Guest “It was the best of times, it was the worst of times,” by David Middleton
“It was the best of times, it was the worst of times, it was the age of wisdom, it was the age of foolishness, it was the epoch of belief, it was the epoch of incredulity, it was the season of light, it was the season of darkness, it was the spring of hope, it was the winter of despair.”
Charles Dickens, A Tale of Two Cities
“The Winter of Despair”
The life-or-death race to improve carbon capture
The technology works, but we’ll need better chemistry and engineering to reach the scale required to avoid a climate disaster
by Craig Bettenhausen
July 18, 2021 | A version of this story appeared in Volume 99, Issue 26Carbon capture isn’t about saving Earth. Earth is a wet rock floating through space; it doesn’t care if we drown our coastal cities or turn our farmland into desert. Rather, carbon capture is one of the technologies we will need if we want Earth to continue to be a tolerable place for humans to live.
In 2020, we sent 40 billion metric tons (t) of carbon dioxide into Earth’s atmosphere. We need to cut that number to 0 by 2050 if we are to avoid the worst consequences of climate change, according to the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC). If we don’t, the natural systems that keep Earth’s climate relatively peaceful and comfortable will start to tip. The shift will be chaotic, and the new normal might not be conducive to life as we know it.
To reach net-zero CO2 emissions by 2050, we need an all-of-the-above approach. Efficiency improvements can reduce our energy needs, and renewable and nuclear power may eventually be able to supply enough electricity for our homes, offices, and cars. But nuclear power is expensive and lacks public support, and renewables are struggling to find the land they need to be deployed at scale. On top of that, activities such as aviation and iron smelting are currently impossible to carry out commercially without releasing CO2.
That’s where carbon capture comes in.
[…]
Chemical & Engineering News
Once you get past the breathlessly alarmist nonsense, it’s actually a fairly good discussion of the current state of CO2 capture technology…
“The Spring of Hope”
Carbon Capture: The Key Answer on Climate Change
By Dan Ervin
July 18, 2021Hard as it may be for many environmentalists to acknowledge, a technology that captures carbon dioxide emissions at coal plants needs to be a part of a global approach to carbon dioxide reduction.
It is a remarkable paradox: At a time when the rest of the world is looking toward America for leadership in combating global warming, the environmental movement refuses to accept the only technology that could make a real difference in reducing carbon emissions from coal and other fossil fuels that are the foundation of the global energy system. Coal plants with carbon capture technology along with advanced nuclear reactors can reliably provide all of the electricity needed globally with little or no CO2 emissions. These technologies will work in almost any region in the world.
[…]
Coal is the world’s leading fuel for electricity generation, providing nearly 40% of the world’s electricity supply, and an even higher percentage in countries with fast-growing economies.
[…]
The U.S. cannot lead on climate by writing off coal or other fossil fuels. As Senator Joe Manchin recently said, “you cannot eliminate your way to a cleaner climate, you can innovate your way, but not eliminate your way.”
It’s absolutely critical that U.S. energy policy recognizes that American climate leadership will come directly from coal country and advanced fossil fuel technologies along with innovative nuclear reactor designs.
[…]
There is simply no credible way to address the climate challenge without becoming more practical about the way we generate electricity and the need for carbon capture. This shouldn’t be a secondary piece of the solution to reduce global emissions but rather right at the heart of the effort.
Dan Ervin, PhD, is a Professor of Finance in the Perdue School of Business at Salisbury University.
RealClearEnergy
No matter how one defines “the climate challenge,” Professor Ervin is spot-on… Because, even if the threat of anthropogenic climate change is 99.7% fiction, the threat of regulatory malfeasance on the part of our own government is “a clear and present danger.” And the Harris-Biden Dominion is the the most dire “climate challenge” since 1975…
Coming Soon to a Gulf of Mexico Near You!
Reference
Meckel, T., Bump, A., Hovorka, S. and Trevino, R. (2021), Carbon capture, utilization, and storage hub development on the Gulf Coast. Greenhouse Gas Sci Technol. https://doi.org/10.1002/ghg.2082
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I believe that the greater long term threat is declining oxygen. If the only means of producing oxygen is by plants and the only feedstock for oxygen is CO2 and water by virtue of photosynthesis there is way to little CO2 in the atmosphere to maintain 21% oxygen. Oxygen is decreasing at 16 parts per million per year and if the level drops below 16% we would have serious issues. This is only about 5000 years which is not long in the span of civilization.
The atmosphere is “losing 19 O2 molecules out of every 1 million O2 molecules in the atmosphere each year,” not 19 ppm of the atmosphere. The current O2 concentration is 210,000 ppm (21%). 19 O2 molecules out of every 1 million O2 molecule equals about 4 ppm of the atmosphere.
The atmosphere is currently 21% O2 (210,000 ppm O2).
At a rate of 4 ppm/yr, in 5,000 years the atmosphere will drop all the way to 20% O2.
It’s actually been dropping for about 800,000 years.
Decline in atmospheric oxygen over past 800,000 years (Stolper et al., 2018)
You want to “capture carbon”?
Stop cutting down trees to make pellets to burn for energy when a shovel full of coal will do the same job.
Or, better yet, build a nuclear power plant.
David,
I understand the point you’re trying to make, but I sure hope you won’t relax your guard and drop the sword of sarcasm you have been wielding so effectively against the greentards and other assorted Progressive riff raff!
Because our government is filled with idiots, crooks and morons; we need to redouble our efforts to show them the insanity of following the Great Green agenda! Maybe tossing them a bone like CCS will allow us to sneak other sane policies into the tent, like nuclear and NO MORE
UNRELIABLES!!
“ Maybe tossing them a bone like CCS will allow us to sneak other sane policies into the tent, like nuclear and NO MORE
UNRELIABLES!!”
Chamberlain said much the same about Hitler.
That straw man would do you a lot better if you stuck it in field as a scarecrow!
CCS could be a wedge in the space between the Green Blob and our politicians! Would I rather drive a Mack truck though the gap? Hell, yeah! But that ain’t the reality on the ground right now! Take the wedge and push it deeper, than add more until you can see some daylight!
I’ve kicked in a few doors in my day, and one of the first things I learned is that it’s much easier if the door is ajar! The VERY first thing is to see if it is locked or not!
CCS/CCUS might just be that Mack truck…
Smokestack Fighting: Carbon Capture Promises to Slash Emissions, and Greens Hate It
They will have to pry my sarcasm “from my COLD DEAD HANDS!”
😎
Fat chance!
Are these people advocating CCS aware of the math involved with CCS?
Coal is 60 to 80% carbon and 20 – 40 % other minerals. NG is mostly CH4. Either way, when burnt the C, carbon, is combined with two O, oxygen, to make CO2. The CO2 is going to weigh over twice as much and take over twice the volume of the coal mined or the NG pumped taken out of the ground. That means twice as much needs to be stored somewhere.
I live near where a Coal fired power plant once was. During operation, this plant required a train of coal cars very close to two miles long. It has been 50 years since I took college Chemistry and Thermodynamics but a train of compressed CO2 or solid CO2 is going to be no less than TWICE as long as the train of coal that was burnt. Look at the open pit coal mines in Montana. look at the vain of coal. That is how much space is going to be needed for each fossil fueled power plant. Then you have the energy necessary to pump the gas to where it will be pumped into the ground and to pump it into the ground.
I worked for an Electric Utility, I am well aware of why the majority of the coal plants were shut down. The majority were shut down because more and more of the electricity produced was needed to operate all of the scrubbers and filters and precipitators, and, etc. etc., etc. that they were approaching 30% of the generated electricity. Back of the envelope calculation tells me that this is another energy wasting boondoggle.
https://www.realclearinvestigations.com/articles/2021/07/20/smokestack_fighting_how_greens_spurned_better_as_the_enemy_of_perfect_-_and_may_wind_up_losers_785733.html
The Petra Nova project captured 92% of the CO2 emissions from one of the coal-fired units at the W.A. Parrish power plant in Fort Bend County. It included an 80 mile pipeline to West Ranch oil field in Jackson County, where it was injected into a Frio reservoir. The CO2 EOR project boosted oil production in the field from about 200 bbl/d to over 3,000 bbl/d. There was no parasitic load on the power plant because the CO2 capture was powered by a natural gas cogeneration plant.
My strong belief is that the free market should decide what is best. I believe government subsidies are wrong over the entire spectrum from agriculture, wind & solar energy, and now CO@ur momisugly sequestration.