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  Whack away part 2

  Improving efficiency is clearly important and so is using cleaner fuels. Better fuel efficiency clearly makes economic and environmental sense. However, huge cuts in CO2 emissions are required and cleaner fuels and better efficiency measures cannot achieve this.  Efficiency improvements will only deliver a small percentage in reduction in emissions. Cleaner fuels can have a slightly bigger impact, e.g. gas as opposed to coal. Capture plants are a very efficient way of reducing emissions, 90% of CO2 can be captured and sulfur emissions are virtually zero.

  Don't confuse lower energy efficiency of capture technology with bad technology. Let me use a simple example, if we all just tossed our trash in the street and left it there we would be more fuel efficient. We would not burn energy in the trucks hauling away the trash.  Besides the lower energy efficiencies of capture are, in part, a normal issue of new technology. We have to build these plants and learn about them in order to make them more efficient and cheaper.

  It does sound like there are specific issues around the clean air act that could have been handled better. For me the lesson is to make sure new legislation is drafted better not to avoid better technology.  

  Finally, you have to consider the big picture with oil and gas. There is only so much in the ground and we are slowly but surely using it up. Pretty much all the good easy to extract high quality stuff is gone or going.  We are already heavily reliant on oil and gas from the Middle East, Russia and Africa.  Coal on the other hand we have lots of and in our own back yard. One of the reasons we don't use more coal, instead of expensive oil and gas, is that it's pretty dirty in comparison. In fact you can argue that fuels like gas are in part more expensive because they are cleaner.  It seems to me that if we think we will use more coal in the future we really need to think about cleaner ways to use.
  On CCS: Environmental whack-a-mole posted 1 year, 4 months ago 21 Responses

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  Whack away

  Carbon capture and sequestration is clearly less energy efficient than conventional power plant and that really should not come as a surprise.  The laws of thermodynamics tell me you don't get something for nothing.

  Introducing sulfur clean up on coal power plants also knocked back their efficiency but did that make sulfur clean up a bad technology? True carbon capture and sequestration introduces a big energy efficiency penalty because it's a bigger job and more ambitious. Lots of processes could be more energy efficient if we choose to use the environment as a giant dustbin.

  If we go down the road of Carbon capture, where does this leave us? More coal would be used to make more expensive power but there would be lots of it and it would be infinitely cleaner. Great! Bring it on.  This will make other technologies more competitive and stimulate development. On CCS: Environmental whack-a-mole posted 1 year, 4 months ago 21 Responses