I'd really like to know why I am supposed to want this initiative to fail, though. If there's net energy from carbon free coal, it seems to me everybody wins big for two reasons. First, there's a huge supply of energy into the future, so we have one fewer constraint to worry about in the next couple of crucial centuries. Second, the coal interests are much less inclined to support a campaign of deceit about climate change.

I saw a technical talk by a carbon sequestration specialist last week. Before getting into a really interesting talk about the dynamics of carbon in saline aquifers, he said something like "Almost everybody believes that carbon sequestration is a very good idea. Not everybody does, though. Greenpeace believes this is sweeping our problems under a rug. I would say perhaps so, but on the other hand it is a very thick rug."

So I don't think this story means what you think it does, but if it does, I don't see why you want me to celebrate it. My interest is in having something of our beautiful world survive into the far future, ideological purity be damned.


mt

Coal + sequestration is a fantastically expensive way of getting low-carbon energy. There are numerous alternatives on both the demand and supply side that will yield larger CO2 reductions, faster and cheaper, especially ten or 20 years from now when this speculative technology is finally developed and deployed.

It is also a political tactic to give established powers -- who are hostile to the larger goal of moving to a sustainable energy system -- a token to wave around to make it look as though there's progress.

You think we oppose it despite the fact that it hastens the deployment of low-carbon energy. That is incorrect. We oppose it because, as a more expensive option in a world of limited dollars, it delays the deployment of low-carbon energy. Opposition to clean coal is pragmatic, not ideological.

grist.org

It's a lot like how Hydrogen, if it were implemented on a grant scale near instantanously, would result in emissions reductions.

However what it's really about is waving it around to placate the general public, when the car companies have no serious intention of actually doing it.

i.e. It's "permanently in the future".
And in the meantime nothing gets done for the next 3 decades or longer.

It's far better to kill the lie, and move on to realistic emissions reduction methods, which can actually make real progress in the next 1-5 years.

-David Ahlport

Anything on the scale that is needed to get us out of the pickle we are in is "in the future", pretty clearly. So? Surely by opposing it you aren't expediting it.

Of course we in the west and especially North America need to learn to do more with less, so we can meet the rest of the world at a sustainable level. I'm not arguing against that by any means. The rest of the world needs more, rather than less energy, to get to sustainability though, and it has to come from somewhere.

I don't see anyone here arguing against solar because it takes resources away from wind or vice versa. The finiteness of financial resources is an argument from people who aren't taking matters seriously. We need to hurry up on all fronts as long as they show promise.

The "us vs them" mentality here sure looks ideological to me. What is or isn't more expensive is for the marketplace to decide. The coal people need to try to sell their wares in a form that doesn't drive us off the cliff to a world that is totally out of control. They should be able to pursue that, just as any other approach, and it's a legitimate area for the Department of Energy to pursue.

Now, if you're right that coal with sequestration is certainly and inevitably more expensive than all other options for all applications and offers no advantages over them I will change my mind. However, you need to provide analysis, not hunches. In particular, you need to account for energy storage in evaluating renewables for meeting peak demand, right?

The analogy to hydrogen or corn ethanol is just an analogy until you can back it up with evidence.

However, the fact is that I think ethanol is a fraud and hydrogen is a red herring and sequestration is real based on substantive conversations with the very same folks, especially a group of energy and environment scientists at DOE in whom I have considerable confidence.

As far as I know, the people who actually work the numbers disagree with you, and as a member of both communities I need to expend the credibility I have here on Grist to say that.

Of course they aren't infallible and I'm not either, but until I hear something resembling a substantive and quantitative argument from someone I am just not going to take your opposition as pragmatic. The line between reason and rationalization isn't always easy to discern. Convince me you aren't rationalizing.


mt

__Molar Weight of C: 12.01kg
Molar Weight of CO2: 44.01kg
Over 3.5x as big

This is why cars are able to spew out their own weight in CO2 every year.

_

This of course has storage implications as well.

According to MIT's 2007 "Future of Coal" study, capturing and compressing just 60 percent of the carbon dioxide produced by U.S. coal-fired power plants would demand a new pipeline network big enough to move 20 million barrels of liquefied carbon dioxide each day from power plants to suitable sequestration sites (which depend on particular geology)--a volume equal to all the oil piped daily throughout the country. Sequestration sites would have to be honestly administered, closely monitored, and tightly sealed. Such demanding technical requirements led journalist Jeff Goodell to write that "the notion of coal as the solution to America's energy problems is a technological fantasy" http://www.orionmagazine.org/index.php/articles/article/5 ...

Even if carbon capture was cheap, and compatible with existing low cost power plants, the cost of this infrastructure, (and the parasitic loads) required by it would be astronomical.

_

Also keep in mind, this is the very same DOE that felt Geothermal and Hydropower deserved $0 of R&D subsidy for 2007.
http://www.csmonitor.com/2006/0915/p02s01-uspo.html

-David Ahlport

Speak of the Devil.

it suggests intentional dispersal of suitable calcium and magnesium silicates will just work.

Coal without CCS is bad. The nearest path to a world with no conventional coal may (or may not) include unconventional coal. I have yet to see even an unconvincing argument that CCS is unworkable.

What disturbs me most is that so many environmentally concerned people seem not to want it to work.


mt

The issue is not whether it's workable but whether it's cost-effective.

Go read some of Sean Casten's many postings on this blog. New coal -- not gasification, without CCS, just new coal that meets the pollution requirements of the Clean Air Act -- is already so expensive that private investors won't touch it. It's cheaper to go with natural gas, or efficiency, or cogen, etc. etc., and soon the rapidly falling costs of solar thermal, geothermal, and wind will hit the same mark.

Again -- that's new dirty coal. Coal gasification is substantially more expensive than that, and coal gasification + CCS is far, far more expensive than that. You might bring down the costs of clean coal, but do you really think the massive operation required to capture and sequester the carbon is going to reach parity with dirty coal? Or get cheaper? Please explain how.

And remember, even the DOE says that CCS is in its infancy and is years, possibly decades in the future. By that time, renewables will be cheaper, batteries and other storage will be farther along, efficiency and green building will be farther along, etc. etc.

Is there any reason to believe that 10-20 years from now, when CCS is finally scaled up and deployed, that it will represent cheaper or faster CO2 reductions than renewables and efficiency? It's just outlandish. It would require a miracle, and even if the Baby Jesus handed us that miracle, you'd still have all the other enormous externalities of coal mining, coal ash, coal transport, etc. to contend with.

So you have to wonder why our government is not only lavishing it with subsidies, but lavishing it with subsidies far in excess of what it's offering the alternatives. And you have to wonder why any green would support this insane course of action.

Yes. Opposition is pragmatic.

grist.org

It's also ironic to see people (e.g. Roberts) who argue that sequestration is a bad idea because "it's always in the future", while arguing IN THE SAME POST that solar will be ready "ten or twenty years from now."   Solar has been just around the corner since I was a kid.  

I am a big fan of solar power --- indeed, just two weeks ago my wife and I signed the papers to install solar panels on our house, and we're expecting a call from the installer Any Day Now to come do it!  Go Solar!  But: there is no way that the trillions of dollars of coal infrastructure worldwide are going to be abandoned within the next twenty years.  Even if an alternative technology --- solar thermal electricity generation, for example --- were already cheaper than coal, it's not like all of the coal plants would be shut down by the end of the year. It would still take decades to build all of the replacement plants, and in the mean time those coal plants will still be spewing out CO2.  

So: (1) If they cut the sequestration project and put the money into some clean energy project instead, I could see celebrating, but that's not what they're doing, and (2) I disagree with the assertion that money spent on sequestration is wasted.

--Phil Price