I’ve always thought that the biggest issue with greens was not CO2 and AGW, but “progress in general”. This story seems to support that notion. Maybe they’ll get James Hansen to denounce it too. – Anthony
‘Emissions-free’ coal plant pilot fires up in Germany
BERLIN (AFP) – One of Europe’s biggest power companies inaugurates on Tuesday a pilot project using a technology that it is presenting as a huge potential breakthrough in the fight against climate change.
But green campaigners have denounced the project as a cosmetic operation that does not really address the problem of global warming.
At the site of the massive “Schwarze Pumpe” (“Black Pump”) power station in the old East Germany, Vattenfall wants to the new method to allow it continue burning coal — but with radically reduced emissions.
To do so, the Swedish firm is using Carbon Capture and Storage, or CCS for short, which captures the greenhouse gases produced when fossil fuels are combusted.
This prevents the greenhouse gases escaping into the Earth’s atmosphere and contributing to global warming.
The captured gases are then sharply compressed until they become liquid and are injected deep underground, sealed away and therefore will not contribute to the increase in the Earth’s temperature, Vattenfall says.
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What is the chemistry involved in the process described in this part of the article?
“Another option are geological formations currently filled with salty water, which can partially absorb the CO2 and in some cases react with minerals to form carbonates, permanently trapping the CO2, Vattenfall says.”
What are the “some cases” in which carbonates are formed? Can that be done intentionally and efficiently (that is, without bankrupting us all)?
Makes me ask the question… “What is the real Environmental Adgenda?”
I thought progress was looking at new alternative energy technology. Sticking to old fossil fuel is the Luddite mind-set.
Anthony, this article really does not go into much detail about why “the greens” are disgruntled.
But reading this quote,
“Vattenfall managers talk a lot about supposedly environmentally friendly coal power stations but they are still planning and building conventional coal-fired power stations with high levels of CO2 emissions,” BUND’s energy spokesman Thorben Becker said.
It makes me wonder if it is “progress in general” as you state, or “progress as usual” that is the issue…? It’s difficult to draw strong, broad-brush conclusions based on that little blurb..no?
John D.
Injecting liquid carbon dioxide at great pressure into deep rock formations under a populated area. I wouldn’t want to carry the liability insurance for that operation.
So they say no to this stuff and no to nuclear. I wonder how they expect to generate a base load? If global warming turns out to be real, nuclear is the only option unless we want to return to the 16th century with a reduction in population to match.
I wonder how many Germans believe that Global Warming is a bunch of bull?
Pumping carbonated salt water into the crust of the earth.
Yeah, that sounds like a recipe for trouble.
it would be interesting to know
– how much the efficiency is reduced by the capture process
– how many trucks they use to transport to CO2 to the storing site
– the emergency scenarios and plans in case of leakage of CO2 from the storing site.
At depths of thousands of feet water in the ground is typically warm and saline. Water there has been equilibrating with the rocks for millions of years and the geothermal gradient insures heat. I’m not sure if that means the water becomes more or less able to accept CO2 in solution.
Depending on the chemistry of the rocks it may already be saturated with respect to CO2. In this case adding more CO2 will could result in precipitation of carbonate, sealing off the unit to more injections.
Even where the chemistry of the waters allows CO2 to mix in solution, it is going to react at some time in a similar fashion as soon as saturation is reached.
I don’t think that it will explode as some of you seem to think. I also don’t think it will be a very effective CO2 sink under most conditions.
Pumping pressurized fluids into the ground is a common tactic in recovering oil. And the pressure will be a lot higher than the pressure _before_ you pop the top of the can. IOW, bubbling and fizzing is unlikely.
Why does anyone suppose that the leaders of the environmental movement give a flying rat’s hindquarters about the environment?
They don’t want that which works, such as a coal-fired plant that is much cleaner than anything from 1950, or a natural gas plant, which is even cleaner, or a nuclear plant.
So for thirty years they’ve been pushing the rank and file and everyone else to go for solar and wind power, even though such technologies are {on a large scale} unproven, inefficient, and unreliable. What good is a windmill if the wind’s not blowing, or a solar panel if the sun’s not shining. Also, don’t forget the environmental impacts. And how affordable is it, even with taxpayer subsidies, when it takes up to 30 years to break even {assuming there are no problems with the device in the interim}?
As far as I’m concerned, those environmental leaders don’t want improvements in technology; they want no technology.
You guys don’t get it. They don’t expect us to generate a base load, or to even continue to live, really. Failing the elimination of humans (except for themselves), they want us to return to the Stone Age, as hunter/gatherers supposedly “at one” with nature.
I like to thank you Anthony for your work. Great website!
As for this, “CO2 camouflage” :
which lake in Africa killed thousands of people in the valley below?
The fizzy-drink effect….
Way not sale the CO2 to the tomato farmers (GLASHOUSE) ? LOL
Mick.
Many environmentalist are religious cult members with the Earth as their god and man as the devil. Logic has no place in their cult. I’ve seen these cult members in action all over the West Coast of the US where I live. From burning down seed banks at the University of Washington, to protest tree sitting at the University of California, they are against progress of any kind. Unfortunately, many formerly great magazines like National Geo, etc. are gradually getting sucked into this cultic behavior as so many of their articles end with critical comments about human behavior. Discover Magazine regularly publishes wildly inaccurate articles on enviro and evil man. For example, they published an article that wildly exaggerated the amount of water it takes to grow corn, raise a lb of beef with the implication that eating meat is tough on the environment.
What a waste of Good CO2, they should be using it to produce algal bio-diesel.
Then in might even be economical!
johnnyb, the Germans were made to believe, that someone elese will bear the cost of their good-naturedness to green causes. With rising energy bills and the knowledge of their dependency of the energy bully in Moscow appearing on their horizon, things will change. The German governement is still trying to hide the consequences of its politics in the past decades. It accuses the energy providers of ripping off consumers while keeping up the high taxes on gasoline, heating oil etc. This is seen and felt by lots of people directly in their pockets. So the cover of somebody else paying the costs is coming apart.
This, at last, is a reason for hope.
95% of spending on these temporary ‘bridging’ technologies plus 5% spending on proven technologies like solar and wind and very promising technologies like geothermal that simply need infrastructure and development funding means that the bridge is to nowhere.
If you are in a car speeding toward a cliff, do you change the radio station and empty the ashtray, or do you pump the brakes… while the passengers think about changing drivers.
CO2 is already ROUTINELY pumped into oil reservoirs to increase oil recovery. This is not much different. The CO2 liquid (well, its not strictly liquid; its dense-phase CO2) it pumped in to occupy the pore space in the reservoir sands. Provided its in a depleted reservoir, it should be fairly safe – certainly no more risk of subsidence than with normal oil & gas mining. In fact – less.
The only real risk is if it leaks out, which is why depleted reservoirs are a good option – they have proven seals.
Typingisnotactivism, please understand that solar and wind are hardly prove technologies, moreless they have been proven to be a failure. For all intents and purposes they are worthless unless you have huge battery banks or some sort of large scale hydroplant to balance the load. Otherwise you are using fuel that could be used for transportation to generate electricity. Short and simple though, wind and solar does not work and is not cost effective.
Electricity is a pretty easy fix, just go nuclear if we really need to reduce CO2 and the problem is solved for the next 1,000 years, then after that humanity is on their own. I have a feeling that people given 1,000 years should be able to figure a few new things out.
Thing with nuclear though, is that nuclear can not be used to transport anything smaller than a ship. Even a train is too small to use nuclear directly. Since transportation and heating fuel is a concern in the real world, updating and improving our transportation infrastructure should be the first order of business, and would be if these global warmists really wanted start the trip towards a carbon free world (as if that would even be possible or desirable).
True, Germany has the super cool high speed trains, but you never hear global warmists or Americans for energy indepence suggest high speed trains for the entire US, only highly populated corridors in California and the Northeast. These places are the most expensive to build a high speed train, and give pundits plenty of ammo to charge that they are too expensive. Still reducing the need to take short flights from point A to point B would save oil and reduce fuel demand.
Next thing we could do is forget about goofy wind and solar, and go nuclear in a big way. This would decrease the demand for coal, which hopefully would lower its price. Coal, like natural gas, can also be used as a transportation fuel. Let’s face it, people are not going to go back to the days before the jet, and you will never be able to run a jet on a fuel cell, but you can run a jet on coal. Still, carbon emmissions would be reduced, and we would enjoy a real benefit by lower energy costs not just in electricity, but also heating and transportation.
Return to the Stone Age…
I have a strong luddite streak in me too. I would have loved to be an indian. Live in a teepee. Wake up in the morning, strech and try to figure out if I wanted to go hunting or fishing that day, while I cooked a chunk of buffalo over an open fire.
Trouble is that I do not have the heart to kill all of the people who would have to die to allow me to live out all of my great luddite fantasies.
Coal is no “bridging” technology, it’s a long-term solution. “Coal – the once and future king”
Johhnyb
To get your transport and heating fuels you use nuclear energy/electricity to strip Oxygen from water(H20) and Oygen from carbon dioxide (Co2). Using oil indutry techniches you squeeze and heat the Hydrogen and Carbon to make liquid molecules called petrol and diesel. You can keep all of the existing transport, industry, and living style. Bet the greens hate me already
As a couple of other commentators have pointed out, this sequestration carries the risk of unintended consequences. That is the problem the Greens have with it. Specifically, the have mentioned the strong potential for acidifying the water table. It is nothing to do with halting progress, they just don’t like anything that might upset the environment. On our collective past experience of unchecked industrial emissions they are obviously correct. It is the same with CO2: I have a strong feeling they don’t really believe the science either but they just don’t like to take the chance that this is the one emission that might have no effect on the environment.
CCS seems like a promising solution to allowing us to continue to use cheap energy sources whilst reducing CO2 emissions
– it may have some problems, but if handled properly, it looks to be a good way forward
The greens seem to be worried that it would be used as a smoke-screen of some sort
– hiding the fact that more non-CCS power-stations will be built
– but i’m not sure they’re justified in this fear
– if this CCS project proves successful, then it would lead on to other plant being built
– but they need to build smaller plants like this to prove and improve the techonology.
JamesG
Cheers
Christopher Booker in this week’s Sunday Telegraph (UK) has written an article about objections from the Greens to new coal fired power stations. In the Uk we will lose about almost 20% of our electricity generation in the next 15yrs as nuclear power stations reach the end of their life. The EU seems to be insisting that we lose another 20% of our capacity because it is generated by less efficient coal fired power stations. The Govt tried to get the French company EDF to build a series of nuclear stations in the Uk, but they had to offer a subsidy to entice them to do so. The subsidy offer had to be withdrawn when they realised that this was against EU regulations. Consequently the deal fell through. So we are to lose 40% of our capacity and the government is powerless to solve the problem. The only solution offered is to build more wind farms. These are heavily subsidised and that is encouraged by the EU. even though other stations are needed to back up the supply from wind farms.
This is a nightmare scenario for us here.
We will not have the capacity to provide our own energy. In terms of security… this is one of the major objectives for any responsible government. But it does seem that even when the UK govt sees a problem and tries to do something about it (albeit 10yrs too late in terms of building nuclear power stations!) they are constrained by unelected people (the EU rulers and their green pressure groups). Sometimes I am reminded of the Khmer Rouge in this attempt to do away with all industrial life… or am I getting paranoid?
We seem to have slipped down a slope that led from cleaning up pollution… to demonising the western way of life. … or was that the original intention?
In the 70s we had infiltration of the Labour party by a Marxist group that tried to take control of the party. Eventually they failed and were ousted. However, it seems that the genuine concern from environmentalists has been taken over by people with other motives who do not accept any reasonable attempt to solve the problems of pollution.