CCS gets slammed

Hawkins to industry: 'deal with it'

Posted by Ted Nace (Guest Contributor) at 11:17 AM on 07 May 2008

Read more about: carbon sequestration | climate | Greenpeace | grassroots activism

Greenpeace's body slam of the core "clean coal" technology known as carbon capture and storage (CCS) may take a while to sink in. Not so long ago, groups like NRDC were writing glowing accounts of the technology, and it's safe to say that much of the environmental movement is still sipping the Kool-Aid. So it was heartening to read that at least one person attending the Carbon Capture and Sequestration conference in Pittsburgh seems to have her head screwed on straight and her ear to the grassroots: Becky Tarbotton of Rainforest Action Network. Becky writes:

I woke up this morning to the sight of a coal train rumbling below my window and the image of a shiny new "clean coal" billboard fresh in my mind. I'm here in Pittsburgh for the 7th Annual Carbon Capture and Sequestration conference to present RAN's perspective on CCS -- which, for those with any remaining doubt, is that CCS is too expensive, dangerous, experimental, and energy intensive to be a real solution to the climate crisis and that we have better options. My panel was moderated by NRDC's David Hawkins who set the tone by summarizing Greenpeace's fantastic report on CCS: "False Hope: Why carbon capture and storage won't save the climate" (released today). David's message to the industry reps and academics crowding the room was that although he doesn't agree with most of the report conclusions himself they had better damn well get to know the environmental arguments because they're going to have to deal with us whether they like it or not. Faint praise indeed, but to his credit I was set up nicely for my own presentation.

You see, the striking thing about this conference is how the proponents of CCS are, how can I say this delicately, their own worse enemies. More or less every presenter has agreed that the technology is expensive, that there are tremendous uncertainties, that liability is an issue, leakage is likely and safety is a concern. So my talk was nothing new until the part where I said that my team and I wake up every morning thinking about how to shut down all the remaining coal plants on the books. Because here's the thing: CCS proponents look at the long list of problems with the technology and see it all being overcome by massive taxpayer subsidies to cover R&D, liability, and increased electricity rates. We look at the long list of problems, and we add the oft overlooked fact that (surprise!) the coal itself has to come from somewhere and we see: a dead end.

Rainforest Action Network's condemnation of CCS has been seconded by a long list of grassroots groups, who jointly penned a letter to Congress denouncing "any policies that promote or provide taxpayer subsidies for carbon capture and storage" and stating, "Every dollar invested in CCS is a dollar unavailable for investment in renewable energy, efficient vehicles and energy efficiency."

By the way, in case you don't have time to read the whole Greenpeace report, here's a nice sum-up of the arguments against CCS by Bria Morgan and Robin Beck of Rainforest Action Network:

For story: CCS gets slammed
12 Comments | Post a Comment

The NRDC's batting average is tanking

In the end, it all comes down to biodiversity. Poison Darts--Protecting the biodiversity of our world

by biodiversivist at 11:43 AM on 07 May 2008

Some people are not very smart

Hi, I belong to a grassroots movement and we think CCS presents one of the few technologies to save the planet.

CCS can be coupled to biomass, in which case a carbon-negative energy system emerges. Leakage would be no problem, because if any CO2 escapes, it is biogenic CO2, not contributing to climate change.

Each time you were to recharge your battery-electric vehicle with electricity from such a system, you would be withdrawing CO2 from the atmosphere.

NASA's James Hansen and many other, rather smart people, support the grassroots movement in favor of carbon-negative bioenergy.

Here's the deal on emissions:

-coal: 800 to 1000 grams/KWh of CO2 eq
-coal + CCS: 200 g/KWh CO2 eq
-natural gas: 200 to 300 g/KWh CO2 eq
-solar photovoltaic: 100 to 150 g/KWh CO2 eq
-natural gas + CCS: 50 to 100 g/KWh CO2 eq
-wind power: 30 to 50 g/KWh CO2 eq
-biomass: 30 to 50 g/KWh CO2 eq
-hydro: 15 to 30 g/KWh CO2 eq
-nuclear: 10 to 20 g/KWh CO2 eq
-biomass + CCS: -800 to -1000 g/KWh CO2 eq

Yes, that's right: minus.

Some people are not very smart, especially if they claim to be from grassroots movements that have not the slightest clue what they're talking about.

Each dollar not invested in CCS is one not invested in an energy system that can provide a Kwh of electricity with minus 1000 g of CO2 eq.

by Jonas at 12:14 PM on 07 May 2008

DOE Awards $126 million for 2 CCS projects

DOE Awards $126.6M for Two More Large-Scale Carbon Sequestration Projects
The US Department of Energy (DOE) has awarded more than $126.6 million to the West Coast Regional Carbon Sequestration Partnership (WESTCARB) and the Midwest Regional Carbon Sequestration Partnership (MRCSP) for the Department's fifth and sixth large-scale carbon sequestration projects.
These industry partnerships, which are part of DOE's Regional Carbon Sequestration Partnership, will conduct large volume tests in California and Ohio to demonstrate the ability of a geologic formation to safely, permanently, and economically store more than one million tons of carbon dioxide (CO2). Subject to annual appropriations from Congress, this project including the partnership's cost share is estimated to cost more than $183 million.
The new projects will demonstrate the entire CO2 injection process--pre-injection characterization, injection process monitoring, and post-injection monitoring--for large scale injections of one million tons or more to test the ability of different geologic settings to permanently store CO2. DOE plans will invest the $126.6 million in the two projects over the next 10 years, while the industry partners will provide $56.6 million in cost-shared funds.
More information: GreenCarCongress

I think the DOE could do much more. The EU is spending more than €2 billion on CCS.

Every dollar not invested in CCS is one not invested in carbon-negative energy.

We must shift all our money away from polluting carbon-neutral or carbon-positive technologies (like solar, wind, hydro, or nuclear) and to carbon-negative ones instead.

by Jonas at 1:04 PM on 07 May 2008

The potential danger of CCS leakage

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lake_Nyos

1700 people died when a large volume of CO2 was released from a volcanic lake.

I also have concerns about long term sustainability of CCS. It invites people to continue burning fossil fuels until they are all gone but I doubt there is enough stable storage capacity. e.g. the stoichoimetric carbon equivalent of one barrel of oil is not one barrel of CO2 but something closer to 3 barrels of CO2. Aside from all the depleted oil fields to be refilled with CO2, people talk about saline aquifers but where does all the displaced salt water go? How certain can you be that there will never be any leaks?

I believe CCS has a part to play in the future but it will make almost no difference before tipping points are crossed. I doubt if CCS will ever mitigate more than 10% of emissions. That's a significant wedge so I would support continued research (on a reasonable budget) but every extra dollar spent on CCS now is a dollar not spent on proven effective solutions which keep us further from disaster. CCS is not the saviour of the human race.

by katakanadian at 10:04 PM on 07 May 2008

Uhh riiight

"Leakage would be no problem, because if any CO2 escapes, it is biogenic CO2, not contributing to climate change."

Now aren't you all glad you took the time to explain things to Jonas? Hehey.

http://amazngdrx.blogharbor.com/blog

by amazingdrx at 10:45 PM on 07 May 2008

Lots more tech...

Hi, I belong to a grassroots movement and we think CCS presents one of the few technologies to save the planet.

Funny, last I checked there was also wind, solar, tidal, geothermal, landfill gas and conservation.

And they did it without the need to constantly strip mine valuable forested and grass land for a non-renewable resource.

by Tasermons Partner at 10:52 PM on 07 May 2008

Lead to more emissions..

...also, i'm interested on your take of using CCS in oil fields. As you're no doubt aware, most CCS projects proposed would use the sequestered CO2 as a way to help extract more oil...

...the thing with that is, the extra oil supplied would further our dependance on fossil fuels, and the oil burned off from fields that used CCS technology would release vast amounts of GHGs, which unlike the coal CO2, would not be sequestered.

So given that, what's the gain? Wouldn't it just be usin' sequestered CO2 from coal to produce more, unsequetered CO2 from oil and gas?

by Tasermons Partner at 10:57 PM on 07 May 2008

Clarification Jonas?

Exactly which form of carbon capture and storage are you talking about? The OP refers to the CO2 capture at a power plant and you're talking biomass.

I'm an advocate of biochar carbon sequestration but if I'm paying a guy on one side of the planet and a utility on the other side to relatively bury a pound of charcoal so that somebody burns a pound of coal to feed my laptop electricity I'm engaging in futile cycling.

Also that project you quote above that will spend $183 million to sequester the gases from about 273k tons of coal sounds a bit pricey at $671 or so per ton of coal burnt. How many trainloads is 273,000 tons? Not a whole lot I suspect. Why is this supposed to be sane again?

Provide some detail so we know of what you speak.

Put the Carbon Back

by Pangolin at 11:02 PM on 07 May 2008
[ Parent ]

"Biogenic" CO2

I figured it out.

It's the old myth about biomass energy being carbon neutral, but with a new word. Biogenic!

It's biogenic! CO2 from biomass is aok, because plants absorb it again and again. It's a perfect cycle, right?

But CO2 from oil, that's bad, non-biogenic CO2. Because oil is made from biomass from 100s of thousands of years ago. It somehow loses it's biogenicity underground.

And it becomes bad CO2. CO2 that acts as a GHG, trapping heat. Biogenic CO2 is good CO2. It's harmless. Because it's reabsorbed by plants, so it doesn't trap heat. Hehey. I think Jonas maybe some kind of environmental comedian?

http://amazngdrx.blogharbor.com/blog

by amazingdrx at 11:17 PM on 07 May 2008

Greenpeace CCS Report

The real issue is money. Most of our members, who are primarily moderate to conservative, are worried about affordability and quality of life. They equate efficiency and renewable investments with green jobs and lower utility bills. On the other hand, they equate coal with air pollution and lung disease. Their impressions are right on.

From a financial standpoint, the era of the large, highly expensive, financially risky, 50-year baseload coal plant investment is over. Distributed resources and utility-scale wind are cleaner, less financially risky, create more jobs, a attack the global warming issue in an economically viable way. The idea of new baseload coal plants is being kept alive only by politics. The coal and utility industries make their money off of baseload investments. That's how they increase revenue requirement and profit. They reduce their risk in these ventures with construction work in progress - pay-as-you-go construction - thereby shifting the risk to ratepayers. The only reason to have CWIP is to build uneconomic investments. Wall Street is skittish about coal-based investments, which is driving utilities to CWIP to secure financing. The coal gasification plant proposed by Duke Energy in Indiana, where I'm from, is already at 9.5 cents a kilowatt hour - more than twice the cost of energy efficiency, which could easily meet increased demand in Duke territory. The company recently announced, arguably, the first of many cost increases. This one was 18% - $365 million. By the time the plant it completed, it will probably cost nearly $4 billion and that's without CCS. If we invested that kind of money over 30 years in Indiana statewide, we'd eliminate the need for that plant plus 15 others and be able to phase out older units.

I know, the cost-effectiveness argument. But we're on the verge of spending $1 to $2 trillion on the Iraqi War. According to a speaker I heard last week, a Yale study estimates that it would cost $6 trillion to phase out coal over 40 years. Not only would we be half way there if we decided to apply those dollars to clean energy rather than the war, but, given the timeframe and if the speaker was accurate, we're talking about 2% of the US economy. Others have demonstrated a complete economic phase out of coal and nuclear over 40 to 50 years. I'd say that's worth it given the enormous economic and environmental benefits we would achieve.

Ultimately, it comes down to priorities, and buying into CCS is buying into the status quo.

by Grant Smith at 8:13 AM on 08 May 2008

A great deal!

"...a Yale study estimates that it would cost $6 trillion to phase out coal over 40 years."

I think 20 years would be better though. That's something we could afford. Think of the economic growth a fraction of that amount, invested per year by diverting corporate welfare, in a tax neutral fashion would bring about.

50 billion per year for 20 years, taken from fossil, nuclear, and agribizz energy subsidies could easily atract 5 more trillion in private investment in renewable/conservation energy revolution over those 2 decades.

The magnifying effect through out the economy, reviving the manufacturing, job, and tax bases would payback the investment of the 50 billion per year in government funds. The national debt would shrink.

Russia has payed their debts with oil and gas revenue. China holds our debt as creditors. We are in a global balance of power emergency here. Forget al qwueda. Russia and china will snuff out mother earth in the next few decades unless we keep our national power strong. Especially our technological and manufacturing leadership.

Without that, how do we bargain with the corporate feudal giants walking this earth? They ARE the 4 horsemen. Incorporated.

http://amazngdrx.blogharbor.com/blog

by amazingdrx at 8:49 AM on 08 May 2008

Um, we ALREADY have 100% viable CCS in place

Yup, the technology is here, it's viable, and it's 100% secure and free.

If we want to sequester CO2 emissions underground, all we need to do is to leave the coal underground. Do you see the genius? It's already sequestered! Let's just not unsequester it! Mountain top removal is ugly and expensive anyways, this is free!

Yay common sense! Yay leaving coal underground!

by greengabe at 5:42 PM on 08 May 2008

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