Greg, list et al:
1. I agree with your concerns and guidance. Thanks.
2. Yesterday a White House document was released that implies our US
Federal Agencies will be looking hard at CCS (among other things). Maybe a
concerted effort by some on this list could broaden the assignments handed out
to a range of agencies to include CDR (as is being done throughout the EU). I
see many places that biochar could qualify. See:
http://www.whitehouse.gov/administration/eop/ceq/Press_Releases/October_8_2014
http://www.whitehouse.gov/sites/default/files/docs/enhancing_climate_resilience_of_americas_natural_resources.pdf
3. This new effort is being led by CEQ.
http://www.whitehouse.gov/administration/eop/ceq/blog
Ron
On Oct 6, 2014, at 12:27 PM, Greg Rau <[email protected]> wrote:
> Thanks, David. While new, advanced technology power plants can be built with
> integrated CCS to lower CO2 mitigation cost, the real need is to retrofit the
> existing fleet to avoid the 300+ GT of CO2 emissions they are already
> committed to. It is too costly to do this with CCS, so rather than insisting
> CCS will somehow be able to save the day, those in charge of the R&D
> pursestrings need to ask a very important question: are there any
> technologies out there that might help us do this job? Otherwise, we are
> committing the future of the planet to a single and, in my opinion, unlikely
> solution - CCS - without making sure that is our only option. Now is the time
> to diversify the R&D so that we will fully know our options and their costs
> (and can accurately inform policy and resource allocation), not after many
> more $Bs are spent to (again) proven that CCS is too expensive in most cases.
> Is diverting 5-10% of the CCS RD&D budget to alternative concepts really
> asking too much given what is at stake?
>
> It is time to admit that CCS will at best be a niche technology, and we need
> all hands (and brains) on deck to find additional solutions, including and,
> under the dire circumstances, perhaps especially the possibility of
> post-emissions CO2 management - CDR. This will not happen unless there is a
> fundamental change in outlook, policy and priorities (and sense of urgency)
> at DOE, IEA, etc. Let's discuss how to make this happen, not how to continue
> to place all our bets on one technology.
>
> Greg
>
> From: David Lewis <[email protected]>
> To: [email protected]
> Cc: [email protected]; [email protected]; [email protected]
> Sent: Monday, October 6, 2014 9:23 AM
> Subject: Re: [geo] 'Clean Coal' With Carbon Capture Debuts in North America
> (Not in U.S.) - NBC News.com
>
> I wonder what "we" know.
>
> American Electric Power CEO Mike Morris said his company could prove that CCS
> fitted to a full scale coal fired plant will be "clearly cheaper than new
> nuclear, clearly cheaper than sun and wind". He was speaking to Public Radio
> International's Living on Earth radio show on July 22 2011. Audio and
> transcript here.
>
> He mentioned shale gas combined cycle units as the only ones that could
> produce power more cheaply. But those plants would emit more CO2. His
> interviewer mentioned that AEPs "operators have demonstrated" their
> Mountaineer pilot plant "can remove 90 percent of the plant's CO2 emissions".
> Morris was confident and ready to build at full scale. Except for one
> thing. His regulator would not allow him to recover one dime of the cost of
> removing CO2 from the exhaust because there is no requirement to produce low
> CO2 power mandated by government. "We were strong proponents of Waxman-Markey
> in the House, but we just couldn't get it over the finish line".
>
> "Society - American society - needs to decide that's the way they want to
> go".
>
> He summed up the cost factor this way: "there is the impact of running this
> machine, which we were always targeting at 10 to 15 percent, what's called a
> parasitic impact, meaning you lose about 10 or 15 percent of the kilowatt
> hours you could put on the system by running the machines that capture and
> store the carbon. If that power plant makes energy at five cents, it might
> make it at seven cents with this technology". His plan was for his company
> to also profit selling the technology to other companies: "the whole concept
> of being able to duplicate this technology and install it elsewhere is part
> of what we're doing. Once its demonstrated, others will come flying to the
> technology and that's my point. It is not inexpensive. But it is doable".
>
> What Morris says American Electric Power has done is right in line with what
> the IPCC Special Report on Carbon Capture and Storage explained was possible
> back in 2005.
>
>
>
> Re: [geo] 'Clean Coal' With Carbon Capture Debuts in North America (Not in
> U.S.) - NBC News.com
> Greg Rau Oct 5 at 9:57 AM
> To
> [email protected] <[email protected]>
> CC
> geoengineering
> What happens if full scale demonstrations of CCS simply confirm what we know
> so far - that CCS is too expensive in most applications (except for
> extracting more oil/CO2 out of the ground)? Yes, we need to evaluate "a full
> suite" of other point source mitigation options. That is not happening
> because CCS is viewed as the only game in town in terms of R&D funding and in
> terms of policy formation. We are placing the planet at great risk and
> strangling technology development if those controlling R&D investment and
> policy continue to think that CCS is our only and best hope for mitigating
> the >300 GT of CO2* we are now committed to. And while we are at it how about
> investing in CDR R&D, just in case none of the above save the day? Imagine
> what $2B could do if diverted from one CCS demonstration (of the obvious)
> project to explore potentially cheaper, better, faster technologies.
>
> *http://iopscience.iop.org/1748-9326/9/9/094008/pdf/1748-9326_9_9_094008.pdf
>
>
> Greg
>
>
>
> From: "Hawkins, Dave" <[email protected]>
> To: "<[email protected]>" <[email protected]>
> Cc: geoengineering <[email protected]>
> Sent: Saturday, October 4, 2014 11:58 AM
> Subject: Re: [geo] 'Clean Coal' With Carbon Capture Debuts in North America
> (Not in U.S.) - NBC News.com
>
> I went to the launch. CCS is currently expensive but the cost assessment
> needs to be done in the context of a full suite of methods to achieve deep
> reductions. When real market drivers for such reductions are adopted we
> should see cost-reducing innovations stimulated for CCS and a range of
> competing technologies. It's way to soon to write-off any of the candidates
> as "too costly."
>
> Typed on tiny keyboard. Caveat lector.
>
>
> On Oct 4, 2014, at 1:42 PM, Andrew Lockley
> <[email protected]<mailto:[email protected]>> wrote:
>
>
> Poster's note: potentially of interest to air capture types. Cynics may claim
> that this is simply an expensive piece of subsidized greenwash for the fossil
> fuels industry - and one that's being used partially to extract even more
> fossil fuels via EOR.
>
> http://www.nbcnews.com/science/environment/clean-coal-carbon-capture-debuts-north-america-not-u-s-n218221
>
> 'Clean Coal' With Carbon Capture Debuts in North America (Not in U.S.)
>
> BY JOHN ROACH
>
> A first-of-its-kind coal-fired power plant retrofitted with technology to
> capture and store most of the carbon dioxide produced at one of its boilers
> officially began operations this week in Saskatchewan, Canada. Meanwhile, a
> similar project in Illinois to demonstrate a cleaner way to burn the world's
> most abundant fossil fuel remains in legal and financial limbo.Whether the
> U.S. government-backed project in Meredosia, Ill., will advance so-called
> carbon capture and storage, or CCS, technology is an open question, but
> experts deem the technology itself vital if the world hopes to stand any
> practical chance at staving off catastrophic climate change.advertisement
>
> And CCS is being propelled forward by pollution-control measures such as the
> Obama admnistration's proposed rules to limit carbon emissions from new and
> existing power plants.
>
> "The reason that you want to look at CCS is the math," John Thompson, the
> director of the Fossil Transition Project at the Clean Air Task Force, a
> nonprofit that advocates for low-carbon energy technologies, explained to NBC
> News.
>
> About two-thirds of the roughly 30 gigatons of carbon dioxide released by
> human activity each year comes from the power sector and industrial
> activities such as oil refining and fertilizer production. These activities
> are all "amenable to carbon capture and storage," Thompson said. "In fact,
> you can capture 90 percent of the CO2 from any one of those particular
> sources."
>
> 'Great bumper sticker'
>
> While increased use of nuclear, solar and wind power could replace some coal,
> gas and oil-fired power plants, they are not an option for most industrial
> sources of carbon dioxide, he added. "Eliminating fossil fuels is a great
> bumper sticker," he said. "It is an ineffective climate solution."
>
> To boot, global greenhouse gas "emissions are higher than they have ever been
> and we are building more coal plants every year,"
>
> Steven Davis, an earth systems scientist at the University of California,
> Irvine, told NBC News.In fact, current emission and construction trends
> suggest that the international goal to limit warming to 3.6 degrees
> Fahrenheit is "completely implausible," he said during a presentation of his
> research at a recentclimate conference in Seattle. Getting anywhere close to
> the goal, he added in a follow-up interview, will almost certainly require
> massive deployment of solar and nuclear power along with CCS."But there is a
> big cost associated with CCS," he noted. "It is like 40 or 50 percent more
> expensive to get energy from a fossil plant if it has CCS."
>
> How CCS works
>
> Carbon capture and storage is a basket of technologies used to prevent carbon
> dioxide from escaping to the atmosphere in the course of power generation and
> other industrial activities. The captured gas is typically injected deep
> underground where, in theory, it will stay forever. In some cases, this
> injected gas is used to force out remnant oil from underground deposits, a
> process known as enhanced oil recovery."
>
> It is a natural next step especially for the fossil fuel industry which sees
> value in CCS because it means we can continue to keep burning their
> products," Davis said.
>
> The Boundary Dam Power Station, owned by SaskPower, is near Estevan,
> Saskatchewan. The world's first commercial-scale carbon capture and storage
> project officially opened there this week.
>
> The carbon capture approach used at SaskPower's newly retrofitted Boundary
> Dam Power Plant in Saskatchewan removes the carbon dioxide with a chemical
> solution after the coal is burned to generate electricity. The captured gas
> will be used for enhanced oil recovery; some will be stored 2.1 miles deep in
> the Earth in a layer of brine-filled sandstone.
>
> A second method called coal gasification employs heat and pressure to convert
> coal into gas before it is burned, easing the removal of carbon dioxide. A
> Southern Company power plant under construction in Kemper County, Miss., due
> to come online in 2015 uses this approach. The captured carbon dioxide will
> be shipped via pipeline to nearby oil fields.The project in Meredosia, Ill.,
> is backed by a $1 billion federal stimulus grant and aims to demonstrate a
> technology known as oxy-combustion, where the coal is burned in oxygen and
> carbon dioxide instead of air to produce a concentrated stream of carbon
> dioxide for transportation and storage in saline rock deep underground.
>
> FutureGen delays
>
> That Illinois project, known as FutureGen 2.0, will retrofit and restart a
> boiler at a retired coal-fired power plant. It is the second iteration of a
> demonstration project originally conceived under the George W. Bush
> administration in 2003. The original project was scrapped due to cost
> overruns.The scaled-back version also faces financial hurdles, including
> efforts to secure $650 million in private sector financing that have been
> hindered by a legal challenge from the Sierra Club, which opposes coal plant
> construction, according to MIT Technology Review.advertisement
>
> NBCNEWS.COM<http://NBCNEWS.COM> "The lawsuit is really about the integrity
> of the permitting process," Eva Schueller, an attorney for the Sierra Club,
> told NBC News. The current permit, she explained, will allow the project
> backers to operate the refurbished plant as a traditional coal plant without
> limits on the amount of carbon it can release into the atmosphere.
>
> The environmental group and the project backers are working together "to
> resolve issues related to the air permit," Lawrence Pacheco, a spokesman for
> the FutureGen Alliance, told NBC News in an email. Meanwhile, he added, the
> U.S. Environmental Protection Agency recently issued the project an
> underground storage permit for carbon dioxide and limited construction has
> begun at the plant.
>
> 'The world changes'
>
> Thompson with the Clean Air Task Force holds a dim view on the FutureGen 2.0
> project, which he noted even if built would demonstrate a "third-tier"
> approach to carbon capture that is unlikely to gain mass market traction.
>
> Nevertheless, he is optimistic about the future of carbon capture and storage
> technology. "I see a series of projects breaking ground or going into
> operation that for the first time actually capture CO2 from these power
> sources and once that happens I think the world changes," he said.
>
> The caveats, noted Davis, concern the high price tag for energy generated
> with the technology as well as the new infrastructure required to do it. For
> example, his rough calculations suggest that to capture and store just 10
> percent of global carbon dioxide emissions would require the same amount of
> pipelines and pumping infrastructure that already exist for the oil industry."
>
> It is not technologically impossible," he said, "but some people might hear
> that and say there is no way we are going to do it."
>
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