From the University of Colorado at Boulder
New study: US power plant emissions down
Power plants that use natural gas and a new technology to squeeze more energy from the fuel release far less of the greenhouse gas carbon dioxide than coal-fired power plants do, according to a new analysis accepted for publication Jan. 8 in Earth’s Future, a journal of the American Geophysical Union. The so-called “combined cycle” natural gas power plants also release significantly less nitrogen oxides and sulfur dioxide, which can worsen air quality.
“Since more and more of our electricity is coming from these cleaner power plants, emissions from the power sector are lower by 20, 30 even 40 percent for some gases since 1997,” said lead author Joost de Gouw, an atmospheric scientist with NOAA’s Cooperative Institute for Research in Environmental Sciences (CIRES) at the University of Colorado Boulder. NOAA is the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration.
De Gouw, who works at NOAA’s Earth System Research Laboratory (ESRL), and his NOAA and CIRES colleagues analyzed data from systems that continuously monitor emissions at power plant stacks around the country. Previous aircraft-based studies have shown these stack measurements are accurate for carbon dioxide (CO2) and for nitrogen oxides and sulfur dioxide. Nitrogen oxides and sulfur dioxide can react in the atmosphere to form tiny particles and ozone, which can cause respiratory disease.
To compare pollutant emissions from different types of power plants, the scientists calculated emissions per unit of energy produced, for all data available between 1997 and 2012. During that period of time, on average:
- Coal-based power plants emitted 915 grams (32 ounces) of CO2 per kilowatt hour of energy produced;
- Natural gas power plants emitted 549 grams (19 ounces) CO2 per kilowatt hour; and
- Combined cycle natural gas plants emitted 436 grams (15 ounces) CO2 per kilowatt hour.
In combined cycle natural gas plants, operators use two heat engines in tandem to convert a higher fraction of heat into electrical energy. For context, U.S. households consumed 11,280 kilowatt hours of energy, on average, in 2011, according to the U.S. Energy Information Agency. This amounts to 11.4 metric tons per year of CO2 per household, if all of that electricity were generated by a coal power plant, or 5.4 metric tons if it all came from a natural gas power plant with combined cycle technology.
The researchers reported that between 1997 and 2012, the fraction of electric energy in the United States produced from coal gradually decreased from 83 percent to 59, and the fraction of energy from combined cycle natural gas plants rose from none to 34 percent.
That shift in the energy industry meant that power plants, overall, sent 23 percent less CO2 into the atmosphere last year than they would have, had coal been providing about the same fraction of electric power as in 1997, de Gouw said. The switch led to even greater reductions in the power sector’s emissions of nitrogen oxides and sulfur dioxide, which dropped by 40 percent and 44 percent, respectively.
The new findings are consistent with recent reports from the Energy Information Agency that substituting natural gas for coal in power generation helped lower power-related carbon dioxide emissions in 2012.
The authors noted that the new analysis is limited to pollutants emitted during energy production and measured at stacks. The paper did not address levels of greenhouse gases and other pollutants that leak into the atmosphere during fuel extraction, for example. To investigate the total atmospheric consequences of shifting energy use, scientists need to continue collecting data from all aspects of energy exploration, production and use, the authors concluded.
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Authors of the new paper, “Reduced Emissions of CO2, NOx and SO2 from U.S. Power Plants Due to the Switch from Coal to Natural Gas with Combined Cycle Technology,” are de Gouw (CIRES), David Parrish (NOAA ESRL), Greg Frost (CIRES) and Michael Trainer (NOAA).
I’m sure this conclusion was pinned to the mast of Noah’s ark.
I was at a presentation a couple of months ago that included information about a procedure that turned coal into what used to be called town gas by burning the coal in the seam. Most of it was way over my head but the bottom line was that it was very clean, relatively easy to do and there was enough coal under Scotland to provide us with cheap energy for a couple of hundred years.
Apparently the South Africans used something like this during the time of the oil embargo and it worked.
So presumably it will work anywhere.
Sorry to be so vague but I have thrown out the papers I got at the meeting. Maybe someone else can enlighten.
Oldseadog:
Is there more than one person who posts to WUWT as Oldseadog?
I ask because at January 11, 2014 at 1:10 am in this thread you ask
I have repeatedly answered that question in WUWT threads.
Three years ago someone posting as oldseadog made a post on January 7, 2011 at 1:37 am
And in that thread I made a post which was immediately following that post from oldseadog. My post gave a detailed reply to your question in this post. It was at January 7, 2011 at 1:39 am and this is a link to it
http://wattsupwiththat.com/2011/01/06/co2-is-plant-food-clean-coal-say-watt/#comment-568193
My linked post concludes saying
Richard
Damn scientists, keep improving our lives! Who needs them I tell ya!
Do you really need a study to establish this.
Gas has a higher calorific value, so obviously more energy is produced per given volume.
Meanwhile, back in the UK we are doing our utmost to delay shale gas extraction which if used for electrity generation would lower emissions, and we are closing down perfectly workable coal fired stations converting some of these to biofuels. Biofuels have considerably lopwer calorific value compared to coal, and thus actual CO2 emissions in the UK will rise.
That is the green lobby for you in a nutshell. Protest against using something that would lower CO2 emissions, and lobby for something which increases CO2 emissions.
Not that I am that concerned about CO2 emissions, but one would imagine that those who are concerned about such things would support energy programmes that in real world applications reduce CO2 emissions. I can just about understand that there may be people who oppose nuclear because of the inherent danger, but that does not explain why anyone would wish to pursue windfarms that do not reduce Co2 emissions because of the need for conventional back, nor why one would wish to switch from coal to biofuel which results in more CO2 emissions. Pure madness.gh .
SideShowBob says:
January 11, 2014 at 1:39 am
“Damn scientists, keep improving our lives! Who needs them I tell ya!”
How did these creeps improve your life by squandering your tax money on a study that researches the obvious
richardscourtney says:
January 11, 2014 at 1:35 am
/////////////////
Further to what Richard Courtney has to say, I too have posted many times on the South African experience of turning coal into oil. The breakeven price use to be a little under $100 per barrel. Inflation will obviously have increased that figure somewhat.
In the past I have suggested that because it is economically viable to convert coal to oil, at about the $100 per barrel mark, this will tend to keep oil prices down. Of course, there would need to be a lot of investment in new plant and technology, so that will allow oil to go up a little before the economics shift the scale, but if it were to hit and maintain a consistent level of say $130 to $150, many countries that have a ready source of coal may consider it time to invest in that new plant and technology.
The reality is that with coal and shale gas, the world has many hundreds of years, if not a thousand years of suitable fossil fuels to meet all of its energy needs. Peak fossil fuel is not on the horizon, and of course, it is highly unlikely that coal or oil will be used in the 22nd century as base energy production. No doubt we shall have mastered something like fussion by then. There is no energy panic, and man should push full steam ahead using as much energy as he wants to make a better world, which better world will be achieved sooner if he pushes full steam ahead, rather than trying to restrict energy use.
R. de Haan says:
January 10, 2014 at 10:08 pm
“Karl Marx is back: http://www.acting-man.com/?p=27920#
”
No that’s just The Rolling Stone on its suicide mission.
Shouldn’t the title of the study be, ‘Even though we already knew this but we wanted some money to spend on a worthless exercise anyway, Gas power stations produce less CO2 than coal stations’
Oldseadog: S.Africa does indeed produce fuels from coal but not by underground gasification. The company (used to be SASOL?) uses technology developed by the Germans to produce liquid fuels from coal (aka Coal-to-Liquids or CTL). They built up this capability during the embargoes of the apartheid era and have kept it going since. The main product these days is kerosene for jets. Aircraft fuel in SA is usually a 50% blend of CTL and oil-sourced.
There’s a lot of argument about the economics – it is certainly not competitive when oil prices are low and fuels produced from cheap natural gas would undercut it too.
Richardscourtney:
I remember your post from a couple of years back but this presentation I was at recently claimed that they were talking new, or at least improved, technology.
But I defer to your better knowledge and your response, and that of Richard Verney – that is what I hoped would happen, that people who were up to date would chip in with their take on the problem.
Natural gas is about as clean burning as you can get, short of pure hydrogen. And gas fired plants should be cheaper to build too. If we really have an abundance of it then we should use it. But lets not use it all up producing electricity and not have any left for home heating. Also will the enviros shut down fracking and put an end to natural gas power too?
Bring on Coal Bed Methane
Send down a steel pipe to get the energy out the ground and not risk the lives and health of human coal miners.
Considering water vapour is a far worse ‘pollutant’ than CO2 are we not endangering our planet by burning gas rather than coal in our power plants?
Coal tar soap, asparin, derived, by accident, from coal (Actually, some food colourings were derived from coal too in the past), a used by-product once. Most urban areas in the UK had “gas works” (And gas towers) and used coal to make gas, pretty much locally. Most of that was all shutdown in the 1970’s in favour of north sea natural gas (NSG). The UK has ~300 years of coal reserves, at least, and was mostly shutdown in favour of NSG in the 1980’s. So we had a system of locally produced energy, which was very dense and now we need to replace that with wind and solar, which requires massive land area to produce same?
Two problems, CO2 is NOT a pollutant, CO2 does not drive climate.
But I am all for getting a bigger bang for my buck.
Using natural gas instead of coal in base load power generation as opposed to satisfy peak power needs is plain silly. The only way to justify it is to distort the category of “pollutant” to an umbrella term which includes CO2 which is not harmful to human health in any way along with SO2 and NOx, which are. No wonder that from this point on one can’t think clearly and make sound economic decisions.
There are ways to decrease toxic emissions in coal fired plants, which of course have their own cost, but it is impossible to perform proper cost-benefit analyses in a flawed logical framework. Therefore a separate legal concept is urgently needed for non toxic emissions like CO2 &. H2O, but that can only be introduced by the legislative branch to limit executive transgressions like the the proposed EPA standard.
richard verney:
With some trepidation that we may seem to be conducting a mutual support compact, I write to support your post at January 11, 2014 at 2:03 am.
As you say, the ability to convert coal to synthetic crude oil (syncrude) constrains the true maximum cost of crude.
You mention the South African (SA) method for converting coal to syncrude. This SA method is the Sasol process developed from the German Fischer-Tropsch process. The Fischer-Tropsch process was developed more than a century ago so syncrude from coal has been technically possible for a long time. Germany used syncrude from coal during WW2 and apartheid South Africa used syncrude when embargoed. In both cases this was because their supplies of crude were curtailed.
Until 1994 syncrude was more expensive than crude. The cost of drilling and transporting crude was less than the cost of mining, transporting and converting coal to syncrude. But at the UK’s Coal Research (CRE) we completed research, development and demonstration of the Liquid Solvent Extraction (LSE) process for converting coal to syncrude in 1994. And the LSE process enables syncrude from coal to be economically competitive with crude.
We invented and developed the LSE process at CRE then proved the technical and economic performance of LSE using a demonstration plant at Point of Ayr in North Wales.
The surprising economics of LSE derive from two factors.
1.
LSE consumes sulphurous oil refinery bottoms which have disposal costs.
and
2.
The LSE process can be ‘tuned’ to adjust the hydrocarbons it produces.
An oil refinery separates the contents of crude to provide products for sale. And a refinery needs to output products in proportions which match market demand; e.g. an output of gasoline must not produce too much or too little benzene. This match to market demand is achieved by blending crude oils from different places (different crudes contain different proportions of hydrocarbons) and separating the contents of the blend.
Blending has costs, and the ability of LSE to be tuned reduces those costs.
So, using LSE syncrude reduces costs of refining in two ways, and these reductions are greater than the costs of converting the coal to syncrude.
CRE was indirectly owned by UK government and details of the LSE process became intellectual property of UK government when CRE was closed (as completion of the closure of UK coal industry) in 1995. Those details are now a state secret. The importance of this to the UK is demonstrated by the fact that CRE was the last part of the UK coal industry to be closed (except for the administrative Coal Authority). A closing industry usually shuts is research first – not last – but CRE was not shut until after it had completed full demonstration of LSE.
Brent crude is the most valuable crude because it blends (~1:2) with Saudi crude (i.e. the most available crude) to provide refinery products which match market demand. Hence, the value of Brent crude has great importance for the UK economy and balance of payments. Adoption of LSE would require large investment in infrastructure so would not be warranted unless there was a long-term increase to the cost of crude. Also, the UK now produces little coal.
Hence, the existence of the LSE process has strategic value to the UK because it constrains the true cost of crude. But adoption of the LSE process would harm the UK economy. In the events that Brent crude exhausted and also that the long-term cost of crude increased above the cost of LSE syncrude then the UK could be expected to license the LSE process for use.
Until then, the existence of the LSE process constrains the maximum true cost of crude and removes fear of ‘peak oil’. There is sufficient coal to meet world need for both coal and syncrude for at least 300 years. Energy for transport depended on hay for horses 300 years ago (n.b. not crude). Nobody can know what – if any – demand for crude will exist 300 years in the future.
Richard
There is lots and lots of natural gas all across the world. There are some places that don’t have it, but it is far more widespread than oil or coal is. Some general regions have so much that they will never run out. It can be transported by pipeline across a continent or shipped across the ocean liquefied. What’s not to like.
And it quite safe to use and transport. It is piped throughout many cities, into virtually every home in those cities and is becoming more common for cooking stoves for example. Burn something right on your counter-top? And it can be stored relatively easily in large underground caverns for many years and pulled out when it is needed. What’s not like?
So home heating, home energy use, industrial processes, the obvious solution.
Foe electricity production, however, it is not as prevalent. I know some of the earlier turbine designs were not that efficient, broke down more often, sometimes didn’t ‘t even work after they were built and they are normally much smaller. The area coverage is much smaller so you need more of them disbursed around. This presents a reliability of supply problem and then one needs more back-up capacity. For a particular area, one might need to build two turbines, one for back-up, one for normal usage. Then it takes time to bring a back-up turbine into operation. The power is out for hours at a time which is not the main purpose of reliable electricity. A large coal-fired plant does not have these issues.
Maybe the newer turbine designs have found ways around these problems.
Richard,
This is most interesting.
Would it be easy to convert an existing refinery which processes N S Crude to process LSE syncrude?
Oldseadog:
At January 11, 2014 at 3:41 am you ask me
I answer.
1.
If you mean, ‘Can an existing oil refinery refine LSE product without amendment?’
then the answer is, Yes.
2.
If you mean, ‘Can an existing oil refinery include an LSE plant?’
then the answer is, That would depend on circumstances; e.g. available physical space at the refinery.
Please remember that the UK is now a net exporter of North Sea Oil and is a net importer of coal. Also, coal is almost entirely used for power generation in the UK and the UK is closing its coal-fired power stations. So, oil is now much more important to the UK economy than coal.
I hope that is what you wanted.
Richard
The Met Office have had second thoughts, and they have decided avid Cameron was right after all.
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/topics/weather/10564153/David-Cameron-was-right-to-link-storms-to-climate-change-say-weather-experts.html
With the news that the government is planning two new cities for Britain, that means lots more concrete, more flooding and even more ‘climate change’. I despair.
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/politics/10564713/Two-new-garden-cities-for-southern-England-in-secret-Tory-plan.html
CO2 is PLANT FOOD not Pollution.
THis is exactly what BP and Enron were aiming for. Enron, joined by BP, invented the global warming industry. I know because I was in the room. This was during my storied three-week or so stint as Director of Federal Government Relations for Enron in the spring of 1997, back when Enron was everyone’s darling in Washington
Now ask yourself WHY?
How come the article does not mention that switching from coal to natural gas is going to increase the cost of power by a factor of five to ten times!
The Broken Window Fallacy anyone?
Richard,
Thanks.
So IF, I repeat IF it became advantageous, Grangemouth and Tees Side refineries could process the coal underneath them and use the existing dock facilities for distribution?
Oldseadog:
At January 11, 2014 at 4:23 am you ask me
Well, hypothetically, I suppose so. But before I were willing to provide a proper answer I would need much more information about the coal seams, their accessability, the local geology, and the dock facilities.
This is not an evasion. It is simply true.
Sorry.
Richard