The Age has a story about Australia’s first carbon sequestration trial, about half way between Warrnambool and Port Campbell on Victoria’s south-west coast. The trial is apparently working well, with 50,000 tonnes of CO2 stored without significant incident. This earlier newsletter expands on that definition a little – essentially, the CO2 is moving through the depleted natural gas well as predicted in their computer modeling.
That’s great. Well done. When will they be able to scale this up to that required to cope with the 1.6 million tonnes of CO2 emitted from Hazelwood power station every month?
This pdf provides an overview of the CO2CRC’s La Trobe valley projects.
You’re spot on there Robert.
You probably also saw this op-ed from the ACF, also in the Age today.
I thought Guy Pearce was fairly clear-eyed when he accepted that we’ll probably see *some* CCS plants working in coming decades in *some* locations where the geology, transportation, etc. was right. But the idea that the promise of CCS will solve ongoing coal usage was complete BS.
If CCS might allow, say, 5% of our ongoing power needs then we aren’t we allocating 5% of our energy R&D funding to it, not 95%?
dk’s on the money, I reckon….
I live about 10km from the sequestration site (uphill, happily!) but I grew up in the Latrobe Valley, taking school tours to power stations or the open cut mines every year, and swimming in Hazelwood Pondage. The sequestration project is absolutely tiny – it’s great for a trial, but how many sites are there like this in Australia? And, compared to what Hazelwood alone puts out, how much use can it be? I suspect that it’s a nice little bandaid on the huge open sore of brown coal power production, and basically a waste of time. Still, the people working on the project are nice!
If CCS might allow, say, 5% of our ongoing power needs then we aren’t we allocating 5% of our energy R&D funding to it, not 95%?
Hi Aussie Oskar,
I’ve been looking for sources on how much the government spends on CCS vs. other low emission technologies, so you could you please supply your source for the above quote? Also does that include indirect aid such as MRET? Thanks in advance.
Ken,
the 95% figure was more rhetorical flourish than thoroughly-researched data. Caught me out on that one I’m afraid….
I’ll do some digging around on R&D spending on CCS vs renewables.
More broadly, support for fossil-fuel usage wallops that for conservation and renewables. Guy Pearce calculates that in Rudd’s first budget, ‘for every dollar spent on greenhouse programs the government was apparently content with close to fifteen dollars more being spent on subsidising fossil-energy use.’
I’d doubt the picture would be much different when it comes to R&D spend.
Hi Aussie, no worries.
I do worry, however, that the attacks on CCS by some parts of the green movement risk removing an option from the table – which may in turn lead to higher CO2 emissions than need be. If it turns out that renewables can’t supply Australia with power at a good price and excellent coverage, we may see a shift in attitudes to “bugger it, we can live with global warming”.
The point of CCS was never really whether it was technically feasible, it almost certainly is. The issue is whether it will ever be remotely economically feasible, and the opportunities for inaction while we pretend we have this solution in the wings.
Don’t worry, wilful. I think the whole point of CCS is to soften us up for geoengineering.
Congratulations lilacsigil:
You survived swimming in the Hazelwood Pondage. For many recent summers, warning signs have been erected at the public entrance (car park, yacht club) regarding blue-green algae contamination.
Don’t worry, wilful. I think the whole point of CCS is to soften us up for geoengineering.
If aspects of the green movement keep on spending their energy attacking solutions rather than problems, then perhaps we will be left with geoengineering or adaptation as our only options.
Cool. Merkel turns cynical.
Ummmm, they could just shut down the smelters and close Hazelwood. I hear Iceland is begging for more smelters.
Sure, if we could be convinced that CCS was a solution, and not just a subsidy for the coal industry.
Carbonsink: perhaps it’s just me, but I get the feeling that there is a certain strain of green thought that wants renewables for the sake of renewables.
Ummmm, they could just shut down the smelters and close Hazelwood. I hear Iceland is begging for more smelters.
Great, lets go back to the good old days where the coal industry funds global warming skeptics rather than research into low emission technologies.
Sure, if we could be convinced that CCS was a solution, and not just a subsidy for the coal industry.
This is quite interesting. Has anybody done any research comparing the money that big coal in Australia has spent on CCS vs. what they have received? AFAIK, the major beneficiaries so far have been Universities, CSIRO and some engineering firms.
In the long term, big coal will only win if they can make CCS cost competitive. And in that case, we all win.
What exactly are the problems Ken?
Saying that the coal industry isn’t getting money from CCS funding is like saying the nuclear industry didn’t get funding from the Manhattan government. They’re direct beneficiaries of the ‘basic’ research, which last time I was holding its hand out for another 180m smackers http://www.co2crc.com.au/
Why do you paint it as a fair fight between big coal and other techs? It’s clearly not. Energy policy is a social process and hugely path dependent, not some dispassionate atemporal chess game.
I’m sure that’s true. If we had a government with the courage to price carbon appropriately and let the market rip, I think we’d see a lot of investment in natural gas, some wind, and perhaps some solar thermal. Nukes are way too risky politically, but that may change. I doubt many investors would put their hard-earned into CCS.
Its a pity we’re not going to find out.
Its just a change of emphasis really. Switching tack from denialism to CCS is a bit like the tobacco companies switching from “cigarettes don’t harm your health” to “try our new low tar cigarette that won’t harm your health … much”. They will do whatever it takes to keep selling their poison.
Ken, CCS is not a solution. It won’t work, except on toy projects, carefully designed to look like it’s the technological fix we crave. There’s just too much CO2 to bury safely.
To be frank, I think we’ve left it too late anyway. We’re fucked. You should have listened to the hippies 40 years ago, but now it’s too late.
I weep for my unborn grandchildren.
Ken, CCS is not a solution. It won’t work, except on toy projects, carefully designed to look like it’s the technological fix we crave. There’s just too much CO2 to bury safely.
Now would be a great time for you to provide a source for these claims. I have a passing familiarity with the CCS scientific literature and I haven’t seen a paper suggesting that it will only work on toy projects.
To be frank, I think we’ve left it too late anyway. We’re fucked. You should have listened to the hippies 40 years ago, but now it’s too late.
Hippies? What hippies were talking about global warming forty years ago? We should have listened to the scientists then (or better yet the peer reviewed scientific papers that they publish), and we should do the same now.
I weep for my unborn grandchildren.
Relax, they will be fine.
dk.au, at the moment, CCS research is costing big coal a lot of money.
If CCS doesn’t produce cost competitive outcomes, the coal industry is going down big time. Alternative power generation methods will gradually take its place as older plants are shut down. The cost to Australia from the CCS research will be minimal – the sums involved are tiny relative to the amounts that we will have to spend on whatever technologies eventually win.
If it does work out, then we all win. We get clean cheap power. They get to keep their profits. High fives all round.
Why do you paint it as a fair fight between big coal and other techs? It’s clearly not. Energy policy is a social process and hugely path dependent, not some dispassionate atemporal chess game.
Actually, it is much closer than what you think. Renewable research is given lots of support both directly and indirectly in Australia. To give one example, the Victorian gov estimates that the Victorian Renewable Energy Target has attracted about $2 billion in renewable investment. And that’s one source of support in one state. Compared to that the CO2CRC costs are chump change.
Ken, although the hippies weren’t specifically talking about global warming 40 years ago, we did recognise that peak oil and other resource depletion, and overpopulation, were likely to be big problems. Malthus and the Club of Rome were right.
As to CCS, there are only a few working projects in the whole world, all of them toys. (As a computer scientist, I know all about cheating on small problems … ) The volume of gas produced, even if compressed, just can’t fit into the available salt domes, etc, even if you could easily pipe it there in the first place. What if it leaks out? (Just remember how a lot of oil and gas deposits are discovered. In case you don’t know, it’s leakage.)
Depends what you call big money, Ken. This flyer shows the impost on the local industry for R&D of a tick over $100m pa over the last 5 years. Notably this is exceeded by govt funding at every level.
There’s the lack of support you’re concerned about from the green groups on CCS but then there’s the lack of support you’ll find from the industry themselves who really aren’t committing the kind of money that would make me think they believed in it.
There are over 20 companies in this scheme, including Rio and Xstrata. Can you even begin to count what these guys pull in in a year? Must be over $50bn. And the best they can manage is $100m pa between them for something that’s meant to save their industry.
They’re simply hanging on as long as they can, milking the public tit, and they’ll abandon coal only when they absolutely have to and not a moment before.
They’re the cigarette industry of the 21st century, Ken and we shouldn’t be hoodwinked by the idea that they’re contributing to the national interest in any way.
Sorry, buggered up the link.
The flyer’s here, the list of companies involved here
ken,
dk.au, at the moment, CCS research is costing big coal a lot of money
I’m not sure where your getting your figures? The Coal21 website says its $500 million total thus far. Governments have committed more than that. These companies make tens of billions in profit each year, so they should be underwriting the costs if they want to stay in business surely?
If aspects of the green movement keep on spending their energy attacking solutions rather than problems
I’d suggest you look at our website, rather than rely upon the commercial news. We spend most of our time working on solutions. Last year we released a very authorative and comprehensive report that modeled how we could move away from coal, towards renewables.
CCS however is a problem. It is diverting resources, and attention, away from many many solutions we could implement today. As a report released a few weeks ago quantified, there are many other costs related to coal mining and combustion. CCS will not address these other real problems.
You make reference to indirect costs of an MRET. I’d make two points. Firstly, the massive infrastucture that the coal generation industry enjoys was paid for by paxpayers, and ongoing costs are paid for by taxpayers too (i.e. recent $18billion for NSW). Secondly, we released a report last year that tallied subsidies/grants etc, and it found that the fossil fuel industry gets $28 for every $1 the RE industry receives. You can find it on our website.
There will be increased costs in going for CCS or renewables. However one is still harmful to human health, will still create GHG and will create an ever growing quantity of waste that will need to be safely managed for thousands of years. I’d rather pay extra for the other path – renewable energy.
Um Simon, who is ‘we’? and where is ‘our’ website?
Click on his name, myriad, and you’ll find he’s a Greenpeace lad…..
there’s some good info they have on their site, but I’d question their lumping together of nuclear with CCS. They may both be unpalatable in their different ways but they ain’t the same thing and I don’t see the point in treating them as such.
@myriad:
Like many commentors here, Simon has linked a website to his username on his comment. My Sherlockian branepower has deduced that this therefore is most probably the website (and organisation behind the website) to which he is referring.
@ Aussie Oskar,
Our comments crossed. Sorry for the duplication of information, myriad.
although the hippies weren’t specifically talking about global warming 40 years ago, we did recognise that peak oil and other resource depletion, and overpopulation, were likely to be big problems. Malthus and the Club of Rome were right.
Aside from neither Malthus nor the COR being hippies, Malthus’ predictions certainly haven’t come to pass this far. So far, predictions of peak oil haven’t come to pass, nor depletion of most resource. As for the COR, AFAIK, they haven’t made enough verifiable predictions to assess their accuracy.
As to CCS, there are only a few working projects in the whole world, all of them toys. (As a computer scientist, I know all about cheating on small problems … ) The volume of gas produced, even if compressed, just can’t fit into the available salt domes, etc, even if you could easily pipe it there in the first place. What if it leaks out? (Just remember how a lot of oil and gas deposits are discovered. In case you don’t know, it’s leakage.)
Well, I’m a scientist (chemistry not computers), and I know that if you want to do something complex, you start small. If you want to bury huge quantities of CO2 each year, you start off burying a small amount and use the data gathered to assess your models. You then use the data and lessons learned to refine both your theory and the methods used to bury the CO2. Next step, do it again on a bigger scale.
Can you please provide your sources for lack a geological storage locations? And evidence for leakage from the types of strata and depths at which CCS proposes?
CO2 has been separated from natural gas and sequestered back down into the wells for many years. There is nothing new about this. It is expensive to do, but if they do it if they have good reason to (e.g. extracting more oil from a nearly depleted well).
The big difference with CCS for power stations is that the CO2 must be extracted from much larger volumes of the burnt gas released from the chimneys.
So there are two major challenges that CCS (for coal fired power) needs to address: 1. A very large volume of CO2. 2. Extracting it from chimneys post burning.
I don’t see any problem with the coal industry pursuing this option. I have a big problem with the Australian Government paying for it, and zero consultation on this with us (the public).
Renewable energy options are clean, green, and available right now. If we also reduce demand through strict efficiency measures we could dramatically reduce our carbon emissions. Now.
Aussie, while the sums paid out by the fossil fuel industry aren’t large relative to their total revenue they aren’t tiny either. Certainly they cost less than a well funded PR campaign aimed at undermining support for global warming mitigation.
Your also ignoring other projects. The Gorgon Project, for example, aims to sequester about 2.7 millions tonnes of CO2 per year. This is a significant effort.
However, if the preliminary studies into CCS and demonstration plants/sites bear fruit, then massive amounts will be needed to be spent, which will cost the fossil fuel industry billions – if we make them by putting a decent price on carbon dioxide.
The big difference with CCS for power stations is that the CO2 must be extracted from much larger volumes of the burnt gas released from the chimneys.
Not exactly, the CO2 concentration in a flue gas is probably around 12-15 %. In other configurations such as oxy fuels or pre combustion it is much higher. The CO2 levels in natural gas needing processing are frequently much lower. So per unit CO2 removed we need to handle less not more gas.
I must say, I do admire Ken for going into bat for CCS, a lost cause if ever there was one. Its good to have a diversity of opinion at LP on these matters, especially if its well-informed and well argued.
I’m not buying it for a minute though
P.S. How about a battle of the lost causes? Merkel vs Miles, Nukes vs CCS?
Ken, that’s exactly what any money the coal industry is throwing at CCS is for. It’s an extremely cheap way of making everyone think there’s no problem with continuing to use coal. (After all, secretly that’s what we all want to believe.)
As to the rest: Peak oil has already hit us, according to Deffeyes (who ought to know) – about 2 years ago from memory. So has peak phosphorous, and peak gas isn’t too far off.
Early gas and oil finds (and some more recent offshore fields) were located by surface leakage. While newer (harder to exploit) fields are better sealed under a salt dome, typically, but anyway capped with impervious rock, they already have at least one potential point of leakage (the oil well). Would you trust the lives of yourremote descendants to the well staying sealed forever? I wouldn’t. The long-term storage problems make nuclear waste storage look easy.
The “cheating on small problems” thing is a joke, btw. “Mathematicians only look at small problems, engineers cheat to make a solution work, and computer scientists cheat on small problems.” Computer scientist are not, of course, scientists at all: we’re more like a kind of mathematician.
Hi Simon, thanks for your reply. If you don’t mind me asking are you a Greenpeace official or just a supporter?
As for money paid by industry towards CCS, see my post at 29 for some details. Coal21 isn’t the only industry funded project. Big business also pays some of the CO2CRC bills and presumably chucks money into CSIRO’s efforts. Then there are projects such as Gorgon Island. I’m not sure of the costs, but I would be surprised if it didn’t turn out to be in the hundreds of millions for this project alone. If CSS does turn out to be a competitive technology then industry will be in for a world of costs.
These companies make tens of billions in profit each year, so they should be underwriting the costs if they want to stay in business surely?
Given that renewable energy companies are also profitable (thanks to very generous contributions from the Australian taxpayers and consumers), I would be very careful of where this line of thought might take you.
I’d suggest you look at our website, rather than rely upon the commercial news. We spend most of our time working on solutions. Last year we released a very authorative and comprehensive report that modeled how we could move away from coal, towards renewables.
To be perfectly honest, I’ve learned from reading about the science of global warming, to pay very little attention to advocacy groups be they Greenpeace or The Australian and much more attention to peer reviewed scientific journals.
But onto the broader point, I am infinitely more comfortable with Greenpeace when they are putting forward suggestions for rolling out renewables than when they attacking competing solutions.
CCS however is a problem. It is diverting resources, and attention, away from many many solutions we could implement today. As a report released a few weeks ago quantified, there are many other costs related to coal mining and combustion. CCS will not address these other real problems.
If you read the report, not just the commercial media story, it becomes illustrates that externalities of CCS aren’t much higher than winds. Unfortunately, the report lacks error bars (presumably because of a scarcity of good data) which would allow a better comparison. Additionally, organisations such as the CO2CRC and CSIRO are trying to reduce these externalities (such as substitution of amine solvents with either carbonates or amino acid solutions).
You make reference to indirect costs of an MRET. I’d make two points. Firstly, the massive infrastucture that the coal generation industry enjoys was paid for by paxpayers, and ongoing costs are paid for by taxpayers too (i.e. recent $18billion for NSW). Secondly, we released a report last year that tallied subsidies/grants etc, and it found that the fossil fuel industry gets $28 for every $1 the RE industry receives. You can find it on our website.
Much of the existing support to fossil fuels has already been paid for. Short of a time machine their isn’t much that we can do about that. As for ongoing costs, I would be very interested in a good source for this. I couldn’t find the report which you referred too, however, I am very interested in it. Could you please post the link.
Thanks Aussie and Tigtog. Didn’t mean it in a rude way, just found it strange to have someone talking as a representative without saying who for.
Sorry about the lack of clarity and yes I work for Greenpeace as a climate campaigner.
The report Energy and Transport Subsidies in Australia: 2007 Update re fossil fuel subsidies, released in 2007 (how time flies) can be found here
And the latest proposed, ongoing network costs have been reported widely, try here.