It’s amazing what a crisis can prompt a government to do.
Aside from having the gumption to increase tax on the richest to help pay for the massive deficits caused by the recession, British Labour has bitten the bullet on coal-fired power, too:
No new coal-fired power stations will be built in Britain from now on unless they capture and bury at least 25% of greenhouse gases immediately and 100% by 2025, the climate change secretary, Ed Miliband, announced today.
One might very well ask why Britain’s government is prepared to mandate this, while Australia’s isn’t.
“One might very well ask why Britain’s government is prepared to mandate this, while Australia’s isn’t” Because the poms will shortly be forced to close down their old leaking and dangerous nuclear reactors, before they do a Chernobyl that’s why. They have suddenly realised that they face a huge generation shortfall and are desperate. Unfortunately the neat litttle green painted reactors on a truck that you love so much are just vapourware. So they have to all out for coal and CCS. Won’t work either.
Huggy
I’ve never claimed that they are anything other than vapourware, but at least some of them are no more vapourware than most of the renewable energy stuff floated in the popular media. Nuscale is basically planning a small LWR. Given that LWR’s have been around for 50 years, it shouldn’t be that hard to get them to work.
As for Britain’s reactors doing a Chernobyl, given they’re gas-cooled it’s pretty unlikely they’ll have a steam explosion…
I’d also note that Britain is also planning “conventional” new nukes, which gives them a fallback option.
Because the Greenhouse Mafia doesn’t have quite the same influence in the UK that it does in Australia.
One wonders why they need to mandate CCS though. I mean, if the European ETS actually worked it would be uneconomic to build a new coal-fired power station without CCS. I’m sure our CPRS will be similarly effective.
I’m sure it’s something to do with the different stages of the electoral cycles. Rudd desperately would not want to go anywhere near being a one-termer, would not want to replicate Howard by pissing off a core constituency. Labour however has been in for a while, is behind in the polls and so will be receptive to the idea of throwing a hail Mary. As i understand it the torries have also gone to the left of Labour on environmental issues, we could be so lucky.
Yes that is by far the biggest disappointment of Turnbull’s leadership. He could have done a David Cameron, but all he’s done is make noises about job losses in the energy and resources sectors.
The fine print doesn’t look all that encouraging though, does it?
There are going to be four major “energy clusters” built, each of which will have “at least one” major new coal-fired power station. These will have to capture and bury at least 25% of their carbon emissions, which I think we can safely take to mean for the foreseeable future “no more than 25%”.
Given that the UK hasn’t built a major new coal-fired power station for nearly 30 years, any way you juggle the figures this is going to be a shedload of extra CO2 emissions, and probably about the equivalent of the entire CO2 output of three large new coal-fired generators.
And that is without speculating on the chances of the scheme getting up anyway, given that at least 50% of the cost of the carbon capture is likely to have be public subsidy and Treasury is furiously objecting.
This is really no more than belated recognition of the impending power generation crunch in the UK, and dressing up the only viable solution in as much green smoke and mirrors as they can.
I don’t myself have a problem with that, but that’s for another argument
Robert, thanks for posting this, which I saw come through on a feed last night. The Brits are also considering doing this to the Severn estuary to replace the equivalent of eight coal-fired power stations with tidal power.
The Brits are perhaps showing signs of making some of the hard and unpalatable decisions that will almost certainly have to be made.
Closer to home it looks as though the Queensland Government is about to disengage from the ZeroGen CCS project in Central Qld though not, you can be sure, from building coal-fired power stations.
As a society the Brits are far more concerned about climate change than we are. There are regular protests at airports in the UK about airport expansion and the growth in air travel.
Can you imagine Aussies protesting against cheap flights?!
Brian, the Severn project (there are actually several options)woule certainly displace lots of v=coal and nukes with abaseload 100% renewable plant.
Guess what? The greens are going totally apeshit over it.
They want solar on rooftops instead – the dopes.
Robert I thought the rooted UK reactors are graphite moderated. They are unable to catch fire??? More new physics.
Huggy
The Severn Barrage idea has been floating around at least since my family moved to Somerset’s north coast 36 years ago.
It ain’t gonna happen in my lifetime.
Sure, graphite can catch on fire, and could theoretically cause a nasty accident. Merely noting that you can’t get a steam explosion (which is what happened at Chernobyl) with a gas-cooled reactor.
Little more than just empty spin from a dead-on-its-feet government that has comprehensively ruined the British economy.
Unlikely they’ll have the money to build anything. Notice how little Darling says that ‘tax-the-rich’ nonsense will actually bring in? And that’s an optimistic forecast. The rich will simply reduce their incomes to avoid it.
So spectacular has been Labour’s corruption, venality and economic incompetence that we are going to see what happens when a welfare state collapses.
IT
The problems with CCS aside, the fact that the UK Government is also firming up its emissions reduction target suggests they are serious.
In other, good, news on climate change, the ABC is reporting that CSIRO research shows that the risk of the methane clathrates being released is less than was previously thought.
The UK proposal to sequester 25% of the CO2 produced in conventional power stations is about as stupid as you would expect from a bunch of pommy’s whio never go any-where but to the local pub.
.
You can get a far better result by burning Coal Seam Methane in a CCGT, Wales is full of the stuff.
Hard to believe that they are so stupid. Maybe they have caught the American disease
Huggy
Agreed.
“One might very well ask why Britain’s government is prepared to mandate this, while Australia’s isn’t.”
The Poms have got nuclear, and are planning to build more. Their nukes produce (from memory, don’t quote me), some 11GW power, which is 20% of all their power. About 7GW of their nuclear is supposed to be shut down by 2015 (the things are getting old). They’re planning 12.5GW of new nuclear. So if all goes to plan – ie they don’t extend the lives of the old stations and manage to build the new ones on schedule – the UK will overall add a net 5.5GW of nuclear by 2020.
This compares with 29GW currently generated from coal. So with their nuclear plans, they’ve no need to build any new coal-fired plants. You only need to build one horrendously dangerous kind of electricity generation at once, not two.
Australia doesn’t have power nuclear reactors, and has no plans to build them. So if we insist that any new coal-fired stations must have CCS, that means we have no new ones at all. Since we have such piss-weak renewable plans, no new coal would mean we have around the same electricity production. Which would not be politically acceptable.
Of course we could just use renewables, but that doesn’t involve digging stuff up and selling it overseas, which is the Australian Way. We’re about as likely to stop having digging stuff up and selling it overseas as the basis for our entire economy as the Americans are likely to stop producing crap cop telly shows, or the Japanese are likely to institute a compulsory 30 hour week.
It seems that underground under the North Sea is where they are planning to dump the stuff.
We can thank (ironically if you must) Maggie for busting the Coal Mafia in the UK.
The problem we have at the moment is all about the way w think about things. For example if we were to burn coal in an oxy-fuel process (combust it with pure oxygen)we could use one or other of the new CO2 to methane techniques to produce methane from the rather pure CO2 that emerges. This gets added on as a high efficiency gas turbine “tailing” cycle and the steam from this is fed back into the primary turbines. Then we sequester the CO2. Also we would have some rather useful liquid nitrogen to use as transport “fuel”. At present over 60% of the potential energy in coal goes up the smoke stack (along with radioactive shit and stuff). That’s the real problem
Huggy
The rich will simply reduce their incomes to avoid it.
I can never hear this line without chuckling. “Yes, I’ll forego more money in my pocket just to deny the government more income!”
I was thinking that anyone that stupid would be unlikely to be rich, but there’s a lot of old money in the UK, so maybe it’s true
Huggybunny (No. 19), that O2-methane system you describe there sounds interesting. Got any good references on that cycle? I’d like to do some reading on it.
MarkL
Canberra
Huggybunny
‘liquid nitrogen to use as “fuel”‘ ??
At what temperature(s) is (are) your hypothetical processes operating?
Liquid N2 is damn cold on the planet I inhabit.
Markl check out this weeks new scientist. I will follow this up in the literature and post on it . I too find it very interesting.
Phlogistical, go to : http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Liquid_nitrogen_economy
The point is that as liquid nitrogen is a waste product from the production of liquid oxygen; the energy can be recovered in a simple turbine or in a stirling cycle engine or even in an ordinary piston engine. You allow the liquid to turn to gas and then expand it through an expansion engine. In fact you could use it in conjunction with a traditional fuel- in a specially designed engine.
Probably the safest fuel of all. It simply evaporates if you spill it. You can tip it on to your hand and it stings a bit. (A vapour barrier is generated by your body heat) You have to plunge a limb into the liquid before you are in serious trouble – or have a tankful poured over you. In our lab we used protective suits when we handled the stuff but a mate in the UK tells me that they just got a dewar full and splashed it around.
Huggy
Huggy: by the way, have you seen the proposal floating around the net to use boron, burned in a pure O2 atmosphere, as an energy carrier?
It seems to me that there’s any number of potential energy carriers if abundant clean electricity or high-grade heat became available, and hydrogen is actually one of the less attractive options due to the handling difficulty.
Yes, I’ve been wondering whether boron has legs. See second part of this post at BraveNewClimate.
Thanks Huggybunny.
I understood that you meant ‘energy transport medium’ and not ‘fuel’.
Of note, N2 cryogenic systems are used extensively in the offshore oil and gas industry to conduct the heat transfer from the cold box in LNG trains on FPSO and the new FLNG. While less efficient than other systems, they are much simpler and easier to maintain; hence more reliable, especially with seawater cooling of the compressor.
MarkL
Canberra
Robert; Hydrogen is probably the worst possible material for the storage and transformation of energy. It explodes at the slightest provocation and it leaks out of pressurised vessels. The other storage techniques have gone no-where much. When I needed hydrogen for reducing stuff in the old days I simply cracked methanol – got a bit of CO as well but what the hell. Know nothing of boron but will I check it out, thanks.
MarkL yes I have used the term “fuel” rather loosely. Robert raised the question of what to do with the liquid nitrogen that is a by product of the oxy-fuel process I suggested the use of it to “fuel” vehicles. I have not done the numbers on it yet but if it basically entirely paid for by the oxy-fuel process it should be able to compete with petrol. I read a paper by Melbourne Uni Boffin about the efficient extraction of energy from liquid nitrogen. Can’t remember his name but. Any-thing but the hydrogen economy, it is another green fantasy, a complete waste of time. Of course if you really want high energy density storage try Hafnium
Huggy
Brian, my take on boron is that I’ll feel much happier when somebody builds a prototype.
Huggy, I had the impression that the “hydrogen economy” was more of a big fossil fantasy, the idea being that they can keep the existing patterns of extraction and consumption but use magic pixies as the fuel instead of dead dinosaurs. Sorry, hydrogen, magic pixies, whatever. The few greenies I’ve heard mention it are usually the naive or anti-science ones.
If by boron you mean boron hydrides for hydrogen storage and subsequent conversion in a fuel cell I should say that I am agin it.
Fuel cells for motor vehicles are total crap. Let me explain why.
I have done considerable research on electronic converters for fuel cells, i have good understanding of their electrical characteristics. They are not a power source, they are an energy source. By this I mean they are limited by their internal impedance to supplying a defined and limited load. (They are such sensitive little dears that we have to take special measures to keep 100Hz current ripple out of them when they are connected to the grid via an inverter) Go over the design load and the fuel cell voltage collapses. For example your fuel cell driven car will have really poor acceleration characteristics. It is an inherent characteristic of fuel cells and has little to do with design. Battries on the other hans are voltage sources and can supply huge amounts of power on a short term basis – unless it is a”flow” battery (vanadium redox or zinc bromine). Flow batteries are also crappy.
One serious contender for transport is the Zinc air battery, you buy a bag of zinc pellets at the service station and drive off on the power generated by oxidising them – later the zinc oxide has to be reduced back to zinc in a factory some-where. The zinc air battery is simple; a process for reducing zinc that is carbon free requires easy access to a Hydrogen source – not so simple. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Zinc-air_battery
If by boron storage you also mean boron air , the you can also do aluminium air and probably magnesium air (now that would be interesting).
Huggy
Moz,
Yep Hydrogen is the Green get out of jail card and not worth the paper it is printed on. I have worked with hydrogen and it is really dangerous. They used to call me bomber huggy as every other day there would be a loud explosion.
It is one of those things that appeals to the utterly naive and the techno-phobe as it sounds so good.
As a transport fuel it is probably one of the most dangerous ever put forward. A collision between two fully charged hydrogen fuelled vehicles would liberate enough energy in the resulting fuel air bomb to wipe out an entire city block “If you choose to store the Hydrogen as a compressed gas, you’ll need HUGE tanks, and many of them, since Hydrogen isn’t very dense, so a tank really can’t hold all that much. In addition, you’ll be driving a giant bomb. In a collision, expect to die in a huge fireball/explosion.” http://www.switch2hydrogen.com/h2.htm
Now the above quote is from a firm that is promoting hydrogen storage as a hydride but we should be getting a picture here.
The green fantasy seems to be that we should pipe hydrogen to every-one where they have this diddy little fuel cell that provides electricity and heat to the home. It is such rubbish that it is not really worth refuting. However I have heard eminent Professors rabbitting on about it.
Huggy
“In addition, you’ll be driving a giant bomb. In a collision, expect to die in a huge fireball/explosion.”
Being green doesn’t have to be boring. I think this could fly if marketed properly.
Huggy: the plan was burning boron in pure oxygen. You can read about it on Barry Brook’s site, where he reviews a book by Tom Blees called “Prescription for the Planet”. You won’t like the source of the energy to purify the boron (Integral Fast Reactors) but if you had enough renewable electricity you could use that instead.
As an aside, the IFR is pretty close to magic pixie energy, with the bonus it should actually work. And, no, you don’t need an army to defend the plant; the radioactivity of the fuel does the job for you.
Robert,
Lets drop the no bomb with the IFR stuff. I suspect that it could be used to make a Hafnium bomb, good thing about it is that it just kills every living thing with Gamma rays and leaves property intact. The ultimate Capitalist weapon.
Huggy
Hey Robert, have a look at this: http://theodoregray.com/PeriodicTable/Elements/005/index.html
What price pure boron? and er..”Some very nasty boron compounds have also been used as rocket fuel, because they are able to pack more energy output into a smaller, lighter package than conventional fuels. Unfortunately the compounds in question also kill on contact with bare skin in a matter of seconds. So much for boring boron.”.
I am liking liquid nitrogen more every day.
Huggy
If you’re referring to the flap about hafnium in US military circles a few years ago, it’s almost certainly a pipedream from some latter-day Buck Turdigson.
As for boron, it’s much cheaper in bulk, and there’s no “compounds” involved in GRL Cowan’s proposals, it’s just pure boron and pure oxygen.
Robert, don’t get me wrong I am all for these neat systems – love this stuff.
Read this and get back to me with your design for a vehicle( I think it will be about the size of a semi-trailer).
http://www.asctbhopal.com/Technovista/Mechmania/BORON.htm
Huggy
here is a portable oxygen concentrator for medical applications. One liter per minute of 90% pure oxygen in a 5kg box, including 3 hours of battery.
If I’m crunching the numbers correctly, scale that up by a factor of about 50 and you’ve got enough oxygen to run a car. As for the rest, a modified Stanley Steamer (to deal with the hotter combustion chamber) is my fallback design
Being atavistic and whimsical, why not just go with a coal-oil liquifaction plant (good old Fischer-Tropsch) to produce paraffins, and just go with the Stanley Steamer?
One of the benefits of converting Gippsland brown coal is a nice solid CO2 output to help the crops grow better as the planet continues to cool.
MarkL
Canberra
Australia’s Leading Beach Fisherman on Climate Change
Robert, yep the oxygen concentration is not a serious problem energy oputput will cope with it. Maybe it will work fine.
Seriously there are plenty of these schemes about , Zinc-Air has been trying to get up for 10 years, plenty of zinc , plenty of air (oxygen actually) reducing the Zinc Oxide back to Zinc is not difficult.
I ythink it will take a real crisis before any of these schemes get up.
Markl actually a stanley steamer run on ammonia would be good. No Co2 emissions.
Ammonia burns very well and you need only moderate pressure to keep it liquid.
Huggy
Hmm. So it would – but it would still be a lot safer on coal-derived oil or paraffin! Ammonia’s rather nasty stuff in high concentration, though – I do not want to think about the accidents.
Having seen some meth labs where the denizens had little accidents with their ammonia, I know it’s a really horrible way to die. They had spewed forth a lot of rather disgusting brown foam as it ate their lungs.
MarkL
Canberra
MarkL,
Some-one should have warned me about that when I went into a refrigeration plant room when I was about 16 to shut a valve that was feeding this massive ammonia leak. The engineer sprayed this huge fire hose into the room and I surfed in on the wave, so to speak. The smell was really bad, but I did manage to shut the valve. Fancy suits and helmets were unknown then.
We are gradually eliminating all the options, oh well.
Huggy
You WHAT??
Hell’s teeth – you were lucky to survive!
No, having seen what I have, ammonia is really bad juju. You REALLY don’t want to breathe that stuff.
MarkL
Canberra
I guess I was. The worst part was that I could not see very well what with all the water and the stinging in my eyes. I sort of groped around until I found the valve handle. I guess 16 year olds are considered expendable. I suppose those poor bastards making meth did not know about the extreme solubility of ammonia in water. We certainly did, hence the fire hose located at the door of the refrigeration room.
Many years later I was asked to design a water plant for a remote island town. The funding body insisted upon chlorination. I told them that the water was sterile as it came from an ancient artesian aquifer and that there was no way I would sanction cylinders of chlorine in a place where there were no trained people. In the end I installed a solar powered salt based electrolyis system.
At least I don’t have the image of the consequences of a chlorine leak one night to haunt me.
So I understand where you are coming from.
Huggy
Back to CCS, it was good to see my mate Graham Brown (ex-coal miner, now Newcastle-based anti-coal activist) exploding the grubby “Clean Coal” myth in the business ages of the Weekend SMH: http://business.smh.com.au/business/mining-stalwart-sees-no-future-in-carbon-plan-20090424-ai16.html?page=-1