Graphic: Lawrence Berkeley Labs
The Department of Energy awarded $126.6 million in grants today to projects that will pump 1 million tons of CO2 into underground caverns at sites in California and Ohio. The grants are subject to approval from Congress. When private money is included, the amount spent on the projects will be about $180 million over 10 years, the DOE said. So there’s still time to write a scathing letter to your US Senator or Congressperson to tell them they’d may as well just pour money down the hole and save the trouble.
Will you have carbon dioxide underfoot? Lawrence Berkeley Lab studies the locations of power plants, oil wells, and geological formations for storing carbon dioxide. Hopefully DOE will divert a little bit of money towards LBL to help in making a US map that actually represents our borders and Great lakes well. Puget Sound and much of the Great Lakes are smoothed into oblivion. Massachusetts has gained a landfill in the ocean. Maybe this is the “homogeneity adjusted” US Map? Maybe this is what the USA will look like in the future once we bloat the underworld with CO2?
Even some environmental groups call carbon sequestration “a scam”, claiming that it is too expensive and uncertain to be competitive with non-coal alternatives like wind and solar.
Of course the concept is so simple, thanks to DOE kids web, even a child can understand it. Got something you don’t want mom to see? is your room a mess? Shove it under the bed!
I just hope nobody drops a shipment of expired Mentos down the wrong hole.
“Total energry requirement is 30-40% of the power plant.”
I did not know we had so much extra fossil fuel resources on the planet to be wasting them on this total nonsense.
Even this total lunacy http://www.cbmjournal.com/content/3/1/1 looks intelligent compared to the idea of wasting energy on pumping CO2 into the ground.
What a delusion
Anthony, don’t forget to offset the CO2 generated by your blog
http://wordpressgarage.com/plugins/offset-your-blogs-emissions-with-co2stats-wordpress-plugin/
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Terry (from 05:27:05 on 5/9/08),
Los Alamos isn’t the only group working on energy from surplus C02.
They don’t want solutions that work! This is just another form of wealth redistribution from the productive to the wage-parasites who keep the Washington scum in office.
Actually, Michael, I think they don’t want it to work because it would facilitate a lifestyle with which they disagree.
I know $180M seems like a lot and I certainly wouldn’t turn it down if offered but put it into perspective. A single MacDac F-18A cost $32M in 1980 dollars. Not allowing for inflation, $180M would buy 5.5 F-18A fighters. A single Boeing 757-300 costs $80M (2002 dollars) –> 2.25 airliners. Alternately, you could opt for the economy model: 757-200 at $65M –> 2.76. The Hubble Space Telescope has an operating budget of around $20M (per month!)
IOW this project amounts to purchasing 2-3 jet airliners or 9 months of HST operation spread over 10 years. Sounds like a token project to me and not worthy of any fuss.
If they actually end up following through with the insance idea, who wants to bet these sequestration sites end up being in politically sensitive, job needy areas who voted for the party in power at the time? Pork Barrel potential on a MASSIVE scale. Who wants a Sequestration site?!?!? Vote for me!!!
Then again, if we do end up with a Lake Nyo scenario, they may very well be shooting themselves in the foot.
insance should be “insane”.
Offer is still “awaiting moderation” over at RC…has been for a few hours now.
My first comment, see above 02:16:24, bit the dust.
No one seems to bring up the carbonic acid and what it will do in sedimentary
layers. Dissolving CO2 in the ocean is allegedly bad due to the pH drop, thus bad for coral and shelled critters. Sedimentary rock is often largely or cemented together with, calcium compounds, that will dissolve in low pH water…
Pierre,
You’ve got to understand that the folks at Hadley will follow those at NASA, and viola they will readjust the 90s downward and the most recent decade upwards. Much better to use UAH/RSS temps than anything coming out of the Team’s offices.
” Total energry requirement is 30-40% of the power plant. In effect, steam is diverted from electricity production to CO2 capture and sequestration”
Help me out here folks. If 30-40% of the power plant electricity production is diverted to CO2 capture and sequestration, wouldn’t you have to up your electrical production an additional 30-40% to meet the current consumer demands of the power plant? Do these power plants even have the capacity to up their electrical production 30-40 % ? And wouldn’t 30-40 % of the additional production be used to capture and sequester the additional CO2 produced so that the actual net production increase is only 20-25 % so you are still short of current consumer demand. I know there is a term for this kind of return but do not know it, anyone?
Tom: I think the term is “insane”, or perhaps “stupid”. We do not have 30% excess capacity. We import electricity from Canada. And trying to generate the extra power will require more coal, which will send the eco’s into a further state of frenzy. This reminds me of the Solar Power Satellite from the late 70’s. It looked great until you examined the numbers.
Tom: Presumably that is why it costs $100/ton to sequester CO2….
Vaclav Smil, of Manitoba University, and a world renowned expert on energy has this to say about carbon sequestration in this week’s Nature (Vol 453/8 May 2008, p154) in a sequence of correspondences relating to Piekle et al.
“Carbon sequestration is irresponsibly portrayed as an imminently useful large-scale option for solving the challenge. But to sequester just 25% of CO2 emitted in 2005 by large stationary sources of the gas….we would have to create a system whose annual throughput (by volume) would be slightly more than twice that of the world’s crude-oil industry, an undertaking that would take many decades to accomplish.”
He also refers to the scenarios in the 2000 IPCC Special Report on Emission Scenarios as “risible” and even stronger says “Basing policies on computerized fairy tales is inadvisable”
Pierre,
The Keenlyside et al paper has obviously really got under the skins of the RC crowd. Personally, I think the bet idea is rather pathetic on their behalf, and I’m glad a number of posters have told them so. After all aren’t these the guys who are always telling us that peer reviewed science counts more than anything?
Their attempts to ‘smear’ the Leibniz Institute for “going to the media” and even to try to downplay publication in Nature as if it is nothing much (of course it was brilliant when Mann et al had their papers published by the same journal!) are incredible.
I posted to them on these lines but like you it never got through.
This may be somewhat OT, but perhaps not much since people have discussed the economics of various alternatives in addition to CCS. And the is a tie-in in that regard at the end.
Anyway, what I fail to understand is why people (including the government) are not paying more attention to hot rock geoothermal (HRG), aka enhanced geothermal systems (EGS). According to the widely regarded MIT report, for a very modest R&D investment HRG has the potential to provide an immense amount of energy very cost-effectively. Eventually, HRG could be deployed essentially anywhere, but even in the near term there is enough “high grade” resources to make a significant dent in the energy needs of various locations around the world. And one of the best of those locations is the Western US — essentially everywhere from Colorado and west. And yet HRG is attracting less and less federal R&D money in the US, even though essentially every pilot project over the last 30 years has proven successful. It’s gotten so bad that the amount of money allocated to HRG geothermal research in the federal 2007 budget was exactly zero. Zip. I don’t get it.
It’s not that way in other parts of the world, though. HRG projects are springing up in France, Germany, Switzerland, Japan, and perhaps most notably, Australia. Australia has a number of sites in development, but apparently the Cooper Basin area is much larger than anticipated — big enough to supply the entire country with all their electricity needs. New Zealand, by the way, is thinking in the same vein.
Interestingly, there is also an indication that CO2 sequestration could increase the efficiency of HRG systems by as much as 50%. Everything I’ve ever read about HRG indicates it’s for real. And yet no one seems to be paying attention. I don’t get it. Are we letting the world pass us by or what?
Dave Andrews,
That’s why the oil and pipeline companies are very interested in CO2 capture. Lots of money in it.
Anyone would be a fool to take a bet with the rc guys. If the next 5 years are cooler than today, not only would the rc.org site not exist, you wouldn’t be able to find them. Think about it.
If there is consensus regarding AGW, why are two fraternal climate modeling groups betting against one another? I expect Al Gore or Hansen to step in privately and straighten these clowns out.
Tom in Florida (10:16:29) :
“Help me out here folks. If 30-40% of the power plant electricity production is diverted to CO2 capture and sequestration, wouldn’t you have to up your electrical production an additional 30-40% to meet the current consumer demands of the power plant?”
Sorry, bogus math. The 30-40% additional would then need 30-40% more for its CO2, etc.
If P = production, R = ratio (percentage) of additional capacity, and D = delivered power,
then D = P – RP, meaning its what you produce minus the energy to stuff the CO2 under the rug.
Rearranging, D = P(1-R), P = D / (1-R)
So, if R = 33%, or 1/3, then you need to produce P = D / (1 – 1/3) or P = D * (3/2), i.e you’ll need 50% more.
A more intuitive problem would be if 50% of the produced power went to stuffing CO2, then you’d need to produce twice the power.
Concerning the RC “wanna bet” for “serious” money:
http://www.realclimate.org/index.php/archives/2008/05/global-cooling-wanna-bet/
Appears that the climate sophomores RC are not prepared to accept my proposed bet.
CONCLUSION:
THE REALCLIMATE SCIENTISTS, CORE OF THE IPCC, DO NOT BELIEVE THE NEXT 10 YEARS WILL BE WARMER. What else can one conclude?
Anthony, please post something about that.
@jim pace
Micheal Mann, Gavin Schmidit, Jim Hansen etc. are good examples as to why we have so many lawyers today. They twist, misrepresent and distort data wherever and however they can. So when betting such brats, you need a full-blown contract, and be prepared to go to court when obligations come due.
So let’s add sub-clause 3.1, that is: NO FUTURE COOKBOOK ADJUSTMENTS:
1. Let’s up the ante to 10 grand (or whatever).
2. Let’s use the time frame to 1998-2007 vs 2008-2017.
3. We use a composite of the UAH, HadCrut, GISS, and RSS.
3.1 Only the 1998-2007 temperature data as it exists today shall be used.
4. Bet is off only with a volcano with VEI 6 or more.
5. Chaitén in Chile not in the deal.
Overall, I see that no one here is really ready to join me in this. Anthony wants to wait and see what the other readers will do.
I guess it looks like I’ll have to do this on my own.
What’s wrong here? Look at the sunspots…the AMO, PDO, ocean temps, 10 year trend. Why aren’t you bloggers answering the call?
Ramstorf in German magazine FOCUS:
http://www.focus.de/wissen/wissenschaft/klima/tid-9923/globaler-klimawandel-von-wegen-abkuehlung_aid_300673.html
“Auf dem Weblog KlimaLounge (siehe Surftipp) bieten wir deshalb den Autoren aus Kiel eine Wette an. Wir sind überzeugt, dass die globalen Temperaturen auch in den kommenden zehn oder 15 Jahren weiter ansteigen werden.”
Translated in English:
“At the website KlimaLounge (see Surftipp) we offer the authors in Kiel a bet. We are convinced that the global temperatures will also continue to rise in the next 10 or 15 years.”
In this FOCUS interview Ramstorf clearly questions and challenges the Keenlyside et. al. study, claiming the study has weaknesses.
I wonder how Keenlyside and Latif will respond to that?
But note how his bet at RC is only for the next 6 years, and not for the next 10 to 15 years he mentions above.
Ramstorf and Co. are in a serious damage control mode.
The bottom-line is, what is the economic payback? If you sequester 0.1% of the US’s CO2 output & could even accurately translate that to a temperature reduction, how can a monetary payback be calculated from that? There would be negative consequences from lower temperatures too — more heating costs would be the most obvious. Crop-yields would also decrease w/less CO2 in the air.
Pumping in CO2 (air would be alot cheaper) to increase output from oil wells is fine (and is already done to some extent) if it’s economically feasible. Using taxpayer money to do it shouldn’t be necessary if it were. Using 30-40% of a power plant’s total output (that’s alot) for such activity is absurd unless the economic benefits are reasonably quantified. But I seriously doubt it’s possible to quantify the economic or otherwise “benefits” — it’s just as likely a liability.
HRG does sound good, Rico. If only they would put that 126 million into HRG geothermal research instead of stupidly wasting it on C02 sequestration. Also whether or not using C02 instead of, or in addition to water increases the efficiency is beside the point. The point is the cost. If it adds to the cost per kw or btu then it makes no sense.
Rico, it isn’t so much lack of interest in HRG, but that there is induced seismicity. For some reason, people don’t appreciate that.