The Norwegian company Aker Clean Carbon may be closed. Its value is set to zero. The market for carbon capture and storage is dead according to their CEO.
Guest Post by Geir Hasnes, Norway
Article in today’s net edition of Norwegian Teknisk Ukeblad (Technological Weekly).
Aker Clean Carbon may be closed
This article brings important news especially damaging for the Norwegian politicians and believers in carbon capture and storage because Norway has put itself as the avant-garde of this totally useless technology and spent untold billions of dollars on it. The moon-landing that crashed that is referred to in the article refer to Norwegian prime minister Stoltenberg’s way of comparing the development of a technology for carbon capture and storage as equivalent to the US project of putting a man on the moon. The price tag of the Mongstad moonlanding project became too high and untold obstacles kept popping up continuously during the project until it crashed last year.
Below is a quick translation of the articles as it appeared at http://www.tu.no/industri/article293599.ece
Aker Solutions gives up efforts to clean CO2 emissions.
By NTB and Mona Strande Published: 11/04/2011 at. 7:42
The market for the company’s technology for capturing and storing CO2 is “dead”, according to chairman Øyvind Eriksen. He confirmed that the closure of Aker Clean Carbon is one of the options.
No full-scale
– The market has disappeared for several reasons. It relies on support from public authorities. Today, the assumption of support from the government and the consensus among energy companies no longer exist. There is in reality no full-scale projects for the ACC to pursue, he tells “Dagens Næringsliv” (Norwegian financial newspaper, literally translated “Today’s Business”).
The company has lost enormously because the so-called moon landing at Mongstad crash-landed.
In addition, the British government decided to withdraw from plans for a full-scale project in Scotland: they were prepared to go in with one billion pounds in the project, but now, the operator Scottish Power believes that the bill will be closer to 13.5 billion. Then the costs became too high, and the authorities said no.
Zero value
In Aker Solutions’ accounting for the third quarter, which was presented on Thursday, the value of Aker Clean Carbon is written down to zero. Aker Solutions had an operating profit before depreciation of NOK 322 million in the third quarter, down from 733 million in the same period last year.
Reality 1 – Watermelons 0
The best way to “capture carbon” is to plant trees, cut them for lumber, “sequester” the lumber in houses and buildings, and plant more trees. There you go: “green” jobs that produce a product beneficial to mankind.
Utter futility never will get in the way of the Australian Labor Party and their Global Carbon Capture and Storage Institute. At a mere $305,000,000 per annum, it is a drop in the bucket compared to our new carbon tax.
http://www.ret.gov.au/resources/gccsi/Pages/default.aspx
Don’t count the watermelons out yet. There’s still a few well-funded idiots in government.
http://www.energy.alberta.ca/News/2908.asp
LOL is the only appropriate reply.
Even worse – it was the chairman of the board that said it!
Should be OK for a “breed” like me to say this.
“The only good Carbon Credit is a stone cold dead Carbon Credit.”
Only thing better is a negative net worth for all Carbon Credits.
You wanna dump some CO2?
Simply order a billion kg of CO2 from Linde or Air Liquide at 5 USD or so a kg and bury it, what’s the problem. Print the money, get it delivered to a landfill, dump the bottles.
Anyone can ‘capture carbon’ in their back yard and then, instead of getting credit for storing it, just sell it directly. It’s called fire wood.
I often wonder what the opportunity cost of 25 years of AGW greenie policy madness would be.
Globally something in the order of one trillion dollars has been devoted to windmills, carbon capture plans, solar panels, etc.
If that money had been diverted to cancer research would we have cure?
Or Parkinson’s, or Dementia, or Malaria,
Or ??
If CCS is dead, that pretty much means the future of coal is dead. Right?
Oh yeah Fred. I usually think that about Communism – the enormous wastage of 70 years x millions of persons that believed it, brain power that could have much better use and i am not even counting for the damage that it made over the world just the uselessness of it all – , now i have to add the Warmists to the list.
Lawrence Berkley National Labs did a ‘China 2050’ study earlier this year and concluded CCS was only marginally effective in reducing long terms emissions.
http://china.lbl.gov/sites/china.lbl.gov/files/2050_Summary_Report_042811_FINAL.pdf
It is actually quite tragic. First the different governments signs some paper, and suddenly there are billions availiable. New companys are born. Solar panels are made. Windmills are produced. Big visions about huge installations….and lots of new jobs in these companies.
Then, after a while, reality sets in…..another paper is signed, and voila, all the billions stops coming….plants are shut down, visions gone, solar panels not produced anymore. Thousands of jobs gone in a flash. But the jobs should never have been there in the first place.
If free marked forces are allowed to play, other products would have been made, like better nuclear power plants, better coal power plants, underwater turbines for maelstroms, more hydro dams ( in Norway, for example)., petrol made from coal, and so on, and so on…..thousands of jobs.
But no, we cant have that. That is capitalism.
So, in the end, I cannot do anything else but chuckle deep inside. Because it is so stupid, all of it.
Moon-landing. Bah!
This is a good example that justifies why the UN is now saying we’re all getting poorer because of global warming.
CEO: “The market for carbon capture and storage is dead”
Whew!
I guess I can exhale now.
🙂
The time and money diverted and wasted by the AGW scam is the reason I believe someone should be held accountable – if not criminally, then financially. Al Gore is first on my list.
I think we are getting to a point where an accounting of the total costs of all the research funds, mitigation funds, alternative high cost energy programs, exotic conference costs (interesting that they all go to the hot spas of the world to hyperventilate about nasty global warming) of this shameful quarter century of CO2 madness would be of value. Stack this enormous amount up against what might have been achieved. Is it more than the cost of eradicating malaria, HIV, cancer, a manned mission to Mars, clean air, waters and land, rescuing the world economy of which a measurable part of the problem has been these foolish expenditures …….? This accounting needs to be done, not just forgotten about in the euphoria of seeing an end to this CO2 nonsense. Also, the research millionaires (billionaires?), the carbon sales, green energy sales millionaires. It’s also time to try to account for the value of the benefits of the higher CO2 levels – going by what is acceptable by climate science in accuracy and estimates, one shouldn’t be too daunted by the task. Meanwhile, Australia is shaping up to be the grand experiment on how far this craziness will be allowed to continue – valuable for future crazinesses that will crop up.
Too bad they didn’t ask a chemist.
============
Buzz , No , it means that so called “green” technologies are failing and will die without government intervention . At the moment , it looks like the American People are losing their stomach for subsidizing failing enterprises . BTW , if you’re the Buzz I think you are , there’s a market for Buchanan Co coal abroad .
APACHEWHOKNOWS says: “…“The only good Carbon Credit is a stone cold dead Carbon Credit.””
Ouch! (I think that may go over a lot of people’s heads, here.)
Linking Gary Hladik and Dr Burns above – surely Australia is THE place to do a genuine green carbon capture scheme.
Aus is pretty well a desert that, as I understand used to be covered in forest. Also, it is quite sunny there and generally the Southern Hemisphere is quite windy.
So, plant a few wind turbines & sunshine cells and use them to desalinate a bit of water and pump it inland.
Initially grow a bit of grass, let it turn into scrub and henceforth forest. How long before it makes its own ‘forest climate island’ (UHI in reverse) and becomes self sustaining. Maybe use a wind mill or 2 to fix a bit of nitrogen for fertilizer to speed things up a bit. Next, harvest (some of) the trees, make charcoal out of them and use that to pre-fertilize more desert before you start pumping in the water. (isn’t one of the reasons Aus is a desert is simply because its soils are low in carbon.)
If Australia went green (again), how much carbon would be stored there?
Something that must surely be preferable to using ever more energy to push CO2 underground from where its got nothing else to but escape again – who is going to list all man’s inventions/contraptions/great ideas that have NOT failed.
The technology already exists, it needed be expensive so why not. Think big and you don’t get much bigger than Australia do you – ‘cept Texas maybe 😉
It would be laughable, if one didn’t have to weep at the vast amounts of money which have been wasted on pipe-dreams such as this.
And the waste continues, unabated.
Thank God! Another small stake through the heart of this zombie that won’t quite die that is AGW. Let’s hope this miserable sumbitch dies a horrible death once and for all.
” In the Gulf of Mexico, BP’s Carbon Capture Technology failed & OIL SPILL DUMPED MILLIONS OF TONS & damaged the Environment.
More over CO2 is NOT CHANGING THE CLIMATE.
Capture Conc: DEICERS FROM HEAVY DUTY DESALTERS & Correct the climate. Welcome to visit Airconditioning of Mother EARTH & comment “