Yesterday, I wrote a story for the Gazette print edition about a new Harvard study that purports to detail the Realistic Costs of Carbon Capture from coal-fired power plants.
In a nutshell, the study puts the costs of capturing and storing greenhouse gas emissions from coal-fired power plants much higher than previous studies. Harvard researchers projected first-generation plants with CCS might double the cost of electricity. The costs might drop as the technology matures, but could still increase power production rates by as much as 50 percent.
This study also got some attention from The Wall Street Journal’s Environmental Capital blog, which called it a “reality check for clean coal.”
That’s probably right. But what kind of reality check? As I thought about this, it became clear that, in the national discussion over the American Clean Energy and Security Act, the coal industry is trying to have it both ways. Coal lobbyists want to argue that “clean coal” is here, but then also demand that the climate legislation working its way through Congress be further watered down, to give them more time to perfect and deploy carbon capture and storage technology.
First, let’s look at what coal is doing to trick the public into thinking that CCS technology is here, ready to go …
The other day, I tweeted and blogged about some comments singer/songwriter Steve Earle made in introducing his song “The Mountain” during a Mountain Stage radio show. I got a quick Twitter response from the folks at an industry front group called the American Coalition for Clean Coal Energy, who tweet under the name of their blog, AmericasPower:
 @Kenwardjr Actually, the Edwardsport IGCC plant will reduce CO2 by up to 45% http://sn.im/factuality5
That’s what these industry folks are doing. If anyone in the media dares to point out questions or problems with their scheme to capture carbon dioxide emissions and pump them underground, coal’s mouthpieces sprinkle the PR equivalent of pixie dust, to make it sound like CCS is some kinda magic potion to save us all.
Just take a look at the group’s blog, Behind the Plug, which is basically a collection of press releases aimed at showing that CCS will work, is working, and is going to be a huge part of our energy future.
Contrast that to the statements being made by coal industry officials in opposition to the current climate change bill:
– The National Mining Association, complains the bill “mandates near-term emission reductions before [CCS] technologies can be deployed.”
– CONSOL Energy vice president Steve Winberg, testifying to Congress last week, said CCS technologies “may be commercially viable by 2020, [but] they will not yet be deployed to a sufficient extent to avoid a serious impact on electricity prices and reliability.” He added:
Coal is our most abundant domestic energy resource and we need sustained investment in CCS technology and the time to develop, demonstrate and commercialize it. Emissions targets and timetables must be aligned with the pace of technology development.
– Friend of Coal skydiver Congressman Nick J. Rahall, explaining his vote in the House against the climate change bill, said the emissions reductions requirements are “still too high and too soon to incentivize rapid development and deployment of carbon capture and sequestration technologies so as to ensure coal-mining jobs in the future.”
– The United Mine Workers union, admitting that “the future of coal is intact” because of billions of dollars in CCS subsidies, still refusing to support the legislation and seeking more changes to benefit the industry.
– And don’t even get me started on my buddy, West Virginia Coal Association President Bill Raney, who fooled the Bluefield paper into writing this in an editorial:
According to Raney, the Obama administration is attempting to penalize the public — and coal producing regions such as southern West Virginia — based on a science that no one has a consensus on. Raney argues there are still differences of opinion regarding climate change and global warming.
Coal operators and coal-fired utilities (not to mention the mine workers union) want us to believe that CCS will work — and in fact is working — so that the public won’t demand a tougher climate bill, or tougher restrictions (or abolition) of mountaintop removal coal mining, toxic coal-ash impoundments, etc. That’s why they lure the media into writing glowing reports about CCS projects, without ever making it clear that they are very small, experimental efforts.
But, they also want us to believe that any really tough climate bill with a strong near-term emissions reductions requirement is just too much, too soon.
That doesn’t make for an honest debate.
The truth is, even experts don’t know if — let alone when — CCS is going to be ready to be installed on hundreds of coal-fired power plants across the country (and indeed, across the planet).
As I’ve pointed out before on Coal Tattoo, quoting Andrew Revkin’s New York Times’ Dot Earth blog:
Vaclav Smil, an energy expert at the University of Manitoba, has estimated that capturing and burying just 10 percent of the carbon dioxide emitted over a year from coal-fire plants at current rates would require moving volumes of compressed carbon dioxide greater than the total annual flow of oil worldwide — a massive undertaking requiring decades and trillions of dollars. “Beware of the scale,†he stressed.
You can read the paper in which Smil makes this argument here.
The new Harvard study I wrote about this week is yet another indication of the huge challenge that faces coalfield communities if coal is going to remain a viable energy source in a carbon-constrained world. Other previous major studies by MIT and the Union of Concerned Scientists drew similar conclusions and spelled out similar concerns.
There have been a lot of cheesy comparisons made between efforts to rework out energy system and the Apollo space program that put men on the Moon. But one area that seems worth thinking about is the plain talk President Kennedy gave the country about how going to the Moon was going to be hard, and that was part of why it was worth doing:
We choose to go to the moon in this decade and do the other things, not because they are easy, but because they are hard, because that goal will serve to organize and measure the best of our energies and skills, because that challenge is one that we are willing to accept, one we are unwilling to postpone, and one which we intend to win, and the others, too.
Cleaning up coal — if it can be done — might be an even bigger challenge. Can’t we at least be clear about that?
Subscribe to the Coal Tattoo
Ken,
Excellent. Thanks so much for shedding the light on this spin. Am sharing this with my colleagues at PRWatch and at Poynter. Thanks, too, for the link to the study–will check it out and also share it on the listserves.
One of the things that worries me and that I do not see discussed is the problem of co2 escaping once placed underground. Just imagine how much co2 we are thinking of placing underground year after year and if it were to “bubble” out it would suffocate every airbreathing animal in that location. clean coal technology is more pr than reality and some of the realities of clean coal have not even been brought up. Perhaps the coal companies have a vested interest in keeping the argument geared to whether it will work and not whether it is potentially very dangerous.
Great post, this blog is still kicking it!
The strongest arguments (to me) for supporting massive funding for immediate CCS research and deployment, and paying for those costs from revenues charged for carbon emissions, are:
(1) no one can properly estimate the costs of CCS and thereby its real utility without real-world experience, and we have none ;
(2) keeping the CCS option alive and viable helps widen the political circle for beginning the emissions limitation regime now, which is crucial;
(3) there are a number of disinterested and leanrned people who believe that no matter what the coat of CCS turns out to be, unless it is available to China and India, civilization is basically over.
Yes, I know CCS gives the coal industry cover for continuing mining and even MTR. That’s another discussion.
Ken, Todd,
I’ve never been clear on this, when Smil is talking about emissions captured over a year, is that 10% of global emissions, 10% of US emissions, or what exactly? Later, he uses the adjective “worldwide” to clarify the infrastructure requirements.
There is an old saying about pv solar–no doubt a bit out of date w/ respect to the numbers but still valid–for every $1 invested in efficiency, you save $10 in the cost of your system.
This same concept applies to CCS. It’s a lot cheaper to make power plants more efficient and to encourage more efficient use of electricity across the economy. We should be spreading our research dollars and our subsidies around and not putting every egg in the CCS basket.
What began as a fiends of coal pr campaign, is about to become a phenomenally expensive boondoggle, one with potentially tragic consequences for the planet. The most absurd part is that coal is encouraged to grow while CCS is developed–the growth in emissions from coal under W-M will wipe out all the gains from the new automobile fuel efficiency standards Obama announced last spring.
In effect, consumers will be subsidizing coal twice, once when they purchase more expensive vehicles that help reduce US GHG emissions, and again via the direct transfer of federal monies.
Red Desert, good question about Smil. I think studying some of his work is possible online, and it would be a good project to answer this, and report back to Ken.
According to Joe Romm’s blog Climate Progress, the huge built-in incentives and subsidies and direct research investments in solar and wind and biomass and efficiency in all pending climate legislation dwarf support for CCS.
Romm also says that given the likely role of gas in the next few decades, coal is going to have a hard time, even with the CCS regime in W-M or more.
Also, according to the scientists and economists at the UCS, Pew Climate Trust, MIT, IPCC, IEA and more, there is a substantial intellectual basis for the position that CCS quite possibly can be made to work, albeit at a substantial cost — and that cost is worth determining and exploring in the real world, now. I simply can’t discount their expertise.
Yes, CCS would help coal mining continue, with all of its other externalities,including MTR — in the short-run as we explore it, and if it works, in the longer-term. And that is another discussion.
Finally, I think the next big issue related to coal and climate change (much more important than CCS) is the “safety valve” that some people in the Senate, including possibly Jay Rockefeller, are going to want to put in place in a climate bill.
It would allow more emissions permits to be issued if the price of energy goes over a certain level — that would throw the economy into a depression. I’m certainly no expert, but from my reading, I get the impression that a “safety valve” may be necessary to get a climate bill passed. If so, I’m for it.
Great subject here — what do folks think?
American power producers expect to have to limit CO2 emissions because the reality of climate change will eventually force the hand of even the most reactionary governments. What worries them is that the research and demonstration projects necessary to identify and optimize ways of reducing greenhouse gases will be so delayed by our corrupt political system that the remedies put in place will be too late to prevent much of the damage and much more expensive than they need to be.
I don’t know if carbon sequestration is economically feasible and nobody else does either. We aren’t going to find out without getting some practical, large-scale experience with the available technologies. Detailed plans exist for the needed facilities–I’ve worked on some of them myself–but political roadblocks and the uncertainties associated with the current economic crisis have stalled many programs. The expense involved in these projects is considerable, but not prohibitively great. We should probably also be funding more work on new and cheaper nuclear technologies and other power sources while simultaneously doing everything we can to decrease power consumption. Instead, we are effectively doing nothing while bickering about the options as if a magic bullet were in prospect.
Here’s a link to Romm’s latest on gas:
http://climateprogress.org/2009/07/21/game-changer-robert-f-kennedy-jr-end-america%e2%80%99s-deadly-coal-power-addiction-unconventional-natural-gas/
Romm’s thinking seems to be that no matter how much money goes into CCS, or how low of a safety valve is set, if gas pans out, emissions will start dropping pretty fast and get us through the beginning of the transition.
That’s why painting CCS and other short-term accommodations to coal interests as planetary treason may be exaggerated.
Red Desert, Tom Rodd:
If you look at the paper I posted a link to (http://home.cc.umanitoba.ca/~vsmil/pdf_pubs/oecd.pdf) check out page 21 (as they are numbered, it’s page 22 of the pdf file). The first full paragraph … he’s talking about global emissions.
Smil also had a comment in Nature about this, http://home.cc.umanitoba.ca/~vsmil/pdf_pubs/nature2008.pdf –
“Carbon sequestration is irresponsibly portrayed as an
imminently useful large-scale option for solving the challenge.
But to sequester just 25% of CO2 emitted in 2005 by large
stationary sources of the gas (9.6 Gm3 at the supercritical
density of 0.468 g cm¬3), we would have to create a system
whose annual throughput (by volume) would be slightly more
than twice that of the world’s crude-oil industry, an undertaking
that would take many decades to accomplish.”
One thing that strikes me is that the coal industry and its supporters really want to claim that the science is not settled about climate change — as Raney argued, that there is no consensus that the world is warming because of human activities like burning coal.
On the one hand, there seems to be a lot more unsettled questions about CCS than there are about the basic science of global warming.
BUT, if folks who want to argue that the IPCC is the standard for science on these issues are going to be consistent, then they need to understand that the IPCC advocates CCS. Read their special report on the subject here:
http://www.ipcc.ch/pdf/special-reports/srccs/srccs_wholereport.pdf
Of course, they also outline gaps in knowledge that are important to understand.
Ken.
Thomas,
I basically agree with most everything you say. What I want to see is that the money for coal research go to things that reduce emissions now–switching to gas or biomass for example–or making the power plants more efficient. (Let’s build plants that beat the 50% threshold.) By doing these things first, CCS becomes more realistic later. Boosting inefficient coal today with the hope a future CCS do-hickey will solve everything is an expensive and possibly dangerous bet to make. Environmentalist and economists argue that it is important to start reducing greenhouse gases now. The problem is just too enormous. Why should emissions from coal be any different?
Joe Romm is onto something. I think the US may get more reductions switching to natural gas than from W-M over the next ten years. It may well happen w/o cap and trade. Pro-coal commentator Brandon put a bunch of links on Coal Tattoo today lamenting mining layoffs. One article said coal was loosing out to “cheaper natural gas.”
Think where the US could be in 2020 with the conservation/efficiency measures in W-M, the new CAFE standards, and a switch to natural gas for some of our electricity generation. It would be cheap and make our economy stronger, too.
Several things about the Harvard Study in the above post. I looked quickly at it, but have these comments–(corrections welcome)
1) It studied new (yet-to-be-constructed) IGCC plants w/ integrated CCS. These are not costs for capture at existing plants or even for capture at brand new, state of the art pulverized coal plants.
2) The kilowatt per hour retail costs seemed low relative to the high capture costs. How were these calculated?
3) The study was from the Kennedy School of Government at Harvard. It’s kind of a policy school rather than a technical or engineering school.
Finally, the safety valve that I know about in W-M works this way. Each year the government “banks” (withholds) 1-3% of the allowances. Then, if the average price exceeds the average calculated over the preceding three years by more than 60%, banked allowances are released to bring the price down. I think the president can also create more allowances if a significant need is perceived.
Well, I think we are not seeing the big picture here, whether you love coal or hate coal CCS is part of a much bigger picture. There are several things we need to do like strengthen our economy by creating more jobs to be able to afford the change, come up with a quick affordable solution to carbon emissions, and make it a global solution.
In order to improve our current debt problem, we need to reinvest in America not sell it off for a quick profit as we have done in the past. We need to buy American and MFG in America- plain and simple. Does this mean you can’t own a car like a Toyota? No it does not. It means that the products need to employee some American Labor somewhere in its manufacture or pay a tariff if it is mfg out of country and no American jobs were used in the process. Seriously, the Japanese figured out how to work with tariffs years ago just mfg the parts in Japan and let American workers assemble the cars here. Still it creates good paying jobs for Americans and myself I am fine with that.
When we use federal money such as the Recovery Act for improvements to the infrastructure roads, power grids, etc, it needs to be required to pay prevailing wage rates, employee American Labor and if available use materials mfg in America. We need to reinstate tariffs on products mfg out of country if it is also mfg in the USA. We can’t compete with Chinese prison labor. We need to buy our energy products from US companies producing it in the USA not the Middle East. When energy producers invest in clean energy improvements we should provide funding only if the products such as wind turbines and solar are mfg in the USA. If you do all this there will be plenty of money in this economy to pay for the need improvements and technology that is needed to stop carbon emissions and reduce the deficit from the higher tax base created.
Now as for Carbon Capture the reason everyone is banking on it is that it is more of a global solution. Even if it is still a little more expensive than originally predicted globally, it is still more cost effective. From the floor at the UN to the White House people are making plans to use it and have been for awhile. Carbon Capture is more deployable and cost effective than other technology because most of the world produces electricity from coal. It would be easier and cheaper to upgrade their power plants than to scrap them and start over with wind or solar and a new grid system that is more efficient to support it. This doesn’t mean it is better or cleaner just more deployable for the cost. And as for gas the way the rates are increasing so unpredictably it might even cost more to use than Carbon Capture.
We also need Cap and trade on a global level to encourage that energy industry moves in the right direction and any country in the long term that is not agreeing or complying with the plan should be hit with UN sanctions. That way it is truly a global solution to a global problem. We also need to crack down on the companies mining coal to minimize the impact on the environment.
As we use CCS to cut the emissions quickly in the short term for the long term goals, we need to concentrate on plant by plant grid by grid to fazing in renewable energy solutions and gradually switching to a green economy. I believe if we do it in this way even if it is not the greenest solution it will be a better solution for a stronger green economy and be more affordable over the long run.
Interesting discussion!
A few thoughts:
1. I don’t mind spending on CCS research, as long as we ban new coal plants until CCS is possible.
2. A “safety valve” would not be safe for the planet. It would basically prevent the bill from achieving its goal of setting a price for carbon so that emissions reductions are incentivized. The only thing that’s made safe by a safety valve is industry profits.
According to author Richard Conniff, a 2007 Guggenheim Fellow, who writes on his blog 360
“The coal industry and its allies are spending more than $60 million to promote the notion that coal is clean. But so far, “clean coal†is little more than an advertising slogan.”
He goes on to reveal that the campaign to dupe the public into thinking coal has been paid for by Americans for Balanced Energy Choices, which bills itself as the voice of “over 150,000 community leaders from all across the country.†Among those leaders, according to ABEC’s website, are an environmental consultant, an interior designer, and a “complimentary healer.†Other, arguably louder, voices in the group include the world’s biggest mining company (BHP Billiton), the biggest U.S. coal mining company (Peabody Energy), the biggest publicly owned U.S. electric utility (Duke Energy), and the biggest U.S. railroad (Union Pacific). ABEC — whose domain name is licensed to the Center for Energy and Economic Development, a coal-industry group — merged with CEED on April 17 to form the American Coalition for Clean Coal Electricity (ACCCE).
Although Mr. Conniff wrote about the myth of Clean Coal over a year ago, does anyone doubt that they’ve spent far more on advertising than actually figuring out how to make coal cleaner?
At one point the industry was putting all its CO2 mitigation eggs into one basket which they’d tagged “FutureGen”, but apparently that plan was shelved when the runaway cost estimates were leaked to members of congress. FutureGen is the DOE/ coal industry’s joint venture program to design and build a large-scale prototype plant which will produce electricity and hydrogen from coal with no carbon or other emissions.
According to an AP report today (June 23, 2009) in the Chicago Tribune, the FutureGen Alliance just bought the final piece of property needed for the plant for a record-breaking $750,000 from Kurt and Michelle Theriault, who paid $155,000 for the Illinois property in 1971.
Alstom Power Inc. from Europe has already licensed a solution and will be the company that perfects it. They have 35 or more utilities from around the world investing in it right now and one of the pilot project with AEP and will be tested right here in WV . They also have some joint ventures going with DuPont on the technology. That myth of carbon capture will soon be reality the Alstom Power process works kindly like a converter on a car does bonding and transforming the carbon back to a solid and removing it from the plant exhaust then heating it back to a gas and pumping it into the ground.
http://www.aep.com/environmental/climatechange/carboncapture/
Bob,
I don’t think you actually read my post … Please go back and take a look –
I discussed the Alstom projects you tout here:
http://blogs.wvgazette.com/coaltattoo/2009/04/06/a-drop-in-the-bucket-dows-carbon-capture-project/#more-478
They are small pilot projects — nowhere near the scale that is needed to deal with this problem.
Same with the AEP project you tout — also discuss in that post — deals with just 1 percent of the plant’s CO2 emissions.
There’s a huge question being raised, not just by me, but by experts all over the world, about whether this stuff will work on the scale that is needed.
You state:
“That myth of carbon capture will soon be reality.”
We have absolutely no idea if that is true or not … that’s the problem — and if it turns out not to be true, what then?
Ken.
Ken,
This CCS debate misses the point that assuming the reality of climate change and its dangers, which it is prudent to do, some method of CO2 capture and sequestration is a necessity. That conclusion is obvious from the following largely indisputable facts:
1. Climate change is a global problem. Reduction of emissions in the US is a useless sacrifice if not matched by action elsewhere.
2. The developing world cannot afford and thus will not curtail power production as political stability and basic well being depend upon their ability to maintain and grow their ecconmies and that depends on affordable energy.
3. CCS is the best available means of reducing CO2 concentrations without the significant world wide curtailment of power usage which is unlikely or impossible.
4. While the feasiability and cost of CCS is uncertain, it is much more likely to be timely useful and cost effective than the hoped for advances in non fossil fuel sources of energy.
Thus, it is the anti coal folks who want it both ways – make coal use and mining unprofitable by enviromental regulation, with the sure ecconomic harm that necesarily entails, and refuse to fund the research and testing which could make the sacrifices to perhaps achieve enviromental goals useful.
Forrest
Forrest,
Thanks for those comments … perhaps you can have a talk with Bill Raney about the wisdom of believing the science on global warming, huh?
A lot of really smart people agree with you about the necessity of making CCS work … including the scientists who wrote the IPCC report I previously linked to (http://www.ipcc.ch/pdf/special-reports/srccs/srccs_wholereport.pdf).
My point is that it’s bad policy — and bad politics, in the end, I think — to not make clear to the public the hurdles, questions and complications of perfecting this technology and deploying it widely. The American people need to be challenged. And especially in coal country, the public (and the miners) need to understand there is a tough road ahead — and we are far from certain where it’s going to lead.
As for the rest of your comments, I think there are smart people who don’t necessarily think you’re right …
For example, this report from the Worldwatch Institute,
http://www.worldwatch.org/press/prerelease/EWP178.pdf, concludes that there are many ways to seek reductions in greenhouse gases besides relying on CCS. I’d encourage you to give it a read before making up your mind.
Even better is this report from the Union of Concerned Scientists (also linked to before on Coal Tattoo and above), http://www.ucsusa.org/assets/documents/clean_energy/Coal-power-in-a-warming-world.pdf.
Among other things, it recommends a halt to non-CCS coal plants as a way of directing the market to invest more and thus speed up the development of non-coal energy sources.
Finally, I would encourage you to review the word of two scientists at Princeton, who write about the “wedges” that can be used to stabilize CO2 emissions — CCS is just one of the strategies they advocate.
http://www.princeton.edu/~cmi/resources/stabwedge.htm
Best, Ken.
Ken,
I have reviewed that which I could and still beleive CCS is critical to any achieveable reduction in emissions sufficient to meet the concentration goals the world needs if the scientists are right. Each of the wedges suggested by the Princeton writers require governmental compulsion unlikely in developing countries or scientific advancement at least as uncertain as CCS. Moreover, they seem more difficult to achieve politically. If feasable, CCS, like sufphur capture, can be required and the only trade off is cost. Most of the other non technology partial solutions require changes in the way people live, and are thus moore complicated to impose.
Both the UN group and the “Concerned Scientists” push hard for CCS. While they also seek more difficult measures, they tout CCS and any other technology which can be provided developing countries.
As to the policy and politics of it, there is little hope that either side will see facts except through the lens of the goals they have. I understand Coal Industry exageration – survival is in issue. I cannot see the motivation that leads anti coal folks to ignore the global nature of the problem and insist on potentially hugh ecconomic harm here when the efforts to achieve a workable (global) solution must succeed to make that harm of any value.
Forrest
Forrest Roles:
Your question about people’s motivations is a good one.
If one is involved in challenging coal mining primarily due to its more local externalities (water pollution, land degradation, toxic byproducts), there is a natural tendency to view anything like CCS that would more readily permit coal mining to go forward — as a bad idea. That is the lens I think you are referring to. (And as you note, the same effect works with folks who see more local benefit than local harm from mining — they tend to really like the idea of CCS.)
But what about global benefits and externalities? is what I see you as asking.
The interplay between the debate/issues involved in weighing coal’s local externalities and benefits, and the debate/issues involved in weighing coal’s global externalities and benefits (more what you are referring to), is a common (if not always explicit theme) on this blog, I think.
It is often hard to separate those two related debates analytically, or to figure out what the best synthesis/approach is in any given situation. But I do think progress is being made, right here. What do you think?
Ken,
Yes I read it and you make some good points but while others are talking a good game about CCS this company is demonstrating it.
The thing people are hearing is that they are capturing only one percent of the carbon. In truth they are only pulling in one percent of the flue gas but, the process is extracting 80 to 90 percent of the carbon. This was proven at the Pleasant Prairie demonstration project that has operated on a 24/7 basis for over 4,600 hours, captured 88 to 90 percent of carbon dioxide emissions, and achieved 99-plus percent purity levels.
The data was first reported during an industry conference co-sponsored by the U. S. Department of Energy.
Over all, Alstom has a total of four demonstration projects operating or being built and six additional projects scheduled in the three major technologies it is pursuing: chilled ammonia, advanced amines, and oxy-combustion.
The data on the Pleasant Prairie project was released as part of a presentation made by officials of American Electric Power on a new carbon capture demonstration project that will be brought on line later this year at AEP’s Mountaineer power plant in New Haven, West Virginia.
The AEP Mountaineer project is the second in a three-phase process for validating and optimizing Alstom’s chilled ammonia technology before it is made commercially available in 2015. Mountaineer will be the first integrated demonstration project that burns coal, cleans the flue gas, captures the carbon dioxide (CO2), compresses it, and sequesters the CO2 at more than 8,000 feet (2,438 m) underground.
And let’s not forget that Alstom builds power plants worldwide and helped produce some of the most efficient turbines in the industry that made plants both coal and gas fire much more efficient and use less fuel. Their track record is very impressive. Usually a successful technology based company with a lot of experience and a good track record will not attempt a project this experimental, untried and unproven, unless they are sure they can succeed at it. Although they were only pulling aside 1% of the flue emissions, the efficiency is what counts. Up scaling to capture a bigger percentage of the emissions is not nearly as complicated as getting the chemistry and the procedure developed.
And as for CCS not working, I think if it doesn’t then we won’t be able to cut emissions in time and we won’t be able to stop or reverse global warming. I know I sound like I’m pro Coal but actually I’m not and I live in coal country and develop green and more efficient technology for business. If there was a better solution for miners, the economy, and the environment I would be the first onboard. I am just trying to be realistic and I believe that in the future we will eliminate coal and it will be replaced by a green economy and technology but that goal just can’t be accomplished overnight and will take many years to do and CCS will have to do until we get there.
Tom,
CCS does raise issues of what global energy policy should be. The point of my post is that given the realities of the global ecconomy and the need for energy to sustain developing countries’ emergance from grinding poverty, and the probability of global warming harm from necesary increased use of coal to produce that energy, we ma need action. Given the sucess of global cooperation exemplified by Kyoto, the best answer is in new technology. The apparently most promising is CCS.
I cannot see the motive of those who promote research in renewable energy, etc which does not promise to sufficiently reduce greenhouse emissions unless coupled with politically imposible to achieve reduction in energy use, opposing research in CCS unless simply agianst coal under any circumstances because of local externalities. If that is the case, then those who favor coal cannot persuade by refuting arguments based on global warming . Rather, the debate should be limited to what local regulation is appropriate. Maybe that is progress.
Forrest