Kind of sad that both Barack and NRDC tout clean coal as one of the big answers to GHG energy problems.

We can go one way.  To clean coal, fuel farms, and nuclear power.  Or the other way.  

To a distributed renewable smart grid, plugin hybrids, electric mass transportation, and geo heat exchange heating/cooling.  

The frontrunner in this presidential election cycle and the biggest eco lobbying organization are headed in the wrong direction.

I propose a campaign to re-educate these and other powerful players in this deadly GHG/energy crisis.  Credible people like Al Gore, Lester Brown, and many Grist contributors could lead the effort.

http://amazngdrx.blogharbor.com/blog

We could take the Edwards route, and let them choke on their own stupidity.

Mandate that if coal plants are to be built that they must have CCS from day 1 of operation.

Effectively legislating new coal plants out of existence.

My idea was to toss a few handfuls of vanilla beans in with each ton of coal.  That way, the smoke would be sweet-smelling.  Rose petals could work too.  I spent about 20 billion dollars on this study where I was eating a few pounds of rose petals every day and I found that within a couple of days, my farts smelled like roses.  

Now if I can come up with cool "clean coal" ideas like this, what the hell are all those brainiacs at DOE doing with their time?

Shu pas a vende.

Huh?

The tech can't be scaled up until there is an enormous quantity of CO2 to test the scale. The enormous quantities of CO2 in question are being spilled into the atmosphere, you know, and not captured. THAT"S THE WHOLE PROBLEM, REMEMBER?

So yes, of course you have to work that out, and you work that out by doing it, and of course that costs that aren't directly recouped by the utility. Did you think the capture mechanism would be free?

I am absolutely in agreement with Grey on this: "Mandate that if coal plants are to be built that they must have CCS from day 1 of operation." This is absolutely right. It's what Hansen says, it's what Gore says, and so say all of us.

That being the case, opposing the work to scale up CCS on the grounds that it is expensive to prototype makes very little sense. The first iPod probably cost, what, about sixty million dollars or something? So what?

Let me be fair. I don't think the economies of scale will be as dramatic here as in consumer electronics. I have little doubt that CCS will considerably increase the cost of coal energy, much more than the coal interests would like. I have little doubt that it will take a long time to scale this up.

I also have little doubt that those with other horses in the race are underplaying the costs and overplaying the benefits of their particular wedge. I have seen completely implausible claims about solar go unchallenged around here.

The thing to do is more research on all promising fronts. Any wedge that makes a big difference will take some considerable time to scale up. We are talking about a century-time-scale problem, and so a twenty-year ramp-up is well within the spectrum of useful alternatives. Unless we are determined to torch the planet, energy costs will go up whatever we do.

My gripe is that this posting adds nothing to the conversation. The highlighted quote offers no useful information about the prospects of CCS that isn't perfectly obvious. I'm totally baffled by your featuring it.

Sure, there's no advantage to the producer to capturing the carbon unless it's mandated. Why is that even news? It's just the tragedy of the commons restated. I'd figure we were all caught up on that around here by now. The producer won't be able to capture the carbon unless mandated to do so. Yup. It would violate their fiduciary responsibility to their shareholders. (We can talk about whether this is the right way to set things up, but it isn't changing anytime soon.) We need regulatory action.

What a surprise. Stop the presses.

mt

You say we obviously need regulatory action, and we obviously should ban coal plants until they have working CCS, and it's obviously going to take 20 years to scale CCS up before it's a reasonable alternative.

To whom, exactly, is all of that obvious? Dedicated Grist readers, perhaps. But the Bush administration, and Republicans generally, and coal-state Democrats, and coal companies, are involved in a broad and active effort to obscure those facts you consider obvious. They are offering clean-coal subsidies as a "market-based" alternative to regulation, not as something for which regulation is a necessary precondition. They are actively fighting efforts to block the siting of new dirty coal plants. They are talking about clean coal like it exists, like it's an active option that can allow us to go forward with business as usual.

To date, FutureGen has primarily been an adjunct to those propaganda efforts, not a good-faith research undertaking. As evidence, witness the fact that the Bush administration's pubic discussions of FutureGen, and the DOE's press releases, are contradicted by the DOE's own estimates.

This stuff may be obvious to you, but I'd say it deserves a much wider public airing.

grist.org

First of all, I don't know anything about FutureGen itself, and I certainly don't put it past the government to get this drastically wrong.

For me the most striking thing about the Katrina incident (not the saddest or most important, but most amazing and interesting) was how (after the extent of the disaster finally sank in with them) FEMA and Homeland Security and the Administration really seemed to be bewildered about what could possibly be expected of them beyond the empty posturing and symbolic gestures that are their stock in trade.

Also, I am quite convinced that well-regulated capitalism can solve most problems, but that unregulated capitalism will cause more. The effect of the unrestrained invisible hand is to monetize everything, after all. I'm very concerned about the capacity of the democratic process to do a good job of regulation though, especially given the power of symbols in public discourse.

I have no disagreement with David's last comment, but I still find the article problematic. Whether FutureGen is another piece of cronyism and empty symbolism or not is outside my ken. What I am saying is that celebrating a setback for CSS is very disturbing to me. We will all be much better off if CSS works well than if it doesn't.  

Rooting for promising technologies to fail in the hopes of some literally Romantic back to nature fantasy that isn't, in fact, possible, seems to me just another example of putting symbol ahead of substance, and another example of taking a step closer to the abyss in the name of ideology.

Again, I am expressing no opinion about FutureGen; I'm just asking people to take our quandary seriously and understand that more than a few compromises will be necessary in our lifetimes and for the next few generations after that.

mt

"Rooting for promising technologies to fail in the hopes of some literally Romantic back to nature fantasy that isn't, in fact, possible"

No, you are backing the romance of "clean" coal.  It's a love affair between corporations, lobbyists. and politicians...a threeway cluster effing lubricated with cash.  

You can watch, but it's gonna cost you.  100s of billions in tax dollars (borrowed from China)and the human friendly climate of spaceship earth.

The realistic back to nature approach:  Local, regional, and national interactive renewable distributed smart grids powered up by wind, solar, water, and biogas energy.  Recharging plugin hybrids and powering electric mass transit with commuter rail and electric buses.  Storing power as heating or cooling employing geo heat exchange heating/cooling of buildings.

There, that's your natural romance.  Love it or leave it...  to those who understand real reality.

http://amazngdrx.blogharbor.com/blog

"It's a love affair between corporations, lobbyists. and politicians...a threeway cluster effing lubricated with cash. "

Well, you raise a good question, but I don't know another way to keep an overpopulated planet going than with corporations and politicians.

That's a topic for another thread. The question here is whether you oppose a technology because it doesn't work or whether you oppose it because you wish it didn't work.

Making that distinction isn't easy, but anyone who doesn't make the effort is part of the problem, not part of the solution.

If it works to the scale we need, 1) somebody is going to make a lot of money and 2) some natural systems are going to be disrupted and 3) some people are going to oppose the effort in very emotional terms to protect their competing interests.

This is as true of wind and solar as it is of hydro or nuclear or CCS. If the problem were easy we'd already have solved it. If there were an easy alternative to oil some country would already be using it.

This problem is hard. It is fine to say "local, regional, and national interactive renewable distributed smart grids powered up by wind, solar, water, and biogas energy.  Recharging plugin hybrids and powering electric mass transit with commuter rail and electric buses.  Storing power as heating or cooling employing geo heat exchange heating/cooling of buildings."

I'm all in favor of all of that. If you think that will get us through the crisis of the next 200 years without CCS or nukes, though, you need to show some numbers.

More to the present point, if you think any of that will happen without corporations, government, lobbyists, or lots of lubricating cash, you have a whole lot of 'splainin' to do. It's exactly that sort of vague handwaving that I call romantic.

Don't get me wrong. I wish for a world a lot like the one you wish for. I just distinguish between wishes and plans.

Tell me how we are going to get food and water to ten billion people for hundreds of years and still preserve some shreds of nature and human dignity. I think it will require a lot of compromises.

If your vocabulary doesn't include the word "tradeoff" your "real reality" doesn't impress me as especially realistic.

mt

Yep, and in practice, it will take a time to electrify all the railroads, also, and in some cases, won't make sense, i.e., as for many shortlines.  GE is at least doing real hybrid diesel-electrics (i.e., with regenerative braking), but they still need fuel.

They've tried nuclear merchant ships (4).

I don't think anyone has tried nuclear Class 8's...

For some of these, I'd guess the only real hope is algae biodiesel, and that's still early.

greyflcn: your 2nd link seems broken in "numbers?" post.

-John Mashey

No instant solution is possible or necessary.  Plenty of oil reserves exist for many decades if most transportation goes to plugin hybrids, electric commuter rail, and electric buses.

Aircraft, long haul trucks, ships, and other applications can go along as oil burners until better technologies take over.  More efficient plugin hybrid systems backed up by solid oxide fuel cell/turbines could help all of these to triple their efficiency.

"If you think that will get us through the crisis of the next 200 years without CCS or nukes, though, you need to show some numbers."

No actually mt you need to show some numbers.  You are claiming that nukes and clean coal are necessary.  That's a hard claim to prove.  But go ahead and try.  There aren't even any numbers for clean coal yet.  no one has made it work, pumped the cO2 underground, and shown the real costs.  Real reality dude, it's hard.  hehey.

I have plenty of numbers and links to back them up all about how that renewable smart grid could replace our present grid.  Economically, much cheaper than clean coal or nukes.  Along with plugin hybrids replacing imported oil and geo heat exchange and other conservation measures cutting grid power demand.

http://amazngdrx.blogharbor.com/blog