Check out this article on carbon capture and storage from AlterNet.
Carbon Capture: Miracle Cure for Global Warming, or Deadly Liability?
My colleague and co-campaigner here at RAN, Matt Leonard, was quoted several times in it.
“The coal industry is grasping at straws trying to find some way to convince the public that they have a place in our future energy policy,” Leonard said. “And carbon sequestration is their attempt to brand some kind of PR campaign to have clean coal be a possibility.”
The coal industry (all of the fossil fuel industry for that matter) is racing to maintain relevance and pushing Congress and the America people to pick up the tab and clean up it’s mess, again.
Maybe we should be looking at ways to shift renewable sustainable energy infrastructures. There was a great blog post on Gristmill which made those points. Check it out.
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This is a very important discussion. I’m going to write a full-length post on this soon, but for now I just want to point out a couple things:
1) The IPCC did a special report on CCS in 2005 with a lot of positive assessments. It’s available at http://www.ipcc.ch/ipccreports/special-reports.htm
2) The International Energy Agency (IEA) does a big annual study on CCS. The 2007 report can be found at http://www.iea.org/Textbase/publications/free_new_Desc.asp?PUBS_ID=1979 . To quote:
“Carbon dioxide capture and storage (CCS) is a critical technology to significantly reduce CO2 emissions. In a global CO2 emissions stabilisation scenario, CCS in power generation, industry and fuel transformation could account for 20% of CO2 savings (6.5 Gt of CO2 captured and stored annually in 2050).2 Accelerating investment in R&D and demonstration projects will be needed if CCS is to make a significant contribution. CCS along with other mitigation measures could significantly reduce the costs of stabilising greenhouse gas concentrations and increase the flexibility to achieve that goal.”
3) The Energy Information Agency (EIA) estimates that, between 2004 and 2012, China, India, and the United States will build over 850 coal power plants which will put more than five times as much carbon dioxide into the atmosphere as the Kyoto protocol aims to reduce. China’s total coal-related emissions are projected to increase by 232% between 2004 and 2030. Over 550 of the plants will be built in China. Coal provides about 70 percent of China’s energy, and China builds roughly one new coal-fired power plant every week.
I think the original post makes the argument about the true nature of CCS, clean coal and why the coal industry is interested in pursuing it.
But other good examples of the real nature of coal, clean or otherwise, can be found in the extractive practices used in Appalachia and the American southwest.
1.) Mountaintop Removal. Over 450 mountains in Appalachia decapitated to power coal plants. More than 1200 miles of streams and rivers buried. Nearly three million pounds of explosives are detonated per day in West Virginia alone (27 times the force of the atomic bomb dropped on Hiroshima). How many families dislocated from their homes as a result of coal extraction in Appalachia? http://www.appvoices.org/index.php?/mtr/environmental_impacts/
If we ever see a generation of “clean coal” plants or the use of CCS, the coal will still be coming from these mountains. http://www.crmw.net/campaigns.php
2.) Black Mesa’s Water. More than 4500 acres of water from the Navajo Aquifer are pumped annually to make coal “slurry” to move the coal strip mined from Dine’ and Hopi land to facilities in Nevada. http://www.blackmesawatercoalition.org/black_mesa.html
Human rights violated by the coal industry need very much to be part of this argument. We can debate and theorize about the technology and efficiency of IGCC and CCS, but to go to West Virginia, Kentucky, Ohio, southwest Virginia, Tennessee, New Mexico and Arizona today you see the frontlines of global warming and climate justice struggles. Real people affected by this economic infrastructure.
The build up of Carbon Dioxide is humankind’s greatest threat to its very existence, but Carbon Capture for one cited solution, is putting off today what others will have to deal with and solve tomorrow. Politicians are pushing for CC, but the real motive I would say is the vast profits that multinationals will make and which will translate into immense taxation revenues derived at the initial charge end as usual through the people themselves. No government in the world is different here I believe.
The World Innovation Foundation is the voice of the world’s ‘INDEPENDENT’ scientific community (3,500 eminent scientists, engineers and technologists and counting). It is not therefore dictated too by governments or national academies of science. This independence of mind away from the control of governments and multi-national financially supported entities, gives the WIF the ability to tell the truth.
Therefore with regard to just one possible aspect of trying to reduce the effects of global warming, that of carbon capture, what is being done here is basically putting off as usual, problems that our future generations will have to solve. Consequently, carbon capture is just putting off the inevitable and where the big multinationals will make literally billions out of a regime of continuation and where no real solutions are found. Indeed, if this vast amount of carbon leaches out of the ground or oceans in the future, we might as well say goodbye to human life on this planet. In this respect, all it would take is a huge earthquake and the planet would be swamped with a carbon release never seen before. Therefore politicians are presently dabbling with humankind’s very existence.
What in essence should be happening is that governments around the world should be investing in the development of a centralised global centre that solves the world’s immense problems, not putting them off for others to solve at a later date. We as independent scientific minds have been telling governments for a decade now to develop the concept of the ORE-STEM complex with its 1000 plus incubator centres around the world. Simply, this mechanism harnesses the world’s creative thinking and siphons it into this huge centre to solve the biggest problems that confronts humankind and possibly save it from extinction. It is common sense in reality, as only a mechanism large enough to stop the worst effects of global warming and provide the necessary answers to famine, supporting the population explosion (now predicted to be a minimum of 10 billion by 2050 and possibly even 12 billion) and alternative energy sources (new discoveries) et al. Therefore the world has to force forward what the independent scientific community is saying, for if not, we certainly run the greatest risk of all, the extinction of the human experience itself.
Dr David Hill
World Innovation Foundation
Bern, Switzerland
One factor unmentioned is if we removed coal from the energy generation equation today, we would all have to choose the one or two electrical appliances that we could use each day. Would you choose the computer, washer, dryer, TV, dishwasher, refrigerator or your lights? That is about how much electrical generation capacity we would lose.
The discussion is wasted without that context. So what we should be discussing is how to 1 - lower coal’s CO2 emmissions now, 2 - lower overall coal use over the time period that it takes to create alternative energy generation such as wind and solar (and the required storage technologies to accompany them), and 3 - the cost! Money, especially now that we are spending 3-400 billion a year on Iraq, is hard to come by.
While it’s lots of easy and fun to bemoan the evils of mining and burning coal, how about some realistic suggestions.
Such pessimism. Simply put a cost on damage incurred.
This is the most transparent, most efficient, and least expensive way to get to sustainable energy and end energy imports and global warming; guaranteed!
The Free Market Solution Part 1
This is about using the power of the free market to provide to solution to oil imports and global warming.
The next president should appoint a commission, of wise people, with no significant financial interests in energy, to come up with the most effective and least costly means to reduce greenhouse gases.
This is what they would come up with:
An assessment against fossil carbon release and then returned equally to all tax filers.
Here’s why:
1.It avoids a tax that to many people means wasteful spending.
A carbon tax would do many of the same things an assessment would do, but would not
be as efficient (motivate) and certainly would not be popular.
2. A carbon tax is regressive, since low income people spend a greater portion of their
income for energy.
A carbon tax would be especially unfair and unpopular with lower income people.
3. An assessment does not make reduction of energy use mandatory.
Free choice is always desirable and would motivate more people. Those who chose
not to participate can feel free not to as they will be paying others to reduce their
use and will pay for renewable fuel development.
4. As non-fossil energy comes on line, the assessment becomes less until it disappears.
An assessment is temporary and disappears as fossil carbon emissions drop.
5. It would be inexpensive to collect, since it would involve the few oil or coal companies
and they already collect the necessary information.
6. It would cost very little to pay back, since a tax filing system is already in place.
7. An assessment would be fair, if the assumption is made, that all people are born equal and
have an equal stake or equal rights to a clean environment.
8. Most important, an assessment would allow free market principles to work.
Why would anyone think congress would make the best decisions on what energies to
support with grants, subsidies, tax breaks or mandates. The reason an assessment
would work is the complete transparency and everyone can choose whether to be
involved and those risking their investment money will make more knowledgeable
decisions than congress.
Go to http://www.greengenes.info for parts 2 -6
[editor's note: There is a proposal like this already, known as Sky Trust]
Sky Trust is a cap and trade.
I did find 1 sentence in wikipedia suggest the same and also a web site calling it a fair market solution. I’m looking for someone to tell me why it will not work. It is so simple and fair. Cap and trade will not work as it will reqire large numbers of people to police and there will be many people trying to capitalize on questionable trades. A tax is not politically possible, beside being very regressive.