Another billion plus down the drain. I guess it wasn’t “sustainable”.
…
The potential demise of the scheme comes amid growing fears among renewable power enthusiasts that David Cameron and George Osborne want to scale back the “green” agenda on the grounds that low-carbon energy schemes such as CCS and offshore wind cost too much at a time of austerity. Osborne told the Conservative party conference in Manchester that if he had his way the UK would cut “carbon emissions no slower but also no faster than our fellow countries in Europe”.
Scottish Power, and its partners Shell and the National Grid, have just completed a detailed study of the CCS scheme and have deep concerns about its commercial viability without heavier public backing.
Full story here
Of course this just follows a long line of FAIL, the most prominent being the death of the Chicago Climate Exchange and it’s nickel a ton flatline:
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The idea of capturing carbon is not daft but paying a premium for doing it and not getting any useful products or productive result is.
Xstrata has – perhaps – just saved aussie taxpayers a whole heap of money that was going to Windlab for a 750 megawatt wind farm in the outback that had to link to the grid via the proposed Copperstring project. the pollies and CAGW crowd are freaking out:
7 Oct: Climate Spectator: Giles Parkinson: Xstrata gas deal sinks renewables hub
Hopes of building one of Australia’s largest renewable energy hubs in north Queensland appear to have been dashed after the Swiss-based global mining giant Xstrata signed a deal instead with AGL Energy to build a gas-fired power station in Mt Isa.
Xstrata had been mulling three strategies to ensure future energy supply for its Mt Isa mining operations: the extension of the current sole supplier, the gas-fired Mica power station (an idea it dumped a while ago); go for another gas-fired station; or participate in the CopperString project that would link Mt Isa with the grid at Townsville via a 1000km transmission line, and unlock a series of renewable energy projects, including wind, solar, biomass and geothermal found in between.
Xstrata decided on the “safe” option and went for more gas, and signed a deal on Thursday with AGL and pipeline group APA to build a 242MW gas-fired power station at a cost of $500 million, and a 17-year supply contract.
The decision by one of its major customers almost certainly signals the end of CopperString, which would have cost at least $1.5 billion, but was backed by state and federal funding, and of a multi-billion dollar renewable plan, including the $1.5 billion, 750MW Kennedy wind farm – which would have been the nation’s largest – and a host of other renewable projects. Among them were several solar thermal projects; another wind farm and solar plant at Mt Isa; a 400MW biodiesel and biomass plant using kapla trees being considered by another CSIRO spin-off called PhytoFuel; a 100MW hydro project, and a biomass project proposed by Samsung; and several geothermal prospects. In all, up to 3000MW of renewable projects were envisaged…
It also means that Queensland will likely struggle to meet its renewable energy target, as CopperString would have unlocked its best renewable resources. As it is, the state has only 12MW wind farm in the south and a single turbine on Thursday Island to show for its renewable efforts, apart from a whole host of solar PV on rooftops and the two largest solar thermal projects, including the Solar Dawn flagships project, that are on the drawing board.
Xstrata says it has based its decision around the reliability and cost of energy, and a spokesman said it relied heavily on a report produced in 2009 by former Port Jackson principal Rod Sims (now chair of the ACCC) to justify it on environmental and social criteria…
http://www.climatespectator.com.au/commentary/xstrata-gas-deal-sinks-renewables-hub
7 Oct: ABC: Paul Sutherland: Green energy companies left reeling, as Xstrata pulls out of power project
Windlab was one company planning to tap into CopperString’s transmission lines, but chief executive Roger Price says its plans need to be reassessed…
Federal Treasurer Wayne Swan, who was a vocal supporter of the project, has said in a statement to the ABC that the Federal Government is disappointed with the decision, and they will now reassess the energy future of the north-west.
Federal independent Member for Kennedy Bob Katter says the decision means the death of clean energy in the region.
But Steve Du Kruijff, the chief operating officer of Xstrata Copper in North Queensland, says the gas-fired Diamantina Power Station was the best option for the energy needs of Xstrata Mount Isa Mines.
http://www.abc.net.au/rural/news/content/201110/s3334455.htm
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A bit off-topic, but this interesting article about shipping through an increasingly ice-free Arctic Ocean appeared in the same issue of the Guardian:
http://www.guardian.co.uk/environment/2011/oct/05/melting-arctic-ice-supertankers
Smokey says:
October 7, 2011 at 1:35 pm
Dave Andrews,
You are mistaken, it is against federal law for any hospital to turn away anyone because of their inability to pay. No one in the U.S. is denied health care, and they don’t have to wait.
OTOH, we routinely hear about the horrors of the UK’s health care system, where people regularly expire while waiting months or more for care.
___________________________________________________________________
Not to mention starving to death…. Starved by the NHS: 242 patients die from malnutrition in a single year
Scottish Power huh? I wonder how the Scottish government’s target of 100% renewable energy by 2020 is going.
Presumably not well. Looks like another Darien disaster in the making.
It’s the same in Queensland in Oz where miner Xstrata just bit the bullet on all the green daydreams and fantasies with the ‘Copperstring’ project and all the renewables that it would supposedly spawn and signed up a gas fired power plant to the howls from the usual suspects here-
http://antinuclear.net/2011/10/07/xstrata-mining-company-like-its-close-friend-glencore-out-to-wreck-renewable-energy-in-australia/
So many daydreamers, so little capital.
I apologise for the rudeness of a fellow Brit. British healthcare can be excellent, but it can also be abysmal. I dare say this is true, at least to some extent, of any healthcare system. Whether things on the whole are better in the USA or Britain, I cannot say; but I certainly don’t feel confident enough to throw stones from inside my glass house.
Dave Andrews says (October 7, 2011 at 1:26 pm): “BTW, your so called ‘ commercial viability’ manages to leave some 40 million plus of your fellow Americans without adequate access to healthcare facilities. Are you not alittle bit ashamed about that?”
Doesn’t the UK have a private health system operating alongside the National Health Service?
This is a regulated utility. The regulator won’t let the customers pay for it and the feds won’t fund it. There ain’t no one else.
M Night Shyalaman should make some crazy film about how nature gets back at us through the air – oh wait he did…and it was farcical
What’s next, digging holes to bury coal?
All of us who are concerned for peace and triumph of reason and justice must be keenly aware how small an influence reason and honest good will exert upon events in the political field. ~Albert Einstein
Robert M says:
October 7, 2011 at 12:41 pm
Really? I don’t believe it! They should throw another couple of billion pounds at it!
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The way the story is phrased it can be interpreted as: 1 billion pounds would have been spent —-if—— the project had gone ahead. It is not going ahead.
So how much was actually spent in the feasibility studies? Feasibility studies do not typically cost 1 billion.
Smokey says:
October 7, 2011 at 1:35 pm
Dave Andrews,
You are mistaken, it is against federal law for any hospital to turn away anyone because of their inability to pay. No one in the U.S. is denied health care, and they don’t have to wait.
————
That’s interesting. Didn’t know that. So what happens when you leave the hospital?
Lazy says:
“So what happens when you leave the hospital?”
How would I know? You need to ask them. But IMHO they either go home, or back to Mexico.
Pat Frank says
“Heavier public backing” means obtaining higher subsidies than they already get.
———
Maybe. But in some places in the world electricity rates are government controlled, to compensate for the fact that utilities are often de facto monopolies.
In that case “Heavier public backing” doesnt mean subsidies, it means adjustments in politically sensitive electricity rates by government.
Smokey says
How would I know? You need to ask them. But IMHO they either go home, or back to Mexico.
——-
So would you agree a reasonable scenario would be that: you recieve a bill for luxury health care at a price point set by those with health insurance. And then you go home and sell your house to pay for the bills. And then you and your family move into rented accommodation.
This doesn’t affect me, just plumbing the advantages and disadvantages of the american libertarian point of view.
If you loose your job does your health care disappear immediately or do you have a pro rata scheme that covers you for some transition time?
How could CCS possibly be a commercial success when it is the function of storing something no one wants.
Dennis Nikols, P. Geo. says:
October 7, 2011 at 4:11 pm
“The idea of capturing carbon is not daft but paying a premium for doing it and not getting any useful products or productive result is.”
The idea of capturing carbon dioxide ( one carbon atom, two oxygen atoms ) to try to remove it from the biosphere IS daft.
The use of the word carbon ( as in ‘carbon footprint’, ‘carbon pollution’, etc.) without the word ‘dioxide’ should be banned. Some think that this is about carbon monoxide, or just plain carbon, as in soot or coal dust. Tell ’em it’s the gas in soda, fizzy water, beer etc. and they look very askance.
Ben Turpin, dig holes to bury the carbon … hahaha LOL VG
the CAGW narrative is unravelling at a fast pace:
8 Oct: Age Australia: John Garnaut: As China’s emissions rise, so too does sceptics’ hot air
CHINESE President Hu Jintao is having to stare down claims that human-induced climate change is an elaborate American conspiracy, as the country’s carbon emissions surge despite tough government constraints.
“Global warming is a bogus proposition,” says Zhang Musheng, one of China’s most influential intellectuals and a close adviser to a powerful and hawkish general in the People’s Liberation Army, Liu Yuan.
Mr Zhang told The Age that global warming was an American ruse to sell green energy technology and thereby claw its way out of its deep structural economic problems…
Mr Zhang, whose father was secretary to China’s former premier, Zhou Enlai, blasted Chinese policymakers for encouraging Chinese companies to buy foreign intellectual property in order to manufacture renewable energy equipment. The Chinese-made equipment helps the environment in other nations while leaving China with financial and environmental costs, he said.
“The low-carbon economy, carbon politics and carbon taxes are actually driven by the West as the foundation for a new cycle of the virtual economy,” he added…
http://www.theage.com.au/world/as-chinas-emissions-rise-so-too-does-sceptics-hot-air-20111007-1ldvl.html
5 Oct: Clickgreen.org.uk: Building boom causes China’s carbon emissions to triple
Constructing buildings, power-plants and roads has driven a substantial increase in China’s CO2 emission growth, according to a new study involving the University of East Anglia (UEA)…
The study, entitled A ‘Carbonizing Dragon’: China’s fast growing CO2 emissions revisited’, is published today in the journal Environmental Science & Technology. It emphasizes that putting a low carbon infrastructure in place in China as well as other emerging and developing economies from the beginning is a key global challenge to avoid ‘carbon lock-in’ – where a country could be stuck on a path of high emissions – which would have a significant and persistent impact on future emissions…
The study’s lead author Jan Minx, from the Potsdam Institute for Climate Impact Research (PIK) and the Technical University of Berlin, said: “Up to 2002 there has been a race between consumption growth and efficiency gains. However, the recent rise in emissions is completely due to the massive structural change of China’s economy. Emissions grow faster and faster, because CO2 intensive sectors linked to the building of infrastructure have become more and more dominant. China has developed into a ‘carbonizing dragon’.”…
They found that emissions almost tripled between 1992 and 2007, growing by about four billion tonnes, with 70% of this growth happening between 2002 and 2007. The average annual CO2 emission growth alone in this period was similar in size to the total CO2 emissions in the UK. While exports showed the fastest CO2 emission growth at one point, capital investments and the construction industry then overtook…
http://www.clickgreen.org.uk/analysis/general-analysis/122602-building-boom-causes-china%5Cs-carbon-emissions-to-triple.html
A high school student suggested the most cost-effective way of going about this:
Build commercial greenhouses near the powerplants and use the CO2 as a by-product, piping hot in the wintertime.
Waste not, want not.
@LazyTeenager – when your job goes, you have COBRA, which basically allows you to purchase the same insurance that you had through your employer, for a year. But, you have to pay both parts, the money you were paying PLUS the employer’s contribution, which is usually significantly more than your part was.
So, now unemployed, no income, you can pay probably half of what was your take-home pay each month to continue to be covered.
So in reality – you finish work on Friday, your healthcare ends on Friday.
btw the John Garnaut who wrote the Age piece on China with the headline about “sceptics’ hot air”
is none other than the son of the aussie al gore, Ross Garnaut:
2009 Festival of Ideas: John Garnaut is the Asia Economics Correspondent for The Age and the Sydney Morning Herald, based in Beijing. He also writes occasionally for the International Herald Tribune, The Diplomat magazine and various other publications.
He is the son of Professor Ross Garnaut, author of the Garnaut Climate Change Review.
http://ideas.unimelb.edu.au/2009/speakers/jgarnaut.html
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It can be strongly argued that if so much the money had not been spent ‘fighting AGW’ the world would not be on the verge of Global Economic Collapse. When this happens, possibly in a few weeks time, no subsidies will be available to continue this ‘fight’. It could be fatal for any politician to try!
In some ways it could be considered a win for the ‘Dark Greens’ who want civilisation to regress, but probably the true winners will be the anti-globalists and anarchists. These are the trouble-makers at various G8 conferences, etc. who are usually despised.
I am not sure the green organisations will enjoy the world they have [inadvertantly] created, but unintended consequences are nothing new.
A billion dollars for 1/10,000 of a degree?
I did some number crunching on this issue since in Alberta, Canada, they still want to spend about a billion dollars on one carbon capture project. At the present time, humans emit about 90 million tons of greenhouse gases into the atmosphere every DAY. I DO NOT believe this to be the case, however let us assume there will be the IPCC average number of 3.000 degrees C increase in temperature due to our emissions if we do nothing. So if a billion dollars is spent to capture 1 million tons a YEAR, this amounts to a fraction of 1 in 32,850. So if nothing is done, let us assume the temperature will presumably go up 3.0000 degrees C, but if a billion dollars is spent, the temperature would go up by 2.9999 degrees. Or to put in another way, if we take the temperature of 10,000 cities now and then again in 100 years from now, 9,999 cities will have the same temperature and one city will be 1 degree C colder if a billion dollars is spent.