Guest “No schist sherlock” by David Middleton
PJM, MISO, others warn of ‘significant power shortages’ from EPA’s power plant carbon rule
The agency’s proposed limits on power plant carbon emissions rely on “green” hydrogen and carbon capture, technologies that may not be widely available, four grid operators told the agency.
Published Aug. 10, 2023
Ethan Howland Senior Reporter
The Environmental Protection Agency’s proposed greenhouse gas emissions standards for power plants could hurt grid reliability, with the potential for “significant power shortages,” according to major U.S. grid operators.
“The joint [independent system operators/regional transmission organizations] are concerned that the proposed rule could result in material, adverse impacts to the reliability of the power grid,” four of the largest U.S. grid operators said in joint comments to the agency Tuesday.
Their reliability concerns mainly stem from the chance that the EPA is overestimating how quickly technological advances may occur in “green” hydrogen production, transport and generation, as well as in carbon capture and storage, or CCS — the key compliance pathways for meeting the proposed rule, according to the Electric Reliability Council of Texas, the Midcontinent Independent System Operator, the PJM Interconnection and the Southwest Power Pool, organizations that operate the grid in 30 states and the District of Columbia, serving about 154 million people.
[…]
The proposal requires coal-fired power plants that intend to operate past 2039 to install CCS that captures 90% of carbon emissions. Coal plants that plan to retire by 2035 and run at no more than a 20% capacity factor and units that will be shuttered before 2032 don’t face GHG emissions limits.
Gas-fired combustion turbines larger that 300 MW and with at least a 50% capacity factor have two compliance options: CCS with 90% carbon capture by 2035, or co-firing of 30% low-GHG hydrogen beginning in 2032 and co-firing 96% starting in 2038, according to the agency.
Utility Dive
“The EPA is overestimating how quickly technological advances may occur in “green” hydrogen… as well as in carbon capture and storage, or CCS”
Note that the EPA’s new strategy doesn’t rely on wind and solar to save us from the weather… It now depends on the rapid deployment of “green hydrogen” and CCS.
Green Hydrogen… WTF?
Scientific element: Hydrogen
A colourless, odourless gas, hydrogen has the lowest density of all gases.
Hydrogen is an essential element for life, it is present in water and in almost all the molecules in living things.
Hydrogen is easily the most abundant element in the universe. It is found in the sun and most of the stars, and the planet Jupiter is composed mostly of hydrogen.
University of Nottingham
What makes “a colorless” gas green? Dollars.
What Are The Colours Of Hydrogen And What Do They Mean?
[…]
Green
Green hydrogen doesn’t generate any emissions in its entire life cycle as it uses renewable energies in the production process, making it a true source of clean energy. It is made by electrolysing water using clean electricity created from surplus renewable energy from wind and solar power. The process causes a reaction that splits water into its components of hydrogen and oxygen (the H and O in H2O). This results in no carbon emissions being released in the process. It’s a great alternative to grey and blue, but for now the main challenge is in reducing the production costs of green hydrogen to make it a truly obtainable renewable and environmentally friendly alternative.
[…]
Acciona
Hydrogen, as an energy source, ranks right up there with nuclear fusion: Infinitely abundant clean and inexpensive energy; however, it’s always just over the horizon. Green hydrogen is the most expensive way to manufacture the most abundant element in the Universe, furthermore relying entirely on the most unreliable electricity generation sources on Earth.
What’s the main obstacle to carbon capture and storage?
The EPA.
The Permitting Program Crucial for Carbon Capture’s Success
Posted on March 11, 2021 by Jena Lococo
[…]
Challenges with the Class VI Program
A program that was meant to protect the public’s drinking water has instead created many challenges for cost-effective deployment of carbon capture and sequestration. Of the more than 700,000 wells the UIC program has permitted, only two Class VI wells have ever been permitted for injection, both located at the Archer Daniel Midland’s ethanol plant located in Illinois. The typical permit application processing time was six years for both of these permits. This timeline is a significant barrier to develop storage capacity at the rate needed to capture carbon dioxide as well as for projects trying to take advantage of the incentives provided by the 45Q tax credit. Additionally, there are significant costs associated with complying with the onerous corrective action and monitoring requirements of the Class VI program, which are not always proportionate with the risk to drinking water from the project.[…]
Clear Path
The technology for CCS is already available. It’s been available for more than 50 years. Furthermore, there’s no shortage of geologic storage space for CO2. The 45Q tax credit might actually make it economically viable. However, there’s an 800 pound gorilla blocking the road:
Thus far, the EPA has approved 2 Class VI permits and lists 118 Class VI applications as “pending.” The EPA seems to think that industry can rapidly ramp up CCS to meet its new CO2 emissions restrictions, in spite of the fact that the EPA is incapable of processing Class VI applications in a timely manner while slow-walking approvals of primacy for state agencies.
Low carbon hydrogen is a new thing. I personally like high hydrogen carbon as a fuel.
If I put on my environmentalist tinfoil thinking cap 🧢, natural gas is the best solution – clean burning and highly efficient in ccgt’s and affordable – should be enough to make everyone happy, comfortable and prosperous – but the fake environmentalists bullying their way through government spoil that utopia and keep pushing ‘solutions’ that hurt everyone and everything.
The best carbon capture is also the least expensive… and is designed by nature not the gooberment
The best carbon storage is also the least expensive… and is designed by need not the gooberment
LPG in city vehicles would be a win-win, which is why the UK government stopped promoting it
Clean burning and cheap
Easy and low cost to convert existing petrol engine vehicles to LPG.
Natural gas for home heating – very cheap and very efficient
Natural gas for power generation…well yes, but I think coal is more naturally suited, with suitable clean burning technology.
Coal has little other utility and has the tremendous advantage of being strategically stockpiled – as Thatcher demonstrated so well in the 1980s UK miners strikes.
Don’t forget that coal is essential for steel manufacture and that world steel production has risen from 189m tonnes in 1950 to 1951m tonnes in 2021. Coal will be needed for power and non power production for a long time. Can’t build your wind turbines without coal.
Growing up in the 1950s and 60s, I remember vividly reading ingredient labels on all kinds of products, including foods, and on each one finding the mysterious entry: “Coal tar derivatives.” Its position in the list varied, according to (as I learned much later) how much of the product was made from it. Coal distillates were the cornucopia of hydrocarbons used by industry before the widespread adoption of petroleum as a feedstock. What’s left was coke, whose quality depended on the type of coal. Low grade stuff went to power plants, the high grade stuff to metallurgy. Nothing has changed in the nature of coal. It can still be used as source of hydrocarbons for manipulation into a wealth of products, including high-grade gasoline (through the Bergius process). We have enough coal for a very, very long time, even if oil becomes scarce.
You never put the “sarc” but you still got the votes for” Hy Hydrogen”.
Green hydrogen takes far more energy to produce than it ever delivers .
They try to tell us that it is produced with surplus wind and solar power but like pumped hydro there is far more power used to pump the water up the hill than you will ever generate running it back down through a turbine .
Hydrogen is not the solution as the costs of handling and using it prohibitive whereas hydro stations have the heavy lifting of the water performed by the sun .
In New Zealand the first government built power station was comissioned on the Waikato River in 1929 .It is still working well after 90 years along with seven other dams and eight power stations .
The fuel really is free and these stations are controlled remotely to meet demand during the day and night .
The best carbon capture is forestry managed to grow trees to mill for construction timber as the timber in buildings is around for a long time.
I am certain from my own observation on my farm that grazed pastures with live stock are carbon sinks as red clay tracks for access that I have bulldozed soon have inches of black top soil on them from the cattle and sheep droppings.
It is almost impossible to to convince those people counting our so called emissions that our pastures are a major carbon sinks .
Make it more complex….and more expensive…so that the disaster in the future will be bigger and more disastrous. Wind/solar…batteries….green H2….carbon capture…all this is an area for fraud and waste and all unnecessary…it will make the masses poorer and the few richer – what’s not to like? We need more gubment…more debt …more turmoil….more socialism…let’s get on with it!
All this green stuff…green H2 etc….grows on green trees….so just go out to your orchard and pick som green solar panels…to make your green H2…it’s like magic….and by jacking the price of energy up up up…we get green inflation…it’s a win win win, no?
This should be interesting. It’s tomorrow.
https://psr.org/event/hydrogen-blending-in-buildings-bad-for-health-bad-for-climate-2/
My guess the presentation will have lots of platitudes, no real data and no real science.
I was going to disagree with you and dispute your pessimism but then…
“Join PSR Colorado and PSR national expert Barb Gottlieb to learn more about the dangers of hydrogen and hydrogen blending as part of our deep commitment to protecting human health and the climate we depend on. We will discuss why hydrogen use increases GHG emissions and continues reliance on methane and coal; how it increases the risk of accidents and fires and perpetuates gas stove indoor air pollution and health inequities. Lastly, we’ll identify alternatives to hydrogen and methane that are healthier, safer, more efficient and discuss related policy issues.”
Seems like more green BS – what in the world is wrong with these people making up S about using natgas cooking and heating?!? “perpetuates gas stove indoor air pollution and health inequities.” Natgas burns incredibly cleanly and is the cheapest and best way to cook and awesome in my barbeque – really these people just pull their talking points out of their asses and have serious carbonphobias.
The proposed rule shows how lawless the EPA has become. I wrote about it in essay Clean Coal in ebook Blowing Smoke.
The EPA’s power plant emissions regulatory authority stems from CAA§111, found at 42USC7411, standards of performance. The EPA can only set a performance standard if the required technology has been “adequately demonstrated”. Courts have held there are two “adequately demonstrated” tests:
So EPA proposing requiring CCS is unlawful on its face.
The proposed alternative to CCS, increased use of ‘green hydrogen’, is equally unlawful, since such hydrogen production does not exist in power plant quantities let alone based on renewables (less than 10% of hydrogen is produced by electrolysis, always only in small quantities for industrial purposes. The notion that utility scale water electrolyzers could be run on intermittent renewables violates both the feasibility and cost tests. None exist at the requisite scale so definitely not commercially available. Intermittency means scaled costs (underutilized real big electrolyzers) would be exorbitant.
Should be easy for utilities and grid operators to get this foolishness stopped.
The truly funny thing is that the EPA can’t (or won’t) approve Class VI permit applications for CCS wells in anything remotely similar to a timely manner.
If you want something to be truly unaffordable, just pit the government in charge of designing the process.
If you want something to be truly affordable, just put the market in charge of designing the process
while there have been, so will be, a large gaggle of investor that don’t do due diligence very well, “industry” as a whole only designs a process once the process has been adequately shown feasible and economic.
The comments that West Virginia filed explained in some detail why carbon capture for coal, and co-firing with green hydrogen for natural gas, are currently unachievable, and therefore can’t be control mechanisms that can be imposed by EPA. It’s pretty clear West Virginia, and others who filed similar comments, are correct, but I’m sure EPA will ignore them and the grid operators.
Maybe. But reality will catch up to EPA sooner rather than later.
Or to paraphrase Ayn Rand?: ‘You can ignore reality, but you cannot ignore the consequences of ignoring reality.’
Rud,
Have you provided comment to the EPA regarding this.
It would be great to have your information added to the process of their ridiculous regulation environment.
Any help you can provide us to get other qualified comments before the agency?
I’m standing by watching this and many other disasters unfold and could use some good counsel on how to begin to find a thread that will start to unravel this crazy world that I’m living in.
Thanks
Danny
Rud: As always you hit the nail on the head. EPA’s own web sites refer to BACT (Best Available Control Technology) and BDAT (Best Demonstrated Available Technology) as requirements in setting regulatory requirements. Key word is “Available”. Neither CCS nor Green H2 are currently available demonstrated technologies. They are demonstrated failures. EPA is also supposed to do a rigorous cost/benefit analysis for their proposed regulation – a practice honored only in the breach.
It would appear the EPA is as reality challenged as the rest of the Biden administration, and Biden. Things like the Inflation Reduction Act isn’t about reducing inflation—rather increasing inflation by green spending, or Fauci telling Congress he didn’t fund GoF research in Wuhan (leading to a criminal referral by Sen. Paul), or DoD supporting trans military—sure to amuse China.
The title of almost all legislative acts, especially those that run to more than a few pages, are always designed to deceive by essentially being the opposite of what the title suggests.
Any mention of the magical solution to hydrogen embrittlement? The stuff will embrittle any normal steel.
Use Lithium-Steel!
If it doesn’t exist now, it will someday.
So let’s convert now!
How about transparent aluminum? Or vibranium? Super strong and stores energy. I’m sure the Biden admin can wave Wakunda into existence.
I have a plan for that – can you send me some money? 🙂
Sorry, but my Big Oil check bounced.
(Or maybe it wasn’t real? It was signed in green crayon. Should that have been a hint?)
“Carbon” capture. Just what does that mean?
We’re carbon based life forms. I suppose the Flower Wars might be considered “Carbon” capture?
If they mean CO2, what are they going to do with it?
Put it under pressure into the ground? Sounds a bit like fracking which is supposed to cause earthquakes. (I seem to recall a natural disaster when a lake in Africa “burped” a bunch of CO2 and wiped out a village.)
Convert it into something else like limestone? What would they start with? CaO? Where would they get that?
If they want to capture CO2, best to let nature take it’s course and continue to let it “Go Green” feeding more plants, many of which directly or indirectly produce something called “food”.
That was Lake Nyos in Cameroon:
https://science.howstuffworks.com/environmental/earth/geophysics/lake-nyos.htm
Nearly 1800 people died along with thousands of livestock and wildlife. Nature sends these warnings, idiot politicians ignore them.
Not even remotely analogous.
CO2 is injected in a porous formation generally about 6,000′ to 9,000′ below the surface. There are multiple confining shale layers between the storage interval and the surface. Injection is halted well before the pressure exceeds the frac gradient. Then the injection well is cemented to the surface and abandoned. The injection wells, pressure front and CO2 plume are monitored throughout the injection period and for 60 years afterwards.
https://www.epa.gov/uic/class-vi-wells-used-geologic-sequestration-co2
Lake Nyos is a lake in the crater of an active volcano.
http://geophile.net/Lessons/volcanoes/ND_volcanoes_06.html
even more stupid and wasteful than the ‘permanent’ sequestering of nuclear power plant spent fuel.
No, nothing is as stupid as that, especially with breeder reactors available, and msr’s on the way.
Dang, just when I was hoping for a renewable source for carbonated sparkling water for Gin and Tonics
I think CCS got traction early on because unscrupulous investors thought they could rip off gullible politicians and green taxpayers and just turn around and use the CO2 to frack, 2-for-1 special.
If I was inclined to work a green con, I would offer carbon sequestration in the deep ocean – pump it deep into the cold depths where the waters would easily absorb all that we could make without anything reaching the surface – the extra carbon would help the sea creatures with shells. Pipe in a bit of iron and other nutrients too and supercharge the sea creatures into sucking up even more CO2, so I could sell carbon credits too.
“…gullible politicians and green taxpayers…”
Tautology.
How are politicians and taxpayers the same thing?
David Middleton says:
Rud Istvan says:
A difference of opinion appears to exist between David Middleton and Rud Istvan concerning the economic and technical viability of CCS. Is this apparent difference of opinion real?
It is technically viable. Large scale CO2 injection programs for enhanced oil recovery have been operating economically since the 1970’s. From a geological and engineering standpoint, CCS injection is not significantly different than CO2 injection for EOR. The main difference is that CCS wells are for permanent sequestration and CO2 EOR is used for enhance oil recovery.
CCS is not economically viable without government subsidies. It might be economically viable with the current 45Q tax credit. However, we won’t know until we have established a track record. There are currently only two Class VI CCS wells operating in the US, both at an ADM ethanol plant in Illinois. The EPA currently has 118 pending Class VI applications. If the Class VI permit approval process continues to take 6 years, there will never be a track record.
The ADM (ethanol CO2) plant experimental Illinois CCS failed. Problem was, the injection into deep saline layer resulted in carbonate formation that plugged the injection wells. No good drilling a new one every few weeks.
Saline aquifers are the ideal reservoirs for CCS. The Mount Simon sandstone is particularly well-suited for CCS. The ADM injection wells are still operating as designed.
https://ghgdata.epa.gov/ghgp/service/facilityDetail/2021?id=1005661&ds=E&et=&popup=true
Has ADM made a profit off the 45Q tax credit? I doubt it. It’s a relatively small project, the first of its kind and the 45Q tax credit was lower when this project was approved.
The technical side of this is relatively easy. The economics rely entirely on government funding and are still unproven. The permitting process is far more nightmarish than drilling deepwater oil wells.
it’s also important to note that ethanol plants are the “low hanging fruit” in the world of CCS. The emissions are nearly 100% CO2 and relatively easy to capture.
There’s a market for CO2. We used about 10,000 to 12,000 pounds a day at the water treatment plant I worked at.
Our supplier got if from ethanol plants.
We “sequestered” it in a very practical way that was a part of producing a useful product, potable water.
Why stick it in ground just to be sticking it in the ground?
If you want it Stuck in the Ground as a sink, the easiest way and least expensive way is to…
Plant fast growing trees like Poplar
Harvest and replant every ten years
Take the harvested trees and stack them in played out open pit coal mines
When the pit is full, fill in with dirt and let sit
Repeat with next played out mine
Eventually that mass of wood will become the next fossil fuel source
“The economics” of taking wealth from the populance and then burning it (or dissolving it with acid, or dumping it into the deep ocean, or burying it in a deep hole, etc.) is a great perversion of the idea of economics. Its just like the Robin Hood fantasy, except in reverse.
Unlike gasoline taxes that are collected at the pump, those subsidies have to come from the general coffers, which means income taxes. While the public may not be aware of the machinations that move money from one hand to the other, the bottom line is that subsidies take money from the public. Thus, decisions about where to spend money is no longer made by those earning it. It is, instead, made by politicians. The public has less discretionary spending available to them, and thus has a lower standard of living.
If the tax credits (or cuts) result in enough increased economic activity, that they generate more taxable income, they pay for themselves. That’s one of the pillars of supply side economics.
While gasoline taxes have been greatly perverted, essentially starting with the Reagan administration, the end result of gasoline was production and maintenance (of roads and highways) for the public good. There is no public good in CCS.
just because it could be done does not mean that it should be done.
it’s not a matter of could or should… It is being done.
It is being done to recover assets, namely oil that can be sold at a profit. Injecting CO2 into the ground with no recovery of any minerals is a fools errand.
118 pending Class VI permits… It is being done.
Is that because it is economically profitable, or are there merely lucrative government subsidies involved?
The only money in CCS is the 45Q tax credit. Can companies make a profit off of it? Lots of companies are betting they can, particularly because the government will probably continue to increase the subsidies for CCS and/or simply make it a requirement.
The “only” money? It’s still a borrow and spend taking. Yes, it benefits you and your employer. But even if you believe in significant man mad climactic forcings – which most here don’t – it’s trickle up winner picking.
Beta,
Depart from the theoretical and learn from the practical.
If CCS was viable, it would have been in routine commercial production decades ago. It is not.
You cannot make a new process viable by political decree. To be prudent and to minimise your risk, you work out the mechanics and the economics from known engineering and accounting principles, then you look at the politics.
Beware of projects with danger words like “ambition” and “intention” and “policy”. They tend to go with projects doomed for failure. Geoff S
Geoff S: “If CCS was viable, it would have been in routine commercial production decades ago.”
A hard and fast regulatory requirement for applying CCS technology to all coal-fired and gas-fired power plants is only a very recent development, is it not?
As far as I can determine from reading Rud’s and David’s responses to my question, a difference of opinion does in fact exist between them as to the viability of CCS technology and economics as applied to power plants.
Do you yourself have a different opinion from mine as to whether or not a difference of opinion exists between Rud and David?
Technical and economic viability are two very different things.
CCS can’t be economic without government funding and/or government edicts the we have to do it in order to keep operating. The current 45Q tax credit, with wide bipartisan support, might have made it economically viable. However, it will take years, if not decades, of actual experience to determine this,
The fact that the EPA has 118 pending Class VI permits is a pretty good indication that industry is generally willing to take that current bet.
Is there a list available from the EPA of which companies representing which industries have applied for these Class VI permits?
https://www.epa.gov/uic/class-vi-wells-permitted-epa#table
Under the “Permittee/Permit Applicant” heading.
Denbury Carbon Solutions, LLC, Oxy Low Carbon Ventures, LLC and Shell U.S. Gas and Power, LLC are affiliated with oil & gas companies. Some are electric utilities. Most are private equity/venture capital funded startups.
Thanks for the link. I took a closer look at some of the CCS startup LLC’s to get a feel for what they are all about. These LLC’s have been created to take advantage of government subsidies for carbon capture and sequestration.
Every one of the startups that I looked at closely is very long on talk and very short on describing a CCS technology which is both technically effective at capturing the large volumes of CO2 which power plants produce and which are also economically operated without huge government subsidies.
These CCS startups have much in common with the numerous fusion energy startups which are now selling claims of being close to reaching a technical break-through with commercial nuclear fusion — lots of happy talk with little or no evidence that their technology will work at the huge scales which are needed.
I’m familiar with some of the folks at Gulf Coast Sequestration. From a technical standpoint, they are very solid. I’m not familiar with the other startups.
The only money in CCS is the 45Q tax credit and whatever an emitter is willing to pay to meet their own emissions reduction targets.
The 45Q tax credit is transferable. The PE/VC companies basically finance the CCS companies by purchasing the tax credit to offset their other income. Solar and wind projects are funded in a similar manner.
Denbury is an oil company that specializes in CO2 EOR. They already have an extensive CO2 pipeline and infrastructure system. ExxonMobil is in the process of acquiring Denbury.
Also… Very few of the current permit applications are for power plants. The vast majority are for ethanol, petrochemical and LNG facilities and other low-hanging fruit. These facilities emit nearly pure CO2, which is relatively easy to capture and they tend to be located in areas with very favorable geology.
There’s no doubt that this can technically work at a very large scale. The US oil & gas industry could become “carbon neutral,” if not “carbon negative,” simply by utilizing the available pore space in Miocene saline aquifers under the Gulf of Mexico.
The economics are what’s doubtful at a larger scale.
For my money, I don’t particularly care one way or the other about what is happening with CCS in the oil and gas industry. If it works for them and delivers acceptable value for what it costs, fine.
The electric power sector is a different animal. We have not yet seen convincing evidence that CCS can be successfully applied to coal-fired and gas-fired power generation.
The EPA is using CCS as a regulatory weapon in forcing the premature closure of our coal-fired and gas-fired power plants without a one-for-one replacement of each lost megawatt-hour of capacity.
The real concern we should be having is the threat that a technically and economically infeasible mandate for the use of CCS presents to the electric power generation sector and to maintaining a reliable supply of electricity.
Every dollar spent uselessly on CCS technology is a dollar not spent on maintaining and upgrading our power grid in ways that have a historical track record of working out successfully.
I don’t disagree with you philosophically.
Unfortunately the regulatory playing field has made CCS a reality.
There is one coal-fired plant that did successfully employ CCUS. The Petra Nova project did successfully capture ~90% of the emissions from a coal-fired unit at the W.A. Parrish Generating Station in Fort Bend Co, TX. The CO2 was sent by pipeline to the West Ranch oil field in Jackson Co, TX. The EOR project boosted production from the Oligocene Frio reservoir from a few hundred bbl/d to over 6,000 bbl/d from 2017-2020. Unfortunately it was shut in when oil prices collapsed in 2020.
https://www.osti.gov/servlets/purl/1608572
JX Nippon plans to restart it later this month.
https://www.reuters.com/business/energy/restart-delayed-texas-coal-unit-linked-petra-nova-ccs-project-2023-08-01/#:~:text=Restart%20delayed%20at%20Texas%20coal%20unit%20linked%20to%20Petra%20Nova%20CCS%20project,-By%20Timothy%20Gardner&text=Aug%201%20(Reuters)%20%2D%20A,N)%20said%20on%20Tuesday.
Or simply industry is willing to Bend the Knee to government and say “Thank You Sir, May I Have Another”? in order to remain licensed
Industry doesn’t have a civil disobedience option.
Too true
Hydrogen is the ‘Houdini’ molecule.
It can escape from anything.
This is the EPA’s plan for power generation:
The EPA must be disbanded, they have become nothing more than a radical activist organization kneeling at the alter of Gia.
Who never finished the first job given to them.
Unfortunately that idea is akin to demanding of King Ferdinand II that he disband the Inquisition.
You are mostly right. I don’t see EPA being shut down and closing the doors on them. What I can see however is holding them accountable, taking their rule making authority from them and forcing them to justify every one of their findings with proper legitimate science. If their findings can’t be supported with proper science then their findings go on some rat hole shelf until they can be justified. They will likely shut themselves down which is as it should be.
If they could see today’s EPA, the Founding Fathers would say “Oh, hell no”!, or words to that effect.
The claim from Accionia is pure fiction.
If the production of “green” hydrogen requires renewable, or any other energy, in any form, there are CO2 emissions somewhere along the line.
Still, lies are part and parcel of what passes for information these days.
Yup. There are no solar or wind powered industries that mine, smelt, manufacture, and transport the materials needed to produce solar and wind power devices that will produce the power needed to produce “green” hydrogen. And there are no solar and wind powered services that remove and dispose of solar and wind power devices that have exceeded their operational lifetimes.
The most effective carbon capture has been perfected by nature. WE should allow that well tested and well proven beneficial system to continue. Plants like to capture CO2. Trees like to build materials other animals in the environment like to use. It has worked so well, whole economies have been built up and thrive on natures evolutionary systems.
The puzzle for many of us is why some Johnny come lately species thinks nature needs any help?
Nature has managed around 4.5 billion years without human intervention. It is a bit of a stretch to think a (sentient) creature that has existed for a few tens of thousands of years needs to intervene in natures balances, simply because we can and simply because we think the past sixty odd years are significant.
‘The most effective carbon capture has been perfected by nature.’
It’s called limestone and it’s brought the natural world dangerously close to the point where photosynthesis becomes problematic.
Conversely, termites emit more than 10 times the amount of CO2 into the atmosphere that humans do. If we exterminated just 10% of the worlds termites the world would have full employment, a huge protein source to eliminate world hunger and solve all human CO2 emission problems in one fell swoop.
Doon,
Where does the termite meal come from?
Out in the forest I live near, they are at wood branch restaurants on the floor putting the CO2/Methane back into the forest environment.
More to the point, anti-carbon technologies are pointless, and based on lies. They might as well take money and flush it down the crapper, and oops, there goes the economy. Oh well, easy come, easy go.
The EPA will continue increasing restrictions until someone/something stops them.
Let’s not get lost in the weeds of technical capability and statistics. What’s going here is the trampling of boot on the citizens of the US. This is not about CCS as the end goal. The end goal is the consolidation of power and the pressing of Western countries into economic, social, and political degrowth. That’s all it is.
Personally, I think that the EPA should build test facilities for hydrogen in their basement and lower three floors.
I doubt it would take them long to fully research hydrogen’s failings and to revise their absurd advance hydrogen science fantasies.