By Hugh Price
In New Haven, W.Va., the Mountaineer Power Plant is using a complicated chemical process to capture about 1.5 percent of the carbon dioxide it produces. The gas is cooled to a liquid at a pressure of about 95 atmospheres and pumped 2,375 meters down to a sandstone formation, where it is meant to remain indefinitely. The objective is to reduce the amount of carbon dioxide being added to the atmosphere from the coal burning at the plant.
This certainly seems to be doing it the hard way. Extracting just this 1.5 percent of the CO2 from the plant’s flue requires a $100 million investment, and whether the gas will remain underground or bubble to the surface is in question.
Fortunately, there is a way to capture and store excess carbon from the atmosphere that is cheap, efficient and environmentally friendly. It relies on two technologies that have been in use for more than 8,000 years: agriculture and the garbage heap.
…
The biggest problem with this approach may be that it’s so low-tech. No green-technology subsidies are required, so there may not be a natural constituency for it. On the other hand, environmentalists should love it. What could be greener than growing plants? And for those concerned about the economy, this approach provides a low-cost method of reducing the country’s carbon footprint without increasing the cost of energy. It is also reversible. If current concerns about CO2 concentrations turn out to be unwarranted, the stockpiled material will be readily available for use. What could be simpler?
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Damn, now how will I explain this to my petroleum and coal industry clients. Are these Washington Post guys are trying to put me out of a job.
The added cost of electricity generated at coal fired plants if they incorporate carbon sequestration, as pointed out by Vboring, is spot on. This is not unlike the phony safety issue which makes electricity from nuclear plants more expensive (and arguably less safe since most malfunctions occurred during safety tests).
Those unfamiliar with agriculture may be oblivious to the unintended consequence of loss of soil fertility if all organic material is removed as noted by MJB.
Global warming has stopped. Objective application of science and engineering reveals the cause of temperature trends since 1895 including the temperature run-up late in the 20th century and the flat temperatures since. Without human-caused global warming there can be no human-caused climate change or human-caused Global Climate Disruption.
Research, with findings regarding projected temperature trends is reported at http://climaterealists.com/index.php?tid=145&linkbox=true. The 6/27/10 pdf there presents a rational equation that accurately calculates the average global temperatures since 1895 with a coefficient of determination of 0.88. That means that it explains 88% of the measured temperatures for 114 years and counting. The best that GCMs have done is significantly less than this. The equation shows that CO2 is, at most, a minor contributor and predicts that the future trend of average global temperatures will be down. The above link and sub links, including links to the temperature data reported by the five reporting agencies, track the data back to the published credible sources. The work can be verified by anyone competent with a spreadsheet.
From 2001 through June 2010 the atmospheric CO2 increased by 20% of the total increase from 1800 to 2001 while the average global temperature has not increased significantly and the trend of yearly averages from 2001 through 2009 is down. The El Nino that made early 2010 appear to be a bit warmer than the down trend, peaked in March, 2010 and average global temperature is now declining.
This El Niño warmed the air enough for NOAA to announce the warmest ever period. They failed to say that ‘ever’ includes only the last 130 years or so. They also failed to mention that the new record was only 0.02C higher than their previous record. A more correct announcement would have been that average global temperature has not changed significantly for over a decade. Saying that the average global temperatures are the hottest on record is about as profound as saying that you drove 10,000 miles last year and the last 10 days were among the greatest distance traveled since the beginning of the year
William Woody says:
September 20, 2010 at 8:56 am
By definition recycling generates loss of jobs and growth of poverty. Every time you recycle remember you are firing somebody out of his/her job.
Recycling of animal residues provoked the “mad cows disease” in europe, though the reinforcement of prions.
Green=Maddness.
So you capture the CO2 from burning fossil fuels and feed it to plants, thus preventing the gas from entering the atmosphere. But when you eat/burn/compost these plants, the CO2 ends up in the atmosphere anyway.
What freakin’ genius came up with that plan?
Burying all plant waste also wastes nutrients, as you’re also burying the minerals which are in the plants. Biochar is indeed a better idea, as then you’re burying carbon where plants can reach the minerals. I also see that biochar is being sold online, so it’s not hard to get a sample with which to inoculate the proper bacteria into your own charcoal.
Also, conservationists have been complaining for a while about agricultural black soil being reduced. Increasing the fertile soil is a better idea than intentionally filling valleys with quilt padding.
Also, you can make biochar out of used household lumber. We sequester lumber for dozens or hundreds of years, but then demolition returns some of that lumber to the environment unless it is sequestered in a landfill. Turning it into charcoal (if it’s not lead-contaminated) can be done even if it still has some drywall or nails in it.
This propsosal does not seem very practical. Maybe that is the pointof it that is to point out the impracticality of carbon sequestration.
One good source of plant material is the “green” garbage now bing collected by cities. This is commonly incinerated in Europe and used to create biogas in landfills in North America. The ininceration and biogas will priduce energy wipthout fossil carbon. This is essentially what the proposal is trying to do only more directly and more efficiently.
One thing that one should not do is to remove the waste plant material from the fields. This is the basis of the modern no-tllage methods of farming which greatly reduces soil erosion etc. At least this is what I ahve read.
The optimal process would be to minimize the handling of the non food organic field residue so as to retain the maximum amount of organic content in the field’s soil.
Crop rotation regimes that work use the minimum till approach to maximize the texture, organic content and soil microbial life concentration, to optimize the conversion of non edible “wastes” to boost soil fertility for the next crop to be grow in the same field.
Removing residual organic content from this cycle of soil regeneration is the first step increasing erosion that leads to the loss of vigor and healthfulness of the plants, that results in the loss of yield and nutritional content of the edible crop harvested.
Taking soil nutrients away from fields is about as Malthus as you can get out of stupidity. I commonly import discarded yard wastes from stupid suburbanites to augment my farm soils via applying compost liberally to all food crops, yield, water conservation, nutritional content, and taste are much improved at little cost.
How ridiculous. With all the “green” posturing that goes on, has anyone taken the time to calculate the carbon footprint of a “greenback”? It takes energy to create wealth, and in the current day and age, the majority of that energy comes from the burning of fossil fuels. My guess is that the amount of carbon sequestered is LESS than the amount of carbon that had to be expended in order to pay for this venture.
Picture of run off coming onto my farm from 3″ rain
http://www.myspace.com/aerology/photos/8417979
Picture of run off still leaving my property 48 hours later.
http://www.myspace.com/aerology/photos/8417979#a=0&i=8416394
Richard Holle says:
September 20, 2010 at 11:55 am
OT: Igor finally degraded….
Here’s what drives me to drink with the Green/AGW/CO2 movement: The music. That damn emotionally laden background music that accompanies every single tv commercial or program associated with the supposed moral and intellectual superiority of the Green agenda.
Not all greens support AGW and all that rot. DO stop being so tribal, you guys. Please.
Curiousgeorge says:
September 20, 2010 at 12:27 pm
BTW all those nice guys gather in these days at the UN in NY….There is the source of all evil.
Landfills, had we the sense to cumbust the carbon product parts of our waste for energy, would be the metal mines of the future.
There is what I choose to call an MQ, a madness quotient, that increases in size and scope as an organization grows larger. The larger the organization, the greater its Madness Quotient. Eventually, when the organization grows large enough, its MQ kills it off. Governments are organizations. Businesses are organizations, and there are many other kinds of organizations. All eventually get killed off because of increases of their Madness Quotients due to growth.
As satire, the article is not bad. It seems like it gets harder all the time telling The Onion from normal media.
Sooo, we want to pay farmers to grow, and then bury, useless plants. However, that means we are NOT paying them to grow plants, or aninals, we can eat. So that means world overall food production must go down, possibly way down. We have already lowered food production by growing plants to make feul, result, eventually someone must go hungry.
So, the question about this is, how many people are we willing to KILL to sequester this carbon?
And that fact that this is an obvious consequence of this idea, that was NOT realised by the author, says what about the author?
The science of the compost heap is all WRONG.
People are wrong to think in short terms about a long term process. Let’s use trees and farms as an example.
In the long term, virtually all of the carbon taken in by photosynthesis or plant roots goes out again as CO2 by oxidative decomposition. You have nil effect on CO2 balance if you merely farm for centuries. It’s a reversible chemical equation, to a good approximation.
Think again about planting trees. Same problem, longer time span. The ONLY way for tree planting to reduce atmospheric CO2 is to plant more growing mass where once there was less mass e.g. replace grasslands by forests. This will produce a temporary blip downwards in CO2. But, if the forests are not managed to contain the same weight of carbon that they gained when growing, they too will decay and admit the possibility of return to grassland. Net effect of the exercise – some carpetbaggers got rich at your expense via carbon credits of a temporary nature.
New forests for carbon sequestraton have to be managed forever. There is no point in putting them in and leaving them unmanaged. If you want to invest in tree schemes, read the fine print to ensure they will be managed forever, or refrain from investing because otherwise it’s a con.
The argument that wood lasts a long time as a carbon store is fictional. How much wood harvested 1,000 years ago can be accounted for today? A miniscule amount. Sorry folks, it mostly decays away and puts its CO2 back in the air. Reversible chemical equation.
This nonsense about soils becoming incredibly rich in carbon, the South American miracle soil, the biochar story … these are stupid distortions. Sure, you can make charcoal and put it in the soil and make it more productive. But, it becomes more productive because it takes the carbon our of the charcoal, over time, and makes CO2 again. It also helps the ion exchange capacity, but it does not last forever. It’s a transient way to improve crop yield, but as a way to reduce atmospheric CO2 – forget it, it’s trivial.
On the downside, once amateurs start burying biomass, they get problems like production of inwanted substances like methane. Sure, pros can make a gas tight system and recover methane for energy, but burning methane produces CO2. Like I keep saying, reversible chemical reactions. Nature tends to favour the stable CO2 as the end product.
It’s devilish difficult to sequester carbon permanently. That’s why nobody is doing it.
Mustafa Quit says:
September 20, 2010 at 6:14 pm
“”The science of the compost heap is all WRONG.””
_____________Reply;
Only if the short sighted goal is CO2 sequestration, the real process is more dynamic than that. Recycling organic matter through a composting processes that enhance the usability of the plant nutrients, works for the enhanced production of foodstuff, the goal I [an organic farmer] am striving for is keeping it IN the food chain.
Long term CO2 sequestration will be affected by the continual long term additional biomass that is alive and growing, whether animal, microbial, or plant. The atmospheric levels of CO2 that is slowly acclimating from the burning of fossil fuels, and petroleum oil products, is but a visible measure of the slower response of the total volume of biosphere’s growth rate to catch up to CO2 release, (just another example of negative feedback damping to prevent over shooting in nature,) that gives stability to the complete system.
As the background level of CO2 increases a wider variety of plants will grow better, increases in the density of those that would like higher CO2 levels will benefit, as will the selective consumers of those plants, you might like to investigate if you are on that list.
High growth forests add about 50 tonnes of tree mass per acre per year. Calculate the mass of CO2 over that acre. It’s not possible to cover the whole land area with such a forrest as it would deplete the CO2 to the level of crop reduction in short order.
And that is exactly what happened. That is why plant growth improves with added CO2 up to about 1,000 – 2,000 ppm. They evolved for higher levels, then the interglacial let them suck it all out of the air, until they are starving for more.
Want to remove all the ‘excess’ CO2 from the air? About 1% of the earth surface turned into a high growth forest for one life time does it. Then just leave it a mature forest. So think maybe cutting down all the mature forests of the last few hundred years might have had an impact?
FWIW, my looking in to this has lead me to believe that burning fossil fuels is one of the best things we can do for the planet. It lets the plants thrive instead of just survive.
Oh, an algae grow about 10 x as fast, you even smaller ‘pond scum’ operations could suck the air empty of CO2. Many attempts to use algae as fuel run into the problem that they are severely CO2 limited due to their rapid growth.
I have some ‘timber bamboo’ in my back yard. By observation I’m certain it grows faster than just about anything but corn… At 50 foot tall and 1 year to grow a stem from nothing to full sized I’m pretty sure that a bamboo forest will suck the air down to nearly plant starvation levels in one pass of air through the leaves.
I have a ‘bunny brush pile’ of bamboo stems from 5 – 8 years ago sitting in the open. It’s just not going away despite my wishes… If buried and kept dry it will last nearly forever… Wet it decomposes in about 2 years (in contact with wet dirt).
So the upshot of all this? The sequestration would work, and it’s just not needed. Plant life on the planet is CO2 limited and anything we can do to put more in the air just makes things better.
But please, do the math. 50 tons per acre, 1/2 dry matter, carbohydrates. Per year… Then compare to tons of CO2 per acre…
Huth says:
September 20, 2010 at 12:42 pm
Not all greens support AGW and all that rot. DO stop being so tribal, you guys. Please.
By “greens” do you mean the Green Party? When people refer to “Green” they generally mean Big Green, or the greenie religion, and not any political party. That said, I don’t believe I’ve heard of any Greens (the pol party) speaking out against AGW. Probably because they find it to be useful.
E M Smith – but you have to look at dynamics over a long time. There’s no point in adding carbon weight in biomass to an area of land unless you are prepared to sustain it forever. If you do not, it might just revert back to business as usual.
That’s why forestry schemes are a scam unless there is a plan to maintain the carbon storage forever. If it gets burned down to CO2 plus other stuff, the investor should get his money refunded.
Any of these subsidised schemes should work the way Ross McKittrick proposed for carbon taxes. Work out the change in global temperature every couple of years, then either tax ot rebate according to the results. It’s a wonderfully logical outcome of property rights thinking.
Carbon sequestration payments should be paid in arrears each couple of years after a measurement is made of the carbon change on the selected land. If it’s gone down, the schemer pays out. If it’s gone up, he gets money to put in his pocket. This is another case of advance model bad, post-measurement calculation good. Seems a little known principle in climate science.