Does the coal industry really believe that carbon sequestration can make coal-fired power plants climate friendly? It's got legislators and even some green campaigners believing so. Given the coal industry's troubled relationship with the truth, perhaps some skepticism is warranted.
The inimitable Sir Oolius points me to this post from M.J. Murphy. Murphy, obviously a masochist, overheard some intriguing things recently in the Climate Change Skeptics news group.
Recently, CEI emeritus Myron Ebel was complaining to the group about sequestration -- he noted that it's expensive and unworkable at scale. Along comes Richard S. Courtney, long-time climate change skeptic, former Senior Material Scientist for British Coal, now Technical Editor for CoalTrans International -- coal shill for life. He lifted the veil from Myron's eyes:
Firstly, the value of carbon sequestration is political: n.b. it is not technological or economic.
There is opposition to power generation systems that emit CO2 as waste (this is similar to opposition to nuclear power systems that emit radioactive waste). A response to the opposition is needed until the AGW scare is ended. And claims of carbon sequestration (cs) provide that needed response although everybody knows cs would be too expensive for it to be used. [my emphasis]
Inside Big Coal they are well aware that carbon sequestration is a boondoggle. They just need something, anything, to say in response to global warming.
According to Courtney, anyway. As Sir O says, "That's a rare candid moment from professional liars."
Why won’t Lisa Jackson/Nancy Sutley visit a mountaintop removal site?
Is “we’re going to burn the coal anyway” an argument for carbon sequestration?
Comments
View as Flat
sindark Posted 12:00 am
04 Sep 2007
The Summary for Policy Makers is available online:
http://arch.rivm.nl/env/int/ipcc/pages_media/SRCCS-final/ ...
So is the full report:
http://arch.rivm.nl/env/int/ipcc/pages_media/SRCCS-final/ ...
a sibilant intake of breath
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sindark Posted 1:06 am
04 Sep 2007
"Scenario studies indicate that the number of large point sources is projected to increase in the future, and that, by 2050, given expected technical limitations, around 20-40% of global fossil fuel CO2 emissions could be technically suitable for capture, including 30-60% of the CO2 emissions from electricity generation and 30-40% of those from industry. Emissions from large-scale biomass conversion facilities could also be technically suitable for capture. The proximity of future large point sources to potential storage sites has not been studied."
a sibilant intake of breath
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bigcitylib Posted 1:53 am
04 Sep 2007
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IfOnly Posted 2:11 am
04 Sep 2007
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Michael Tobis Posted 5:58 am
04 Sep 2007
I elaborate here.
mt
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David Roberts Posted 6:24 am
04 Sep 2007
Here it is, one last time: by the time you add the costs of Clean Air Act compliance, gasification, and sequestration -- the minimal required to make coal "clean" -- you get electricity that is far more expensive than renewable sources like efficiency and wind. For any given kWh of demand, it will be cheaper to eliminate the demand or satisfy the demand with wind power than it will to satisfy it with clean coal.
So why devote billions in public subsidies to develop a form of energy that's more expensive than forms of energy we already have?
(This is leaving aside, of course, the damage wrought by coal mining and the substantial mercury and sulfur emissions generated even by CAA-compliant gasification plants.)
Nobody wants to return to a "preindustrial" economy. That's a straw man. We're seeking a post-industrial economy, where energy needs can be met without drawing down our fossil reserves.
I'd love to hear some, any, response to the critique actually being made rather than pop sociological speculation about environmentalists' feelings and biases.
grist.org
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GreyFlcn Posted 6:38 am
04 Sep 2007
Coal + Clean Air Act Compliance + Gasification + Sequestration
Stacks up against renewables with storage.
And then compared that to baseload renewables like geothermal, offshore wind, ocean current energy, and run-of-the-river-hydro.
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Michael Tobis Posted 6:54 am
04 Sep 2007
Renewables do not scale smoothly; by their nature they require specific environmental circumstances, and they have huge environmental impacts of their own. (The back and forth on hydro is giving me mental whiplash.)
And as GreyFlcn points out, most renewables operate at the whim of the environment and don't tend to match up well with demand cycles.
I know that coal can scale up. Show me the numbers on renewables. I'm not so stubborn that I can't change my mind, but you will have to make your argument at full scale, not at a few ideal local facilities.
Also, it will have to be a slam dunk. The coal interests are stakeholders, like it or not. We are better off if we can deal them in. That's really the main point. They'll continue to lie and cheat as long as it's in their interests. We want to make it in their interest to cooperate, not to defect.
Also, sequestration (coal or otherwise) is required if we ever have to go so far as an anthropogenic draw-down, a possibility I (and greater minds than mine like Broecker and Hansen) do not find far-fetched.
mt
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David Roberts Posted 6:57 am
04 Sep 2007
Coal mining + coal mining remediation + coal transport + CAA compliance + gasification + sequestration + R&D money needed to make sequestration possible + health care costs of mercury/particulates pollution
vs.
renewable portfolio (wind, solar, geothermal, etc.) + efficiency + storage + long-distance transmission lines + R&D money needed to make this possible
Which total do you think will be higher?
grist.org
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sunflower Posted 7:15 am
04 Sep 2007
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Michael Tobis Posted 7:25 am
04 Sep 2007
I have a couple of objections on the matter of costs, but ultimately I object to discussing the matter in those terms at all.
There is, I am assured, no piece of the sequestration chain that is not mature technology for some other appplication. So that term basically goes away. It's all deployment costs.
I am not sure about what gasification has to do with anything. It seems that putting gasification in the loop is changing the subject a bit. Transportation is a tiny part of the problem outside North America. Of course we'll have a hard slog moving away from trucking around these parts but I'd consider that a separate problem. Even here, stationary sources dominate. So I'd argue that's an unfair item to throw in.
As for which "costs more" it seems likely to me that the either/or proposition you present is very likely to cost more than a mixed strategy.
This isn't my field of expertise, but what you are saying is so far from the conventional wisdom I have been hearing that I would pretty much need to see a very detailed peer reviewed study before I started to believe that a pure renewables strategy could be cheaper than a mixed strategy.
I don't think cheaper is the only thing we need to think about, mind you. We should stop letting the economists intimidate us out of our values. Cheaper is what you said, not what I said.
What I am saying is that sequestration 1) increases the political feasibility of a path out of our mess and 2) offers us new hope of actually reversing the damage we have already done.
My top value is getting Gaia out of the mess we have gotten her into. Everything else is secondary. Sneer at me for a pragmatist or even a weak-kneed lineral if you want. I don't care.
I don't think money arguments make a hell of a lot of sense when the future of life itself is at stake, so even if you make your point I may not be convinced.
That said, I don't see, so far, why your guess on costs is any better than mine.
mt
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Nucbuddy Posted 7:49 am
04 Sep 2007
Please explicate.
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Michael Tobis Posted 7:53 am
04 Sep 2007
How could there be any existing coal business at all if that were true at any significant scale?
And once you explain that, what on earth would be motivating the Chinese?
I am sorry, but I find the most likely explanation by far is that you are incorrect in some way.
mt
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GreyFlcn Posted 8:26 am
04 Sep 2007
They don't have to follow the US Laws (i.e. the Clean Air Act, and Sequestration isn't even on their radar.
As is, thats a price difference of $1000/KW, versus $2200/KW in the US markets.
Ah yeah, and the chinese don't really give a crap about using coal with high sulfur content.
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GreyFlcn Posted 8:32 am
04 Sep 2007
Solar Thermal, and GeoThermal are much cheaper than PhotoVoltaic solar panels.
And then you have thinfilm solar panels exploding on the market within the next year.
You also have to factor in the risk associated with the coal plant potentially having to upgrade down the rad, or be canceled, which is a financial nightmare for investors that demand a return on investment.
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David Roberts Posted 8:36 am
04 Sep 2007
It's clear you really want this to be a dispute between clear-headed pragmatists and shrill ideologues. That would certainly put you in a flattering light relative to those who disagree with you. But it's just not true. To say that one path to reduced carbon emissions is cheaper and faster than another just is to say that it is more pragmatic.
If by pragmatic you mean willing to give in to the coal industry's extortion, well, on that we differ. I think that's a disastrous (read: non-pragmatic) strategy in the medium-to-long-term.
And yeah, like Gray said, the reason the Chinese are opting for coal is that it's cheap for them. Why's it cheap? Precisely because it's dirty.
Coal can be cheap and clean, but it can't be both at once.
grist.org
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Sean Casten Posted 8:55 am
04 Sep 2007
If you burn coal, you get the exhaust diluted with nitrogen (air is 79% N2). If you gasify coal, it necessarily implies using an air-starved environment, which has the benefit of providing you with a much more concentrated CO2 stream to pressurize and sequester. This is why gasification is in the mix. And while gasification is inherently more expensive than combustion, it is also inherently less expensive than massively compressing (and sequestering) air. This is why David lists it in the mix.
It's not simply a guess on costs. Ontario did a peer-reviewed study of the health costs of coal - which did not include CO2 - and found that alone to be well in excess of the price coal plants were currently being paid to earn a profit. (e.g., those health costs were subsidized with income tax payments rather than in the price of power). There are numerous other externalities in the system, from acid rain to water use to cooling towers that are not borne by the coal plant - or any other central station under the regulated utility monopoly, for that matter, but which would clearly be alleviated by cleaner local generation (note that renewable is not the only path forward, but this is a detail.) There is actually very little debate on this point amongst policy wonks - simply a debate about whether our historic choices to subsidize cheap energy in the name of electrification are still valid. (e.g., if you pay more for electricity but less for tax, you potentially raise regressivity issues that are politically interesting, but in no way change the fundamental observation that greener power has fewer externalities.)
The one point where I think we can overstate this point is on solar PV which - at today's prices - is still on the thin end of making sense, even once all the externalities are factored in. (This results as much from high capex as from the low capacity factor innate to solar.) But just about every other clean local technology - from wind to cogen to fuel cells - displaces more externality than it costs. Can flood you with hyperlinks if you'd like, or alternatively just click on some that I've posted here over the last few months.
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GreyFlcn Posted 9:05 am
04 Sep 2007
Yeah but nobody is realistically saying conventional silicon PV is cost-effective.
But that isn't the only solar.
http://greyfalcon.net/pv
http://greyfalcon.net/csp2
http://greyfalcon.net/csp4
http://gristmill.grist.org/story/2007/8/30/11351/3283
http://greyfalcon.net/quantum
http://greyfalcon.net/csp
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Michael Tobis Posted 11:04 am
04 Sep 2007
I suppose the China cost differential is plausible as far as I know, but I still can't see how you can argue that solar is competitive with dirty-but-not-Chinese-dirty coal. If it were, it would already be deployed.
I actually met a guy at an earth day house party who is with a company that is in possibly the first large scale deployment of solar power for an electric utility. The City of Austin runs the local utility, and has contracted with TekSun for a megawatt peak solar power. They are taking the better part of a square mile to deploy this installation, which is a lot more complicated and rugged than something that sits on your roof. It provides less than a tenth of a percent of Austin's load, but it is imaginable that it could be scaled up.
My acquaintance points out than in Texas cities peak demand coincides with peak sunshine rather well, so this makes some sense, though in fact the peak A/C demand will lag the peak sun by a few hours. This is a great thing, of course. A lot of CO2 emissions potentially cancelled.
The idea that this could be scaled up a thousandfold, that each city the sieze of Austin could stomp out Godzilla-like an entire county, is ridiculous enough. But the city needs power when the sun is not high in the sky, too. So the whole storage quandary comes to bite you.
Now if you were to argue that Texans overconsume energy I would be the first to agree with you. Yes, something will have to change, and how that change will happen is a very interesting question.
But I promise you that Texans will not accept that power is rationed, and storing solar energy turns out to be impractical, even if we could put aside a thousand square miles of countryside for every city. Note again that Texas is peculiarly well situated to take advantage of solar.
So basically, I just don't believe you can do anything like you are claiming. I suspect you are comparing end-to-end costs in sustainable coal power with materials costs in peak solar, and even then I wonder if there's something you;'re not telling me.
You are lucky though. You don't need to argue me into submission. I'm rather openminded and make a point of advocating that people be willing to publicly change their minds on things, but you don't have to go to the trouble of constructing a detailed argument, chapter and verse.
If you are rigth, it should be easy to come up with a business model and make a fortune. My friend with the megawatt contract was diligent and persistent and got the banks to bankroll their panel factory. However, they have not the slighterst intent of providing baseline power.
Go do that. Capitalism has its flaws but it won't stand in the way of you making a clean profit. If you can compete with clean coal, compete with clean coal. Do the world some good while you're at it.
Show me the manufacturing plant that competes effectively with coal using solar.
I agree that new nonsequestered coal facilities must stop immediately. I agree that costs must be accounted for and not swept under the rug.
But the world is overpopulated. Avoiding catastrophe will require huge energy expenditures for the foreseeable future. (Perhaps not at current North American standards, but on the other hand the less developed countries must be cut into the deal.)
Solar can help a bit, but we can't cut coal out, certainly can't cut coal and nuclear both out and keep things under control on any foreseeable technology.
You think I am selling out but I am not. I am trying to tell you that we are in deeper trouble than you seem to think.
mt
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GreyFlcn Posted 12:08 pm
04 Sep 2007
Well I can answer part of that issue for you.
http://thefraserdomain.typepad.com/energy/2007/05/the_us_ ...
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GreyFlcn Posted 12:09 pm
04 Sep 2007
And that instead of building new coal plants, they've been ramping up excess capacity in old plants.
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sunflower Posted 2:27 pm
04 Sep 2007
My old memories of dirty coal numbers were about $1/W(e). Of that, $0.25/W(e) was for the turbine-generator and about $0.75/W(e) for the coal burner and balance of system. Adjusting for efficiency, dirty coal burners plus were about $0.25/W(t). Those numbers are not adjusted for inflation and I do not know about current costs. If you start at $2/W(e)...
One thing has remain constant over the decades. As solar technology advances solar energy becomes less expensive while coal technology becomes more expensive with time.
Don't fall into the trap that if it worked somebody would have already done it. New ideas run into the buzz saw of disbelief, industrial inertia, and vested resistance. Further afield, China is in our technological past.
The question is: What happened to the tradition of American innovation? Why are leading solar economics being developed in Spain, Israel, Australia and not in USA? Could it be something simple, like we are the empire of coal?
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trock Posted 3:40 pm
04 Sep 2007
I'm sure that the fossil fuel lobby tries to keep the renewable reseach amount down.
I think that the reseach that is done on solar is tied together somehow.
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Nucbuddy Posted 4:44 pm
04 Sep 2007
We live in a world populated by literally millions of entrepreneurial solar zealots. Entire nations have pledged themselves to solar-power or bust. If that's a trap, then I guess I have fallen into it.
Sunflower wrote: Further afield, China is in our technological past.
You mean like 30 years ago when the United States was producing a quarter-billion cellphones every year?
news.google.com/news?q=china+cellphones
If China is not doing solar-thermal-electric right now, it is because solar-thermal-electric is more-expensive than hydro, coal, and nuclear. This should tell us something, since a labor-intensive technology like solar-thermal-electric would benefit from China's cheap labor; and a capital-intensive scale-dependent technology should benefit from China's ability to dictate massive projects in single 5-year-plan swoops. If it is too-expensive for China, then it is even-further too-expensive for the United States.
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Sean Casten Posted 11:32 pm
04 Sep 2007
However, you also raise a larger point which I think I can correctly paraphase as "if it's such a good idea, go make some money at it." This is well taken, and - as a guy building a business around exactly that (see here - one I take to heart. But one needs to be careful not to overstate this case, for two reasons:
(1) the idea that cheaper/better products justify new businesses only works in competitive markets. Which electricity isn't. In fact, it is precisely the opposite of a competitive market, with regulated utilities subject to "cost-plus" pricing models that give them an incentive to pursue MORE expensive projects - precisely the opposite of what you would get in a functioning market. And the regulated electric business, at ~$400 billion in revenue is just about the biggest business in the country (real estate might be a credible #1). So making money at the expense of the regulated monopolies takes more than just a good idea - it also takes a certain desire to tilt at windmills and truly believe that you can affect regulatory reform to instill market discipline in the industry. We're headed in the right direction, but we've got a long way to go - but in all cases, the fact that something is competitive with regulated power is not, on it's own, sufficient to justify a business investment.
(2) Related (but only partially) to the first, a part of the way that cleaner sources make sense is by considering externalities. From pollution costs to subsidized transmission, there are lots of costs that are imposed by central coal which are not imposed by local clean sources - but which are not captured in the c/kWh rates. This is not unique to the US. In Canada, the gov't for years as set power prices at a politically-determined level and then used income tax receipts to pay utilities for any shortfall. In American Samoa, they take the opposite approach, overcharging for electricity and then using the excess to also pay for trash collection, water treatment and any number of other island utilities - which makes it very politically hard to do something that would save you money on your power bill, since that might incentivize your electric utility to stop picking up your trash... At a macro level, once we factor all these benefits in, we can fairly readily show that lots of clean techs (really just about all, with the exception of solar PV) lead to a net reduction in energy costs. But implementing them would require regulatory reform to get rid of existing cross-subsidies.
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Michael Tobis Posted 1:59 am
05 Sep 2007
Regarding your first point, yes, electricity is a complicated product and not really a pure capitalist marketplace (for all the good and ill that implies). However, that isn't all there is to my argument.
Much energy is generated in situ for large scale industrial processes, though, and a contorted decision making process presents no barriers to converting such sites to solar. Such installations have a huge incentive to save money. Yet there is little sign of solar deployment in such situations. Hence the idea that solar is cheaper than coal at scale is very unlikely to be true to say the very least.
Finally, I am amused to see that someone else pointed a Department of Energy press release presented in answer to my request for a business model. I have a lot of friends in the DOE, and God bless them and keep them in the money, lots of good work gets done there in spite of everything, but the PR departments at the labs are not to be taken too seriously.
The more solar and wind energy there is, the better, but saying that's all we need is wishful thinking of a sort we can't afford right now.
mt
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Sean Casten Posted 4:10 am
05 Sep 2007
(And even if the utility doesn't impose those costs, the industrial still has to put that plant up with at-risk capital - where the dominant risk is that the industrial will cease demanding the power before the capital is fully paid off. By contrast, the utility investments are borne by rate payers and guaranteed regardless of how they operate, so while the capital costs may be competitive the cost of capital is quite biased in favor of dirtier sources.)
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GreyFlcn Posted 4:36 am
05 Sep 2007
When was the last time that any in America built a new coal fired power plant?
Directly after Katrina, the price of Natural Gas had sky rocketed a couple hundred percent.
The price of natural gas has also gone up due to it being used for nitrogen fertilizer creation for ethanol.
_
While you can say "We'd have lots of new solar plants by now"
Where are the new coal plants?
That said, currently one utility owns 90% of the US solar electricity. Southern California Edison.
Most of which is Solar Thermal in various areas of the mohave desert.
And yet their primary source of green energy isn't solar, it's geothermal.
http://greyfalcon.net/raser2
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Fergus Brown Posted 4:58 am
05 Sep 2007
It occurs to me that DR is attacking along this front; if it can be established that (present) economic self-interest is better served by change than inaction, then there is no longer an excuse. Michael's way is more radical ( and possibly more scary); the way round the dilemma is to change the measure by which we determine present value. narrow the focus to money, and there's a battle to be won: broaden the focus to the 'big picture' of what we really value; comfort, security, nature, happiness, etc., and there is no longer a dilemma; it is then in anyone's best interest to act.
Turned out nice again...
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Sean Casten Posted 4:59 am
05 Sep 2007
The reason why New Coal is now so much in the news is because we've now maxed out the capacity factor on those old facilities, as the inexorable 1 - 2% growth in electricity consumption each year has eaten up all the overbuild in the 70s. As a result, we are now faced with the choice between expensive new coal, expensive gas, or regulatory reform.
One other point: solar is certainly an important part of our energy future, but is an irrelevant distraction from our energy present. Total MWh from solar are in the noise. So while it's nice that SCE owns a lot of solar, it doesn't make a lick of difference to the cost or cleanliness of SCE's power, much less the nation. I don't mention this with the intent of snubbing Solar, but rather to suggest that you be careful playing into SCE's hand. Building expensive, highly visible generation that contributes proportionally few MWh to the grid is a great way for SCE to greenwash themselves, but doesn't do much of material benefit to the grid or environment.
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dkray Posted 5:05 am
05 Sep 2007
Granted, we will be dependent on oil and coal in the years to come. The transition to a renewable energy future will be slow, but it is without any question the future indeed. Why put it off by going back and asking for even more from our old friends when our new friends (wind, solar, tidal) are offering us a better deal? The time to make the transition, to make a commitment, is now, not tomorrow.
That's all I have to say for todayy. I've written more about coal, oil, and the tax windfalls they've enjoyed here.
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Sean Casten Posted 5:46 am
05 Sep 2007
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Michael Tobis Posted 5:59 am
05 Sep 2007
I like to keep people guessing whether I'm left, right, or center. The answer is that I'd prefer if people bought their opinions retail, really.
That said, I do think money is a usewful measure on short time scales, and I'm trying to chase down some peculiar assertions about the relative contemporary cost of solar and "dirty coal".
Sunflower, I don't know what those numbers mean. Feel free to explain them more slowly. What are you selling and what does it do, and which apple are you comparing your oranges to?
I'm pretty confident you can't be competitive with a furnace at night, which certainly counts against you in practice.
I am entirely in favor of renewables. I am just stating the conventional wisdom that they are not likely to be sufficient. If you disagree with the conventional wisdom on that point
I do not know if coal interests suppress research on solar. I doubt they would bother, because solar isn't providing a comparable product until the storage problem is solved. Perhaps they try to steer money away from batteries and flywheels.
My understanding is that solar had gone about as far as it could, which is why the research dollars are drying up. You can't get blood from a turnip, and you can't get more solar power from a square meter than falls on it. Getting above 20% turns out to be subtle and difficult, and in practice I guess a large installation in a very sunny subtropical location will return about 5%, or 40 watts peak, maybe 10 watts daily average per square meter of real estate.
This is a very good thing as far as it goes; that just isn't very far.
mt
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sunflower Posted 6:52 am
05 Sep 2007
"There's not a coal-fired plant in America that's clean. They're all dirty," Reid told reporters after speaking at a conference on renewable energy. He said that the United States should turn to wind, solar and geothermal power in an effort to slow climate change. "Unless we do something quickly about global warming, we're in trouble," he said.
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2007 ...
Standby mt while I look for your solar numbers...
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sunflower Posted 7:29 am
05 Sep 2007
http://rredc.nrel.gov/solar/old_data/nsrdb/redbook/atlas/ ...
One year of sunlight in Colorado is 2007 kWh/m2/year which is equivalent to 1.25 barrels of oil or $93. At 10% return on investment (rich), one square meter of sunlight amortizes at $935. If solar concentrator efficiency is 80% (easy) then solar concentrators in Colorado are worth $748 per square meter aperture (per 11 square feet). Most think that concentrators will cost $150/m2.
Coal has many types, energy contents, and costs. But even if coal is free, coal burners cost more than solar concentrators.
Solar technology will not shut down coal expansion soon enough in spite of favorable economics due to industrial inertia and institutional aversion to risk. Politics and investor confidence will shut down coal. Natural gas can bridge us towards a sunny future. The scale of ordinary mirrors will be massive and fast once the engineering is funded based on substance rather than on spin and scams.
The historical suppression of solar energy was political. Reagan removed the thermal solar collectors from the White House roof, dismantled the Barstow solar power tower (heliostats), cut solar research by 90%, and told the labs that they could no longer use glass and steam in solar collectors. Many stories exist about marginalized solar scientists. Every effort was made to make solar energy appear not competitive with fossil fuels. Coal, oil, and nuclear corporations were behind the curtains. I was also burned directly from Reagan.
Global warming has forced me out of retirement, not selling anything, the information is free.
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Fergus Brown Posted 8:37 am
05 Sep 2007
I'm not against solar; I just can't see how your argument can be right. Sorry if that makes me dense.
regards,
Turned out nice again...
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GreyFlcn Posted 11:36 am
05 Sep 2007
More than California.
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Nucbuddy Posted 12:18 pm
05 Sep 2007
2007 kilowatt-hours of energy, assuming coal costs $1.50 per million btu's, is equal to around $10 worth of coal.
Sunflower wrote: If solar concentrator efficiency is 80% (easy)
Have you ever seen a heliostat with a concentrator-efficiency above 10%? Please point out a picture of one.
Sunflower wrote: If solar concentrator efficiency is 80% (easy) then solar concentrators in Colorado are worth $748 per square meter aperture (per 11 square feet).
You were first placing a value on the land that has potential to support solar concentrators, not on the concentrators themselves. Your conclusion is thus an equivocation. At $1 million per acre, a square meter of land is worth around $250. In relation to the energy-value of coal, and at a generously estimated concentrator-efficiency of 10%, a square meter of Colorado land -- coopted for solar-energy mining -- is worth $1 per year, or $10 amortized at a 10% discount-rate.
To put this in perspective, a 100-acre 10-gigawatt-electric nuclear powerplant unit produces 230 billion kilowatt-hours (kWh) of thermal-energy per year, or 2.3 billion kWh per acre-year, or 570,000 kWh per square-meter-year. If your square-meter of Colorado land is worth $1 per year if coopted for 2,007 kWh per year of solar thermal energy-mining, it is worth $285 per year if coopted for 570,000 kWh per year of heavy-metal fissioning.
The value of a typical square-meter of Earth continental surface (150 trillion square-meters) in terms of its fissionable heavy-metal content's (~150 trillion tons, so around one ton per square-meter) heat-value in terms of $1.50/million-btu's coal is around $100 million.
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GreyFlcn Posted 12:57 pm
05 Sep 2007
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sunflower Posted 2:40 pm
05 Sep 2007
Imploding credit bubbles, preemptive wars, and public policy can slow down coal with demand destruction.
Nuclear, wind, geothermal, and solar will not shut down coal soon enough. Just shut it down.
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Nucbuddy Posted 5:44 pm
05 Sep 2007
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Sean Casten Posted 11:05 pm
05 Sep 2007
As noted above, the Chinas of the world don't require the coal to be clean, and it is the cost to be CAA compliant that makes coal so uneconomic. (In the current prices coming before rate commissions, the cost for pollution abatement are about equal to the cost of everything else - meaning that your capex is just about doubled to get the NOx and SOx down.) Take away the concern about the environment, and coal is quite cost effective (provided, of course, that you ignore environmental costs).
As I noted above, I am not suggesting this is a coal vs. solar debate. Solar doesn't stack up very well - but solar is far from the only energy source that is way, way, way cleaner than coal... it's just the more expensive one. There are lots of better options out there.
Again, don't overstate the power of the profit incentive in a regulated monopoly. In this country, our power regulation has a lot more in common with centrally-planned socialism than it does with Adam Smith. Needless to say, China has some of the same issue.
All that said, there is also simply the power of inertia. A big advantage of coal from a (central) planning perspective is that you can build really big (relatively) fast. Even with permitting delays in the states, the fact remains that you can pick a site and add 1000 MW of new capacity to the grid - a handy thing for central planners who know that we need another 1000 MW. By contrast, the fact that the cleaner stuff is cheaper doesn't change the fact that it takes lots of actions by independent actors to get comparable scale. (500 kW of solar here, 10 MW of wind there, 50 MW of CHP there, etc.) That model is what markets are made of... but electricity ain't a central market. And so we get politburos (we call them utility commissions in this country) who build coal because it fits their political model rather than businesses who build cleaner, cheaper stuff because it fits their capitalist model. The problem is the political system.
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sunflower Posted 11:38 pm
05 Sep 2007
http://www.solarpaces.org/Tasks/Task1/PS10.HTM
http://fr.ghettodriveby.com/images/h%C3%A9liostats.jpg
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Fergus Brown Posted 12:59 am
06 Sep 2007
What you say about a lot of involved agencies is interesting, because it leads to another thought: one benefit of individual sourcing their power at home with solar and wind is that it cuts out the utility problem to a certain extent. Won't stop the utes from selling their power to someone else, but it could help lower the burden.
Via the financial pages, I hear that there are about 70 nuclear projects on the drawing board globally as we speak. Given the short-medium term choice between coal and nuclear, which is the lesser of two evils?
regards,
Turned out nice again...
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GreyFlcn Posted 4:00 am
06 Sep 2007
"Without CCS, fossil fuel use would have to be cut by more than half," Malcolm Brinded, Executive Director of Exploration and Production at the Anglo-Dutch company, said at the Offshore Europe conference in Aberdeen.
"Nuclear would have to grow twice as fast ... thousands more wind turbines would be needed. And a new vehicle fleet would have to run largely on biofuels and electricity, with petrol and diesel fuel almost completely phased out," he said.
A change this drastic would be very difficult to achieve quickly, so CCS - which could reduce emissions from major industrial sources of carbon dioxide such as power stations by up to 90% - is necessary to smooth the transition to more widespread renewable energy, he said.
Brinded of Royal Dutch Shell said cap-and-trade systems, like the European Union's Emission Trading Scheme, are the best way to encourage the development of low carbon technologies in the long term.
Robert Olsen, Director of Production at ExxonMobil Corp. (XOM), disagreed that cap and trade is the way forward. The price put on carbon in the European Emissions Trading Scheme, which has varied from EUR30 a ton to less than EUR1 a ton, is too volatile to make large, long-term investments in clean energy technology, he said. Energy companies need a more uniform, predictable cost of carbon across the whole economy, such as a carbon tax, he said.
http://money.cnn.com/news/newsfeeds/articles/djf500/20070 ...
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