60 Minutes this Sunday takes on clean coal — or lack thereof (see “Is coal with carbon capture and storage a core climate solution?“).
The reporter, Scott Pelley, and the producers definitely know their stuff. They interviewed me for about an hour a few months ago, so I have no idea what parts they’re going to use. Jim Roger of Duke will be on it. I think Hansen also.
Interestingly, on the House panel today with Gore, former GOP Sen. Jim Warner of Virginia dissed the coal industry’s clean coal ads and said, “we know clean coal is not around the corner.”
Warner urged passage of Waxman-Markey and said “future generations will look back” on what Congress does here:
This is serious business. This particular moment in history is crucial.
Hear! Hear!
Previous in TP Climate Progress
Lots of people in high places are pining hopes on this as the only thing that will save us.
It is about time, because time is short. Yesterday, according to Nightly Business Reports on PBS,
at a price 23 percent higher than that of 2008. Two things to note. They have a long term (till 2018) contract with PPL and that keeps the conveyor belt running. The other is that the cost of coal is going up while the cost of solar is coming down. Maybe it is time to revise some of the charts we all use.
Wes Rolley
CoChair, EcoAction Committee, Green Party US
“Clean coal” makes no sense to me. Digging more coal out of the ground at this point is suicide.
The technology of clean coal including CCS, applied to biomass and biocarbon might be the only way to stop runaway global warming.
From mongabay (originally from biopact):
Doing this could have a huge, synergistic effect on the climate crisis.
The oil industry, and so possibly CBS, does not appear to want a solution to the climate crisis. The oil industry appears to want to drill in an ice free arctic, and go after the estimated 90 billion barrels of oil there, and long term, after the huge supply of methane hydrate there.
Paley, of CBS, and also Walter Cronkite have long term associations with David Rockefeller (ExxonMobil, Council on Foreign Relations), by the way.
http://afgen.com/media_control.html
Erratum: *John* Warner.
Oh, and Jim Roger*s*.
This is a step in the right direction for sure, I’ll write my congressman and ask him to support the Waxman Markey bill. The future of our entire planet depends on what we do RIGHT NOW, not 10 years down the line.
The UK is fudging the issue as well:
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/uk_politics/8014295.stm
“For the Lib Dems, Martin Horwood was concerned that by only insisting on 100% CCS use when the technology was deemed ready, Mr Miliband had inserted a “dirty great loophole big enough for some of the dirtiest power stations possible to fit into”. “
That’s great that you’ll be on 60 minutes. give them hell, eh, I hope you did a good job. and that 60 minutes does a good job on the segment.
What a relief we got a good President. and a democratic congress. Now only if they can do something.
A million BTU of heat from coal comes with about twice the “dirt” as a million BTU of natural gas.
Five hundred thousand BTU from coal comes with the same “dirt” as a million BTU of natural gas.
If a new system uses half as much energy from coal as an old system, the new system becomes just as “clean” as if you had continued to waste energy from natural gas operating the old way.
My point being, that there are different ways to accomplish the goal.
It may be very difficult politically to get rid of coal, and if the efforts to do so get too extreme, maybe it would be better to think about working the other side of the problem, that being to find ways to dramatically reduce consumption.
The stimulus recovery act contains several billions for futuregen in Illinois.
Both the President and the Vice President campaigned that American development of “clean coal” is a strategic necessity. Their clearly stated position is that we must develop this technology not for ourselves, but for the Chinese. President Obama reaffirmed this position in recent remarks on global solutions.
New graph:
http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2009/04/090424195920.htm
It is funny how nuclear energy suddenly became green overnight. Now it is coal. The oil lobby is working hard to make to have itself also relabeled green based on risky carbon sequestration technology.
Under cap-and-trade, this could very well happen. These energies could be considered green even though they would continue producing toxic emissions, flows, and/or by-products. This is why structural strategies (see A Structural Strategy for Global Warming AND the Environment) are a better avenue for the future.
Tags: Cap-and-Trade Alternatives
Hi Jim Bullis. You are right about ”working on the other side of the problem”. However, there will be no success to try to lower the consumption. There are to many outside of US, EU, etc who are desperate to start consuming. And they will do it as soon as the price for energy is low enough (which it would be if you eventually succeeded to lower the Wester consumption). ”The other side” is the source of carbon.
You have to figure out a way to lower the mining of fossil carbon. -Yes, the actual source. Whatever is brought up from the ground will eventually be burned and will increase the greenhouse effect as well as acidifying the ocean. Whatever incentive mankind tries needs to have an effect upon the mining of carbon. If it hasn’t, then it will not work.
So why doesn’t our leaders think about this? Because it involves potential conflicts of interests with foreign countries’ and companies internal affairs.
But lets be realistic: At the same rate as the ”developed” world becomes more efficient and decrease the consumption, the developing world will increase their use of fossil energy. What limits the emissions of CO2 is the rate at which the fossil companies can extract oil, gas, and coal from the ground. I.e. the ”peak oil, gas and coal -curve is an approximate limit for the emissions.
The same amount of carbon as is technically and economically available will eventually turn up in the atmosphere. That is if somebody don’t do anything about the actual mining off fossil carbon. Jim Hansen has proposed a Carbon Tax and Dividend (http://www.columbia.edu/~jeh1/mailings/2009/20090226_WaysAndMeans.pdf)
(It is not about the consumption. However, when the mining of carbon has come to and end, you will want to have you renewable energy -to maintain welfare.)
Hi Martin Hedberg,
You raise a serious issue, but I am hoping that the developing world is really more interested in improving the quality of life for themselves than just increasing consumption.
I even think that it is possible for the developed world, USA and EU, to maintain the quality of life we now have if we are willing to rethink our basic systems. For example, if we look carefully at how we mostly use personal cars, there are some intriguing opportunities for dramatic new ways of building such cars. Formidable obstacles to change still exist, but if we are only asking people to change their idea of fashion in the automobile, but can still offer the same main functions, then change might be more palatable.
We can actually build a car that will travel well over 80 mph while providing safety and comfort to the occupants; it just has to look different from the way we have learned a car should look.
We can also generate electric power on a distributed cogeneration basis and get two to three times as much electric power for the same amount of natural gas now used in our central electric power generating plants. And this can be planned as a graceful transition of the present grid concept.
So if the developing nations see such things as possible, maybe they will be satisfied with the quality of life improvement that they can rather quickly achieve. And there will be no great pressure to simply consume in the most wasteful way possible. Indeed, maybe they will reject our example of the past 100 years.
As paulm said “Lots of people in high places are pining hopes on this as the only thing that will save us.”
Paul you’re right, alot of people are thinking this will fix it all. We’re gonna need this and a whole lot more – outside of a relatively small audience who are very informed on climate change, I don’t think most people have any clue about our situation (at least here in the US). But this will be the first watered down (politically bent) step.
It bears repeating that “clean coal” is a hope, not a reality. It is not even a realistic plan, given the state of the art regarding post-combustion CO2 capture and storage or conversion. FutureGen and other IGCC plants solve the capture problem but they still have CO2 they have to dispose of somehow. The scale of the CO2 disposal problem is staggering.
Since nearly all coal plants burn pulverized coal, IGCC is of no use in retrofitting, although it does point the way to coal’s future. The problem is that we only have about 20 years to make a difference, and that means we have to do something soon about post-combustion capture and conversion at the existing fleet of pulverized coal plants.
As for underground dumping of CO2 (which goes by the euphemism “sequestration”), the GAO found serious obstacles to its deployment, including liability concerns. Who wants a lethal gas dump under where they live, and who will insure the risk it won’t leak out? http://www.gao.gov/new.items/d081080.pdf
To get India and China and the rest of the world to do something meaningful soon, we have to find some way of recycling CO2 into valuable products, so it will be viewed as a resource instead of waste. I believe we can do that by using renewables to crack CO2.
Unless CO2 somehow became a valuable resource on a very large scale, it seems that it will continue to make more sense to apply renewables to displacing fossil carbon in the first place. Until we get to a point of having a surplus of carbon-neutral energy (not anytime soon), it should be used as efficiently and directly as possible. In the foreseeable future, that probably excludes trying to process such a ubiquitous combustion by-product as CO2.
Hi again Jim Bullis.
Yes there is a chance that we can mitigate climate change, but it won’t happen if we do not see the whole system.
A rhetorical question: -How many low energy light bulbs do we need to stop the ice from melting?
Answer (?) -It is not the right question!
What we need to do is make sure the carbon stays in the ground, the forest on the ground (and a couple of other things). -And prevent bad things from happening as we do this!
The low energy light bulbs, efficient cars, renewable energy etc (eco-consumption?) is to be able to produce welfare, not to mitigate climate change, once we manage to mitigate climate change. It is part of the solution, but it is not The solution.
Climate change is about risk. (Definition: Risk = probability x effect). In trying to mitigate climate change, there is a risk that we introduce other risks, many of them fairly well known by the public. For example international conflicts. This hinders us from seeing the whole system and problem (even that geopolitical conflicts is part of the climate problem).
Alex J — I would agree with you if wind could substitute for coal in providing baseload power. But since wind is intermittent, and there is no energy storage for wind, it would go to waste at night, when it is most abundant and when there is already excess coal and nuclear power in the spinning reserve. Solar provides much less power than wind, but it is available during the day, so solar power can substitute pro tanto for coal during the day if there is some way to connect it to the grid.
Night wind could be used to crack at least some of the day coal emissions, to produce oxygen for oxyfuel combustion and solid carbon for all sorts of things, perhaps including carbon nanotubes, which are very valuable. CO2 could be, in effect, the energy storage medium for wind.
Maybe it’s an exaggeration to say that only greed can save the planet, but it’s a much more powerful motivator than compassion for the polar bear. That’s especially true in developing economies. The often heard scolding of “stop driving” “turn off your TV” and “stop eating meat” is not going to change many minds in China.
The question becomes one of net return on input. With solar thermal at least, there’s an inherent storage potential. With wind, we’d have to ask whether cracking CO2 would provide a higher return than generating hydrogen or using some other storage method. Or using nighttime power for charging vehicles before routing it to where morning demand is ramping up.
Potential gains from by-product materials would be a consideration. I’m just not sure what the market will look like in the next few decades, or the production capacity for things like CO2-based nanotubes. And if biochar takes off, that’s another source of high purity carbon. But I agree that arguments of economy are often the most powerful ones. Particularly when the threat of rapid interglacial warming remains a largely fuzzy concept in the public mind. That’s one reason we need something like cap & trade, to put a price on using the atmosphere as an open sewer. And perhaps distribute some allowance auction proceeds to incentive programs.
Energy sources pro and con…
Sun, wind: :-) Lasts for another billion years, very small impact :-( Intermittent
Fossil carbon: :-) We already have the infrastructure, :-( Not much left, However enough to create catastrophic changes for our own living conditions.
Leaving the carbon in the ground is The Prime question (not how to replace it). Secondary question: Can we create welfare only using renewable energy.
Sequestering carbon dioxide is too expensive
I’m a chemical engineer with extensive experience designing and cost justifying projects including carbon dioxide removal using amine scrubbers, pressure swing absorbers, membrane and cryogenic separators, and alternate energy. My back-of-the-envelope calculations indicate the capital and operating costs of removing the CO2 from coal fired energy plants would be massive. By the way, the market for carbon dioxide for soft drinks, etc is minuscule compared with the amount that would be generated.
The initial capital cost of wind, solar, and geothermal would also be high, but the operating costs for these would be much smaller than burning coal. Also, since these technologies are relatively new, the experience curve would be steep so future costs have the potential of being much lower.
One of the best ways I found to assess technologies is to look for the simplicity of the process. This is an offshoot of Occam’s razor. The ultimate sources for our energy are two very large nuclear reactors: the sun and internal earth. The closer we get to these ultimate sources of energy, the better our chances of obtaining it at minimal cost and damage to our earth.
Solar direct conversion is the simplest: solar panels on roof/ power. Wind power is also simple: solar heat/ wind/ windmill/ distribution/ power. Coal is more complex: grow plants with solar/ age under pressure for millions of years/ dig from ground/ restore land/ burn in power plants/ remove carbon dioxide/ bury carbon dioxide in ground/ distribution/ power.
As a chemical engineer I would relish designing and building CO2 sequestering plants. However, considering capital and long term costs, I’d have to put my money on other energy sources. The long term ROI for clean coal just doesn’t add up.
Lynn Lanier
The ultimate sources for our stüdyo energy are two very large nuclear reactors: the sun and internal earth