But aren't you neglecting to consider the environmental damage caused by coal mining? The Appalachians are being raped by mountaintop removal coal mining. It seems like we as a nation can do better than to continue to rely on a dirty and damaging source of electricity.

I know you are too busy to research the state-of-the-art so to be brief:

Coal is used as an industrial process heat input, like cooking and distilling ethanol.  That must stop.

Tax carbon (damn the swift boat torpedoes)

Cap and auction, not cap and trade.

N. American innovation created the need for coal 100 years ago (Thomas Edison, George Westinghouse, Nikola Tesla) and was industrialized by JP Morgan.  Those industries now control our N. American government and they vigorously resist industrial change.  You are a part of that government.

I filed a patent application for a solar heliostat last night.  I am a part of American innovation.  There are thousands of American innovators that represent industrial change.

Supporting the sequesture of coal carbon emissions is like flogging a dead dinosaur.  Tax carbon, support visionary American innovators, and go far beyond the coal of old industrial fossils.

The annual fly ash output from the average coal fired steam plant, reportedly contains enough U235 to produce 3 atomic bombs. And the worry about nuclear proliferation from reactors.  The earth's crust contains 4 times as much Thorium as Uranium, and Thorium makes an excellent raw material for breeding fissionable U233.

Charles Barton

I agree with the sentiment, but let's add a few more wrinkles to the coal issue.  CTL simply isn't viable.  If history shows nothing else, it's that the only time you can get enough political support for the kind of subsidies necessary to fund a massively expensive, massively inefficient CTL process is if you are subject to global embargoes on other choices.  Germany did it in WWII, South Africa more recently... but I have a hard time seeing the US getting to that point.  I'm actually of the opinion that we ought to give the coal industry CTL for precisely this reason - gamble that we give them a card they're highly unlikely to play, in exchange for their political support for carbon control down the road.  It's a gamble, but the odds are in the good guys' favor.

But this is not to suggest that coal isn't a part of the equation.  We have lots of it, and we have a huge potential to use it more responsibly.  The vast majority of current coal use is in 33% efficient power plants - and this efficiency is rapidly falling due to CAIR and CAMR compliance (farther still if we start sequestering carbon in IGCCs).  Inefficient coal use not only means excessive carbon release, but also excessive costs from mining.  

But it can be used more efficiently.  As I've pointed out elsewhere, the power industry today is only half as efficient as it was in 1910.  Go back to 1910 efficiency levels, and you approximately cut coal use in half.  Presto, GHG emissions go down, energy costs go down.  (OK, not precisely presto, because it would take massive regulatory reform, but the cost certainly seems worth the gain).  

On another tack, coal gasification could actually be a rather good idea.  Gasify it, upgrade it to pipeline quality and blend it with gas.  Not quite as good on the carbon front as natural gas of course once efficiencies are taken into account, but this would enable vastly more efficient uses of the energy locked in coal for local heating needs and for locally-sited combined heat and power plants.  Local coal is obviously problematic from a NIMBY perspective, but most of these issues go away once you get it into a pipeline.

Neither of these goes to zero carbon of course, but would lead to significant carbon reduction at a much lower $/ton cost than CCS, and without the economic inanity of CTL.

We can only double the efficiency of power production by using more hydro, solar, wind, and geothermal.  Wouldn't that be nice?  We can only cut 80% carbon emissions by not burning coal.  

Sequesture of carbon emissions is not a proven technology, and would be both expensive and dangerous.  Solar thermal cogeneration is inexpensive, safe, and scalable everywhere.  It works in my backyard (Seattle) producing heat and power.  Carbon-free energy is simple and easy to do.

Do not protect the future of coal interests.  Protect the future of civilization, the future of humanity.

If Congress does not take global warming seriously then the people will not like Congress.  We need hope -- now.

Tax carbon.

Are you suggesting that all paths point to nuclear?  History may prove you right, but I think it's dangerous for any of us to purport to know the right path forward.  What I do know is that efficiency has to be a part of the way forward, and is in ever competitive business.  Nuclear is clearly a part of that path, and actually has an interesting story to tell: one of the things that happened when we started deregulating wholesale power markets is that the capacity factor on nukes crept up, as generators suddenly had to care about dispatching low-cost generators first.  Markets work.  I also do not disagree that nuke ought to be part of the solution.  I don't think anyone can convincingly say that we have a storage solution to the waste guaranteed not to cause a problem 10,000 years from now, but the time constant on climate change is more urgent, so I figure we ought to focus on 100 year problem first, then worry about the 10,000 year one.  Pick our battles.

That said, if I understand your points, I think you overstate the ability of nukes to solve all our energy problems.  Taking each of your points separately:

"That scheme is only efficient in terms of thermal-potential of the fuel."

Is there another potential that matters?  Electricity is a very high value form of energy, for basic thermodynamic reasons.  We would be fools to use electric power to make heat, for the simple reason that heat is less valuable.  Moreover, there is no getting around the fact that as a society, we are always going to be dependent on carbon.  Certainly for food, but also for lots of chemicals - and this is a big chunk of our energy consumption.  Extracting the maximum value of our input fuels requires that we maximize our useful extraction of the thermal energy in fuel.  Our current model of throwing heat away in cooling towers (regardless of the input fuel) is uneconomic, bad for the environment and flat out foolish.  But this is not an anti-nuke point (indeed, every nuclear sub is a cogen plant, and there's no technical reason why we couldn't think about a world with smaller, more distributed and more efficient nuclear plants that approach the efficiency we already know how to hit in a much more physically demanding in-ship environment) - simply a point that we ought not throw away energy only so that someone else can burn more fuel to recreate that same waste.

"Fuel is cheap. Human resources are expensive. Schemes to save fuel at the expense of human-resources are economically nonsensical."

Not sure your point, but I hope it is not to suggest that governments are the best arbiters of economic efficiency.  When markets deploy capital, they take all costs into consideration - and when that happens, they universally chase energy efficiency.  The reason we don't is not because someone figured that this was a good use of human capital (indeed, it's not at all clear to me that the job-creation inherent in a retooling of our power grid is a bad thing).  Rather, it's because we haven't exposed the power sector to competitive markets.  Indeed, if you look at the way we regulated power (a half dozen smart commissioners sit in a room, figure out what makes the most sense and then make massive allocations of public capital) sounds an awful lot closer to Marxism than capitalism.  It shouldn't surprise us that we make power at the efficiency of a Russian bread line!  But again, this is not a fuel-specific problem.

Your last point would seem to argue that we should assume fuel is free.  When that happens, I will concede that there is no economic reason to pursue efficiency.  Until then, my preference for fat wallets is going to keep me focused on using as little of it as possible.

I'm no expert, but I think we need to be prepared for the possibility than carbon-capture technology may not pan out. (Can we find enough sites located close to population centers with sinks to store safely vast amounts of CO2?)

And as James Hansen reminds us, we must phase out unsequestered coal plants by mid-century. CTL is a nightmare, we are all agreed.

Thus, as we peak in oil, gas and coal, we need to simulataneously find new clean energy sources and change the emphasis to conservation, which entails changes to lifestyle.

Thus the current energy bill does not even come close to addressing the kinds of infrastructure changes and renewable energy investment that will be needed to avoid disaster in this country.

Sean wrote "But this is not an anti-nuke point (indeed, every nuclear sub is a cogen plant, and there's no technical reason why we couldn't think about a world with smaller, more distributed and more efficient nuclear plants that approach the efficiency we already know how to hit in a much more physically demanding in-ship environment) - simply a point that we ought not throw away energy only so that someone else can burn more fuel to recreate that same waste."

There are no nuke sub designs of which I am aware that make any use at all of the heat being rejected by the propulsion turbines and ship's service turbo-generators.  All designs that I am aware of continue to use once-through condensers, where main seawater is sent through in a single-pass and leaves, taking the heat with it and not doing any preheating or other useful work.

Save the world: Reduce greenhouse gas emissions 5% annually.

What Congressman Markey seems to be telling us, if we read between the lines, is that coal is a fact of life, rather like death and taxes; there is simply no way that the energy future of the US can avoid using coal, so at least let us hope that a practical method of carbon capture and storage will be invented, sooner rather than later.

Whether he is right or not, of course I cannot say.  Nor is it clear what specifically political calculations lie behind this message.

Another presumably political tactic, a rather cute one, is how he gives coal-to-liquid a bad recommendation by telling us about its history: it was earlier used by the Nazis and by the apartheid government of South Africa!  Talk about guilt by association!

Chickens are our cousins! So are other sensitive animals! Enough is enough! No more factory farms!

Submarine design calls for maintenance of positive control of ship's climate.  Except in the coldest of waters the problem is that the heat losses to the ambient space that reduce thermodynamic efficiency of the power plant also require that people and equipment in the non-engineering spaces be provided with constant mechanical cooling, a compounding loss of efficiency.

Save the world: Reduce greenhouse gas emissions 5% annually.

All paths suggest that if we do not accept the use of nuclear power as a significant part of our solution, we will be very very foolish.  Unfortunately there are people on Grist who are advocating this profoundly foolish course.  They imagine that they are fighting a largely imaginary evil in the name of environmental purity.  We all hope they will find their way to sanity, and learn to hug reactors.

Charles Barton

China, India, and the US are blessed with massive coal reserves.  The US generates about 50% of her electricity from coal.  China is going on a coal-fired power plant building spree, increasing capacity by about 2 a week.  China generates about 2/3rds of her electricity from coal.  India is planning to build at least 7 mega coal-fired plants.

Why not?  Coal is about 1/6th as expensive than oil or natural gas, and can be mined domestically, saving valuable foreign currency reserves while funding domestic economic activity.

Yet, there is no way the world will substancially cut CO2 emissions without a ban on building polluting coal-fired power plants.  The technology to build non-polluting carbon capture and storage (CCS) coal-fired plants is decades away from widespread deployment, and will be very expensive to both build and operate.

Since the Chinese hesitate to even operate scrubbers to clean non-CO2 pollution from their coal emissions (even though the Japanese offered to pay to retrofit the scrubbers for free so China's pollution doesn't drift over to pollute Japan), it is a good bet that the Chinese won't pay the extra money to build and operate CCS technology.

Besides, the massive number of already and soon to be built non-CCS coal-fired plants can't be retrofited with CCS technology-and their lifetime is about half a century.  Certainly, China isn't going to dismantle those plants before they wear out.

This is a planetary emergency.  Since it is very likely that massive amounts of greenhouse gas are going to be dumped into the air by developing nation's coal-fired plants, and CCS technology is decades away, and will be very expensive when it is available, we need to remove the CO2 from the air after it has been emitted.

I suggest the low cost and technically feasible method of biosequestration.  Improve nature's ability to extract the CO2 from the air using genetic engineering-perhaps seed a GMO into the oceans.

"We conclude that a feasible strategy for planetary rescue almost surely requires a means of extracting [greenhouse gases] from the air."
-from a recent paper published by Jim Hansen of NASA

Carbon capture and storage is pure and unmittigated crap.  Coal should be banned.

Charles Barton

wise words.  The truth is (as much as I hate to admit it), we aren't ready to exist without coal.  All we can do is use it in the least harmful manner possible.  This is intelligent policy.  Are you listening Obama?

The one thing that irks me about CCS is that people will read about it in the papers and say to themselves...

"ahhh...I knew it.  Human ingenuity was bound to save us."

Then they'll put climate change in the "problems solved" folder, and go on without a care in the world.  

Anyways, to those of you who are criticizing Markey, wake up!  To say "coal should be banned!" is not realistic.  Until there is a major breakthrough in solar or wind, we're stuck with at least some use of coal.
  What gets my goat is that we're still subsidizing it.  Those subsidies need to go towards wind and solar.  

could we talk about serious concervation over how we are going to get the next batch of power.  The government could give tax credits to people who get home energy assesments. Grass roots bitch.

Never play leap frog with a unicorn.

Hey, all:

Hey, Maia:  With respect, I must say that despite your reference to people filing away the problem as solved, you seem to have a very blase attitude about the problem.  If you read Markey's words you find an awful lot of weasel words/phrases such as "would", "emerging", "potential", "would make it possible", etc.  Entire paragraphs, e.g., "Liquid coal is also incredibly expensive...." are effectively weasel words.

I have said this before in response to comments like yours about wind and solar, but here I go again.  If we waited for 'breakthroughs' regarding other previous technologies, we would still be using exclusively steam and kerosene.  Wind and solar is available on every scale RIGHT NOW.   In their best form they are found distributed on roofs across the country and world.  Conservation and efficiency have been proven widely to be very effective in reducing demand.  

If you accept the judgment that we have to wait, you have bought into a corporate fossil fuel lie.   Sorry for the bluntness, but some perceptions cry out for correction.  

David
Sustainability For Life

Messages done with sustainable energy, with Wind and Sun!

GreyFlcn wrote: Likely that would be something comprable to unmining coal.  For instance grow a lot of biomass, heat it with zero oxygen into a charcoal, bury it.

Or capture carbon with lime, mix it with hydrogen and bury it in -- or pump it into -- the ground.

Well yeah, but thats a CCS tech.
Or basically a
"Don't add more into the air"

Hansen however wants a
"Pull what we already got in the air, down"

No, I meant (and as GRL Cowan and I gave explained many times on Gristmill) "take it out of the air." Carbon emissions are not discouraged in this scheme. In fact, they are encouraged. For example, if China wants to emit the US benefits since there is more carbon-resource in the air which the US can easily pull out and use to make gasoline, diesel and jet-fuel.

more carbon-resource in the air which the US can easily pull out

And by easily, you must mean "not easily"?

If it were "easy" we'd just forget nukes, and renewables all together and just go on spewing on our merry way.

Obviously thats not the case.

"The truth is (as much as I hate to admit it), we aren't ready to exist without coal.  All we can do is use it in the least harmful manner possible.  This is intelligent policy." -- from another comment here.

This seems to sum up the general direction of the 34 previous comments.  And that's too bad because there are, oh, about 350 million ways around our poor, unsustainable coal and fossil fuel consumption (sorry, I'm no Census whiz, but this number's supposed to be the # of folks in the US now).

First, admittedly, there's gonna have to be a weaning process.  First comes the Prius, then comes the shoe leather express.  And that's where ya have ta go.

This is NOT a 'go live in a mud hut and eat grub worms' pronouncement, it's a sensible comment on the idea that people are somehow thinking we gotta find a way to use this coal effectively because there's no alternative.

Oh, but there is.  No one's thinking 'outside the Hummer' cuz we've been FORCED to stay inside it.  

That's right -- we all think it's our Manifest Destiny to live in a 7000 sq ft palace at the end of a cul de sac and drive our cars to the grocery store to pick up bananas that have been shipped from South America.  (unfortunately, and realistically, this is a description of my sister)

This is the way America's been built since WW2 thanks to the big industries who promote this lifestyle.  

Al Gore said in the latest Rolling Stone mag (June 28, 2007): "Changing the pattern that causes people to sit in traffic jams for an hour and a half every day is not a sacrifice, it's an enhancement.  Changing the assumption that it's perfectly natural to take 4,000 pounds of metal with us everywhere we go doesn't have to be a sacrifice."

So, if you take a quick look around, you'll see that we're the #1 user of said fossil fuels because of this.  Do Europeans have any LESS of a quality of life than us?  NO.  Do they consume a fraction of the energy?  YES.

Why?  Their cities and towns are more efficient.  They obviously don't suffer for fine bread, cheese, and wine... but they simple walk out their front door to the corner to get it -- not drive 27 miles to Wal-Mart!  

So to make the discussion of how to make coal "safe" and "friendly" utterly moot, think about:

re-planning cities and towns (the way they were before the suburban movement).  
moving closer into a city (if you have a 45 minute commute)
talking to your governments about better, more, and more efficient public transportation
buying your organics locally at a farmer's market (and riding your bike there)
and doing all the energy-efficient things you can do (switch to a renewable provider, watch your water use, etc).

If we're sensible, smart, and could actually knock some sense into any of these politicians, it wouldn't be that hard to write coal completely out of the script.  

Oh, so what about all these fine people who actually make money mining coal (not the white shirts, but the miners and families, etc) -- how about training them to help rebuild our rail systems and to install solar panels and to work on watersheds?  That should keep them busy for a while.  And no, this is no knock, I'm from Pittsburgh, PA, home of coal and Steelers.

Thats 14% to do the sequestration process.

That does not count the process needed to seperate the CO2 from all the other gases.

Or the energy cost to ship it.
The energy cost to "unmine it"
Or give a particularly good place to put it.

Hell, it probably assumes you start with refined silicate onhand too.

Pile all those up, and subtract them all from the effeciency of the plant.  And then how much do you have left?

Meh read through the realclimate comment before the grist comment.

Either way when something sounds too good to be true, it usually is.

Pardon me if I'm still skeptical of the process.

What do you bet there are other things in the air that would react to silicate?

For instance lets say you got an average 1/4th correct matches with CO2.

That'd mean you'd need 56% of the plant's electric capacity.