Heliogenic Climate Change

“US President Barack H. Obama issued a presidential memorandum creating an inter-agency task force to develop a comprehensive carbon capture and storage strategy.  …

While the CCS initiative will have a bigger direct impact on coal producers and users, it potentially will affect oil and gas producers, several of whom already use carbon dioxide for enhanced oil recovery.  …

US Department of Energy and Environmental Protection Agency officials will chair the task force, which will develop within 6 months a plan to overcome barriers to widespread CCS deployment within 10 years, the White House said. It added that the group’s goals also will include bringing 5-10 commercial demonstration projects on line by 2016.”  “Obama memorandum creates CCS task force“

“Multibillion-dollar clean coal projects in West Virginia, Texas and Alabama are getting $979 million in federal stimulus funding, Energy Secretary Steven Chu said Friday.The money will go toward retrofitting existing coal-fired power plants owned by American Electric Power, Southern Co. and Summit Texas Clean Energy to capture and store carbon dioxide …” “Feds give clean coal projects $979 million“
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“For the heck of it, let’s look back to last week, when [Canadian Prime Minister Stephen] Harper dropped into Edmonton to announce $343-million of federal money for a coal-fired TransAlta Corp. carbon-capture and storage (CCS) project. Simultaneously, Alberta Premier Ed Stelmach announced a contribution of $436-million, for a total investment of $774-million of taxpayers’ cash.

That Harper-Stelmach announcement followed an earlier Ottawa-Alberta one for a coal-fired Shell carbon storage project. In that case, the combined federal and provincial contribution was $865-million.

The two announcements – both for coal-fired facilities, the oil sands therefore remaining untouched – mean about $1.6-billion in taxpayer money in the years ahead, or about $220 for a family of four.

What do we get for that sum?

We get, at best, a reduction in greenhouse-gas emissions of 2.1 million tonnes. “At best” because the announcements were tempered with hedging words such as “could” achieve and “up to one million tonnes.” Therefore, something less than 2.1 million tonnes might actually be captured.

Let’s be generous and assume the two projects costing $1.6-billion do in fact bury 2.1 million tonnes of carbon dioxide, the most-prevalent gas contributing to global warming. Such a reduction would mean a per-tonne carbon-reduction cost of about $761 – staggeringly, wildly, mind-blowingly higher than any other conceivable measure designed to cut greenhouse-gas emissions. Want a contrast? Alberta has a piddling carbon tax on emissions over a certain level that companies can avoid by paying $15 a tonne into an technology fund.” “On a cost basis, carbon-capture projects are madness” h/t JunkScience

“These are the likely effects [of carbon capture and storage (CCS)]:

• About 30% [some say as high as 50%] of the power station electricity will be wasted in separating, compressing and pumping of CO₂. Thus a power station now using 1 million tonnes of coal per annum will need 1.5 Mt of coal to produce the same output of usable power for electricity consumers or other industries.

• A 50% increase in coal used will require a similar increase in coal mine capacity and transport and handling facilities – a huge waste of community land, resources and capital.

• The resource life of every thermal coal mine will be reduced by 30% [50%].

• Capital costs for every power station forced to wear this ball-and-chain will rise 30-100%, and electricity charges must rise by a similar amount to cover the parasitic power losses and the increased capital and operating costs.

• No wonder some greens support CCB [carbon capture and burial] – it will make coal fired electricity so expensive that even piddle power from windmills will look attractive.

• The same dismal story will emerge at every cement plant and steel works that is forced to install CCB.

• The figures for gas powered facilities are similar in principle, and only slightly better.

• The use of oxygen instead of air in the boilers merely shifts the nitrogen separation costs from the end of the process to the beginning.

• And after all that trouble and expense, the effect on climate is probably undetectable. There is no proof or evidence that man’s production of CO₂ controls the climate.

A typical 1,000 MW power station could burn about 3 million tonnes of coal per year, requiring 300 trains per year to supply the coal. If CCB is installed, the extra power needed will call for another 150 trains of coal. And if trains were used to haul away the captured CO₂, the mass of material moved would require another 1,150 trains per year, each train carrying 10,000 tonnes.

Australia currently uses 128 million tonnes of coal per year to generate electricity. The CO₂ produced by all of these stations could total over 300 million tonnes py. If triple header trains were used to transport this as liquefied CO₂ it would require 30,000 trains per year or 600 trains per week. No matter what method of transport is used, the tonnage realities are still there and it will require immense energy to capture, compress, transport and bury the CO₂ anywhere.” “Carbon Capture and Burial – a Stupid Answer to a Silly Question“

In Britain they’re playing a funny game. The government knows costly alternative energy schemes can’t possibly supply Britain’s future energy needs, it knows coal (or nuclear) is the only viable option, but it is also a professed true believer in the AGW religion, which views coal as Satan himself. What to do? Well (wink, wink), they’ll permit new coal-fired power plants now “on the condition they can be retrofitted [later] with carbon capture and storage (CCS) technology within five years of 2020 – subject to the technology available“ (link). This is a loophole big enough to drive a truck through. Future promises, coal-fired power now. The green fanatics will be apoplectic:

“Liberal Democrat environment spokesman Martin Horwood said the government’s proposal were subject to “a dirty great loophole” – that new stations will only have to implement the retrofitting of CCS if the technology is ready.

“The technology does need to be proven,” Mr Miliband insisted.

“It needs to work. I believe it will work. But we need to discuss the conditions if it doesn’t.”" “Another step towards Kingsnorth” h/t CCNet

“So the government will give the go-ahead to new coal power station before the technology is proven. And then there will be the mother of all lobbying battles over a future decision by the Environment Agency over whether CCS must be installed.

The interim proposals make the companies happy since they mean power stations get the go-ahead now. Environmental groups are pleased at the safeguards, but ultimately nervous CCS may never be passed fit for service. And the chance of carbon capture becoming commercially viable? And what happens to the new coal-fired power stations if it doesn’t?” “The cold reality of today’s energy strategy” h/t CCNet

CCS is a terrible idea for two reasons. First, it doubles the cost of electricity and halves electricity output (the other half is consumed by the CCS process). Second, it deprives Earth’s CO2-impoverished atmosphere of the vital life-giving trace gas. What idiocy.
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“Colorado startup ION Engineering says it has devised a cheaper way to clean contaminating gases from natural gas – and it’s seeking investment and stimulus funding to extend that to capturing carbon dioxide from coal-fired power plants.

ION Engineering says its new technology could cut the costs of capturing carbon dioxide from coal-fired power plants to as low as $20 a ton – a price that could get the attention of companies and governments looking to spend tens of billions of dollars on reducing greenhouse-gas emissions over the coming years.” “Carbon Capture on the Cheap?“

“[A] typical coal plant employing carbon capture technology requires between 24% and 50% more energy for every kilowatt-hour produced. …

Ironically, carbon capture technology would not only worsen air quality and more rapidly scar the tar sands landscape, it may also harm the global environment if it is successful in its goal of reducing carbon dioxide emissions. Carbon dioxide stimulates plant growth and leads to a greening of the planet. In fact, satellite measurements now show the planet to be the greenest in decades. Little wonder that, in surveys of scientists, the great majority view carbon dioxide as a beneficial gas that’s indispensable to plant growth, and insignificant to any deleterious global warming. …

Estimates from the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change show customers should be prepared to pay as much as 50% to 70% more for their power. With cost penalties on that scale, industries will leave carbon capture jurisdictions for less punitive climes, and captive consumers will rebel.” “Lawrence Solomon: The dirty truth“
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“Both the federal and Albertan governments have touted carbon capture and storage (CCS) as a means to green the tar sands and justify ongoing expansion. Large sums of money have been allocated in the recent federal budget and by Alberta towards the technology that stores carbon underground as a method for reducing emissions. There is no silver bullet “tech” solution to the tar sands. CCS is expensive, requiring massive subsidies, and the proposed regulatory timeline for implementation is long.” “Canada needs a sustainable energy strategy“
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“Rentech, Inc. (NYSE Alternext US:RTK) announced today that greenhouse gas emissions from its planned synthetic fuels facility near Natchez, Mississippi are expected to be lower than those from conventional crude refineries. This is based on the results of a third-party life-cycle assessment of the carbon footprint of fuels to be produced at the proposed Natchez plant. The study was commissioned by Rentech and reviewed independently. An unrelated new study by the United States Department of Energy confirms comparable results for fuel production using technology similar to Rentech’s.

The life-cycle analysis evaluated the design of the Company’s proposed Natchez plant using petroleum coke as feedstock with the Rentech Process to produce approximately 30,000 barrels per day of ultra-clean synthetic fuels, specialty waxes and chemicals. Rentech’s fuels are biodegradable, cleaner-burning and have a longer shelf life than traditional petroleum-derived fuels. The facility is designed to capture approximately 80% of the carbon dioxide generated in the production process to be sold under a long-term agreement with Denbury Resources for enhanced oil recovery in the region.

The well-to-wheels greenhouse gas analysis of the proposed Natchez facility, performed by Dr. John Marano, concluded that the fuels from the facility would produce 11% to 23% fewer carbon dioxide emissions than would result from fuels produced from conventional crude refining. The study is based on a proposed design of the Natchez facility, which includes carbon capture and sequestration.” “Study Confirms Rentech’s Technology can Produce Synthetic Fuels with Lower Greenhouse Gas Emissions than Petroleum Refining“

What this article doesn’t mention is that the concentrating, condensing, compressing, cooling, trucking, and pumping consumes half the energy and doubles the cost of electricity produced by the plant and deprives the biosphere of a vital resource, a triple waste:

“The world’s first “clean coal” power plant fired up in September in the eastern German city of Spremberg. …

The pilot plant in Spremberg, built by the Swedish utility Vattenfall, focuses on the carbon capture part of the equation. First coal is burned, boiling water and producing steam that drives a turbine to generate electricity. Then the resulting waste gas, largely carbon dioxide and water, is cycled back into a boiler in a process that concentrates the carbon dioxide. … The CO₂ that remains is condensed, compressed to a liquid under high pressure, and cooled to –18 degrees Fahrenheit, where it remains in liquid form. Vattenfall soon plans to begin trucking the liquid carbon dioxide more than 100 miles to a depleted natural gas field, where it will be pumped some 3,000 feet underground for storage.” “Can Clean Coal Actually Work? Time to Find Out“

“The Carbon Sense Coalition today accused coal companies, power companies and governments of gross negligence for wasting resources from shareholders, electricity consumers and taxpayers on quixotic dreams to capture and bury carbon dioxide from power stations.

The Chairman of the Carbon Sense Coalition, Mr Viv Forbes, said that there were five main objections to Carbon Capture and Storage (CCS):

• Firstly, there are no possible climate benefits because carbon dioxide in the atmosphere does not control climate and the tiny effect of man’s emissions is wholly beneficial. There has been no open scientific enquiry into the justification for demonising carbon dioxide, and a large and growing scientific opposition to the whole global warming hysteria.

• Secondly, there is no public health justification for CCS because carbon dioxide is not a pollutant. It is a colourless, non-toxic gas and in fact a valuable plant food. A warm climate with abundant carbon dioxide in the atmosphere will be beneficial for all life.

• Thirdly, CCS can never be “economic” because there are huge costs and zero benefits.

• Fourthly, CCS will divert a vast amount of community savings into stupid investments which will be abandoned in a more enlightened future time.

• And finally, neither taxpayers nor shareholders have seen a full cost benefit analysis of the CCS proposals by independent experts. They have no idea of the guaranteed huge cost and the illusory benefits.” From the Carbon Sense Coalition

“The most recent version of the House economic stimulus package, set for a floor vote on Wednesday, allots $2.4 billion for carbon capture technology but nothing for nuclear power.” “So far, coal winning out over nuclear“
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Pre-industrial atmospheric CO2 levels in the 280 ppmv range were by all accounts some of the very lowest on record and dangerously close to the 260 ppmv threshold [which plants require to survive]. Lost in the hysteria about “man-made” and “dangerously rising” CO2 levels is the fact that only once in its entire geological record has the earth witnessed CO2 concentrations as low as the ones we are seeing now: during the Carboniferous Period, approximately 300 million years ago, when CO2 concentrations were around 380 ppmv.

For a geological perspective, compare this to the Cambrian [some 550 million years ago] when CO2 levels reached 7000 ppmv, or the Devonian [375 million years ago] with 4000 ppmv or the Jurassic [175 million years ago] with CO2 levels of 2500 ppmv. Crucially, temperatures were no[t] much higher than today.

There is a growing body of research that continues to put into question the role of CO2 as a positive forcing of any particular consequence and we might all want to think twice and very hard before we start scrubbing CO2 out of our atmosphere, no matter what the economic costs. It could wind up costing us our lives.”

Henry Geraedts, Ph.D., writing in CCNet, 2 February.
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“Europe is to invest NOK 730 million [$105M] in joint European laboratories for CO₂ capture and storage – and will use almost a third of the total in Norway. NTNU and SINTEF will coordinate the international effort, which will involve building five CO₂ laboratories in Trondheim.”
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I bet you thought the UN’s corrupt (dirty) “Clean Development Mechanism” (CDM) allows for carbon credits for retrofitting or including carbon capture and storage (CCS) capability into existing and new fossil fuel fired power plants, right? Wrong:

“However, the head of the U.N. Climate Change Secretariat, Yvo de Boer, said that environment ministers who will attend the talks on Thursday and Friday could still decide to allow power plants to earn carbon offsets from fitting CCS technology. …

“The…issue is the question of whether CCS, broadly in some form, should be allowed as a pilot or as a definite decision part of the CDM,” de Boer told a news conference.

Earlier on Wednesday it had appeared a decision would be delayed.

“By default under the rules of procedure the issue has been deferred until May, June,” a U.N. official, Grant Kirkman, told Reuters of that decision.” “U.N. Climate Talks May Decide On Carbon Capture“

It is virtually certain that the EPA will “find” next year that the essential life-giving trace gas CO2 “endangers public health”. Their Advance Notice of Proposed Rulemaking (ANPR) is a blueprint for the finding. The ecotheist bureaucrats at EPA will not be swayed by the comments submitted by hundreds of scientists rebutting the ridiculous theory of anthropogenic global warming (AGW). They will follow the zealots at the IPCC. What then? By law EPA must then regulate and limit absolutely (no trading of emission credits) CO2 emissions. This will destroy every industry in America that uses energy because energy sources other than fossil fuel don’t exist yet. Nuclear is hated by the ecotheists as much as fossil fuels. Hydro is minor as are solar, wind, geothermal, etc. The only option is carbon capture and storage (CCS), a process that doubles the costs and halves the energy output. But ecotheists oppose this too. Because of the tremendous increase in costs American industries will be uncompetitive and will die off. Unemployment will skyrocket. In short, economic suicide, a new Depression.

When this happens the new green Democrat Congress will ride to the rescue. They will take away EPA’s power to regulate CO2 under the Clean Air Act and replace it with a cap-and-trade emissions trading scheme (ETS) or a carbon tax. (They will, of course have the option of removing EPA’s jurisdiction without replacing it with a ETS or tax, but that is unthinkable to the ecotheists. Some radical ecotheists oppose carbon trading as well. Hansen says, “Carbon trading does not solve the emission problem at all.” They want absolute emission reduction, EPA style.) So it is virtually certain that next year, or the next, America will have a national ETS or carbon tax. This will not be as bad as EPA’s absolute limitation of emissions, but will be very bad for the economy nonetheless. The theory that rationing energy will “grow the economy” is just as fallacious as the theory of AGW, and both theories are pushed by the same ecotheist zealots.

These unnecessary and destructive actions can be undone in years to come when reality intrudes and it becomes obvious that the AGW scam is the biggest hoax in scientific history, but untold damage will be done in the meantime. Ecotheists have been trying to bring down the American economy and return us to the Stone Age for decades. They may have succeeded. And that’s the memo.
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“The Environmental Protection Agency was blocked Thursday from issuing a permit for a proposed coal-burning power plant in Utah without addressing global warming. The ruling by an agency appeals panel means the Obama administration probably will determine the fate of other similar plants.

The panel said the EPA’s Denver office failed to adequately support its decision to issue a permit for the Bonanza plant without requiring controls on carbon dioxide, the leading greenhouse gas.

The matter was sent back to that office, which must better explain why it failed to order limits on carbon dioxide. This is “an issue of national scope that has implications far beyond this individual permitting process,” the panel said.

EPA spokesman Jonathan Shrader said the agency was reviewing the ruling by the appeals panel, which traditionally gives great deference to agency decisions. He declined to say how many other coal plant permits might be affected.

Environmentalist and lawyers representing industry groups said the ruling stops the permitting of perhaps as many as 100 coal plants.” “Utah coal plant permit blocked by EPA panel“

Hopefully the agency will reserse this idiotic panel decision.

Update: after reading the decision it’s not as bad as the above article portrays. It merely remanded the case to the Denver office to develop the record to support the Denver office’s interpretation of the the Clean Air Act, namely that only “pollutants” that have been determined by the EPA to endanger public health (entirely reasonable) are “subject to regulation”, hence CO2 is not.

“Twenty years ago, Professor James Hansen was the first leading scientist to announce that global warming was taking place. Now he has issued a warning that a back-to-the-future return to one of the oldest fuels is imperative because the world has exceeded the danger level for carbon dioxide in the atmosphere.

Growing trees, which absorb the gas from the air as they grow, burning them instead of fossil fuels to generate electricity, and capturing and storing the carbon produced in the process is needed to get the greenhouse effect down to safe levels, he says.” “Phase out coal and burn trees instead, urges leading scientist“

“Leading scientist”? Leading to a new Stone Age. What a loon. Clearcut the Amazon basin, Jim.

“A new bill in the House Subcommittee on Energy and Air Quality attempts to jump-start this technology by creating a private corporation to deploy demonstration projects. The Carbon Capture and Storage Early Deployment Act would generate about $1 billion per year for 10 years by allowing the corporation to assess annual fees to consumers of electricity generated from fossil fuels. The money would be used to fund deployment of carbon capture and sequestration projects, projected to cost between $700 million and $1 billion each. …

This represents a $10 billion tax on American consumers that will be spent without government oversight, said Rep. Edward Markey, D-Mass.

“This bill takes $10 billion and hands it over as a blank check to an (entity) ¿¿ with no government oversight,” Markey said Thursday at a hearing of the Energy and Air Quality Subcommittee.” “CO2 storage key to a cool Earth“

Another useless, expensive, insane green boondoggle. CCS (carbon capture and storage) is unnecessary, outrageously expensive, and robs power plants of 40% of their power. Prior posts under label below.