Random observation of the day

Posted by David Roberts at 12:48 PM on 24 Jun 2007

Read more about: energy | coal

I read a lot of arguments about coal in a carbon-constrained world, given my, um, obsession with it, and I frequently run across these two claims, sometimes in the very same article:

There's so much coal, and renewables are so far from competitive, that it's not realistic to think we could live without it.
Coal gasification is awesome, but it needs tons of subsidies. Coal liquefication is awesome, but it needs tons of subsidies. Carbon sequestration is awesome, but it needs tons of subsidies.

We can't live without it, but it can't survive without subsidies. Weird.

For story: Random observation of the day
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Subsidies

You need subsidies to compete with all the other subsidies....

Don't we need to think about what to do with the existing fossil fuel infrastructure? The coal plants are not going to go away anytime soon. Whether or not coal is a long term goal, CO2 capture should be a top priority today.

Supposing we could capture and recycle all the associated CO2 emissions from tail pipes and smokestacks, would coal to liquid then be worth pursuing?

For some interesting angles on the future of coal take a look under Energy here: www.eutopianiow.org

by eutopianow at 1:48 PM on 24 Jun 2007

Correction

Correction on prior post: www.eutopianow.org

by eutopianow at 1:51 PM on 24 Jun 2007
[ Parent ]

Once more, from the top

The question is not whether we could make coal, in its various incarnations, clean if we spent enough money on it. The question is whether the money we'd spend on it could buy us more emissions reductions and displace more oil if spent elsewhere. And the answer to that question is yes, by a country mile.

grist.org

by David Roberts at 2:23 PM on 24 Jun 2007

LET'S REITERATE

Hey, all:

To avoid confusion, let's reiterate:

The question is not whether we could make coal, in its various incarnations, clean if we spent enough money on it. The question is whether the money we'd spend on it could buy us more emissions reductions and displace more oil if spent elsewhere. And the answer to that question is yes, by a country mile.

The original question is based on a series of lies and faulty assumptions. Furthermore, Coal is NOT sustainable. Never has been; never will be.

Big Coal, Clean Coal, and all its manifestations are machinations of the Corporate Oligarchy. Fear them. Find them and drive them out. Kill the memes they propagate.

David
Sustainability For Life

Messages done with sustainable energy, with Wind and Sun!

by SustainableGreen at 3:31 PM on 24 Jun 2007

Well the question shouldn't be

Well the question shouldn't be whether they get subsidies, but rather why they get MORE subsidies.

http://greyfalcon.net/fossiltaxes.png
http://greyfalcon.net/fossiltaxes2.png
http://greyfalcon.net/nucleartaxes

by GreyFlcn at 9:06 PM on 24 Jun 2007

Not defending the subsidies, but not weird either

It is certainly possible that one could have an energy source the potential supply of which at $50 per barrel of oil equivalent (BOE) is small, but at $80/BOE is very large. (These numbers are just illustrative) Then, if you, as a policy-maker, are of a mindset that it is politically easier to keep prices of that energy at $60/BOE or below through subsidies (especially if the amounts are half-hidden, as are tax credits and loan guarantees) than to let prices rise to cover the costs, you will push for subsidies. The preference of the industry itself, naturally, is a foregone conclusion.

These are only my personal opinions.

by Ron Steenblik at 10:40 PM on 24 Jun 2007

No subsidies like wind subsidies

I find it deplorable that the morons sitting in Congress writing their silly energy bill would alow non-dispatchable wind to qualify for their massive subsidies. Windfarm operators are getting so rich off taxpayers that even Boone Pickens is joining in. States also sould refrain from forcing anybody to buy the junk that is current non-dispatchable wind power. Mix politicians and technology and subsidies together and you've got an ungodly mess. That describes the energy bill.

by theBike45 at 5:52 AM on 25 Jun 2007

I like it

Mix politicians and technology and subsidies together and you've got an ungodly mess.

Quotable!

These are only my personal opinions.

by Ron Steenblik at 6:06 AM on 25 Jun 2007
[ Parent ]

Coal subsidies include the dead

King Coal is subsidized in far more insideous ways. Laws are ignored or changed to allow egregious violations of water and air quality, entire mountains and streams are destroyed, lives are lost and disrupted in the coal raped communities, land is stolen by emminent domain or intimidation, and then there's the subsidized health decline of people living in the toxic ozone downwind of coal plants and of course, the death of forests and streams from acid rain. For a view from those disrupted communities, take the virtual tour via the following link. Denny

http://www.ilovemountains.org/

by Earthling 37379 at 6:55 AM on 25 Jun 2007

Demon Coal

Just below the mountaintop
waits the demon coal
we summon from beneath the rock
to raise the human goal.

Our lust for power delays our fear
of words that rise up from the dark
"Why would your God have put me here,
if not on Earth, to make your mark?"

This black and frozen river
holds a wealth of power;
a human need which we deliver
more valuable than mountain flower.

So we'll pulverize the wooded crest
and blast the ancient stone;
and when the rubble comes to rest
it chokes the river's dying moan.

Release him from his prison,
and light the demon's fire!
Prosperity will be quickly risen;
We'll stoke the world's desire!

No need to fear his angry breath-
it's the price of easy livin'.
Though all of Nature suffers death,
we humans are forgiven.

For we control the demon coal.
We all exhale his blackened soul.

Let's burn him in our public hearth,
let him rise up from the Earth!

The dark savior of the human race,
will drive us to a better place!

a liberal in redsville

by birdboy at 11:39 AM on 25 Jun 2007

Be careful what you wish for on sequestration

Even if sequestration works and the carbon stays underground, it imposes massive parasitic loads on the power plant, in the neighborhood of 25% of total power plant loads. Ergo, a world with carbon sequestration on coal plants is a world that uses ALOT more coal, since each CO2-sequestering plant is now pulling 25% more coal just to run their carbon-capture. Thus more mining, faster resource depletion and every other upstream cost of fuel use.

My prediction is that 100 years from now sequestration is going to be a technology that people look back at and wonder why we ever thought it was a viable option. Pulling out SOx, NOx and particulate from smokestacks is technically viable (if barely - the parasitics for those are also a big chunk of total plant power consumption), but only because there is proportionally such a small amount to remove. Remember - we're taking those pollutants down to parts-per-million levels. CO2, by contrast is orders of magnitude bigger coming out of any stack - and correlates directly with fuel combustion rather than with combustion technologies. Ergo, if you want to reduce carbon dioxide release to the atmosphere, focus on the front of the pipe (burn less fuel) rather than the end of the pipe (sequester the carbon). Carbon sequestration not only focuses on the wrong end of the pipe, but also causes us to burn more fuel to make up for the parasitics.

So yes, we would need massive subsidies to make it work. But they would be subsidies of a rather foolish sort.

Links to the 25% figure here

by Sean Casten at 12:27 PM on 25 Jun 2007

Sean,

I think you're dead-on about sequestration. My prediction is, it will get tons of subsidies, a few facilities will be built, there will be some galling examples of wasted money, and by the time the whole thing settles, renewable technology -- generation, storage, grid -- will have rendered the question moot.

How long that takes is the interesting question.

grist.org

by David Roberts at 1:10 PM on 25 Jun 2007

n

David,

As long as you are predicting, you could throw in a catastrophic accident -- CO2 is poisonous.

by Nucbuddy at 1:24 PM on 25 Jun 2007
[ Parent ]

Central sequestration as carbonates won't burp

I looked at the energy cost for pulverizing abundant CO2-hungry silicate minerals as a fraction of the coal-fired electricity whose generation would thus be offset; it wasn't too bad, about 14 percent.

Like the Lackner experiment, this takes advantage of the ability of CO2 released anywhere in the world to come to a sequestration site on its own. So where the silicates are, one can pulverize them and expose the new surface to air; neither they nor the CO2 have to be shipped anywhere.

Emitters who won't spend the necessary money to capture their own CO2 have a cost advantage over those who do; so like municipal garbage and recyclables collection, this is a classical case where that unfairness can be forcibly remedied by the tax man, who can then pay for a much better job of sequestration to be done, on behalf both of conscientious CO2 producers and of others, than any of them could do on his own.

--- G. R. L. Cowan, former hydrogen-energy fan
How shall cars gain nuclear cachet?

by GRLCowan at 6:43 PM on 25 Jun 2007

We Don't Need Coal Anymore

Do you guys read the papers?

Boeing invented a solar cell that has 40% efficiency.

It's over.

Problem solved.

Go back to your televisions.

Texeme.Construct(function(x)=Participation(x))

by jabailo at 10:07 PM on 25 Jun 2007

Normal solar costs too much

Normal solar costs too much right now.
MultiJunction solar (i.e. Multiple Solar Panels sandwiched together) cost much more than too much.

That said, Thermal Solar has 35% effeciency and costs a LOT less.

by GreyFlcn at 10:46 PM on 25 Jun 2007
[ Parent ]

More than emissions condemns coal.

Everyone is hot about coal's cost to the climate. I think we should add another page to the indictment. Namely that there is a long list of things that are bad about coal, that would recommend its retirement and that have absolutely nothing to do with green house gas emissions.

I am reading Lost Mountain by Erik Reece right now, and if any of you have missed it, shame on you. Among the sins of coal are: devastation of the environment, the permanent sort from mountains leveled, to streams and farm lands destroyed by acid leakage and coal slurry pond dam breaks. Then you have coal's corruption of our politics, and subversion of regulatory policies. You have the alienation of an entire populace from its landscape in a devil's bargain of jobs vs land & heritage. The jobs that are granted are dangerous, and poison not only miners but their families. Coal is not just the enemy of humanity. It will make you believe in the existence of the Devil.

Finally, I think we weaken our arguments when we just make them about climate change. The entire energy regime we are fighting is rotten to the core with greed, corruption, anti-democratic policies and a smorgasbord of envrionmental crimes. If CO2, melting ice caps, and drowning polar bears did not exist, there would still be an argument to overthrow the old regime and bring to the fore a new energy regime.

Randy Cunningham

Randy Cunningham

by randino at 5:28 AM on 26 Jun 2007

Multi-Junction solar

Boeing Spectrolab type III-V cells cost $0.30/W plus concentrator. That is cheap. We can convert sunlight into natural gas at 80% efficiency (65% system) when gas is displaced by solar heat. That gas can then be used to generate electricity in turbines. The opportunities are rich. Heat and power (multi-junction cells) with heat displacing industrial gas. Gas turbines cogenerating power and heat (displacing more gas consumed by industrial process heat). This is squeezing much more value from energy entropy via system organization.

Shutting down big coal will require massive work. Using cogeneration at industries that consume natural gas (food processing is a big one) and saving gas with efficiency and solar heat would be big steps forward towards starting new energy supply industries. Smart grids that shunt power to discretionary thermal loads during emergencies should have a calming effect on power management.

In the long term, building and transportation reform could reduce loads to the point of not needing coal. It is going to require a lot of work.

by sunflower at 6:19 AM on 26 Jun 2007

Solar natural gas displacing coal

Using solar heat to save natural gas for subsequent gas power generation is the same thing as using solar cells for making power, but with the added advantages of using existing low-cost industry plus enabling baseload power sourced from solar energy without needing power storage (batteries, pumped hydro, compressed air).

by sunflower at 6:37 AM on 26 Jun 2007

ADVERTISING POLICY

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