From the “models didn’t predict this” and the “Climate Action” department:
An investigation found that Brussels blew the colossal sum of cash on a drive to build underground storage facilities for CO2 emissions – but no such facilities were ever constructed.
This week the architect of the scheme, a former Lib Dem MEP, admitted this was because officials bungled their predictions for the environmental costs facing businesses.
The revelations, uncovered by the website EUobserver, will heap further pressure on EU chiefs who are already facing increased scrutiny over their spending due to Brexit.
Britain’s departure from the bloc is set to blow a £9 billion a year hole in its budget, with a number of member states actively calling for Brussels’ largesse to be be reined in.
Eurosceptics in the UK have long complained about the cost and red tape related to European environmental regulations which they accuse of stifling entrepreneurial enterprise.
However, many academics and officials have raised concerns about Britain lowering standards once it leaves the EU and the detrimental impact this could have on the public health and the environment.
The reports concern a Carbon Capture and Storage (CCS) project the EU set up in 2007, which was designed to help companies reduce their emissions and so save money on Brussels’ green taxes.
Under the scheme businesses could buy pollution permits, or allowances, from eurocrats the proceeds of which would then be spent by the EU on capturing and storing carbon emissions.
However the fund, called NER300, did not support a single such project after officials catastrophically miscalculated carbon emissions pricing in Europe, which they expected to go up but which actually dropped drastically just after the programme was announced.
Reflecting on the scheme he helped create, former Lib Dem MEP Chris Davies told EUobserver: “The expectation was that the carbon price would rise from thirty euros up to a hundred euros.
“The incentive to not to have to pay a hundred euros a tonne for every tonne of CO2 emitted, was very strong indeed. The assumption was industry would do it, without us requiring any other means. Industry would take all these risks.”
However, he said that when the carbon price crashed – it now stands at just seven euros – the scheme attracted virtually no participants and only ended up funding projects already in the renewable category.
More from the Global CCS Institute:
The failure of NER300
But it should all have been so different. Back in 2008, collaborative advocacy from industry and non-government organisations helped the European Parliament and Member States to secure an innovative funding mechanism for CCS. The NER300 scheme would sell allowances from the EU’s Emissions Trading System (ETS) to create a funding mechanism to support a suite of CCS demonstration projects, as requested by the European Council the year before. With carbon prices heading toward €30/tonne, it was hoped that up to €9 billion would be raised—providing the world’s largest fund for supporting innovative low–carbon technologies. Soon afterward, the European Energy Programme for Recovery (EEPR) selected six projects to receive fast-tracked assistance and a further €1.1 billion of public funding. The future looked bright.
In late December 2012, European Commissioner for Climate Action Connie Hedegaard finally announced the outcome of the first NER300 funding round—but could only award €1.2 billion to 23 innovative renewables projects across Europe. Not one CCS project was funded. What should have been the centrepiece of European CCS efforts had failed to deliver. It had taken EU institutions two years to finalise the programme, and a further two to scrutinise the bidding projects. This was far too long for a supposedly urgent process. But the roots of European difficulties on CCS reach far beyond the administration of the NER300 programme itself.
TWO FUNDING MECHANISMS, TWO FAILURES
Neither of the EC funding approaches has been able to cope with changed circumstances. But the blame must be shared beyond Brussels.
The EEPR funding provided by DG Energy has failed to secure a single project that has been able to move forward. The Vattenfall project at Jänschwalde pulled out due to public opposition and the failure of the German Government to pass an adequate CO2 storage law. Other projects have experienced technical delays or an absence of Member State support. Only Rotterdam’s ROAD project continues to sit in the starting blocks, but it is waiting for partners to emerge to share some of the funding gap. Its utility sponsors are unwilling to absorb on their own a financial hit anticipated to be in the region of €100 million. This is understandable from an individual company perspective, but mind-blowingly short-sighted from the energy sector as a whole. Other industrial players need to step up and provide support.
In respect of the NER300 funding process, it was primarily Member States that failed to deliver on the agreed milestones. They were asked to confirm the projects they would support, together with the level of co-funding they would contribute. Only the French Government confirmed co-funding for the proposed ArcelorMittal steel mill CCS project at Florange, and €275 million was assigned by the EC. Bizarrely, ArcelorMittal withdrew at the last minute, citing technical problems. The CCS project had become a political football, kicked out of the ground rather than toward the goal.
First to comment ok; I’m speechless!
You’d better shout out loud – in Brussels and in Westminster.
Okay. Try this one. What causes money?
Better question: If they never built anything, what happened to the nearly seven hundred million dollars?
POCKETS !!!
CO2! or the Russians, maybe.
Nothing surprising and little changes in Eurocrat Fairyland …… the European Space Agency launched satellites with part of the intention being to generate revenues from selling GPS services…… seems nobody told them that there were global, Free GPS available from the US system !
For the last few years they’ve been working up an alternative – Road Pricing and pay per mile using GPS in cars – if that is run through the ESA satellites then 30+ years down the road from the Big Idea of revenue from GPS , they may have manufactured an income stream.
Your GPS uses the American satellites (GNSS) and also the Russian ones (GLONASS) unless you turned off the “use GLONASS” button that Garmin seems to think a necessary option. The Chinese are planning some of their own and I’d put my money on them having them up and running while the twerps in Brussels are still debating the matter. It’s having the Russian satellites up there that means you nearly always have 12 to 16 satellites in view, and which gives the 3 metre accuracy we usually get these days on hand-held and in-car GPS receivers.
Apart from you just know everyone involved will be promoted then shortly after receive a massive payout commensurate with their seniority. Then they’ll buy investment property and leave their wife for a younger model in Spain and enjoy the CO2 millionaire lifestyle (on us) , , ,
And there are still so many in the UK who are desperate to exit Brexit
There are many many more in the rest of the “EU” who want to get out, but the ruling Euroc-rats always -still- manage to calm the waves. When the time has come, the French revolution will look like a nice and peaceful picknick compared to what these Kommissars have to expect.
I have been to Brussels many times. It used to be a wonderful place to visit. It is now a dump. Its economy is is entirely devoted the production of stupidity. It is the stupidity capital of the world. I am certain that this nonsensical project is only a small fraction of one percent of their annual stupidity production.
So true…
… a new statistic !!!
GSP = “Gross Stupidity Product” — the dark sheep of GDP (“Gross Domestic Product) — not to be confused with GPS (“Global Positioning System) or with GWA (“Global Warming Alarmism”)
… although there appears to be a correlation between GWA and GSP. I’ll get to work on that graph now.
The problem is that GSP can have an infinite value…
Did we not fight a war sometime in the distant past in order that Europe would not be ruled by unelected bureacrats from a city starting with ‘B?’
Yes, there are many American graves to attest to that from both wars.
Yes, SAD but true
Lol.
“Stupidity Capital the World”
Has a nice ring to it
Post of the day!
Thanks.
+10
For the idea of lead free solder alone Brussels deserves to be nuked. Go Vlad!
++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++ . . .
Lead-free solder is an abomination!
I told the boss that when we run out of proper solder I’ll retire, so he has got a good stock in while it’s still available.
I don’t suppose many people care. But those of who know, are appalled!
I don’t suppose many people care.
Even if they don’t know why, they will, sooner or later.
I still have some OC170 transistors, dead from the tin whisker disease.
Utter madness. Glad we are pulling out. When will the truth about carbon dioxide (not ‘carbon’ fer chrissake) filter through to these noddies?
Three sister planets:
Venus … 95% CO2 atmosphere
Earth … 0.04% CO2 atmosphere
Mars … 95% CO2 atmosphere
Earth is the only one of the three that supports Carbon Based life forms that consume CO2 when considered as a whole.
– Life consumes CO2.
Removal of CO2 from the atmosphere doesn’t seem like a problem on Earth, yet some want to pursue more?
It soean’t matter how much pressure is heaped on EU chiefs since they are unelected dictators who can do what they wish. The EU(SSR) is an undemocratic, incompetent, socialist bureaucracy.
Or even ‘doesn’t’
Also of note is that the EU has never, ever passed a financial audit of it’s own devising.
Like the UN. When will people learn?
It isn’t so much undemocratic, it is anti-democratic. For our non-EU brethren that at the entrance to the Visitors Centre of the European Parliament, there is a plaque with these words:
“National sovereignty is the root cause of the most crying evils of our times….The only final remedy for this evil is the federal union of the peoples.”
. . . and people wonder why I voted to Leave the EUSSR?
“The only final remedy for this evil is the federal union of the peoples.”
It’s striking that “final remedy” is ominously similar to “final solution”
*Bipedalism is the root cause of the most crying evils of our times….The only final remedy for this evil is the unifootcation of the peoples.*
Pay everyone in the EU €1 each to hold their breath for as long as possible once a day for a week would have been more cost effective!
Great idea. At least if they are not exhaling then that will decrease CO2 emmissions.
… tax everyone 0.00005 EU €1 per breath. Taxing works better than incentive pay ’cause it allows the regulators to take a bigger cut.
The “breathing reviewers” then get 25% of the breath tax and it all works out.
It won’t work. While you are holding your breath, your bodily functions will continue to,produce CO2, which will just be stored in your bloodstream until you resume breathing, whereupon the stored CO2 will be exhaled in the next few breaths.
Thus it has the same effect as the currently reported EU scheme but is more cost effective. 🙂
There’ll be a separate tax for that.
Looks like the European Commission is now reaping the harvest of the European Commission’s ex-President, Workers’ Communist Party ex-member and Social Democratic Party current member, Manuel Barroso. The longer Christian-democratic follower Jean-Claude Juncker drags it along, the more likely he will be perceived an accomplice.
Well, see the good new: they could actually have had build some stupid CCS, a thing that would continue to cost huge “money for nothing”.
And of course no “paradise papers” on Bruxelles Paradise…
What’s USD 600 Million between friends?…
$600 million here, $600 million there; pretty soon you’re talking about real money
The greatest invention for removing CO2 from the atmosphere is the tree. To reduce a nation’s carbon footprint the nation should gradually reduce its population so that it can convert its cities into forests. The next step in storing solid carbon most effectively is to change wood into diamonds but the process is currently a tad expensive. A very siginificant problem is the there is no real evidence that CO2 has any effect on climate and plenty of scientific rational to support the idea that the climate sensivity of CO2 is really zero. An approach that is more to apt to cause global cooling would be to reduce atmospheric presssure at the Earth’s surface by combining O2 and N2 to form Nitrate salts. Reducing surface pressure by reducing the mass of the atmosphere will bring on cooling.
+683
You are talking about things these Kommissars have never heard of. They do not see the forest for the trees. Spain, Portugal, Italy, you name it, have once been places of abundant forests that turned into Karst. Instead of reforestation the Kommissariat decides to squander money into projects that even half-wits would never touch. Follow the money…
Willhaas,
Actually, I think “the greatest invention for removing CO2 from the atmosphere” is carbonate rocks. There are countless trillions of tons of carbonate rocks in sedimentary basins around the world and the process of creating carbonate-bearing sediments continues in modern basins.
Storing CO2 for easy retrieval, not removing it. We will surely need to recover that CO2 once we run out of fossil fuels and are no longer enriching the atmosphere with a nutrient that without which all life would disappear.
Obviously, those rocks must be taxed.
Carbonate rocks are the bane of hydrocarbon life. Eventually all of our carbon will end up in carbonate rocks and the bioslhere will disappear but this will not happen over night. Without sufficient CO2 in our atmosphere, life as we know it will die out. The burning of fossil fuels is helping but if mankind survives long enough, eventually we will have to deliberately convert carbonate rock to CO2 and whatever just to replinish the Earth’s supply of CO2 that our form of life requires. Because CO2 has no effect on climate and because we are below the optimum amount of CO2 for most plants, there should be no restrictions of replentishing the Earth’s atmospheric CO2 at least until the CO2 level hits .2%. All of our efforts to date have only been good enough to get the CO2 level back to .04%, like it was naturally around 3 million years ago. The ice age that we are in has locked up huge amounts of CO2 in cold oceans and ice. The next ice age cold cycle will lock up even more CO2 and our current burning of fossil fuels is helping to sustain life on this planet and will hopefully be enough to sustain it during the next 100K year cold cycle.
The most notable of these ‘highly innovative or even potentially game changing projects’, deserving €2.1 billion grants so far, seem to be producing ethanol from straw in Italy, biogas from straw in Germany and de-icing windmills in Sweden.
Caution! the original source documents cause trigger dizziness, vertigo, nausea and neurological pain:
https://ec.europa.eu/clima/policies/lowcarbon/ner300_en, more specifically: https://ec.europa.eu/clima/sites/clima/files/lowcarbon/ner300/docs/state_of_play_2016_01_en.pdf
jaakko –
“Caution! the original source documents cause trigger dizziness, vertigo, nausea and neurological pain:”
Hey – you are not kidding.
The amount of bumf produced would have kept several kilotonnes of carbon out of the atmosphere [and my brain unbefuddled, especially after a glass or two [ish, it’s an EU Estimate, for goodness sake!] of good French red wine.
Auto
DOE and EU projects were research on how to capture carbon with minerals like olivine. This all failed to work. What companies figured out is that if everyone has to pay carbon credits, they reduce nothing and buy no credits, just pass on all costs to consumers. Consumers have no way out, and businesses figure this out quickly, other than some demand destruction.
The Stupid, it burns.
Yet another great reason for Brexit.
This reminds me of the witch hunts of the Little Ice Age, roughly 1400 AD to 1850 AD.
Witches were blamed for the cold, poor crops, diseases & famines. Thousands were slaughtered.
Today, centuries on, we have made little progress: CO2, Carbon Dioxide, is blamed, as pollution,
for causing global warming, sorry, climate change, sorry, weird weather, because there’s been no warming for roughly 20 years.
In fact, CO2’s greenhouse gas effect, always very minor compared to water H2O (less than 4% vs more than 95%), becomes negligible above concentrations of 400 ppmv (parts per million by volume), where CO2 functions ONLY, effectively, as plant food, which is greening the Earth.
Add in the facts that 95% + of the CO2 in the atmosphere is produced by nature & less than 4% by man, & you have to bust out laughing, else you’d roar with anger.
Natural sources of CO2 include volcanoes, including a 40,000 mile undersea mid-oceans chain, rotting winter vegetation & animals, which alone emit 25 times man’s CO2 output.
I do hope Trump succeeds in killing this most stupid scam.
Book, by geology Prof. Ian Plimer: Heaven and Earth global warming: the missing science.
Mucho recommended.
A lovely 19 minute video by science writer for The Times newspaper Prof Matt Ridley:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=S-nsU_DaIZE&t=606s
Or, put in searchbox: Matt Ridley on How Fossil Fuels are Greening the Planet
Not case sensitive, I believe.
& when you think that oil is abiotic, not a fossil fuel, you have to chuckle again, & start to realise just how much we have been mugged off.
JD.
+1
B
I saw a good comment that the difference now is that the witches are doing the hunting.
As proof of the ‘witchiness’ of CO2, note that bubbles of it float on water! Burn the witch!!
“the facts that 95% + of the CO2 in the atmosphere is produced by nature & less than 4% by man”
I would like to know if this is true, false or unknown? Wasn’t there a WUWT post long ago on this subject which asserted the same but was found to be in error and corrected?
Same for
“& when you think that oil is abiotic, not a fossil fuel
@Cephus0,
re CO2 %s, this statement is certainly made in Prof. Plimer’s admittedly 2009 book.
But we all know science marches on, unless, of course, errr… it’s settled science.
Page 180: ” At present, each year 186 billion tonnes of CO2 enter the atmosphere from all sources , of which 3.3% comes from human activities. More than 100 Billion tonnes (57%) is given off by the oceans and 71 billion tonnes is exhaled by animals (including humans).”
A brilliant book of about 500 pages, there are chapters on History, The Sun, Earth, Ice, Water, Air, etc.
A foreword by Vaclav Havel, an afterword by Lord Christopher Monckton, it’s written in plain English so nonscientific types like me have a chance of understanding, it contains over 2,200 references to peer-reviewed papers etc. I’d have paid double, & yes I should be on commission.
I’ll stick with the good Prof. till I see this disproved, convincingly.
Re abiotic oil, no fossils have ever been found deeper than about 16,000 ft, where oil is regularly drilled at 30,000 ft +.
http://www.viewzone.com/abioticoilx.html
Proven by lab experiment & once empty drill sites refilling, the Earth is a giant cooker constantly producing H2O, CO2, oil & much else under heat & pressure. The origin of the fossil fuel & peak oil scam:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2cUg3lDgJ20&t=11s
Or, put in: Colonel L. Fletcher Prouty: The Origin of Fossil Fuel & Peak Oil
8 mins.
Prouty was liaison between the CIA & the military for a period.
JD.
jd
Thanks.
On your – and the Warmunists’ – figures, to the nearest one-tenth of one percent, the amount of CO2 in the atmosphere is zero.
Remind the watermelons of this fact repeatedly.
Auto
That’s a good way of phrasing it. 🙂
At 400 ppmv, it’s 0.04%.
Strangely, as CO2 concentrations increase, its effectiveness as a greenhouse gas DECREASES, dramatically, logarithmically, in fact. There’s a good graph in Plimer’s book & I saw it in an article on here as well.
They really are trying to scare us with GOOD witches.
JD.
4 cents in $100, up from 3c.
Do you think a chain store will hand over your articles when you are 4 cents short?
Carbon (dioxide – DUH) capture is terrorism against the whole biosphere.
“Carbon (dioxide – DUH) capture is terrorism against the whole biosphere”
Kinda looks like they’ll run out of OPM long before then can capture enough to do any harm to the biosphere. Now terrorism in regard to OPM is a valid charge.
Is OPM pronounced as “opium”? If so, then it is true the Other People’s Money is the opium of the elite.
It is scarcely to believed that half of the ‘civilised’ world at least think it is a good idea to start removing from the atmosphere the very trace gas compound which allows multicellular life to exist on this planet in the first place. The knowledge that this is actually so and that I share the planet with hordes of zombies at that level of sheer ignorance and insanity is truly terrifying. ISIS don’t phase me much but those guys frighten the bejezus out of me.
Historical events such as The Tulip Bubble and slavery should probably tip us off that human beings have not evolved intellectually to a point where they can set aside their greed and selfish ignorance.
In the Queen’s House in Greenwich, London recently, I noticed that next to paintings of the 1588 Spanish Armada, an information board stated that one of reasons for the Armada’s failure was “bad weather”. We live in such curious times that I wondered whether if it knew of this accurate and truthful information, the EU would exhort its cheerleaders in the BBC and the Guardian to raise a mob to destroy this exhibit in a publicly funded building. Maybe it says more about me that I see the words “bad weather” in an official building in 2017 and I think it’s unusual….
(off topic: I also visited the Queens House gallery recently… enjoyed it a lot… what an excellent gallery… did you spot the first European painting of a Kanagaroo? I also liked the WW1/WW2 paintings…)
The older I get, the more interest I have in official war artists. I was very impressed by Richard Eurich’s naval paintings in the gallery you mentioned. I’d not come across him before and, as ever, I felt more humble and more thankful to a generation who made great sacrifices….
Did either of you figure out how the stone stair stays up with no support on the handrail side? Torsion not ‘cantilever’ as they are often incorrectly described. A miracle of architecture, engineering and art.
http://www.rmg.co.uk/see-do/we-recommend/attractions/great-hall-tulip-stairs
The new NMM exhibition on HMS Erebus and Terror and Franklin’s expedition is on topic I think.
http://www.rmg.co.uk/discover/explore/hms-erebus-and-terror
Nigel S – yes, sadly I didn’t have time for that…
did see the gallery with Nelson relics… they have the actual coat he was wearing when shot – you can see bullet hole in left shoulder
(for non-UK readers NMM is the National Maritime Museum: if you visit Lodon, make a point of taking a boat down to Greenwhich and visiting this and the other amazing pieces of 18th century architecture, palace, observatory, etc, etc)
But wasn’t that “Bad Weather” during the Good Climate (a la pre Catastrophic AGW)
And then there was the bad weather called kamikaze: wind storms that are said to have saved Japan from two Mongol fleets under Kublai Khan. These fleets attacked Japan in 1274 and again in 1281 (Wikipedia).
I do recommend the Imperial War Museum. I’ve been there first when I was 16 and it made me start thinking about real history.
The IWM airfield site at Duxford is also well worth it… all the large stuff there’s no room for in London, plus a WW2 airfield …
Huge number of tanks…100s of aircraft…
The headline should be:
“$600 million captured and buried in bank accounts”
Yeah, “…captured nothing…” isn’t quite right, since it appears to have captured $683 million from hardworking taxpayers to hand over to whatever political crony got approval for this project.
NER300
========
change the name. NER9000. a huge improvement over the early NER300. success is just around the corner.
maybe it should simply be Ner, Ner, NER-NER, ner. (we stole yer monnn-eee)
It occurs to me that had the funding actually worked out, there is not really any CCS in Europe to invest in. Only a Norwegian pilot programme has ever got started.
However funded, CCS is only financially viable if CO2 stored is used for enhanced oil recovery…
Yep…
http://s2.quickmeme.com/img/26/268ea87c70111488087b3ce52adc5cc0f4267758d795b1720ef5be5b146cd0e1.jpg
That means very large coal power plants placed on top of or next to oil fields for gas injection and field engineering for enhanced oil recovery methods. Another name for it is the taxpayer funded small scale synthetic carbon cycle (SSSCC).
Resource guy …. not necessarily on top or next to … Canada’s first miscible flood used CO2 sourced in Wyoming and then pipelined to SE Saskatchewan for injection into Encana’s Weyburn pool. I’m not sure of the distance but it must be around 500 km.
Stew,
Non-market exceptions exist based on various public policy distortion effects, from time to time and place to place.
yes… there was the ‘white rose’ project in the UK… but that didn’t take off.
Please explain to us, Griff, how this noble and heroic exercise in Socialist central planning has furthered the cause of peace, equality and happiness. So that we can sleep at night, confident that our political masters of the Glorious Left are watching over us and our meagre resources.
all governments are prone to making mistakes and spending on stuff which doesn’t ever work out.
My govt is busy building 2 aircraft carriers at vast expense which won’t have any planes on them for a decade or so.
anyone need a floating soccer pitch?
…with a number of member states actively calling for Brussels’ largesse to be be reined in….
…but… the ONLY reason most of the member states stay in the EU is that it provides them with free money.
It used to be the case that the UK, Germany and France provided the lion’s share of the money, and every body else took the cash. When the UK leaves, it will essentially become a scheme whereby Germany and France fund Eastern Europe.
How long do you think that can last before Germany and France come to blows about their relative shares?
Actually, France is so in debt, that only Germany really fund the whole thing nowadays. French money into Europe (and more) is all borrowed from ECB, itself funded by Germans.
So basically Macron just bow to Merkel already.
Before the presidential elections, Marine LePen reportedly said:
“France is going to be governed by a woman. Either Merkel or me.”
oh. I didn’t knew that. But this sound so true. Good Joke.
Or Madame Macron …
Did you some how forget the UK?
I await an in depth exposé from the BBC…(joke)
let me write it for them (and you)
“GB tory government hindered UE carbon capture scheme aiming at controling climate change
EU had a £520m program, called to NER300, to promote carbon capture. But this depended on GB government to commit, which it failed to do, so nothing was build in GB and the money was unused for British people, while we pay high price to climate change, estimated in tens of billions just for GB
… ”
etc. You get the line
Happy you!
Eh?
You didn’t enjoy my BBC in depth exposé? Nothing but the truth, you should notice. Well, not all the truth, I admit, but, BBC has so short air time, you don’t expect all the truth, do you?
Did not get a mention…
The only businesses getting rich from Co2 Cap & Trade are banks, stock trading companies and rent seekers. All for a “problem” that is not a problem. Who loses: the rest of us.
It is all mad, mad, mad. Schemes like this make energy about 60% more expensive to produce, and we lose about 40% of the power output in the process. What a double whammy
Carbon should not have a cost, but it has tanked, and is around €7 per tonne so that has knocked a large hole in the sums.
The only sensible, and cost effective, form of carbon capture is a tree. Nature has spent hundreds of millions of years perfecting the design. There is no point in reinventing the wheel, especially since we could never make anything so beautiful and one which enhances the environment and landscape and provides a home to other species.
The problem with this is that these morons are busily burning trees to make small amounts of energy e.g. the UK’s Drax power station.
It’s funny how often environmental policies damage or even destroy the environment, dieselgate being a perfect example.
Chris
The US where we import all these trees from will soon run out. Drax burns an enormous amount just to keep fired up. We could run out and Drax might cease – just when we need a lot of reliable electricity as it is predicted to get a lot colder.
“The US where we import all these trees from will soon run out.”
If this was foreseeable, why did they enter upon this scheme?
There are (unfortunately) many dead trees (from fire or bugs) in the west of the U.S. They could be used as fuel, if transport costs aren’t too high—which they probably are.
While I’d be the first to agree that shipping wood pellets to Drax is a silly waste, Im not worried about it causing serious deforestation.
I looked into how much was planned on being sent back when it started, and while I don’t remember off the top of my head the exact figures, I do remember that it was two orders of magnitude less then the US converts to toilet paper each year.
The real danger is if it caught on. A thousand Drax’s a year would put a major strain on our forests.
~¿~
Drax doesn’t save any CO2 and should be shut down
(I think Greenpeace have a campaign on that).
Mind you, I read the UK govt has rumbled this and I wouldn’t look to see it continue for ever
Totally agree, the earth has a self-regulating mechanism that removes CO2 from the atmosphere. Rather than wasting money on half-baked schemes to capture CO2, why did the EU not pay Third World Countries to plant trees and maintain them?
This would have been a more effective measure and would have reduced hunger. South American countries could have been paid not to cut down huge amounts of Amazonian rain forest, instead of cutting it down and planting palm oil plantations to harvest palm oil to fuel “carbon neutral” vehicles. The same stupidity allows forests in the USA to be cut down and shipped across the Atlantic to fuel our power stations, 7.5 million tons. Even though new trees are planted they take 30+ years to reach maturity. Only a moron could think these policies are effective at reducing the CO2 in our atmosphere. The sooner we are out of the EU the better!
+ 1
Replanting cut forests with pine seedlings by airdrop and first 5 years maintenance cost +- 550 euros a hectare
“Replanting cut forests with pine seedlings by airdrop”
Kind of a pricey way to plant. I recommend chain gangs, it’s a win-win. You’re already paying to feed & house inmate, let’s put them to work. They should be so tired after a day of working there is no time or energy for gangs or fighting. And it becomes a visual warning and deterrent for others to stay out of prison.
Make that electronic chain gangs, controlled by non-removable GPS anklets. And why not have them harvest tinder (brush and duff) from forest floors as well or instead, killing two birds with one stone.
“Make that electronic chain gangs, controlled by non-removable GPS anklets.”
Nope, low tech high alloy chain with 4-6 dudes chained together for 8 hours. Can’t run and you’re forced to get along with your “team mates” or you’re dragging a body along all day. Getting sent to prison should be life changing, not a way of life.
And no, we are in no danger of running out. My statement of “billions” is no exaggeration. We have parks bigger than many countries.
And so, I have a question which I have asked before on this site.
I live in Canada. We have literally billions of trees. Millions of these are cut down every year and “sequestered” in buildings for approximately 100 years. How much CO2 does this represent?
If it comes to a relevant amount, I would point out that we are not the only country that turns trees into houses, making room for new trees to grow. I know this is millions of tons of wood every year. Is it a significant amount of CO2 in global terms, setting aside the fact that CO2 is a fart in a windstorm in so far as the Earth’s temperature is concerned.
Yet we get no recognition for lumber being locked up in housing for a century or more, whilst planting new trees that soak up ‘carbon’ CO2. Nor do we get any credit for the massive amount of wood waste that is converted to wood pellets, instead of just being burnt in the past in bee hive burners and was just wasted. I live near a city that built a 60 Mw wood fired Cogen plant that was 20 years ago just burnt, up in smoke through bee hive burners, with fly ash all over the city. Now it completely powers the city 5 times over.
Mixing wood pellets with coal would be an ideal solution to keeping coal fired electricity plants open until their end of life termination. I don’t get the uneducated people here complaining about wood pellets being burnt for electricity generation. Most of it is from wood waste that has no higher or better use. The little bit that is harvested from green standing timber is low quality timber anyway, that will soon be near its end of life. And it is growing as fast or faster as it being burnt anyway, so what’s the big deal? Burning biomass is a much bigger slice of the pie than solar or wind when it comes to renewables. This is where the renewable focus should be. Plus it is dispatchable base load power.
Richard,
Thanks for your comments, I call it oxygen sequestration since about 2-1/2 times as much Oxygen is sequestered as Carbon on a weight basis. Who in his right mind would want to sequester Oxygen? OBAMA.
I am surprised that no one has brought up the fact that Bush cancelled the carbon/oxygen sequestration project in Chicago because it was failing and wasting taxpayer dollars. Unfortunately Obama brought it back and resumed funding either out of scientific and economic ignorance or just to send some more tax dollars to Chicago as patronage.
Carbon capture and sequestration is about the dumbest green idea I can think of.
Use of CO 2 to improve oil well performance can make sense.
Mother earth must think us humans are really stupid.
She knows because God told her so – and apologized for creating politicians, the worst of all.
So EU spent £542 million and got no CCS installations. At the current exchange rate, SaskPower spent the same amount, and got one. Who is the worse off?
From the Boundary Dam project worksheet:
The total cost of the project is currently $1.5 billion. The original cost was $1.3 billion. Of that original cost estimate: $800 million was for the CCS process, with the remaining $500 million for retrofit costs. SaskPower feels they can cut capital costs 20-30% on the next unit.
The Boundary Dam project received $240 million from the federal government. The provincial government also supported the project. Besides electricity, revenue will be generated from the sale of CO2, sulphuric acid, and fly ash.
Due to decreased capture rate and failure to deliver promised CO2 to Cenovus Energy, Saskpower had to pay C$12million in 2014 in penalties. More penalties are expected for 2015. Saskpower is confident that revenue from captured CO2 will be greater than the penalties. (That was as of September 30, 2016)
Now we have the results from the highly touted Saskatechewan CCS project.
http://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/saskatchewan/carbon-capture-critics-1.4388026
“Following SaskPower saying it is unlikely to recommend government pursue more carbon capture and storage projects because of the high cost, critics are saying pursuing carbon capture and storage was uneconomical from the start.
SaskPower ‘highly unlikely’ to recommend further carbon capture projects
“It’s not economic, and it was clear at the time it wasn’t economic,” said former SaskWind president James Glennie.
Glennie says SaskPower’s wholesale cost of power is about $60 per megawatt hour. The report pegs the cost of removing carbon dioxide through carbon capture at Boundary Dam Unit 3 at about the same price.
“It cost $140 per megawatt hour,” to produce electricity with carbon capture and storage technology at a coal-fired plant, he said.
“Basically, every single person in Saskatchewan paid $1,000 dollars for a project, which was known to be uneconomic, even when the decision was given to proceed,” said Glennie.
In the fall of 2014, the $1.5-billion Boundary Dam power station near Estevan became the first power station in the world to install carbon capture and storage technology on a commercial scale. SaskPower argued using carbon capture and storage allowed the Crown corporation to reduce emissions while still using coal as a fuel source.”
Note that Greens interpret this as reason to go all in on wind and solar, and use their typical faulty estimates of the cost of renewable intermittent energy.
thanks for the info.
Not surprisingly, it is better for Europe that they failed to deliver any CCS unit, as i said above.
I think you should propose your comment as an article of its own, as a counterpoint to this one.
Thanks paq. On a related issue, namely the term “clean coal” power generation, Ross McKitrick has explained how it can be achieved at a fraction of the cost by installing scrubbers.
https://rclutz.wordpress.com/2017/02/03/ontario-coal-phase-out-all-pain-no-gain/
Even after Saskatchewan (SaskPower) went all in on CCS and actually spent $1 Billion+ on sequestering 1 million tons CO2 annually, the Canadian federal Gov’t comes up with a $50/tonne carbon tax on top of all this anyway. At a cost of $140 Mw/h for a coal fired base load plant sequestering 90% of CO2 on a measly 110 Mw output. Money down the drain, and a new nat gas fired plant could have generated the same electricity for less cost for the same savings on actual CO2 over a 30 year lifespan. What a pity. They should just have a funeral for the money they buried there, as the old bald guy on Shark Tank would say..
So Saskatchewan actually put its money where it’s mouth was, and actually built the worlds first commercial large scale CO2 sequester plant. Why bother trying to sequester any CO2 when your economy is just going to get hammered by a decree from the federal Trudeau Gov’t on a $50/T national carbon tax anyway? No good deed goes unpunished.
The lesson is folks, don’t bother buying into CO2 sequestration for the sake of lowering CO2 emissions even if it technically works. A total waste of effort and money.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Boundary_Dam_Power_Station
What we have here is a veritable pandemic of proctocraniosis.
The CCS project at SaskPower Boundary Dam was done to save jobs in the nearby coalfields. This, in turn was necessitated by Canadian federal regulations which would not allow the commissioning of a rebuilt coal fired boiler at that location unless it met CO2 emission requirements. With three other units scheduled for end of life replacement, this was the death knell for the coal industry in that area.
Without CO2 regulation, the production units at this 800 mW location could have been renewed at much lower cost and we could have continued to enjoy a nice mix of cheap coal fired and hydro power, with newer gas fired capacity coming on as cycling capacity.
Green stupidity costs billions.
And the EU have been wasting this amount and tons more over the 45 years of Britain’s membership. If all the predictions of our mini ice-age come true we will need all that money and more just to keep warm and keep the lights on. What a corrupt dysfunctional organisation it is. Thank God we are leaving.
Unfortunately we will not be leaving, The almost unbelievable incompetence of May as the PM has made the overturning of the Brexit result by the incoming Corbyn government inevitable .
Indeed the incompetence of the Tory PM is so unbelievable that I am inclined to not believe it . I am beginning to wonder if this is not what she planned all along , never having been a supporter of Brexit . Would she actually destroy her own party to stop Brexit you ask? Well look to the US . The Republicans are determined to destroy their own House majority and the prospects of any future Republican presidential candidate in order to get rid of their own , successful, Presidential candidate .
We live in strange times, daily getting stranger. Is the increasing CO2 concentration having a hallucinatory effect on our leaders?
Absolutely spot on.
The whole charade from Cameron not honouring his statement that he would immediately implement Article 50, through his resignation, through the Election of May and then her deferral of starting the process has had one aim.
Delay, Delay and more delay, to give the lawers time to challenge in Court, the labour and lib dems the time to mount challenges in Parliament, the House of Lords to challenge as well and the EU and everybody else (especially the BBC) to continue the Referendum Fear Campaign.
She has been and still is a “remainer”.
I believe it is the Jehovah’s Witnesses who consider politics the realm of the Devil and refuse to participate in any way. They may be onto something.
Politicians will do anything regardless of how disipcable to further their presonal agendas…. Trump is the result of people being tired of the fat cat party political scene…
Mike
I think you may be right ,How could politicians on both sides of the Atlantic become so dysfunctional and incompetent unless they have a hidden agenda.
Vanessa, you have foot daggers in charge of the leaving. They seem to be trying to keep what they can of the association. Unnecessary. The continent is not in a good bargaining position. Chop free the lines at cost and then do business. There is nothing to save.
Trump’s withdrawal from Paris is a similar situation. US is too big to try to bully like they can 180 other countries. US can create a thriving market all by themselves. UK and Germany are the only countries that know how to do in Europe. They need you as the always have, not the other way around.
Cut ties in a day and leave them your phone number.
Maybe the foot-draggers figure that the EU’s fiscal situation is so unsound, and countries in central Europe are so estranged from it, that in a year or two it’ll implode, leaving the EU in a weaker bargaining position re the UK.
To your answer phone
+ 1
I’m afraid this is starting to smell real.
Thearse May produced a suicide manifesto, stupid in the extreme, produced no doubt by the 1%s running things in the background. May is no more that a muppet frontpiece. The removal of Sir Michael Fallon as Secretary of State for Defence over a nothing offence 15 years ago, was ably assisted by fellow Cabinet Minister, Andrea Leadsom, also alleging an offence several years ago. You could not make this nonsense up.
Interestingly, Leadsom is an ardent Brexiteer, while long-time family friend she’s just stabbed in the back, Fallon, is a committed Bremainer. Confused? You should be. Leadsom is an ambitious politician who parades
her religious credentials, which always sets alarm bells ringing for me, & sees herself as the next Margaret Thatcher.
Disgustingly, the young lady who has foregone anonymity to accuse a senior Labour Party figure of rape is ignored by our presstitute Main Slime Stream Media, MSSM, while these nothing peccadilloes are trumpeted loud & wide.
The Conservative Party are deeply split over Brexit. The question is, are factions of it intent on crashing this govt to hand power to the idiot Communist, Corbyn, who will likely call for a new referendum?
The possibility exists.
It’s a filthy game, politics.
An irreverent view: http://www.dailymail.co.uk/debate/article-5045277/Carry-Commons.html
JD.
I’m afraid this is complete uninformed rubbish. The money for the projects that didnt proceed was never ‘wasted’ – it remains with the Commission.
Remaining with the Commission sure sounds like a waste to me. Has zero economic effect
This is a comfort to you? You are a product of the propagandized education the neomarxbrothers instituted.
Meanwhile every day Radio 4 in the UK has some one spouting about how CO2 is a big ‘problem’ for the planet; when will this Gravy Train ever stop one wonders?
Reblogged this on Climatism and commented:
“The EU Blows $683 million (£520m)” of *other-peoples’-money* on “save the planet” feel-good fantasies.
NEVER mind. No amount of wasted public money can trump good intentions and “Save The Planet” virtue. /sarc
Right – so we bury CO2…..
Then what..??
Go back in 100 years’ time and – ‘Oh – its all leaked out….’
(plus minus ) a E.U. politician from southern germany, getting 30,000 euros a month is now getting 14,000 a month pension for attending Brussels for 9 hours in 5 years !
In our house, the phrase ” as rich as Croesus” has been replaced by “as rich as the Kinnocks”: the manner in which they have gained great wealth from the EU for doing nothing other than toeing the official party line is a disgrace. Well worth googling for the exact eye watering sums they’ve transferred into their bank accounts
As Griff pointed out, CCS only really works if the CO2 is put to work doing something useful…
https://www.eia.gov/todayinenergy/detail.php?id=33552
The captured CO2 from Petra Nova is pipelined to West Ranch oil field…
https://www.energy.gov/fe/articles/doe-supported-petra-nova-captures-more-1-million-tons-co2
3,700 bbl/day of increased oil production at $50/bbl is worth $67.5 million per year. They expect to ultimately bring production up to 15,000 bbl/day and recover about 60 million barrels of oil that would otherwise have been left in the ground.
https://wattsupwiththat.com/2017/04/18/clean-coal-carbon-capture-and-enhanced-oil-recovery/
At $50/bbl, 60 million barrels is worth $3 billion. The entire cost of the project is estimated to be about $1 billion, (with the DOE (AKA taxpayers) chipping in $190 million). Better than 3:1 simple ROIC, not bad for a pilot project. NRG expects to be able to bring the cost down in the future.
Thanks, David Middleton, for pointing out the entire TWO CCSs in the world. But then, the world is a huge CCS, with plants capturing carbon and turning it into food, wood, etc.
If CO2 is required, fair enough. But N2 also is used in EOR, and i see no reason why taxpayers should be involved if the whole EOR scheme makes sense all by itself, as it seems.
My bet is that CCS is just the free rider in this business, that would had occured anyway (may be with N2 instead)
Petra Nova only happened because NRG was willing to pay for the whole thing in exchange for a 50% interest in the oil field. The DOE subsidy was available for CCS and NRG had a large coal-fired power plant about 80 miles from West Ranch oil field. This project would not have happened without CO2 being available. It probably would have gone forward without the DOE money.
I don’t think meets the official Griff definition of doing something useful.
Where innovation and solid engineering is required, such projects are successful only in the USA where things are done by for-profit private enterprise. In the Texas example, the project is a winner without giving the carbon dioxide capture aspect a thought.
When I think of sосiалisт bureaucrats, like MEP Mr Davies (the “architect” of the the NEO300), probably a lawyer with a phalanx of sociologist civil servants planning such a disaster, I ask myself, why is there so much confidence in a sосiалisт system? – a question that could be logically asked by an apolitical person with a smattering of history, human nature and a neuron or two buzzing in his brain.
A thought experiment: 1)sосiалisтs want to distribute wealth more ‘equitably’ – at least that seems like a caring thing to do. So they nationalize industries to control behavior and distribute to the electorate shareholders. Run by bureaucrats with little flare or stake in the wellbeing of the company, efficiency, timely capital spending, product improvement, innovation, etc has no priority because there is no competition and things eventually fall apart along with wealth generation and it ends up there is nothing to distribute.
How about letting free enterprise do this job, generating huge wealth, and meanwhile, government push for excellence in real non-political education. Take out the anticapitalist subject matter and instead teach that a citizen can and should become shareholders. If the government wants to ‘distribute’, give a tax break for money invested. Have only a small pizza and one beer a week to increase your investment capital and buy shares in ITT, Amazon, Walmart… Etc. teach how to do your income tax, how to budget, how to read a company balance sheet, etc, etc. and teach to invest at least 5% of your earnings, at least in an index or mutual fund or in small exploration companies in oil, gas, minerals for the more savvy types.. Now go to shareholder meetings and criticize performance, ask what they plan to do with a “problem” , vote in better officers… Which do you think is the better track?
Gary, if you are american, you probably don’t understand what the Liberal Democrats are in the UK. They are they repository of a bunch of tossers who believe in progressiveness, liberalism and a large coating of greenwash who can’t bring themselves to vote for anyone remotely sensible. They enjoyed a surge as they were an altervative to established partoies, came into Government and then were trashed at the subsequent election.
A Liberal Democrat supporting CCS because it save the Planet is absolutely typical of LibDem lunacy. They are typical Greens who find anything that actually works an anathema.
Please, David Middleton, calculate the bottom line. What will be the result in term of CO2 emission if captured CO2 is used to produce even more fossil fuel?
The only bottom line that matters is denominated in $$$.
And I doubt much of that CO2 is actually sequestered for any length of time.
CO2 that is produced with the oil is re-injected into the reservoir. Almost all of the injected CO2 stays in the ground. Now… The oil that’s produced is a different story.
Those number s assume no further operating cost for the production of that oil. So it’s still fantasy math. Everytime the Greenies try to work out something they want, they fail the basic math test. Coincidence?
If it was “fantasy math,” CO2 injection wouldn’t be used for enhanced oil recovery. Currently, about 300,000 bbl/d of US oil production is due to CO2 EOR…
https://www.eia.gov/todayinenergy/detail.php?id=17331
We need to study the potential impact of how impact studies would impact previous impact studies of impacted areas, in addition to studies of non-impacted areas and historical impact studies that were unrelated to the most recent impact study. in case there is an impact.
Increase funding by adding a zero for every level.
2012 Ig Nobel literature prize:
“The US Government General Accountability Office, for issuing a report about reports about reports that recommends the preparation of a report about the report about reports about reports.”
https://www.improbable.com/ig/winners/#ig2012
Touché!
How come so many things that used to be funny just aren’t funny anymore?
Like the 1985 Gilliam movie, Brazil.
indeed. I guess what is funny the first time you think about, isn’t anymore when it really happen, and pretty often. You know this wonderful scene in Chaplin’s Dictator, where he plays and dance with a globe (that eventually blows up). Used to be funny. Now just sad.
Ah yes, CCS – an idea so monumentally stupid, it would be like taking perfectly good cars and crushing them so people would buy new ones.
Oh wait.
‘Connie Hedegaard’ , say no more , a person who could not find their own rear end , with a location map , a anatomical web site and DVD on ‘how to find you own rear ‘ and one to one guidance. But who can sniff out a money making opportunity 1,000 miles away .
knr
Love it
Thanks
nottoobrite
If she found her brain, she’d be close!
Now is there any doubt remaining that this whole thing is a neomarxbrothers enterprise? The Soviets were 1000 times more successful and productive using marksypoleconomics than EU’s attempted emulation under drunkard Junker and his round table of idjits and the collapsed. USSR didn’t have access to the spoils of reducing rich industries to ashes to pay for it either.
And the anti-Brexit UKers were agonizing on how they were going to do on their own,! A people who invented the industrial revolution, ruled the waves for 400 yrs and created a global commonwealth upon which the sun never set!! I’m developing an unhappy theory that genes have a shelf life of a dozen generations. Lenin seems to have been prescient (with a small adjustment) – USSRs cheerleaders in Europe proved to be rather “useless idjits”, which, of course amounts to the same thing.
Certainly all my ‘fans’ 😀 will be familiar with my assertion that most if not all the CO2 is coming out of (farmland) dirt.
Farmers, in some small way, actually know this – mostly subconsciously and not least because so much of their time is taken up struggling through Red Tape inflicted by (Brussels) bureaucrats.
What they do is to use Roundup to try minimise the loss of soil-organic-matter and its conversion to atmospheric CO2 Less ploughing – John Deere’s invention will go down as THE most destructive thing ever invented.
At least atom-bombs might crunch up rocks to create new dirt, hence life & greenery & growth – ploughs just destroy the stuff
In a perfect example of Turkeys Voting For Christmas, the bureaucrats are on the verge of banning Roundup.
Just when you thought it could not get crazier – it does.
Here is another in your face example of ridiculous, absurd, EU waste.
Two moves a month of the entire EU parliament ever month. The ‘reason’ for the waste is the job ‘creation’ in France that the forced move creates.
The reason is a Powa’ issue, not creation of jobs. The decision is older than onset of unemployement in Europe and goes back to founding treaty (which indeed say that Strasbourg, not Bruxelles, is THE location of the European Parliament, while Bruxelles is where the Commission and its bureaucracy — executive branch– are, and in Luxembourg the judiciary branch ).
But members have rather be in Bruxelles, close to the Commission (and, i suspect, far from France, its absolutist rulers and unruly mob who both want it rule over Parliament), and used a loophole in the treaty to be there most of the time while France was weak enough to allow that (just imagine Napoleon dealing with MP refusing to be in Strasbourg ALL the time…) , so things ended up in this stupid and costly arrangement.
IMHO the whole EU political system is just a mockery of democracy, that doesn’t even compare favorably to China’s system, and should gotten rid of.
The money wasn’t all wasted. Chris Davies (ex) MEP championed carbon capture and storage (CCS) while spending 15 years on the European Parliament’s environment committee, working closely with Big Energy interests to do so. Now he has set up his own environmental lobby consultancy and is working with FleishmanHillard, one of Brussels’ biggest lobby firms.
https://corporateeurope.org/revolving-doors/2015/11/brussels-big-energy-and-revolving-doors-hothouse-climate-change#Davies
“The money wasn’t all wasted.”
Sounds to me like it was stolen.
“You might very well think that; I couldn’t possibly comment”
In that regard:
I just watched the whole show (BBC’s house of cards). Very good, and makes the US adaptation even better
It’s the great EU indulgence money pit. Throw it in and feel better and receive you due-pass token.
It certainly captured the imagination of the agents of the green tw@ts in Brussels, and no small amount of dosh from the coffers of European Exchequers.
More disturbing is that the former Lib Dem MEP Chris Davies apparently thought industry would simply suck up the costs imposed by carbon-taxation, rather than migrate to China. Industry has been leaving European shores for a long time because of many factors, not least ratcheting regulatory costs. Does he really think that extra economic punishments will not work in the same way?
So…… the viability of the project depended on carbon going from 30 euros to 100 euros? In a couple of years? I guess it takes a Eurocrat to have that much business acumen.
They don’t have to consider the possibility of being wrong when it’s other people’s money and there’s no accountability.
This is more clinical proof that global warming causes mental health problems and impaired judgement…… in public policy.
No, global warming doesn’t cause mental health problems. Rabid belief in AGW is a sign of psychosis
Even sadder is the underlying theme of the article, that the EU wasted hundreds of millions on renewable projects only because it didn’t have the expected billions to waste on carbon capture.
Has anyone considering CCS taken the time to calculate the volume of the space needed to store the CO2 from either a coal or NG power PLANT?
The coal plant near me burns two mile long trains of coal a week. HS Science shows that if the CO2 from the plant was solidified it would take double that number of trains to haul the solidified CO2 away. If stored as a gas it would take 8 to 10 times the number of trains of Liquid CO2 containers. And that is each and every week the plant is burning coal or NG.
CCS is physically impossible to be able to store the CO2 from fossil power plants. They are worried about fracking causing earth quakes, why not storing CO2 under pressure under ground?
Obviously, the volume underground from where natural gas and oil come, qualify as being large enough to store as much CO2 (if such “storage” made sense, of course…).
CO2 is lquified and is then pumped into the ground as a supercritcal liquid.
And it will well back out again, rather sooner than later.
no more than natural gas or oil, which didn’t come up for a reason.
Carbon capture projects are just one of many examples of EU boondoogles.
Big surprise another layer of government results in comical waste and corruption in addition to the normal waste and corruption for every EU member state. The EU was designed to fail. See boondoogles.
Every year the EU gets borrowed money from member states (every EU country except for Germany is running a yearly deficit) which it forces to be spent on boondoogles.
Carbon capture projects are just one of many examples of EU boondoogles.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Boondoggle
For a group (i.e., the left, or progressives, or “green”, whatever the nomenclature) that rails against greedy capitalism so much, they don’t actual know how greedy capitalists work, do they?
Hint: if it actually works, smart greedy capitalists would be in on the ground floor. With their own money.
If the problem was really CO2, they would be talking about planting 500,000,000 trees
put that issue to rest
Mother nature will plant that many trees, all by herself. !
When any government, anywhere, allocates $683 million for such a useless project, we need to completely redefine our concept of ‘government.’
For that and many, many other reasons, we need to constitutionally restrain and restrict democratic government and specifically politicians from spending outside of very narrow parameters. The politicians in our democracies are the greatest danger to our safety and wellbeing.
Constitution and laws are paper barriers, that are easily trespassed with no restriction.
Have a look at 1936 USSR constitution (Stalin’s work !): it guarantees lots of sensible rights, including freedom of speech, of the press, of assembly, of religion, etc. makes election the core of the system (with secret voting), and only marginally mention the communist party as “vanguard of the working people in their struggle to strengthen and develop the socialist system” with no special power
UK has no constitution, but it has people willing to fight for what they think matters, and they got Brexit.
USA 1st and 2nd amendment are already infringed and would be effectively nullified without being repelled, if it were not for caring people.
you aren’t living in a country which spends millions on aircraft carriers which won’t have any planes, I take it.
Yes, and even the Americans would have to explain how they can have 60 admirals under investigation…in most nations, that would be the total of everyone who had ever admiraled…
Then again, here in Canada, we have more generals than we have tanks.
And, I believe at one time, our army had more captains than we had non-coms.
In the interests of sustainability, the headline should be shortened to:
“The EU Blows.”
Save the planet – make shorter headlines.
The “EU” actually sucks.
meanwhile in the soils….
https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2017/11/171108092406.htm?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+sciencedaily%2Ftop_news%2Ftop_science+%28ScienceDaily%3A+Top+Science+News%29
Who says they didn’t capture anything?
https://video.search.yahoo.com/search/video?fr=yfp-t&p=ghost+busters+storage+facility#id=1&vid=d578b01a19f71fa00f50be20b0a85bec&action=click
CCS works but is very expensive. The Sidel Carbon Capture Utilization System transforms the CO2 into calcium carbonate and a bio fuel and a bio fertilizer. Return On Investment
We are ready for testing and certification, and are looking for an investor.
http://www.SidelGlobal.com
My remark would be ONLY $683m was spent? They must be cutting back the spending on stupid!
100% graft efficiency!
A heater is the only 100%-efficient physical mechanism, because “waste” is the desired output.
The EUrocrats are working hard to develop their Socialist empire to its political equivalent.
Godspeed, I say; the world can always use more bad examples. Right?
Where do I put all these expenses Boss?
You’re new her aren’t you kid? File it under admin.
Actually you wonder if ‘fracking’ can be so bad when the Greens want to pump a liquefied gas underground. Although not poisonous in itself, liquid CO2 is a highly effective solvent and could leach chemicals from rock and transport them to aquifers, or to the surface. I could see that resulting in oil contamination of water supplies.
Huh. I could capture more carbon with two balloons tied BEHIND my back than the EU. Huh. Huh.
Brussels gives new meaning to the term B-Ark.
Here in New Zealand we have just changed our government and the new government has stated that they will plant millions of trees ,New Zealand has the largest area of planted forest in the world and raidiata pine grows extremely well in our climate .We are harvesting pine trees on a 25 to 28 year rotation .A great deal of logs are exported to China and other Asian countries .We also export sawn timber and a lot of moldings for finishing work .On steep erodible country forestry is a good option and if the trees are well pruned and thinned.a better return can be made than farming sheep and cattle .The problem is that you have to wait 25 + years for your pay check.The draw back to the scheme is that the government want to bring in an emissions trading scheme and all stock farmers will be paying an emissions bill for the methane that their live stock emit .This money will go towards tree planting as a subsidy on marginal land and as the trees grow they will earn carbon credits .Methane from livestock does not add any carbon to the atmosphere as all the fodder that the stock have consumed has absorbed CO2 and the small amount of methane belched is oxidized in the upper atmosphere into CO2 and H2O .The average life of methane in the atmosphere is 8.4 years. Methane from livestock is cyclic and should never have been included in the Kyoto accord .
Stop breeding livestock, grow vegetables instead and charge the government for taking co2 out of the atmosphere. I take the odds that they never find out what is wrong with that.
There is far more CO2 emitted from large scale vegetable growing than pastoral farming .New Zealand is as far away from Europe as any country and we export dairy and meat products to the world New Zealand has a population of 4.6 million people and we export high quality food to feed 45million people around the world .
.No other country in the world has included methane from livestock in their emission trading schemes .Why would any government impose penalties on there farmers who generate the major portion of foreign exchange for the country .It will disadvantage our pastoral industries and the New Zealand economy to make the government look good in the eyes of the UN.
For what gain ?
NZ lamb is of good quality and sold at competitve prices here and sells well, not just because I buy it myself, occasionally. Too bad that the NZ government does not quite get how to promote and encourage livestock farming. As many governments, they seemingly do not dare to say no to such a nonsense as the Paris climate “accord” because they are in fear of not being elected or re-elected. Trying to be everybody’s darling does not work and causes harm.
“Non Nomen November 10, 2017 at 12:21 pm”
NZ had, at one time, one market consumer in the 70’s, and that was the UK. NZ lamb, the best in the world. NZ lost that market in one go thanks to the decision by Heath to take the UK into the common market.
NZ is big on dairy, beef and lamb, forestry with growing (Sarc) olive oil and wine industries.
Not to mention pineapples, oranges and dates :=)
A mere £520 million? That’s peanuts.
Try this:
https://www.politico.eu/article/corruption-costs-eu-990-billion-year-rand-study-fraud-funding/
Note that those are the EU Parliament’s own figures!
Can’t understand why so many here are so upset. After all, its only other people’s money! And we know so much better than the peasants how to waste their money! (Sarc, in case someone thinks I mean this!)