaneous decarbonization as we discussed in our Nature paper last spring.
http://sciencepolicy.colorado.edu/prometheus/iea-world-energy-outlook-4714
The entire pdf file
http://www.iea.org/Textbase/npsum/WEO2008SUM.pdf
India just reaffirmed its view: "India today ruled out a global action plan to tackle the challenge of climate change and strongly favoured initiatives tailored to suit local needs. "You cannot have a global action plan on climate change."
http://in.news.yahoo.com/20/20081111/1416/tnl-sibal-rules-out-global-act...
Interesting article on global warming:
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/opinion/main.jhtml?xml=/opinion/2008/11/16/do...
More balanced treatment here:
Mountains and molehills
As for this comment:
Anthony Watts and Steve McIntyre, the Canadian computer analyst who won fame for his expert debunking of the notorious "hockey stick" graph...
Here's the updated hockey-stick graph, with even more solid data:
Progress in reconstructing climate in recent millennia
Figure: Spaghetti plot of the new reconstructions over a) 1800 and b) 1000 years
along with selected older ones for comparison.