Guest essay by Steve Goreham
Originally published in The Washington Times
The war on climate change has produced many dubious “innovations.” Intermittent wind and solar energy sources, carbon markets that buy and sell “hot air,” and biofuels that burn food as we drive are just a few examples. But carbon capture and storage is the Edsel of energy policies.
Carbon capture and storage (CCS), also called carbon capture and sequestration, is promoted by President Obama, the Department of Energy (DOE), and the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) for coal-fired power plants. In September, the EPA proposed a limit of 1,100 pounds of CO2 emissions per megawatt-hour of electricity produced, a regulation that would effectively ban construction of new coal plants without CCS.
Coal is the world’s fastest growing hydrocarbon fuel. Increased use of coal by developing nations boosted coal use from 24.6 percent of the world’s primary energy supply in 1973 to 28.8 percent in 2011. Wind and solar remain less than one percent of the global energy supply. Proponents of the theory of man-made warming realize that world use of coal will remain strong for decades, so they insist that coal plants use CCS to limit CO2 emissions.
CCS requires capturing of carbon dioxide, a normal waste product from the combustion of fuel, transporting CO2 by pipeline, and then storing it underground. EPA Administrator Gina McCarthy says, “CCS technology is feasible and it’s available.”
Carbon capture is feasible, but it’s very expensive. The DOE estimates that CCS increases coal-fired electricity cost by 70 percent. This does not include the additional cost of building pipelines to transport the carbon dioxide and the cost of establishing reservoirs to store the CO2 underground.
An example is Southern Company’s planned coal-fired plant with CCS in Kemper County, Mississippi, which is scheduled to begin operations in 2014. With recent cost overruns, the Southern Company now estimates a $4.7 billion price tag for the 582-megawatt plant. This exceeds the price of a comparable nuclear plant and is almost five times the price of a gas-fired plant.
The DOE pledged $270 million in funding for the Kemper County plant along with a federal tax credit of $133 million. Mississippi customers will be socked with a $2.88 billion electricity rate increase to support the plant.
Nine US plants currently capture CO2 as part of normal industrial processes, such as natural gas or chemical refining and fertilizer production. All nine facilities sell CO2 to the petroleum industry for Enhanced Oil Recovery (EOR), a process which pumps CO2 into the ground. The Kemper County plant will also provide CO2 for EOR. Another ten US projects are underway to capture CO2 and most of these projects are subsidized with federal money.
Ford spent $350 million on the Edsel, the most famous car failure in history. But CCS is a much bigger financial boondoggle. From 2008 through 2012, governments committed to spend more than $22 billion on CCS projects. The United States leads the way with a commitment of more than $5 billion.
Despite support by US and world governments, carbon capture is not headed for success. A report released by the Global CCS Institute this month shows that international investment in CCS is now in decline. During the last year, the number of large-scale CCS projects declined from 75 to 65. Five projects were cancelled and seven were put on hold, with only three new projects added. The institute reports that private organizations are not investing in CCS.
The number of CCS projects in Europe has declined from 21 to 15, where no new project has entered commercial operation since 2008. The Global CCS Institute states that an “urgent policy response is required” for success. In other words, governments must impose carbon taxes and provide big subsidies for CCS.
Would carbon capture really have a measureable effect on global warming? CO2 emissions from power plants total less than one percent of the carbon dioxide that naturally enters the atmosphere each year from the oceans, the biosphere, and other natural sources. If the world fully implements CCS, it’s unlikely that we could detect a change in global temperatures.
But, worse than this, if the theory of dangerous man-made global warming is false, CCS becomes an expensive solution to a non-problem. When the dust of history settles and the ideology of Climatism fades away, failed CCS projects will be remembered as the Edsel of energy policies.
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Steve Goreham is Executive Director of the Climate Science Coalition of America and author of the book The Mad, Mad, Mad World of Climatism: Mankind and Climate Change Mania.
@hunter, So… they’re climatologists?
If they had an EPA back in the 50s and Obama was president we would all have been legally required to buy an Edsel.
Most of the C02 storage plans I’ve heard of involve pumping it into downhole formations, to replace methane and other hydrocarbons that have been produced and to maintain formation pressures. Since the gas can act as a solvent for hydrocarbons still in place, it is very useful for EOR (enhanced oil recovery) projects, and in that context is no more of a danger than the gases and/or fluids that were in those formations originally. (The goal in EOR is to “pump” the formation back up to original pressures, but never to overpressure it)
However, the formations where this is an economically feasible strategy are rather rare and geographically limited. It usually doesn’t work in formations with permeability problems, which is every formation being fracced today. And if the C02 producing plant isn’t built fairly close to where the C02 is going to be injected, then the transportation costs make the entire project economically nonsensical.
The Kemper County plant is a classic example of a giant facility being built based on only a theory that all the problems would work out, once it was online. (sound like a certain online health system in the news lately?) Not only did the cost overruns totally blow out the original cost, but now (because they made bad estimates of their product price) the plant is going to operate at a loss, unless rates are jacked up far above other areas in the country, which is going to drive local business away and increase local unemployment. (although of course they could go for that old favorite desperation move, exempt businesses and just beat the widows and orphans for the extra money). I would not be surprised to see the plant mothballed within 5 years, and any debt associated with it to be defaulted upon, with possibly the company operating it in receivership. It’s that big a financial disaster.
Long story short, the impact of the Kemper County plant, which was supposed to be a showcase for the technology, is that no plant of this design will ever be built again. They have “fixed” all the problems that could be technologically fixed; but they cannot “fix” all of the rosy assumptions built into the basic design that have proven to be false.
You don’t have to go to Africa to see the possible damage of large amounts of carbon dioxide. Visitors to California’s Mammoth Mountain will see areas of dead trees killed by CO2 emissions. As I recall there are signs posted warning hikers to stay out of certain areas. And failure to pay attention can be deadly:
http://articles.latimes.com/2006/apr/09/local/me-mammoth9
Based on the most recent fixed price contracts for Genertion 3 + nuclear plants,
the CCS coal plant costs more than twice as much as a nuclear plant in terms of cost per kw of capacity.The nuclear plant also has lower operating costs and uses far cheaper fuel than a coal plant (less than a penny per kilowatthour of power produced).
“…ideology of Climatism fades away, failed CCS projects will be remembered as the Edsel of energy policies.”
I hope so, but if it gets far enough, ‘CO2 is bad for us’ becomes a motherhood statement and millions of brain-washed school kids will be the adult inheritors of this sacred trust. Remember, skeptics don’t have their own weather stations – these are in the hands of the CAGW manufacturing sector.
If you want to capture all the CO2 from two 1100 MW coal fired power stations, you will need a third 1100 MW powerplant to provide the power required for this.
This means 50% more coal use and fluegas emissions full of heavy metals and other pollutants for the same amount of electricity.
What a great idea!!
CCS sounds more like the Bopal of energy policies.
Ford spent $350 million on the Edsel, the most famous car failure in history. But CCS is a much bigger financial boondoggle. From 2008 through 2012, governments committed to spend more than $22 billion on CCS projects. The United States leads the way with a commitment of more than $5 billion.
In present day dollars the Edsel cost would be ~$2.8 billion so I think you’re guilty of some hyperbole here!
Comparing CCS to the Edsel may be denigrating the Edsel. The Edsel was a reasonable idea that failed from exceptionally poor execution. It did not create excess public cost and could be easily terminated without major disruption and public cost. The Edsel had utility as a means of transportation and the public had many other alternatives if they didn’t like it. Only its creator (Ford) was hurt by the Edsel.
CCS is an idea of capturing carbon with limited use for the product other than deepwell, high pressure injection. Projects that put CCS near places the CO2 can be used for EOR eventually fail because the EOR demand moves or decreases. CCS adds to expense of production, costs all the public more and can’t be terminated without major cost to the public. I’m willing to bet that the industrial and commercial uses of CO2 have less expensive and cleaner CO2 sources.
I think a couple of commenters here are on the same page but perhaps talking past one another.
An analogy may relate to water. A nice spring rain over several days would be quite beneficial but a sudden deluge causing a flood would be much different.
What is really scary is if these so called reservoirs of CO2 that are presumably under pressure suddenly at some time in the future release all that gas in a short time. Death and mayhem from suffocation could be the result as has been already been proven by that gas release from the African lake, http://www.neatorama.com/2007/05/21/the-strangest-disaster-of-the-20th-century/#!lCBmI. The storage of CO2 is not only unnecessary but potentially lethal.
Personally, I kind of like the Edsel. It’s the only antique car I could see myself owning.
However, I believe the Volt cost more to develop and sells worse than the edsel.
It’s not the environmentalists pushing CCS.
One side wants to stop burning coal, because it’s destructive in so many ways: coal production destroys the area around the mine and burning coal is extremely polluting.
The other side wants to burn coal because energy and dollars and jobs and so on.
In the middle, there’s people who want to burn coal but have it be non-polluting. These are the ones pushing CCS, along with other types of scrubbers to keep local and regional pollution down as well. The local and regional pollutants add cost but are feasible to reduce dramatically. Unfortunately, the best storage we have for carbon is coal itself; nothing else is as stable, safe, and easy to transport. But you can’t burn coal to make coal and get any energy out of that.
I’m stumped. I’ve tried to think of something in history approaching the utter stupidity and huge waste of resources of CCS, the financial suffering caused plus the possible threat to lives, but can’t. It is in a category of its’ own. In the future, when someone wants to wax rhetorical, I imagine they’ll say “it is the CCS of” (fill-in-the-blank). Hopefully, they’ll be wildly exaggerating.
CO2 Moving On Up….
So, it appears mass-quantity-stored-CO2-near-populous areas could be used as a weapon of mass destruction, ala other chemical warfare gases, against civilian populations during, say, a civil war.
The FBI defines a WMD as follows: “any weapon designed or intended to cause death or serious bodily injury through the release, dissemination, or impact of toxic or poisonous chemicals or their precursors.”
Whodda thunk it? And here I thought it was just a plain, ordinary “pollutant.”
Can hardly wait til the conspiracy theorists get a hold of this one…
Despite support by US and world governments, carbon capture is not headed for success. A report released by the Global CCS Institute this month shows that international investment in CCS is now in decline.
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Certainly — that was expected. The “carbon-capture” scheme is just a smokescreen — no savvy power-plant engineer believes it could be done significantly. The real intent is to put the coal companies out of business. Obozo the clown-in-chief said as much.
See Technical papers on Lake Nyos CO2 release
Phil.,
Please reread the paragraph you quoted and identify the hyperbole. Are you of the opinion that $2.8 billion is more than $22 billion? Is 22 not considered to be much bigger than 2.8? Help me out here.
All the CO2 that is being emitted (both natural and anthropogenic) is being sucked out of the atmosphere naturally. Natural emissions are at least 20 times anthropogenic emissions. The observed “accumulation” of CO2 is mostly from increased natural emissions. Sequestering anthropogenic emissions is like spitting into the wind.
There are several good reasons for CCS although it has its costs. Burning coal directly to produce heat does produce emissions that have to be scrubbed to meet standards. These include SO2, NOx, CO, and PM as well as Hg and other metals. Scrubbing costs money and is not the most efficient means to remove these emissions. I refrain from calling CO2 a “waste product” as it gives the impression that it needs to be handled in some manner. I prefer to call it a combustion product which like water vapor just needs to be exhausted appropriately.
Coal Gasification is well known technology that is both reliable and safe. It converts coal into synthesis gas (CO and H2) which either can be burned or used to produce fuels and chemicals. In the process, sulfur, NOx, CO2, and other contaminants are removed from the syngas stream and efficiently collected by known chemical engineering processes. There are few emissions from this process that actually reach the atmosphere.
But one benefit of the process is that CO2 is recovered as a nearly pure stream from the syngas cleanup step (using either Rectisol which uses MeOH or Selectsol which uses an amine to absorb contaminants from the syngas). The Clauss process reduces H2S to solid Sulfur, and absorbants remove the metals and dust that may remain. Much of the metal components of the coal end up as vitreous slag that can be disposed of as it is non-leachable.
Once syngas is produce, it can be burned to make power, but this is not the best use of this valuable resource. More useful is production of liquid fuels such as paraffinic hydrocarbons or methanol. Both can be converted into extremely high quality transportation fuels. The Fischer-Tropsch process makes waxy paraffins from syngas and F-T wax is readily converted into synthetic diesel and jet fuel with cetane values in the 70+ range.
And the CO2 from a CTL plant (Coal-to-Liquids) when used for EOR will produce about ~2 bbl of new crude from a depleted oil field per bbl of synthetic product produced. This is the true value of a CTL plant. With CCS, CTL plants will have carbon dioxide emissions at or below the emissions levels of fossil fuel plants (conventional refineries) as defined by the DOE NETL petroleum fuel baseline studies done in 2009. So even the environmental requirements for the Federal Government (Section 529 of EISA) that the government cannot purchase synthetic fuel that has GHG emissions greater than the fossil fuel baseline can be met by a CTL plant with CCS. The economics work as the value of CO2 in concentrated and compressed form are at least $20/ton, and the value of that CO2 for EOR produces about $200/ton net return. Not a bad deal for both producer and user of the CO2. Denbury Resources, Kinger-Morgan and other pipeline companies already provide CO2 from natural sources for EOR and are looking for additional sources to allow EOR to be used in more oil fields. Any reservoir that trapped natural gas will trap CO2. And CO2 over time reacts with some minerals to chemically sequester the CO2 so that it will never escape.
I do not like storing CO2 in brine aquifers as this is just a waste of CO2 as a resource. But in brine, CO2 converts to solid salts with up to 70% of the CO2 injected converted into non-gaseous products (NETL studies). So even in this case, CCS will not be a “dangerous” situation.
From my perspective, if there is a market value for CO2, CCS for EOR is a viable option.
The climate science community also believes these wonder devices make exquisitely sensitive thermometers which can be networked into a vast temperature sensor array, one able to detect miniscule changes in global mean temperature to a hundredth of a degree over distances spanning thousands of kilometers and over time periods spanning thousands of years. (If the time periods occur prior to 1960, anyway.)
Or… capture the CO2 in a cylinder and sell it to Coke and Pepsi!
This guy says forget about capture & storage. Just quit producing more people:
http://www.cnn.com/2013/10/15/opinion/weisman-climate-population/index.html?hpt=op_t1
IMO people who hate people buy into CACA as an excuse to get rid of us, not because they care about what’s good for humanity’s future.
are humans not part of nature?………….were we brought here from someplace else and NOT really part of the natural environment of the earth?
ALL of our emissions also fall into the NATURAL category as long as we are part of this environment!