I'm involved in an ongoing email debate over the wisdom of "clean coal" -- that is, coal power plants that capture and sequester their carbon dioxide emissions. It will eventually be published on a State Dept. website, and then in Grist. In the meantime, a preview of sorts.

A frequent argument one hears in favor of a heavy focus on carbon sequestration goes like this: fossil fuels are fantastic energy carriers, dense, portable, and cheap. People will burn them up no matter what. So we might as well figure out a way to make them low-carbon by sequestering their emissions. It's a way to buy time as we figure out other clean energy options.

It's a seductive argument. It sounds easier to convince people to clean up what they're already doing than to persuade them to do something entirely different.

But I don't think it holds up under scrutiny. It trades on the implicit notion that sequestering CO2 is just a matter of tweaking our current power system a bit -- a quick, low-cost twist on business-as-usual. That would be easier than shutting dirty power plants down and building a new infrastructure based on renewables, efficiency, and intelligent grids.

It's wrong, though:

1. Sequestration is not a low-cost alternative. CCS is expensive! Nobody has any idea how much it will cost once it has been scaled up to the point that it's capturing the bulk of CO2 emissions from the bulk of the world's coal power plants. Most current estimates, though, are that it adds about 30-40% on to the cost of building a new plant and up to 50-60% to the cost of running existing pulverized coal plants. That is not a low-cost alternative to higher-cost renewables. It's one higher-cost option among others.

2. Sequestration is not modification of existing infrastructure. It's new infrastructure, and a lot of it. As Vaclav Smil pointed out in a widely cited 2006 paper in Nature (PDF), capturing and sequestering just 10% of global CO2 emissions would require the creation of an infrastructure that would handle as much as or more volume than that extracted by the global oil industry (which has been built up over a century). Sequestering the 40% of global emissions for which coal plants are responsible would mean infrastructure four times as extensive as the entire global oil industry's. That's not some tweak on what we've got; it's a mind-bogglingly enormous new industrial project that wouldn't be up and commercialized until, on the most optimistic projections, 2025-2030.

So the Argument from Fossil Fuels (as I will now take to calling it) needs to be clarified. If the point is that the countries of the world are going to keep burning fossil fuels because they want the cheapest possible power no matter what, then we're doomed. Period. No country that prioritizes the cheapest energy in the short-term is going to opt for CCS -- it's not cheap, or short-term.

If, on the other hand, the argument is that countries will opt for the low-carbon energy path that represents the easiest, cheapest, and fastest alternative to dirty fossil fuels, well, then, now we're really having a discussion. Now the argument for CCS has to show that it's easier, cheaper, and faster than efficiency and renewables. I don't think it can win that argument.

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 A visual overview of geoengineering schemes.Image: Kathleen Smith/LLNL

LONDON - Sci-fi proposals to cool the planet are laden with risk but may be Earth's only hope if politicians fail to tackle global warming, scientists said on Tuesday in their biggest evaluation to date of "geoengineering" concepts.

The verdict by Britain's prestigious Royal Society came a little more than three months before a U.N. showdown in Copenhagen on how to reduce the carbon emissions that drive climate change.

John Shepherd, a professor at Britain's University of Southampton, who chaired a 12-member panel which assessed the evidence, said geoengineering was filling a perilous political void.

"Our research found that some geoengineering techniques could have serious unintended and detrimental effects on many people and ecosystems -- yet we are still failing to take the only action that will prevent us from having to rely on them," he said.

The report cautiously said some geoengineering schemes were technically feasible but were shadowed by safety worries and doubts about affordability.  Provided these questions were answered, such projects could be a useful tool as part of a worldwide switch to a low-carbon economy, it said.

But, the report warned, other geoengineering schemes are so costly or so freighted with risk and unknowns that they should only be considered a last-ditch fix.

Just five years ago, geoengineering was widely dismissed by mainstream climate scientists as quirky or delusional. As recently as 2007, the U.N.'s Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) cautioned of its potential risk and unquantified cost.

But the schemes are now getting a serious hearing in many quarters, helped by mounting evidence that climate change is advancing faster than thought while progress toward a carbon-curbing U.N. treaty is moving at glacial speed.

Supporters say geoengineering can buy time to let politicians hammer out a deal or wean the global economy off polluting fossil fuels.

The report, "Geoengineering the climate: Science, governance and uncertainty," was based mainly on peer-reviewed literature.  It took a year to carry out, and the Royal Society came under fire from green groups that accused it of handing a cloak of respectability to a once-mocked scientific fringe.

The authors of the report said geoengineering fell into two main categories.

The most promising entails removal of carbon dioxide, such as by planting forests and building towers that would capture CO2 from the air.

Some of these projects could be harnessed alongside conventional methods to reduce emissions once they are demonstrated to be "safe, effective, sustainable, and affordable," said the report.

The other category is called solar radiation management.

Instead of tackling CO2, it would act like a thermostat, turning down the heat that reaches Earth from the sun.

Concepts in this field include deflecting the sun's heat away from the Earth through space mirrors, scattering light-colored particles in the high atmosphere to reflect the solar rays, and using ships to spray water that would create reflective low-altitude clouds.

The advantage would be to lower temperatures quickly and could be tempting if global warming suddenly cranked up a gear, the report said.

But these techniques would not curb CO2 emissions that cause dangerous ocean acidification; their costs are unclear but possibly astronomical; and they may end up generating disasters of their own.

Even so, they should not be dismissed out of hand, given their potential in an emergency, said Ken Caldeira, a professor of climate modelling at Stanford University, California.

"We need to think if Greenland were to be sliding into the sea rapidly, causing rapid sea-level rise, or if methane started to de-gas rapidly from the Siberian permafrost, or if rainfall patterns were to shift in such a way that wide-spread famines were induced," he said.  "We would be remiss if we did not do what we could do to understand the potential of these options as well as their uncertainties and risks ahead of time."

Painting roofs white to reflect solar rays -- an idea gaining ground in California and other sunny places -- would provide only limited, local cooling and not affect the rise in global temperature.

"None of the geoengineering technologies so far suggested is a magic bullet and all have risks and uncertainties associated with them," Shepherd said.

The panel called for funding of around $162 million a year to kickstart research into whether geoengineering schemes could be feasible -- and, if so, in what circumstances they should be applied and how they would be managed.

Here is a snapshot of the report's views on the main geoengineering proposals: 

These are schemes that remove carbon dioxide (CO2), the principal greenhouse gas, from the atmosphere. Projects that are shown to be "safe, effective, sustainable and affordable" should be deployed alongside cleaner energy and other conventional methods to reduce carbon emissions. Among those highlighted in the report:  

Planting trees
Afforestation would suck carbon dioxide (CO2) out of the atmosphere through the natural process of photosynthesis.
• For: Safe, easy, swift, and cheap to deploy, good for biodiversity.
• Against: Only limited potential for carbon removal, potential conflicts over land use (forests vs. food crops).

Bio-energy
Use trees, shrubs, and other vegetation as an energy source, such as bio-mass and charcoal.
• For: Affordable and safe.
• Against: Slow to reduce global temperatures, potential conflicts over land use.

Enhanced weathering
CO2 is removed from the atmosphere over thousands of years by a natural process involving the weathering, or dissolution, of carbonate and silicate soils. Enhanced weathering would accelerate the process by adding silicates to certain soils.
• For: High potential for storing CO2 in the soil.
• Against: Expensive, slow to take effect, and impact on soil acidity and vegetation unclear.

Carbon scrubbers
Build hi-tech towers around the world to capture CO2 molecules from the air.
• For: Safe, technically feasible, and very high cleanup potential.
• Against: Costs unknown but likely to be high, need for infrastructure to store the carbon collected by the towers.

Ocean fertilization
Sow the open seas with iron nutrients to encourage the growth of marine plants called phytoplankton that suck up CO2 at the surface through photosynthesis. The phytoplankton die and sink to the ocean floor, effectively storing the carbon forever.
• For: Technically feasible, not too expensive.
• Against: May not work, given complex ocean currents; slow to reduce global temperatures; very high potential for damaging the marine ecosystem.

Oceanic upwelling
Place huge vertical pipes in the sea to pump water from the depths to the surface and from the surface to the depths.
• For: Would boost the efficiency of the ocean as a means of storing CO2.
• Against: Unfeasible, would only reduce atmospheric CO2 by a tiny fraction, environmental impact unknown.

These are schemes that would cool the planet by reducing heat from the sun rather than by curbing fossil-fuel pollution.  Some of these could have a quick cooling effect, but would not address CO2 buildup, which causes ocean acidification and other problems.  They may also have a potential for causing massive environmental problems.  As a result, solar radiation management is less preferable than carbon dioxide removal, says the report. It should only be applied in an emergency and for a limited time, and in any case should accompany reductions in carbon emissions.  The principal schemes:
  
Albedo (reflective materials)
Cover desert areas with reflecting film or generate white clouds over parts of the oceans through spray generators aboard "cloud ships."
• For: Quick to implement and rapidly effective.
• Against: Desert albedo would have a major impact on desert ecosystems, ocean albedo could affect weather patterns and ocean currents. Both very expensive.

Stratospheric aerosols
Mimicking the dust spewed from volcanoes, these would be fine, white particles of sulphate that would be scattered into the stratosphere to reflect sunlight.
• For: Technically feasible, highly effective (could start to reduce temperatures within one year), can be deployed quickly and at low cost.
• Against: Possible impact on ozone layer, high-altitude clouds, may disrupt regional rainfall patterns.

Space sunshade
Place reflectors in orbit that would reduce the amount of solar radiation reaching Earth by 1 or 2 percent.
• For: Highly effective, and no theoretical limit on potential cooling.
• Against: Would take decades to deploy; huge cost; potential effects on regional climate; impact of reduced sunlight on ecosystem unknown.

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Should Waxman and Markey have kicked off House climate-bill negotiations with a stronger ask?

The bill they introduced was effectively the U.S. Climate Action Partnership proposal, which already reflected years of negotiation and compromise. The idea was that the difficult work of negotiations had already been done -- enviros and business both on board! -- and it would be easy for conservative Dems (and a few Republicans) to sign off on it.

Of course that's not what has happened. Republicans are balking en masse. Conservative Dems have compromised the bill down further, and by all indications will further weaken it in the Senate. Could the bill have ended up in a stronger place if it had started in a stronger place?

The counterargument is that the "green" side just didn't have much leverage. Without sticks, all they had were carrots -- more giveaways, more offsets.

One stick they did have was the threat of EPA greenhouse-gas regulations. There was a lot of talk about this when Dems first won their majorities but very little once negotiations actually got underway. Nobody is brandishing the stick.

Rep. Rick BoucherCould it have made more of a difference? Some recent comments from Rep. Rick Boucher (D-Va.) are intriguing in this regard. In an interview with the Kingsport Times-News, Boucher was candid about his motivation for negotiating with Waxman:

Boucher stressed his interest in climate change has not been driven by a moral belief to control greenhouse gases. [Paging Times-News editors: You awake over there? What is a moral belief to control GHGs?]

What is driving his involvement, said Boucher, is the U.S. Supreme Court determined two years ago that greenhouse gases are pollutants.

“As a consequence of that decision, the Environmental Protection Agency is, for all intents and purposes, effectively required to regulate greenhouse gases,” Boucher said. “The debate about whether or not we will have regulation is over. So the only question is will EPA regulate or ... will we have congressional regulation that does balance economic effect against environmental effect? Given that choice, industry would rather have Congress do this. Industry needs and wants a bill to pass.”

"Industry needs and wants a bill to pass" -- the words of the coal industry's most dogged and effective spokesperson.

So there was leverage. It was used to get Boucher to the table. But once he was there, it went out the window. Not once in the process has industry been forced to face an ultimatum or bargain away a key position. They've been relentlessly wooed, but rarely challenged. They've been able to talk out both sides of their mouths, offering tepid, nominal support while bulldogs like the Chamber of Commerce, National Association of Manufacturers, and the Edison Electric Institute attack and weaken the bill.

And Boucher got just about everything he wanted for Big Coal:

The Southwest Virginia congressman said he spent more than six weeks helping to rewrite the draft bill to help coal-powered utilities and coal producers in his district.

He pointed to “four key things” inserted in the bill.

First, Boucher said, was making sure emission allowances were assigned for free and not put up for auction by the federal government.

“That helps to keep electricity prices affordable and strengthens the case for utilities to continue to use coal,” he said.

Secondly, Boucher said the bill now includes 2 billion tons of carbon offsets available to industrial emitters to help them satisfy their reduction obligations.

“That means an electric utility burning coal will not have to reduce the emissions at the plant site. It can just keep burning coal,” he explained.

The third provision is a $1 billion per year special fund to develop carbon capture and sequestration technologies for controlled disposal or storage.

In the fourth provision, there is another special fund created to deploy the carbon capture and sequestration technology.

“Carbon capture and sequestration attached to coal still makes coal the cheapest fuel,” Boucher asserted.

These are the key -- some argue fatal -- weaknesses of the bill. They were put in to woo an industry that "needs and wants a bill to pass."

One other thing to note:

[Boucher] said lawmakers have “no political will” to mandate the EPA to do a cost-benefit analysis on climate change legislation.

Strictly speaking, this is false. The EPA has done detailed cost-benefit analyses of ACES. (It's going to be cheap, they say.) If Boucher is talking about the dipshit lawsuit the Chamber of Commerce is pushing, he's drifting into "death panel" territory.

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Photo: Yuriy via PicasaDive into the NRDC's new documentary Acid Test and you're immediately immersed in a beautiful undersea world complete with vibrant coral reefs, graceful kelp beds, and rhythmic schools of fish.

But Acid Test is no Blue Planet, thanks to heavy use of green-screen technology. And what's in front of those screens is a lot less pleasant than the fish porn projected onto them. (No offense to the scientists, commercial fisherfolk, and other experts who are doing the talking, of course -- it's more about what they're saying.)

The 30 minute film, part of Discovery Planet Green's "Blue August" month of online and onscreen ocean coverage, is about the threat of ocean acidification, the gradual chemical changes in our waters linked to increased levels of carbon dioxide. Just how much CO2? Turns out that since the Industrial Revolution, the ocean has absorbed about one quarter of the carbon dioxide produced by burning fossil fuels.

But don't go celebrating all the sequestered CO2 that's been kept from contributing to global warming, because it's beginning to cause more problems than it's solving, increasing the acidity of the water by 30 percent. And that acidity is starting to dissolve seashells in areas as close to home as the California coast, meaning tragic consequences for many organisms -- and the millions more who count on them for food, including us.

It's a scary phenomenon that scientists are only just coming to understand, and it's only going to get worse -- leaving us with "an urgent choice," as narrator Sigourney Weaver puts it, "to move beyond fossil fuels or to risk turning the ocean into a sea of weeds."

As you watch Acid Test, keep an eye on the beauty projected onto the green screen and the choice seems pretty obvious.

Acid Test premieres tonight on Planet Green and continues to air throughout the month. Catch the trailer below:

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A Penny Saved Is…

So long and thanks for all the fish

Owners of forestland in the Pacific NW could benefit more under a national carbon offsets system, as trees common to the region store more carbon per acre than East Coast species. Pictured: Douglas firs in an Oregon forest.Courtesy Ecotrust's sbeebe via FlickrThough most people probably think of national parks when they think of forests, more than half of the 750 million acres of forestland in the United States is actually privately owned, much of it by individuals and families, according to the American Forest Foundation, a nonprofit advocacy organization.

Together, these trees suck up about 10 percent of U.S. carbon dioxide emissions annually, according to the Environmental Protection Agency, a portion that could double to almost 20 percent with increased sustainable management practices like replanting cut trees and lengthening cut rotations.

But many of these family-owned lands are small -- a few hundred acres in size. Alone, these small plots don't sequester much carbon. This makes it difficult for forest owners to participate in voluntary carbon markets, which typically trade carbon by the tens of thousands of tons. In addition, private owners often can't afford to inventory and verify the amount of carbon sequestered by their forest on their own.

That's why there's growing interest in packaging small parcels of forestland into carbon portfolios that can then be traded competitively on voluntary markets.

Woodlands Carbon Company, an Oregon-based pilot project funded by the American Forest Foundation, is just one so-called aggregator looking to pool the carbon trading power of forest owners. It focuses specifically on West Coast clients, who are especially primed to benefit from carbon offsets with lands planted with trees like Douglas Fir and Hemlock Spruce that can sequester more than 1,000 metric tons of CO2 per acre over a 125-year period. Its sister organization, CarbonTree, focuses on the East Coast.

"We bundle all of the smaller woodland owners together so that they can get access to these markets," says Mike Gaudern, chief executive of Woodlands Carbon. "They wouldn't have access to these markets unless they had an aggregator to work on their behalf."

Special Series: What's the deal with offsets?Photo illustration by Tom Twigg / GristParticipating in the carbon offset market can be technically challenging, so companies like Woodlands help educate private landowners and foresters through informational workshops that walk potential clients through the many steps of carbon trading. In July, Woodlands hosted two workshops where 120 landowners and foresters came from Oregon, Washington and even California.

"It was a pretty successful event," says Gaudern. "There were landowners there that represented close to 60,000 acres of forestland that will be immediately eligible for carbon offset trading."

In addition, Woodlands offers revolving loans for landowners to complete their carbon inventories, which landowners then pay back through carbon sales.

Woodlands plans to have its first bundle of carbon offsets ready to sell by the end of the fall, most likely either over-the-counter or through the Chicago Climate Exchange (CCX), which requires landowners to sign a contract attesting that the land will be maintained as forest for at least 15 years.

Approximately 9,000 individual farmers, ranchers and forest owners are currently enrolled in CCX, according to Brookly McLaughlin, director of communications for the exchange. Together, they have earned approximately 16.4 million metric tons of offsets since the program's inception in 2003.

The short-term contracts appeal to Ken Faulk, president of the Oregon Small Woodlands Association, because he believes that the focus should be on reducing carbon emissions in the short term. Faulk owns 155 acres in the Willamette Valley in Oregon and is currently inventorying his forest so he can sell carbon offsets through Woodlands Carbon.

"If people truly believe that we're going to be on a fossil fuel economy for the next 100 years, then maybe we should be worried about putting carbon away in the trees for a 100-year rotation," says Faulk. "But I think our goal should be to get the most carbon dioxide out of the atmosphere as soon as we can."

Clint Bentz, an Oregon family forest landowner and chairman of the Oregon Tree Farm System, also believes short-term contracts are the way to go.

"We think the shorter time frame is not only more palatable to the landowners, it's also more valuable because it keeps everybody's attention," says Bentz. "Keeping everybody's feet to the fire with these shorter contracts works better with human nature."

Carbon offsets also provide an additional revenue stream for landowners feeling the squeeze of falling timber prices.

"Nobody's going to get rich off of carbon offsets, but it's a real help," says Bentz. "Recognizing these ecosystem services [like carbon sequestration] is one of the bright lights that we're seeing to help offset the costs of sustainably managing forests."

Of course, as long as the price of carbon remains low, many landowners are holding off in the hopes that a national climate law would spur prices.

"For most people who do the math if they're actually in the sustainable forestry business, they're going to stay in the timber business and not the carbon business right now," says Bill Stewart, a forestry specialist at the University of California Cooperative Extension.

Still, some private owners are getting a head start on the offset market now, before carbon legislation is passed. "We see it as trying to get ready to have these offsets available in any future federal legislation and to have the infrastructure in place to make this work for landowners," says Ted Dodge, executive director of the National Carbon Offset Coalition and Woodlands' carbon broker.

But not everyone agrees that short-term contracts will best benefit the planet, in part because landowners could clear cut their trees after the contract expires. Ecotrust, an environmental organization based in Portland, Ore., is hoping that any federal legislation for carbon offsets would include strict regulations and long-term contracts similar to the Climate Action Reserve's (CAR) protocols, a carbon market that began in California and is now looking to go national.

"Climate Action Reserve's protocols that are being developed are much more rigorous [than CCX's] in terms of permanence and additionality," explains Brent Davies, director of forestry for Ecotrust. Additionality means that the project wouldn't have happened without carbon offset funds.

For example, CAR's standards require that forest owners agree to a permanent conservation easement, a legal agreement that requires owners to permanently give up land development rights. But since many private owners aren't willing to make that commitment, CAR is considering substituting the conservation easement requirement for a 100-year contract.

"We found that the 100-year contract is more acceptable to private landowners who don't want to necessarily bind their great, great grandchildren to this requirement," explains Gary Gero, president of CAR. The California Air Resources Board will vote on the new draft in September.

David Eisler, a landowner in the coast range of Oregon, is looking for the sort of long-term contract that CAR offers because he wants to guarantee that his forest stewardship practices will continue after he passes. He is working with Ecotrust on carbon credit possibilities for his property, an 80-acre tract of land that serves as habitat for spotted owls and endangered coho salmon.

"Our efforts to really protect some of this high quality forestland and ancient trees could be gone in a blink once the property changes hands," says Eisler. "That's why I'm looking for a conservation easement, but I'm also looking to carbon credits to commit to very long term forest stand."

Peter Hayes, a landowner who manages about 800 acres in the Northern Oregon Coast Range, is also looking to sell carbon credits on a long-term basis, but says he has yet to find a carbon offset project that fully meets his family's stringent conservation goals.

"Our approach is to be eagerly involved in understanding and following what's going on, but constructively skeptical and critical before we choose to commit our land long term," says Hayes.

Because opinions on carbon offsets are akin to the number of leaves on a branch, one solution may be to include a broad range of options for carbon offsets in the new carbon legislation. By casting a wide net, more people will be able to participate, which will therefore bring in the largest amount of carbon.

"I don't think it should be either/or situation," says David Ford, executive director of the Oregon Small Woodlands Association. "We have a rather large problem. We're not going to solve it with a narrow solution."

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The coal industry got a lot of goodies in the House-passed energy and climate bill, but it's pressing for even more in the Senate version.

At a Senate hearing on the future of coal hosted earlier this week by Sens. Tom Carper (D-Del.) and George Voinovich (R-Ohio), representatives from utilities and coal companies told lawmakers what they want out of climate and energy legislation: more handouts and looser standards.

Coal boosters have long argued that "clean coal" technology -- carbon capture and sequestration (CCS) -- is just around the corner (despite plenty of arguments to the contrary). Says the American Coalition for Clean Coal Electricity on its website, "The technology isn’t 20 years away—some of it is here today."

But at the hearing on Wednesday, industry reps argued that CCS is still more than a decade from viability and therefore a climate bill shouldn't demand too many emissions cuts too soon.

"I don't think CCS will be widely deployed until 2020 or after," said Chris Hobson, senior vice president of research and environmental affairs at Southern Company, the fourth largest utility company in the U.S. The House bill, he said, includes "targets and timetables that are in advance of the [industry's] abilities." He called for a lowering of the bill's near-term emissions targets, which currently require a 17 percent cut below 2005 levels by 2020.

Hobson also said that Southern wants to see an upper limit on the price of carbon (often called a "safety valve" or "off-ramp" that would kick in if the price hits a certain level), and said the free allocation of pollution permits should be phased out more slowly than in the House bill.

Steve Winberg, vice president of research and development at CONSOL Energy Inc., a major coal producer, echoed those points. CCS "won't be deployed to sufficient extent by 2020," he said. He argued that the House bill is the "wrong template" to use, and the Senate should take its time crafting legislation to account for the "enormous shortcomings" of the House bill.

The fact that CCS is far from ready for prime time is all the more reason for it to get much more government funding, the industry reps reason. They say the House bill doesn't provide enough support for CCS, even though it designates $60 billion for research and development of the technology, in addition to $1 billion per year for CCS demonstration and deployment, funded by a fee on consumers of fossil-based electricity. The House bill would also reward early movers on CCS with bonus emission permits.

But at the hearing, the industry reps said they want more money to develop and deploy large-scale CCS projects in the near term, more money for longer-term pilot projects, more money to explore potential sites for CCS, and more money for the construction of piping systems to transport carbon dioxide to storage sites.

Granted, some important players in the coal sector are generally supportive of the House bill. United Mine Workers of America spokesperson Phil Smith said last month, "the amount of money dedicated to coal in [the Waxman-Markey] bill is remarkable, and the future of coal will be intact." Duke Energy and Alstom (which was also represented at this week's hearing) are both members of the U.S. Climate Action Partnership, which helped craft the House bill. Rep. Rick Boucher (D-Va.), who led the charge to get coal-friendly provisions into the House bill, proudly declared that the legislation would lead to "increased coal use" once CCS technology is in wide use.

But Wednesday's hearing made it clear that powerful coal producers and users are at least as determined as environmental advocates to get a better deal from the Senate than they did from the House.

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International climate negotiations often seem like some sort of cosmic science fair project -- an aquarium full of hamsters connected to rudimentary motors. There's a lot of frantic running, a lot of sweat and heat, but in the end, very little light.

Faith in the UN climate process has dimmed. Joe Romm calls it a "dead man walking." The Copenhagen talks in December are generally discussed with the same dissonant mixture of urgency ("You have to do it in Copenhagen," says UNFCCC chair Yvo de Boer) and fatalism ("There is no movement," says German environment minister Sigmar Gabriel) as the last dozen rounds of international talks.

The Obama administration knows the danger of sclerosis and is working on several fronts to regain a sense of momentum. A good bit of that work will happen during this busy week, which will take the president to Russia to meet with President Dmitri Medvedev and Prime Minister Vladimir Putin; he'll deliver a major speech on U.S.-Russia relations today. On Wednesday, he heads to Italy for the latest meeting of the G8 countries (US, France, UK, Russia, Germany, Japan, Italy, Canada). On Thursday, on the sidelines of the G8, Obama will convene a meeting of the Major Economies Forum (the G8 plus Australia, Brazil, China, India, Indonesia, Korea, Mexico, Russia, South Africa). On Friday he'll head to Ghana and on Saturday he'll deliver a major speech on development and democracy.

At all these events the issue of climate change will play a role. All will reveal something about the Obama administration's approach to international climate negotiations.

The Grand Plan

International climate negotiations have primarily been channeled through the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change, but many in the international community are losing faith in that process, or at least in its monopoly on negotiations. Getting 192 countries to sign on to a meaningful treaty is nigh impossible; the lowest common denominator among 192 wildly diverse countries turns out to be pretty damn low.

Oddly, it was the Bush administration that first saw a way around the thicket. In May 2007 it announced a series of Major Economies Meetings on climate and energy security. The idea was that the largest greenhouse gas emitters could more easily find areas of agreement working directly with one another, and that what consensus they could find would help break the logjam in the UNFCCC process.

The sincerity of Bush's effort was widely doubted -- he (in)famously advocated for purely voluntary measures -- but the basic wisdom of the strategy is apparent to, among others, the Obama administration. In fact Obama seems to be taking it even farther, working not only with smaller groups like the Major Economies Forum (MEF) and the G8, but bilaterally with other large emitters. What shape these smaller deals take could vary, from shared targets to technology R&D agreements, but again, the idea is to show that big emitters are finally acting, taking real steps. This will, it is hoped, cut through the Gordian you-go-first knot sure to bedevil the Copenhagen climate talks.

The strategy began with Todd Stern's initial efforts in China, but "you can definitely say we are looking for other partners," an administration official said.

Russia

Most members of the international community had written Russia off when it comes to climate change. It grudgingly ratified Kyoto back in 2004, serving as the crucial final signatory needed to put the treaty into effect. But since then it's focused on nothing but often dirty and inefficient means of expanding its economy. Just last month, in what many interpreted as a thumb in the eye of the UN process, it announced a "climate plan" that would increase its greenhouse gas emissions 30 percent by 2020.

The reason Russia, a Kyoto signatory, can grow its emissions so heedlessly is that emission baselines for the UN process were set at 1990 levels. Of course in 1992 Russia's economy cratered, and with it the country's emissions. The damage was so great that the economy would need to grow substantially to meet a target of 10-15% below 1990 levels by 2020 -- and that's what it plans to do.

Most observers expected Obama to focus exclusively on arms control and the financial crisis when he goes to Russia, since progress on climate seems so hopeless. But as The Guardian reports, the administration fully intends to forge a deal on joint climate action. It's been pulling its ideas from a new report from the Center on American Progress.

The goal is to coax Russia into accepting strong sticks (mandatory targets at the Copenhagen talks) by offering it carrots. One is help entering carbon trading markets. The country is thought to be sitting on some 1.9 billion euros worth of carbon credits -- one of the main reasons it signed Kyoto -- but the government does not have the capacity or infrastructure to monitor emissions and approve projects. The U.S. could help with that, since it has considerable experience with such markets.

The other carrot is efficiency. Russia's energy intensity -- energy use per unit of GDP -- is twice America's, and the highest among the world's high energy consuming countries. Targeted exchange of efficiency technology and know-how could not only bend Russia's emissions curve but make its economy more productive. It's a win-win, but again, the government needs help. (Interestingly, Russia just announced that it will ban some incandescent lights by 2011.)

No big U.S.-Russia agreements on climate are expected this week, but Monday saw the introduction of a working group on energy, formed as part of a high-level bilateral commission created out of the summit. Steven Chu will chair the group on the US side.

G8 + MEF

The MEF is a smaller group of countries than the full UNFCCC, but it's still large and diverse, and there are enormous challenges in the way of getting a substantive agreement this week. Here are a few:

China + India

The overwhelming short-term priorities for developing countries are poverty reduction and economic development, driven in part by coal-based power. That's why China and India have both recently signaled that they will not commit to any binding GHG reduction targets. No, seriously, they won't. Says Indian environment minister Jairam Ramesh, “India will not accept any emissions targets -- period. It is the bottom line; a non-negotiable stand. This is not something that India is going to budge on, under any circumstances." OK then!

Both countries (India; China) have also recently expressed ostentatious outrage about the possibility that the United States will impose "carbon tariffs" on imported goods. (A border adjustment provision was inserted in the Waxman-Markey bill before it passed the House.) Developing countries warn of an incipient trade war. Of course, as John Kemp points out, the provisions in the bill are not actually carbon tariffs but "carefully structured as import permits specifically to ensure they are consistent with World Trade Organisation rules." And sure enough, the WTO has signaled that the import permits are legal. China and India fear them.

Obama has spoken publicly against the border adjustments, but as Brad Plumer notes, it's helpful to have that stick in hand to make the carrots look better. (Todd Stern didn't have it when he went to China early last month.)

Of course China is hardly sitting on its hands. It's green stimulus package was both larger and greener than America's. Just this month it boosted its renewable energy targets to 15% by 2020. It looks set to swamp the U.S. in both wind and solar investment this year; between now and 2020, it's expected to spend more on renewables and nuclear than on oil and coal.

The central government has established the State Council's Expert Panel on Climate Change Policy to work on energy development plans that will involve trillions in investment. "Roughly, we need to spend an extra 1 trillion yuan every year to raise energy efficiency," said panel member Bai Quan. Just as importantly, maybe more so, it announced that regional government officials will be judged by reductions in carbon intensity instead of purely by economic growth. Getting career bureaucrats on board is essential to making sure the central planners' schemes become reality. The green shift is dispersing into rural areas as well.

Energy Secretary Steven Chu and Commerce Secretary Gary Locke will head to China later this month to talk turkey. Says Chu, "It's in our interest and China's to explore ways to cooperate for our mutual benefit--by promoting renewable energy, encouraging energy efficiency and cutting pollution." Chu's assistant secretary David Sandalow is hosting a high-level discussion on engaging China on CCS this Thursday in D.C.; a second, focused on finance and political barriers, will happen soon thereafter.

You can imagine Chu announcing a splashy post-combustion CCS development project, or an investment in solar thermal projects, in exchange for back-channel agreements on a timeline for the country to accept hard emission reductions targets (and back off on border adjustment fussing).

What's next

Japan and Brazil are among the other countries with which Obama may pursue bilateral deals, possibly before Copenhagen. The big sticking point with Brazil is avoided deforestation. They don't want it paid for via carbon credits, through the Reduced Emissions through Deforestation and Degradation (REDD) program -- they want it paid for with cold hard cash (so old-fashioned!). So far, no one except Norway is biting.

If all goes well -- an enormous if, of course -- the U.S. negotiating team arrive at Copenhagen with a web of bi- and multi-lateral side deals on clean energy technology sharing, adaptation research, development assistance, trade deals, and more. The world's biggest polluters will arrive with agreements in hand. Developing countries will see signs of real movement on the part of developed nations and soften their rigid opposition to targets.

And out of it all will come a stronger, more robust climate treaty, scaffolded by the self-interest of the many countries invested in side deals premised on continued international action.

That's the hope anyway. Needless to say: domestic achievements notwithstanding, if Obama can pull it off he'll be assured of a place in history.

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"Give me coal," Ernest Bevin, Britain's immediate post-war foreign secretary told the nation's miners 53 years ago, "and I'll give you a foreign policy."

UK climate change secretary Ed MilibandWikimedia CommonsExhausted, and almost bankrupt after defeating Hitler's Reich, but still insisting on maintaining a huge army and air force to remain a world power, Britain turned to its traditional source of wealth -- the black gold that had made it an industrial nation.

Now another rising British minister facing an even greater crisis -- this time a planetary one -- is effectively coining a new slogan. "Give me clean coal," Ed Miliband seems to be saying, "and I'll give you a climate policy."

In an abrupt turnabout from previous policy, the young Secretary of State for Energy and Climate Change has set out to make Britain the first country in the world to make carbon capture and storage (CCS) technology compulsory for all new coal-fired power stations. Last week, he formally issued a consultation document laying out his plans, but no one has any doubt that they will be put into force.

"The era of unabated coal is over," Miliband told Parliament.

It's been a long era -- more of an age, really. Coal has been mined in Britain since before the birth of Christ. The Romans found it in use when they came, and by the end of the second century AD were tapping almost every subsequently exploited coalfield in the country. Coal fueled the Industrial Revolution, powered the expansion of the British Empire, and long dominated the country's energy supplies.

Ernest Bevin, Britain's foreign minister under the postwar Labour government, tied his country's security to output from the coal mines.Wikimedia CommonsEven now, a quarter of a century since Mrs. Thatcher beat the miners and began the demise of the deep mining industry, coal still provides a third of Britain's electricity, predominantly from opencast mines and imports. And yet it is emerging more and more clearly as the biggest global warming villain of all.

James Hansen, long prophetic on climate change, calls it "the single greatest threat to all life on our planet." And warnings of the devastating effects that global warming will have on Britain, as on the rest of the world, continue to mount: last week a report by its Metereological Office's prestigious Hadley Centre warned that a two degree national temperature rise by 2040 was now inevitable, and warned of a future of droughts and floods unless urgent action is taken.

But until recently, the British government was turning a deaf ear and making plans (despite claiming to lead the world in combating climate change) to move back to coal. Last year Miliband's predecessor as the top energy minister, the Blairite John Hutton, came within days of giving the go-ahead to build the country's first coal-fired power station in 20 years.

Kingsnorth in Kent, in Britain's southeast, was expected to be the first of some six such plants to be waved through. And there was to be no question of fitting it with CCS technology; leaked emails showed Hutton's ministry to be colluding with the energy company to rule out the expensive technology. So, by itself, the plant would have emitted three times as much carbon dioxide each year as the entire country of Rwanda.

Even worse, Hutton and his own predecessor -- Alistair Darling, now the Chancellor of the Exchequer -- effectively stopped an attempt to build Britain's first CCS plant in Scotland. Indeed, the most the government was prepared to do was to "consult" on making new plants "CCS-ready," a virtually meaningless concept that would do little more than set aside space for it in the car park.

Miliband's plan is to insist that all new coal-fired power stations immediately fit CCS to cover about a quarter of their emissions. They would then have to provide 100 percent coverage within five years of Britain's Environment Agency pronouncing the technology proven, expected in about a decade. And, he has recently intimated, existing power stations might have to follow suit. The technological development would be funded by a two percent levy on electricity bills.

The cooling towers of Ferrybridge power station in Britain.Greenpeace UKEnvironmentalists have welcomed the plan, though some want full CCS technology fitted at once. The government retorts that companies would then avoid building coal plants where carbon dioxide is removed after combustion and so the technology -- which will be badly needed as China and India burn their coal -- would not be developed.

And the government points out that a second form of CCS, where the coal is gasified and the carbon removed before it is burned, is achievable and produces the full reduction. It is planning to get two such pre-combustion plants built, alongside two post-combustion ones, and produces figures to show that this would save marginally more carbon than scrapping coal and building gas-fired plants instead.

Ultimately, of course, the government hopes the plan will give Britain an edge in a post-carbon world, just as Bevin hoped the country's coal would in that distant post-war world.

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You keep hearing about the Waxman-Markey climate and energy bill -- aka the American Clean Energy and Security Act, ACES, H.R. 2454 -- but what's actually in it? We combed through the 946-page beast so you don't have to.

Here are the highlights of the bill, which is sponsored by Reps. Henry Waxman (D-Calif) and Ed Markey (D-Mass.) and was passed by the House Energy and Commerce Committee on May 21.

The bill creates a renewable electricity standard (RES) that would require large utilities in each state to produce an increasing percentage of their electricity from renewable sources. Qualifying renewable sources are wind, solar, geothermal, biomass, marine and hydrokinetic energy, biogas and biofuels derived exclusively from eligible biomass, landfill gas, wastewater-treatment gas, coal-mine methane, hydropower projects built after 1992, and some waste-to-energy projects.

The RES:

The bill would put a cap on emissions of planet-warming greenhouse gases, and would require high-emitting industries to reduce their output to specific targets between now and the middle of the century. (This is the "cap" part of the "cap-and-trade" program.) The bill covers 85 percent of the overall economy, including electricity producers, oil refineries, natural gas suppliers, and energy-intensive industries like iron, steel, cement, and paper manufacturers.

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The goals for U.S. emission reductions, below 2005 levels:

Regulated industries would need to acquire permits for their emissions. (Emission permits are also referred to as "carbon credits," "pollution allowances," and various combinations of these words.)

If a company cuts its emissions so much that it has more permits than it needs, it can sell excess permits to other companies or bank them for future use. If a company doesn't have enough permits, it can buy more or borrow its future credits and pay interest on them. Non-regulated entities (banks, nonprofits, people like you) can also buy and sell permits. (This is the "trade" part of the "cap-and-trade" program.) If a company's emissions exceed its permits, it would be fined two times the fair market value of the permits it should have purchased.

Some of the permits would be given away to industries regulated under this bill:

Some of the permits would be given to entities that are not covered under the bill, which would sell them and use the proceeds for specific purposes:

About 15 percent of the pollution permits would be sold by the federal government in the initial years of the program. Here's how the revenue would be spent (shown as a percentage of the value of all permits):

By 2025, the bill would direct an estimated total of $190 billion to energy technologies and efficiency measures:

The bill also creates a Clean Energy Deployment Administration within the federal government that would provide loans and loan guarantees to spur more private investment in energy technology.

Regulated companies would be allowed to purchase carbon offsets to meet a portion of their required emission reductions -- meaning they could fund clean-energy projects elsewhere instead of cutting their own emissions. This could lower the cost of complying with the new law.

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Economist Jeffrey Sachs said carbon capture and sequestration (CCS) technology and nuclear energy will be necessary to avoid catastrophic climate change, comments made as part of a presentation at the Asia Society in New York Monday night.

Jeffrey SachsFile photo courtesy the Earth Institute at Columbia University“Carbon capture better work, because they [China] are not going to stop using coal,” said Sachs, director of the Earth Institute at Columbia University and the author of The End of Poverty and Common Wealth: Economics for a Crowded Planet, among other books.

He gave a lucid and thoroughly depressing talk on “China's Role in the Global Climate Game,” describing a number of unpleasant options China, the United States, and the rest of the world will have to face in dealing with climate changes already underway.

“Any quantitatively realistic path for a fast-growing China will mean a tremendous reliance on coal,” he said. “They will have to use growing amounts of coal for decades to come.”

That leaves the U.S. with no choice but to develop and use CCS technology, despite the fact that it’s never been successfully implemented, he said. Renewable energy sources and improvements in efficiency won’t come close to meeting the world’s growing energy demand, he said.

“There’s no quantitative way to get this right without the nuclear industry playing a really large role,” he said. “It’s not a happy thought, but it’s unavoidable.”

And if you thought cleaning up the coal industry was politically difficult in the U.S., Sachs finds the Chinese political landscape “vastly worse” on that front.

Regarding Chinese leadership on climate he said, “China’s leadership takes this issue seriously, but China’s leadership also takes very seriously the issue of economic development. ... They want to catch up to the West.”

In other words, those coal plants won’t be shut down any time soon.

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If I told you that my cross-over dribble was better than Stephen Hawking's, would you build an NBA franchise around me?

If I told you I was better looking than Ernest Borgnine, would you pick me as the leading man for your movie?

If I told you that my lifestyle makes Iggy Pop look like a heroin junkie, would you let me babysit your kids?

Peabody Coal is hoping that all those arguments play in their new ad, trying to make the case that the public should support coal with CCS: Clean Green Coal (PDF), touted as "less expensive than natural gas with CCS." Also less expensive than nuclear! And wind!

Setting aside whether even those claims are true, that's a heck of an admission of failure -- it's not even attempting to claim that coal with CCS is cost-effective; just that it's cheaper than more expensive things. Which is sort of like fantasizing about Bea Arthur because she so much hotter than Estelle Getty.

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60 Minutes had a long segment on the problem of coal this weekend. Watch:

A couple thoughts on this.

First, it's worth stepping back and noting how far the discussion has come. The coal industry probably views this segment as disastrous -- it takes for granted that climate change is happening and that coal is a, in fact the, big driver. The industry has lost the denial fight and can no longer hide outside the public spotlight. So we've come a long way.

But more striking to me is where the discussion still stops short. We hear from James Hansen that to preserve a livable climate, we have to put a moratorium on new coal plants and phase out existing coal plants in 20 years. Then the discussion turns to the feasibility of cleaning up coal.

A Martian dropping in to watch this segment might say, wait a minute! What about what Hansen said? Can we do that?

But the subject goes almost entirely unaddressed. Jim Rogers -- the CEO of a coal utility! -- says passingly that he can't do it, and then the focus turns to preserving the role of coal.

But can we? Can we phase out coal and maintain a modern economy? I hate even to say that 60 Minutes producers assumed the answer is no. It seems, rather, that it just never occurs to them to seriously ask the question.

This is symptomatic of a much larger phenomenon. It's a hole in the heart of the ongoing energy/climate discussion: the possibility of a prosperous, fossil-free, low-carbon economy. Of course there are plenty of reports showing how it could happen: Here's a detailed plan to meet America's energy needs without new coal plants, using a combination of efficiency and clean renewable power. Here's another, another, another, another, and more. Just a few weeks ago the Department of Interior released a study showing that offshore wind alone could satisfy U.S. electricity needs.

But for whatever reason, that possibility is not alive in the public discussion. And it's having awful effects. When you hear coal-state Dems push to weaken the short-term targets in the Waxman/Markey bill, what they're thinking is, we need to align the targets with the projected availability of coal with sequestration. Pushing targets faster than that will only jack up prices. Because there's no alternative. Again, this is not a "position" they have, the outcome of an investigation. It's an absence: the absence of a real, live alternative future. They can't see it. They don't know how to think about it.

This is absolutely the No. 1 priority for all climate/energy crusaders: not the science of climate change, not the evils of fossil fuels, but a real effort to paint a credible picture of a low-carbon, fossil-free future that everyone can participate in.

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As the House begins serious debate on a climate bill, the biggest sticking point is shaping up to be how much it will cost average Americans.

The Energy and Commerce Committee on Tuesday started four straight days of hearings on the draft climate bill sponsored by Henry Waxman (D-Calif.) and Ed Markey (D-Mass.). The legislation would create a cap-and-trade plan that aims to cut greenhouse gas emissions 20 percent from 2005 levels by 2020, and 83 percent by 2050. Waxman and House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) want the bill passed out of committee by Memorial Day -- just five weeks away -- and approved by the full House by July.

The EPA estimated on Tuesday that the bill would cost the average U.S. household $98 to $140 a year, or 27 cents to 38 cents a day. But that didn't stop some Republicans from claiming the bill would wring Americans dry.

The committee's lead Republican, Joe Barton (R-Texas), wasn't present for the opening hearing, but he issued an advance copy of his remarks for Wednesday, in which he repeats the (now thoroughly debunked) estimate that a cap-and-trade plan would cost households more than $3,100 per year. He lambasts the Waxman-Markey bill as an "energy tax" and suggests that it would force Americans back to an 1875 standard of living.

For the most part, Barton's statement shies away from the outright climate change skepticism he's voiced at other hearings, focusing instead on the argument that the bill will be too costly.

Other Republican committee members couldn't repress their skepticism on Tuesday. Rep. Steve Scalise (R-La.) said he believes "the debate on the causes of climate change is still happening." Marsha Blackburn (R-Tenn.) also questioned the "underlying science" of the Waxman-Markey bill. She warned that the pending EPA regulation of greenhouse gases is "like a gun to our heads," but said the bill being discussed is like "taking it and shooting ourselves in the chest."

Let's play ball

Tuesday's hearing, at which committee members offered opening statements, was the equivalent of the ceremonial opening pitch at a baseball game -- all show, no impact. But it indicated that getting the committee to sign off on the bill will be far from easy.

The real action starts on Wednesday, when EPA Administrator Lisa Jackson, Energy Secretary Steven Chu, and Transportation Secretary Ray LaHood will kick off a parade of high-profile witnesses. Testimony from Al Gore, other environmental leaders, and a passel of corporate bigwigs will follow throughout the week.

Some Republicans on the committee appear willing to participate in shaping the bill rather just demanding that it be scrapped. At the same time, a number of committee Democrats are none too excited about the legislation.

Oregon Republican Greg Walden, speaking at the Tuesday hearing, called for more incentives for forest protections and a broader definition of renewable energy, but said, "I look forward to hearings on the substance of this matter so we can fix it and make it workable."

Pat Murphy (R-Pa.) also indicated that he believes climate change is a serious issue that should be addressed, and said that improved efficiency and investment in innovation should be priorities. "Where we can find common ground is we want clean air, a clean planet, and clean soil," said Murphy. "The question is, can we do this in a way that boosts our economy, creates jobs rather than sending them overseas, and where American families find opportunities rather than the loss of jobs."

Many Democrats and Republicans alike have complained that the 648-page bill lacks key specifics, including the percentage of emission credits that would auctioned off versus given away, and how the proceeds from an auction would be spent. Without those numbers, they argue, there's no way to know the real economic impact of the bill.

In introducing the legislation several weeks ago, Markey said he and Waxman had left those components open-ended so committee members could weigh in, but that appears to be an unpopular approach.

All 23 Republican members of the panel signed onto a letter to Markey and Waxman on Tuesday that protested the dearth of specifics. "[Y]our discussion draft lacks any decision on permit allocations versus auctions," they wrote. "The manner in which you will address this issue is the cornerstone of the legislation; without it, the bill is simply not finished and not ripe to be marked up or accurately discussed in the context of a hearing."

John Dingell (D-Mich.), who chaired the committee until losing the post to Waxman last November, also noted that the question of auction versus allocation might be a "deal breaker" for some on the panel.

More potential deal-breakers

Dingell also raised a concern, shared by others on the panel, that the bill's renewable electricity standard (RES), calling for 25 percent of power to come from renewable sources by 2025, is too aggressive and "might be more than states can handle." As a possible solution, he suggested that states be allowed to count nuclear power as renewable.

Southern representatives from both sides of the aisle worried that their states might not have enough renewable resources to meet the RES, including G. K. Butterfiled (D- N.C.), Bart Gordon (D-Tenn.), Charlie Melancon (D-La), Mike Ross (D-Ark.), and Cliff Stearns (R-Fla.). "We cannot achieve a 25 percent mandate by 2025," said Butterfield. "Not only is it impractical, but it is impossible."

Democrats and Republicans from coal states have concerns about the bill's plan to phase in strict carbon controls on coal-fired power plants, and they want more funding for carbon-capture-and-sequestration technology.

And while some moderate Democrats on the panel also expressed concern about the potential costs of the bill, they are equally concerned about the prospect of the EPA regulating emissions instead. "If Congress does not act, greenhouse gases could be regulated without the input of legislators who represent the diverse interests of this country," said Gene Green (D-Texas).

In their letter to Waxman and Markey, the committee's Republicans also requested an additional five hearings on the bill before members start offering amendments, to delve into topics like nuclear power and market oversight. No word yet on whether the majority will accommodate that request; with the timeline they've laid out for getting the bill passed, it would be difficult to schedule.

All of the hearings will be webcast on the Energy and Commerce Committee site, and we'll have regular updates as the they progress.

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When penning his stinging rebuke of biochar and all who support it, George Monbiot not only threw out the baby with the bath water but blew up the bathroom just to ensure no one ever considered bathing again. Admittedly he got in a few good blows but the rest just blows hot air.

Biochar is simply the charcoal that remains after burning any kind of biomass in a closed oven with limited or no oxygen (pyrolysis). The gases and oils that are emitted are either captured for energy production later or co-fired in the process, maximizing the output of heat. The heat can create steam to drive a turbine, or a Stirling engine, which converts heat into motion to generate electricity.

Biochar is an effective soil amendment because of its resistance to breaking down, its significant porosity, and its affinity for water and nutrients. Holding moisture and nutrients in the root zone typically increases plant growth.

With little in the way emissions because of closed-loop burning, biochar captures 50 percent of the carbon in feedstocks, and when put in soil holds carbon there for hundreds, even thousands of years. Since it also attracts and holds gases, biochar’s been proven to reduce greenhouse gases from seeping out of the soil by 50 percent to 80 percent. Science, George, not magic.

Biochar does do most everything its proponents claim. But not everywhere and not every time. Biochar production and use is a work in progress; rather than a ‘simple solution’ as Monbiot mocks, it’s actually quite complex. Not all biochar has the same potential, not all ovens have the same functionality. Researchers across the globe are probing every cation exchange and benzene ring in biochar’s chemistry, every updraft in gasification ovens and characterizing biochar/soil interaction six ways from Sunday.

The jury’s still out on what makes the best biochar and what soils can be improved with its use.

Wood accounts for 11 percent of global energy use. Monbiot’s prophecy that biochar cheerleaders expect to replace all other energy with woody biomass is ludicrous and impossible. Biochar production just makes wood energy use more efficient and captures the maximum benefits from it in a carbon-negative, zero waste process.

Mimicking Mother Nature

Now I will hand it to George that a rush to convert land to biomass plantations for the sake of producing biochar soundly stinks. However, biochar can be created out of any biomass, preferably biomass we now think of as waste… rice hulls, nut shells, leftovers from sugar production or methane digesters, slash piles in forests, manure, urban and construction wood waste (28 million tons/year in the U.S. alone). Livestock in the U.S. poops out 35 million dry tons per year, above and beyond what is used for composting and fertilizing croplands. (By the way, you can pyrolysize municipal solid waste but because of unknown constituents, it’s best to stick to creating heat and power and not put that biochar in the soil.)

The imperative remains: ensuring biomass, whatever the source, is used sustainably.

In Western North America, 100 years of fire suppression has severely upset ecosystem balance. Far more trees and undergrowth fill the forests than is natural for most habitat types. As a result, competition for water and nutrients has stressed trees. Add climate change and you have drought, epidemic insect infestations, and millions of acres of dead trees. Nature, always aiming for dynamic balance, will course-correct by catastrophic wildfire.

No one should suggest fine, live trees be harvested to convert into biochar. Nor as a public land manager for decades can I advocate for new roads to access additional timber harvests for biomass. But in the wildland-urban interface (the edges of forests where a lot of people have built homes) there’s a desperate need to reduce the amount of biomass to lessen the risk of wildfire, property loss, and death. Let’s focus there for trial runs on biochar.

We have all the biomass we need right now that we either ignore, let rot, or burn. Problem biomass, like manure in confined animal feeding operations, is just one more area where the production and use of biochar could help contain nitrogen, reduce odors, and put waste to practical, energetic use.

Whether you cook dinner on an open fire in your hut, produce electricity from waste wood, or yearn to produce more food on existing crop land to feed the burgeoning population, there are scientists and engineers around the world trying to figure out if you can do it smarter, cheaper and greener with biochar production.

The collision of Monbiot’s derisive rhetoric with biochar logic apparently caused his explosion and subsequent off-gassing. Critics should certainly challenge new ideas but please hold the explosives and allow the rest of us to work for sustainable solutions.

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Michigan Gov. Jennifer Granholm (D) is trying to rescue her state's tanking economy by taking it "from rust to green."

On Monday, Granholm signed a law that will channel $220 million toward tax credits for the development and manufacture of electric-vehicle batteries, on top of $335 million in credits the state approved in January.

"This expansion of incentives will keep our momentum going and demonstrate that Michigan is uniquely qualified for a significant portion of the $2 billion in federal recovery money designated to build America's advanced-battery infrastructure," she said.

On Tuesday, at an energy summit organized by Newsweek in Washington, D.C., Granholm emphasized the need to invest more public funds in energy technologies if the country intends to become energy independent.

"A lot of the [advanced car] batteries now come from Asia," she said. "If we just transfer our reliance to foreign batteries, we haven't achieved energy independence. ... If we decide we want to be energy independent ... then we need to develop this technology and take it to scale. We have to decide if we want manufacturing in our country ... It is in our national interest."

Appearing on a panel with representatives from domestic automakers and automobile dealers, Granholm rejected the idea that increasing the gas tax would be the best way to encourage a transition to more efficient vehicles, emphasizing instead the need for tax incentives and a price on carbon at the federal level.

Grist caught up with Granholm after the panel to ask about progress on the ambitious energy plan she outlined in February. In her "State of the State" address, she called on Michigan to reduce its reliance on electric plants powered by coal and natural gas 45 percent by 2020, weatherize more than 100,000 homes, and make enough efficiency gains to eliminate the need for new coal-fired power plants.

Granholm said the state has been making progress toward the goals by decoupling energy rates from energy usage through the Michigan Public Service Commission, and by distributing $200 million in weatherization grants for homeowners.

The governor is pushing hard to create green jobs in her state, which has a 12 percent unemployment rate, the highest in the nation. She told Grist the state is laying the groundwork for a "green energy jobs corps" to train residents for new occupations. She said she was headed to Houston on Tuesday afternoon to make a pitch to a wind-turbine manufacturer and a wind developer to bring their business to Michigan. She also said she has directed the state's energy companies to apply to the Department of Energy for grant funding allocated to carbon-capture-and-storage technologies in the stimulus package.

"If the Obama administration is serious about carbon capture and storage, while we get through this period of time, we'd like to be the place where that breakthrough occurs," she said.

"What I really want is for Michigan to employ people in clean technology," Granholm added.

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Is “we’re going to burn the coal anyway” an argument for carbon sequestration?

I am trying to identify the plausible CO2-mitigation strategies that are scalable — that can comprise at least a half a wedge (see “How the world can stabilize at 350 to 450 ppm: The full global warming solution).

So when a new process gets this much hype — as in Scientific American’s, “Cement from CO2: A Concrete Cure for Global Warming?” — it deserves scrutiny. Wired magazine’s “The Top 10 Green-Tech Breakthroughs of 2008,” provides both a good summary of the process and more evidence of the hype:

1. CALERA’S GREEN CEMENT DEMO PLANT OPENS

Cement? With all the whiz bang technologies in green technology, cement seems like an odd pick for our top clean technology of the year. But here’s the reason: making cement — and many other materials — takes a lot of heat and that heat comes from fossil fuels.

Calera’s technology, like that of many green chemistry companies, works more like Jell-O setting. By employing catalysis instead of heat, it reduces the energy cost per ton of cement. And in this process, CO2 is an input, not an output. So, instead of producing a ton of carbon dioxide per ton of cement made — as is the case with old-school Portland cement — half a ton of carbon dioxide can be sequestered.

With more than 2.3 billion tons of cement produced each year, reversing the carbon-balance of the world’s cement would be a solution that’s the scale of the world’s climate change problem.

In August, the company opened its first demonstration site next to Dynegy’s Moss Landing power plant in California, pictured here.

As the sage once said, “Amazing, if true.”

Yet whether Calera’s process can actually sequester significant amounts of net CO2 and whether it is scalable has been called into question by some of the country’s leading climate scientists, including Ken Caldeira, a widely published expert on the carbon cycle whom I have known for many years.

Emails on this subject have been racing around the Internet, and I have communicated with both Calera and Caldeira (yes, I know, the kind of strange coincidence that makes reality so much less plausible than fiction).

While this is a long post with a lot of unavoidable chemistry it, the bottom line is that I think Caldeira has made a strong case that

Questions surrounding Calera’s process — and the too-hot e-mail exchange — became public when John Carey of Business Week wrote about the “Hot Debate over Green Concrete“:

The process is similar to the formation of coral reefs, the company says. It even arranged for an exhibit showing the process at the California Academy of Sciences.

Not so fast, says Ken Caldeira, climate scientist at the Carnegie Institution of Washington at Stanford University. “Their claim that they can put CO2 in sea water and create minerals makes no sense to me at all.” When coral does make reefs, Caldeira points out, CO2 is actually released to the atmosphere. Making concrete-like minerals through the process “is backwards to the chemistry the rest of the world is accustomed to,” Caldeira says.

So in an email message on March 22, Caldeira took on Calera, company founder and CEO Brent Constantz (also an earth sciences professor at Stanford), and the California Academy of Sciences.

He wrote: “From the publicly available information it seems that Calera’s process goes in the wrong direction and will tend to increase and not decrease atmospheric CO2 content. Furthermore, when I raised these concerns to Calera, they would not respond openly to my critique, asking me instead to sign a non-disclosure agreement.”

“I call upon the California Academy of Sciences to withdraw the Calera exhibit until such time that Calera demonstrates (i) that its process does not remove cations from the ocean in a way that will ultimately drive a CO2 flux from the ocean to the atmosphere that exceeds the amount of fossil fuel stored in the carbonate mineral and (ii) that its process does not acidify the ocean.”

I asked Calera for a response to what Caldeira (and other scientists) have said in emails. Brent Constantz replied with a forwarded email:

Dear Dr. Pope,

Brent Constantz informed me yesterday of the negative comments about the Calera Corporation made by Ken Caldeira on a blog site. I judge these comments to be fatuous and indeed insulting and question Caldeira’s motivation for writing them.

The credentials of Brent Constantz and those of the group of distinguished scientists who comprise his Scientific Advisory Board are beyond dispute. Let me assure you that the Calera process does not introduce carbon dioxide to the atmosphere! In stark contrast, the process is an extremely effective means of sequestering carbon dioxide that would otherwise go into the atmosphere from the stacks of power plants. The process described by Caldeira has nothing to do with the Calera process and he should know better than to suggest that it does.

The attached file is a brief explanation of how the Calera process sequesters carbon dioxide. If you have any questions, please do not hesitate to contact me.

Sincerely yours,

J. R. O’Neil, Chair

Scientific Advisory Board

Calera Corporation

Here is the attached file from Calera (see here for original with subscripts and superscripts) — my apologies for the chemistry, but it is unavoidable:

The Calera Process: An Effective Means of CO2 Sequestration

The Calera Process consists of reacting carbon dioxide (CO2) tapped from stacks of operating energy generating plants with treated seawater to produce solid carbonates of calcium (Ca) and magnesium (Mg). These solids are then used in various ways in the production of concrete. The process is a simple and effective means of sequestering CO2 that would otherwise pollute the atmosphere and contribute to global warming..

Seawater contains the following pertinent chemical species:

Ca2+, Mg2+, CO32-, HCO3-, (CO2)aq, H2CO3, H+ and OH-

At a given pH the relative amounts of the various carbonate species are all in rapidly attained chemical equilibrium. Carbonate precipitation can occur if the solubility products (Ksp) of the various possible carbonates are exceeded. The solubility product of a carbonate is given by the following expression:

[M2+][CO32] = Ksp

where [M2+] is the concentration (activity) of the metal cation and [CO32-] is the concentration of the carbonate ion. Precipitation of a solid carbonate from seawater will take place under one of two conditions.

1. The concentrations of the cation (M), in this case Ca2+ or. Mg2+ or both, are increased to the point where

[M2+][CO32-] > Ksp of MCO3.

2. The concentration of CO32- is increased to the point where

[M2+][CO32-] > Ksp of MCO3

In the Calera process the concentration of CO32- is raised (case 2) by the addition of CO2 and most or all of the Ca and Mg present in a given volume of seawater precipitates as a solid carbonate. The concentrations of Ca and Mg in seawater are relatively constant and fixed worldwide.

The concentration of CO32- in seawater is increased upon introduction of the stack CO2 because the pH of the seawater (normally around 8 ) has been raised to the point where CO32- is the dominant and stable species of dissolved carbonate. Alkaline solutions like this are very effective sinks for gaseous CO2. Calera methods for making seawater appropriately alkaline are proprietary, but it can be done simply by addition of a base like sodium hydroxide.

I then shared this document with Caldeira (who in turn shared it with others).

This was Caldeira’s reply:

The document you send gives away the piece of information missing from the museum exhibit. They need to add alkalinity to the system and that is not mentioned in their museum exhibit.

They need to add a base like sodium hydroxide. How much sodium hydroxide is available in the world? The answer is not much.

Kheshgi 1995 discussed the availability of alkaline resources in the world and his conclusion was that there was not enough to make a substantial dent in global emissions. (I sent this paper to the google discussion group.) For example, Kheshgi estimates that if you mined all of the available sodium hydroxide in the world, you would be able to offset about 5 GtC of CO2 emissions.

They claim publicly that their process requires only seawater and CO2, both of which are abundantly available, and then it turns out that their process depends on relatively rare alkali deposits.

Anybody can reduce net emissions with a good supply of alkali materials, so if that is their process, it is a non-event. They promised a scalable solution and provide a solution with very limited applicability.

So, they did misrepresent their process to schoolchildren. They neglected to mention their most important ingredient — relatively rare alkali materials.

By the way, if you do have alkali materials, it is much more effective to dissolve it in the ocean — reduce ocean acidification and store more CO2 in the ocean — than to make carbonate minerals. Dissolving it in the ocean would store about twice as much CO2.

So, they advertise to the world that they can store CO2 as cement using only seawater and CO2 as source materials, which would be a miraculously impressive invention. Then when pushed, they say they can store CO2 if you would give them an abundant supply of alkali minerals — but everyone knew this already. If they had said that from the outset, nobody would have found their process interesting.

So, it is clearly a case of public misrepresentation: They claimed they could sequester CO2 with seawater and they cannot. Now they are saying they can sequester CO2 using alkali minerals. They certainly can, but everyone knew that already … and this approach has been discounted as being unimportant to the climate-carbon problem because it is not scalable to the scale of the problem….

Best,
Ken Caldeira
Carnegie Institution Dept of Global Ecology

Caldeira adds in a separate email:

I am pretty sure that the magnesium hydroxide [Mg(OH)2] at Moss Landing was made through the process something like:

Mg2+ + CaMg(CO3)2 + 2H2O –> 2Mg(OH)2 + 2CO2 + Ca2+

If Calera is using this magnesium hydroxide in their process, they are just recovering the CO2 released during its manufacture.

And he adds:

I note that Calera still is not forthcoming in response to my question regarding what are the inputs to and outputs from their process, in a way that allows balances of mass, energy, and electric charge to be assessed.

They need to maintain acid-base balance and get the alkalinity from somewhere or dispose of acidity somewhere, and until they are forthcoming on this point there is no way their process can be assessed.

Their process can be proprietary but there is no need for secretiveness with respect to inputs and outputs.

Until such time as they present information that allows independent assessment, I will assume their process can make no quantitatively important contribution to addressing the climate-carbon problem.

I am not a chemist, but I have received emails supporting his analysis. Caldeira’s argument seems strong, especially as to scalability.

Ken sent me a further elaboration when I asked for something for a non-technical audience:

You need alkalinity from somewhere. Alkalinity is the net positive charge on the cations of the strong acids (HCl, etc) minus the net negative charge on the anions of the strong bases (NaOH, etc). This difference is available to bind with CO2 to form carbonates.

There are at least three approaches to getting alkalinity:

1. From carbonate minerals like CaCO3. Unfortunately, this comes with CO2 (CaO+CO2) so if you are trying to produce carbonates this is no help.

2. From strong bases available naturally. Unfortunately, there are no large pools of lye hanging around ready to react with CO2. Strong bases today are formed in factories, and are not generally mined. For example, most NaOH would have already reacted with CO2 to form Na2(CO3), but since they are forming carbonates they cannot afford to start with a carbonate. Also, its production, say by electrolosis of NaCl, also produces HCl, which you would need to get rid of somehow. Another example is the Mg(OH)2 at Moss Landing which was produced by heating the CO2 out of dolomite.

3. By disposing of acidity from seawater. You could, as above, electolyze seawater (with large energy input) and then make NaOH and HCl (again, cost is about $1000/ton NaOH). Then you need to do something with the HCl. If you return it to the ocean it will acidify the ocean and drive CO2 into the atmosphere. I suppose you could pump the HCl underground or something and sequester HCl instead of CO2. This is probably scalable, but unlikely to be economic.

4. By accelerating the weathering of silicate rocks. This is something that Klaus Lackner and others have been working on. The problem is that the kinetics are slow.

Recall that they will need 1 atom of Mg or Ca for each molecule of CO2. So for each ton of CO2, they will need approximately and equal mass of Mg or Ca from a strong base. These are not minor requirements that can be easily overlooked.

So, without them saying exactly what their inputs and outputs it is hard to evaluate their scheme. My guess is that they may be heading to option 3, but it is hard to see how that will be economically viable.

One way to get a handle on this is to look at prices of strong bases like NaOH, Mg(OH)2, etc. I think you will find that if you have to pay market prices for these strong bases (making sure that you are producing them by methods that do not release CO2 or acidity into the environment), their process will not be economic.

Best,

Ken

So I think at the least, Calera needs to prove the “inputs to and outputs from their process, in a way that allows balances of mass, energy, and electric charge to be assessed” independently.

Thoughts?

This post was created for ClimateProgress.org, a project of the Center for American Progress Action Fund.

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Hey Umbra,

I'm from Quebec and there is a movement underway to prohibit the new installation of wood burning fireplaces. I'm curious about how much carbon is produced by burning a cord of wood in a fireplace, compared to a tank of gasoline burned by an automobile.

Ron F.
Montreal, Quebec

How does firewood stack up?

Dearest Ron,

Greetings from the less-frozen south, where I can now see actual expanses of dead grass. I read a little about the wood stove/fireplace ban you mention. Quebec's gripe with wood heat seems to be the resultant particulate matter, not carbon emissions. But maybe you know that already, and are just looking to round out your wood information.

I'll say more about particulate matter in a moment, but since I strive to answer my readers' burning questions in full, let's talk carbon. As we all well know, a cord of wood is a pile four feet high, four feet deep, and eight feet long. Said pile weighs between two and three tons depending on the type of wood, its dryness, and its shape. One emissions factor for wood is 3,812 pounds of CO2 per short ton. A gallon of gasoline, burned, emits about 19.4 pounds of CO2. A more sensible way to compare the two fuels is via their BTU: wood and wood waste produce 195 pounds of CO2 per million BTU, while motor gasoline produces 156 pounds for the same BTU.

So strictly by the numbers, wood burning would appear worse -- but wood burning is not directly comparable to gas burning, and not only because the units and purposes are different. Wood, after all, comes from trees, which are important players in the sequestration of carbon. Wood heat is considered carbon neutral, or less carbon-intensive, by some because trees cut down for fuel are typically replaced by new trees, which absorb carbon as they mature. They sort of cancel each other out, is the idea.

As to the wood stove ban, apparently Montreal and various other Quebec localities have been having terrible winter smog, and a substantial part of the problem is attributed to wood burning appliances. The particulate matter hangs around in the still air and is quite noxious. Burned wood also releases pollutants -- some of which, such as carbon monoxide, dioxin, furans, and polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons, are particularly bad for those who live nearby.

Though wood heat can be a good choice from an overall climate perspective, if it's poisoning you and your neighbors, I think you should support stove regulations.

Logically,
Umbra

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Rep. Rick Boucher (D-Va.), one of the House's biggest coal supporters, on Tuesday reintroduced a bill that would invest billions of dollars in the development of carbon-capture-and-sequestration (CCS) technology for fossil-fuel power plants.

Like a similar measure Boucher introduced last year, the "Carbon Capture and Storage Early Deployment Act" would create a $1 billion annual fund for CCS development, drawn from a fee paid by utilities that burn coal, natural gas, and oil. The utilities would likely pass those fees on to consumers; the bill's sponsors estimate that the cost for an average residential consumer would be $10 to $12 per year.

An industry-managed board would administer the funds, providing grants and contracts to governmental, academic, and private entities to help research, develop, and commercialize CCS technologies.

"Coal is America's most abundant domestic fuel, and today, coal accounts for more than one-half of the fuel used for electricity generation," said Boucher as he rolled out the new bill. "Given our large coal reserves, its lower cost in comparison with other fuels, and the inadequate availability of fuel alternatives, preservation of the ability of electric utilities to continue coal use is essential."

The bill has bipartisan cosponsorship, including support from Joe Barton (R-Texas), ranking minority member of the Energy and Commerce Committee, and Fred Upton (R-Mich.), ranking member of the Energy and Environment Subcommittee. All of the 14 cosponsors are from states that either mine coal or rely heavily on coal for electricity.

In an interview with Grist before the bill was formally introduced, Upton said that funding for CCS will be key to keeping coal in the energy mix going forward. "A number of us were very disappointed that [this bill] didn't move [last year]," said Upton. "We've only put online about one coal plant a year for the past 20 years. Wall Street is stopping them all without this [CCS] technology, so we need to move forward."

Barton -- a vocal skeptic of climate change -- also spoke in favor of the measure several weeks ago at a subcommittee hearing on the "Future of Coal." He criticized the panel's chair, Rep. Ed Markey (D-Mass.), for wanting to reduce greenhouse-gas emissions, but said, "If we can get coal right in America, Mr. Markey can be happy and I can be happy, and all God's children can be happy."

As you might guess, the coal industry has plenty of nice things to say about the new CCS bill. It could be a bright spot in what is increasingly looking like a dim future for the dirtiest of all fossil fuels.

Anti-coal activism has been on the rise in recent months, and the Obama administration has started cracking down on problems related to coal. Earlier this month, the Environmental Protection Agency moved to begin regulating coal-ash waste ponds at power plants around the country, and on Tuesday, the EPA put the breaks on hundreds of mountaintop-removal coal-mining permits, saying the projects' impact on waterways needs to be evaluated.

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