Well, it seems that a few commercial-scale “clean coal” plants are reaching the moderately serious planning stages. But, as with the abandoned Hydrogen Power plant in Western Australia, the costs are just mindblowingly expensive.
Sean Casten at Gristmill looks at a project in Illinois. The project itself is another variation on the gasification idea that was the basis of the Hydrogen Power proposal – this time around, however the “syngas” made from the coal is converted to methane. The process CO2 is sequestered, the CO2 released when the methane is burned isn’t – so, in the end, this particular plant has roughly the CO2 emissions of a good natural gas power station. Casten does some back of the envelope calculations, and comes up with some rather unattractive numbers:
The project in question is the Taylorville Energy Center, a 525 MW, $3.5 billion facility that per the Tenaska press release will recover “55 to 60 percent” of its CO2 emissions. That works out to $6,666/kW and delivered power costs on the order of something like 20 cents/kWh and total CO2 emissions of 800-1,000 lbs/MWh. If one gives credit for both, relative to the U.S. average, that implies a 300-500 lb/MWh reduction in CO2 emissions, offset by a $0.11/kWh rate increase. Simple division shows that Illinois ratepayers will subsidize this plant to the tune of $400-700 per ton of CO2 reduction.
As usual when one tries this sort of exercise, Casten is doing his calculations based on press releases, so even his $400-700 dollar range should be taken with a grain of salt. But, even so, that’s the kind of subsidy that makes solar panels on your roof viable, let alone large-scale, low-cost renewables like solar thermal, wind, and geothermal. Undoubtedly, there’s some “first-of-a-kind” costs in this system. But even taking those into account it’s strikingly expensive, and there’s no way it would be viable without massive subsidies over and above any likely carbon price. Illinois’ subsidies are achieved through clean coal mandates and high-price long- term energy contracts, the details of which are savaged in Casten’s post.
Given governments around Australia share a similar manic enthusiasm for clean coal, will they be prepared to fork out subsidies – over and above the CPRS – on a similarly eye-watering scale when the time comes to actually build one of these things?
I would say that, given (a) the influence of fossil fuel interests on the policies of both major parties and (b) Australian governments’ (especially at State level) history of attachment to projects and industries believed to be vital to “national development” long after it’s painfully obvious that they are a bottomless pit for public subsidies, they may well be prepared to do so.
I have found myself turning the radio off when Rudd starts talking about GW or environment. I don’t believe anything that he has to say on these issues. Sadly.
Paul, I suppose my follow-up question is: suppose they fund the first one to an enormous degree on the basis that it’s supporting the commercialization of new technology.
Will they continue fund the second, third, and fourth so generously?
As you say, given the history, quite probably.
This is not strictly on-topic, but interesting nonetheless. Ars Technica has an article looking at a recent US report on grid-level electricity storage (actually there are number of reports and Ars are looking at them one at a time).
Interesting stuff. Good energy infrastructure relies on investment which relies on a stable and well implemented energy policy as a lot of the investment is very very large (in dollar terms) and very long term.
Meanwhile, there’s a gold-style rush on to access the USA’s desert lands for solar projects (between this and clean coal I know where I’d put my money),
and Rudd is being about matched by Sarah Palin on the CC issue.
No, they’ll stall as long as electorally possible in a state of paralysis. No new power sources – not nuclear (scares mainstreet), coal (outrages greenies), but some token turbines (upsets locals). The brown-outs and prices will creep up until the electorate revolts. It won’t matter that the electorate was responsible for any policy paradox.
That government will be voted out and a rational alternative will build a new coal station (and other “evil” infrastructure), giving a well-deserved bird to the ETS and maddened greenies.
Then, at some point, they’ll overreach their useful life and again be replaced by the sort of do-nothing, displease no-one governments we have now. And so the cycle continues.
Craig,
It is a shame that partisan politics forces you to such cynicism about the Rudd government, just because it is the wrong flavour.
It seems to have forced you into defending coal, whose only advantage so far is that it is cheap and abundant, even when, as in this Illinois example, it is really expensive.
As far as I know, the cancer rates in areas near coal-fired power plants (such as the Latrobe valley) are scarily high, due to particulate emissions. Is this something any of us should be defending?
Why not tell us what you really would like Australia’s power infrastructure to look like, and perhaps explain strategies for mitigating their downsides, if any?
As Australia’s demand increases [even after all the efficiency and conservation programmes are fully implemented], we will have to build something. And some of that will have to be baseload power.
Robert you’ve shown recently why nuclear is out [at least in the short term]. So that leaves three choices: dirty / cheap coal, semi-clean coal that is way expensive and falls far short of Garnaut’s target capture levels, or gas, with emissions in the neighbourhood of the semi-clean coal projects in the USA. This brings us back to essentially the same argument used for/against nuclear. Is Australia serious about reducing Australia’s emissions?
The evidence points to ‘no’.
In the end, I predict state / federal governments will opt for gas combined with option ‘D’; continue to weasel around genuine cuts by dumping Australian dollars overseas to build state of the art no/low carbon generation facilities in China, India and other developing countries.
Spot on, Ed.
Add to that, the time frame for renewing Australia’s aging coal power stations is going to take up a big slice of the time from now to 2020, there is zero time for any new technology for taking up base load between then and now.
That is, even if the clean coal technology looks like it might come good, it is not going to be available in the time frame needed for renewing existing facilities.
Given that, the realistic choices are going to be:
Reduce consumption (HA!)
Nuclear
Dirty Coal
Gas
Stick fingers in ears and go ‘lalalalalala’.
Of these, probably Gas is going to be the most likely, if it can get piped to the facilities in time.
If the time and cost of piping the gas is not there (Think Environmental Impacts covering half the continent folks) then the options for base load are:
Reduce consumption. Riiiiight. (Power utilities have been handing out ‘how to save power’ tips for the past 25+ years).
Nuclear.
Dirty coal.
Bury head in Sand and pretend that any other technology for base load will come in, be tested, environmentally approved, and constructed before 2020. Then feign outrage when emissions targets are not met.
Robert, I am going to keep saying, as I did on this post too:
There is no such thing as “clean coal”. Nor “semi clean coal”. It is PR spin.
Lower emissions coal maybe, but certainly not clean. The theoretical capturing of 100% of coal emissions would almost certainly be more costly than current renewable energy options.
“Clean” coal is a red herring (and a dirty lie) buying time for our very own factories of death – coal fired power stations.
Our government’s blind support for this nonsense is an indication of their total capture by industry (coal mining, exports, energy retailers, power generators etc.)
Reducing electricity consumption can be done without any reduction in services. For example the new LED lighting systems that are coming down the track improve lighting efficiency to better than Compact Fluorescent levels without the mercury and at absurdly trivial cost and with a 20 year lifetimes.
New motor technologies that double present efficiencies are already being used, huge efficiency improvements are happening across the board in all applications of electricity.
The real problems lie with the postmodern content free managers who run the power utilities – with some outstanding exceptions.
For example; who were the brain dead retards at Energex who dreamt up the scheme to allow consumers to buy air conditioners with no deposit and to pay them off on their bill -without any conditions on the efficiency rating of the apparatus? Probably the same group who failed to keep the network alive in the present mild rain conditions.
Huggy
Wave energy!
HB: Ummm, doesn’t energex make money by selling electrickery, the more it sells, the more money it makes? What’s surprising about them trying hard to get as many cheap and eco-nasty powermunching appliances as possible running out there in their customers premises as long as possible? GE’s probably got their urging finger in the pie as well, they’re everywhere else where people have bills to pay.
While you’re here, in case the Dictatorship hadn’t been formally recognised at the time, and you weren’t invited to COAG, you might be interested in one of their documents, a High Temperature Solar Thermal Technology Roadmap . The .doc properties show it was last saved by the Dept of Prime Minister and Cabinet, so if he’s on to it, so surely should be the head of the alternative to government, the HuggyBunny Dictatorship. Think of it as part of your Red Book, the Briefing to the Incoming Government.
That is a very solid report there, Danny. Even if it was completely wrong one would still take it seriously because there is so much of it. A quick glance seems to suggest that it is short in the distributed power area. It would be good to know if anyone important had actually read it. Apart from you, that is. I remember my brother who spent years writing management reviews for a particular government department pointing to his book shelf heavily laden with reports and saying that “less than 10 percent of those reports have ever been read”.
Huggybunny: not that I dispute the potential of energy efficiency (though I would, again, mention Jevons), but I would dispute your specific claim about motors.
Electric motors are typically better than 90% efficient at turning electricity into motion already, so there’s no doubling to be had there. As for the internal combustion engine, there is room for some decent improvements, but we’re talking a few percentage points extra thermal efficiency, not doubling.
BilB
And ain’t that a double tragedy, first the implication that whoever’s making decsions is making them on the basis of something other than the expert advice offered by your bro. and his ilk ( eg “We’ve gotta put a dam somewhere, let’s put it in an electorate we’ll never win”), and second, how much time talent and money is wasted in the futile process of producing thousands of megadocuments that only a few boffins in the future, if there is one, might read when they try and work out who and what and why went wrong.
We know that document at least made it into PM&C, have a look at Properties, Statistics of the HTSolar_thermal_roadmap.doc you saved. I agree it’s pretty comprehensive, but the dead hand of Howard is on it: when it was commissioned, in 2006,
It was significantly nobbled: we can’t have anyone making the case for using the abundant heat of the sun to do anythiing as fancy as y’know boiling water into steam, and allowing it to condense into fresh water, or devising and developing solar air-conditioning, can we?
Here’s a series of documents somewhat deceptively describing, so as to make it appear semi-and-a-bit clean, a proposed new open cut coal mine, by a UTAH company. It’s a mere 30 ks from the the water-starved provincial city of Toowoomba, and in a perpetually Nats seat, so the inhabitants don’t matter to the government. Watch carefully for the shell game where the new wonder fuel is shown to be Greenhouse gas benign : until it’s used that is. See the rabbit get pulled out of the hat when they show they’ll be providing a much-needed service by producing enormous amounts of pure CO2 for the benefit of the sequestration and oil recovery industries. Etc.
Felton Clean Coal Project my arse.
Electric motors:
Oh Robert, the big motors > 60 hp routinely get > 90% efficiency. But the little split phase motor that powers your ‘fridge your mixer and all the accoutrements that every middle class lad really needs will have an efficiency of 40% if you are lucky. Also the power factor of motors is often poor – this leads to losses in the distribution network – not the motor per-se. Also It is not just power efficiency that is important it is energy efficiency – this is a function of the implementation as well as just motor design. For example sizing the motor for the load is critically important and the introduction of variable speed drives can improve the task efficiency by a factor as high as 10. I have spent the last 20 years working on domestic and industrial energy saving systems, the unrealised potential is vast but we make progresss little by little. It is a hard sell but industry tends to be responsive when savings can be demonstrated. El;ectricity is such low cost to the ordinary consumer that there is little incentive to invest in more efficient stuff. Much of the push for increased efficiency is actually coming from a few enlightened power utilities..
I said nothing about internal combustion engines but since you raise the matter – it’s also an implementation issue. Most cars idling at the lights have a thermal efficiency in the engine of minus percent %, at low speeds and while decelerating it is <20%. The only time an internal combustion engine gets even 40% is at an optimally matched load – hence hybrids.
About Energex.
The cost of network reinforcement and refurbishment to carry the peak loads from air conditioners has conmpletely wiped out the profit that Energex made by selling air cons and supplying the electricity. Like I said they suffer from the pomo retard syndrome.
Huggy
Interesting, huggy. I didn’t realize that many small AC motors are so inefficient!
How much does a higher-efficiency motor add to the cost of the unit?
Further question: as I understand it, losses caused by power factors aren’t borne by the consumer, they’re borne further up the chain.
Is there scope for tighter regulations for grid-connected equipment to reduce these losses?
Robert, losses in the network are lumped into a magic number called the – DLF Distribution Loss Factor – and guess who pays for them – we do via the tax system,
thus there is no incentive for the network providers to anything but keep the DLF low enough to not attract attention.
Transmission losses (not distribution) are factored into the cost that the consumer pays – in a roundabout way.
In Europe and here there are big efforts to introduce standards for power factor for computer power supplies and all sorts of stuff. Those compact flouro lamps not only have mercury but the cheapies have very poor power factor and should not be sold in OZ, they are banned in Europe.
Motors:
Most appliance motors (blenders etc)are really cheap and inefficient. Low cost electronically driven alternatives exist but they are just slow to get into the system due to inertia and incumbent opposition. Standards and regulations would fix all this at an actual lower cost. Most of the crap stuff comes from China I have to say, but hey they would not make it if we stopped the sale of thus rubbbish.
Huggy
On the other hand, worrying about a blender motor, with a duty cycle of < 0.1%, is a complete waste of effort.
Fridges are where the big-ticket savings could be found. They’re always on, and often in hot-box rooms. Offering bounties on ancient models might be a good way of reducing power demand, although that’s a great way of sending money overseas.
Craig Mc
Yep the duty cycle is low but I was observing that virtually no attention is paid to energy efficiency across the board – motors in particular. Swimming pool pumps are a good example most of the older models are so noisy that they must be run during on peak hours; they are big consumers of energy and typically run for >4 hours/day at 1-2 hp. They introduce a peak load of 400MW in Queensland. Point is that pool pumps are available that use about 20% of the energy to do the same job – by doing it smarter and they are silent. They cost more but as there are no standards for actual pool energy management the old clunkers are installed.
Refrigerators and freezers have high duty cycles but again there is a lot of room for energy reduction in these. Better insulation (even prismatic Dewar panels would come down in cost if mandated) and relocation of the condenser outside the kitchen and the conversion to variable speed unity power factor drives would at least halve the energy consumption.
Interestingly; solar hot water should be mandated for family use – where the consumption is high, it is a total waste of money for two old farts (for example) who shower infrequently – all that expensive energy leaks out through the tank insulation. Better to improve the insulation n the tank or even to instal “on demand” systems.
To sum it all up, I estimate that energy consumption in the average home could be reduced to <33% of present – with no lessening of living standards. With a real effort probably 20%.
No need to be hippies freezing our arses off while we cook our mung beans over a fire made from books stolen from the local lending library. ( I did enough of that in the 60′s).
I could write a number of books on the losses caused by poor network and consumer power factors sufficient to say that this alone accounts for a complete power station on the East Coast of OZ.
Huggy
Huggybunny: the swimming pool motor example does surprise me.
At 14 cents a kilowatt-hour, an 80% cost saving adds up pretty quickly.
Robert, it not being my business to promote products, I can tell you that one swimming pool pump manufacturer claims a running cost reduction of 90%. This would equate roughly to a 20% reduction in energy consumption if we factor in off peak consumption. I have no reason to doubt the manufacturers figures. These pumps use a permanent magnet motor and an electronic power converter, the motor efficiency is probably in the high 90% , they also have a very efficient pump design and run a variable speed profile over the mixing cycle.
I think the off peak rate in Queensland is about 9 cents kWh
The whole point here is that most of the stuff we use today was invented over 100 years ago and is still in use today (3% efficient light globes are a good example).
Split phase and “universal” motors are others.
The downside of the pool pump cited is that it uses rare earth magnets “the word “rare” is of concern but there is an alternative – the modern switched reluctance motor (invented in the 19th century BTW) it uses only iron and copper – plus some low cost electronics.
Huggy
Sorry Robert I meant 80% reduction not 20% in the pool pump.
Huggy
Robert; pool pumps (Some prick is trying to take over here).
“******** Pump is the ?rst pump
to deliver the exact amount of water needed to perform
different tasks. It is adaptable to any pool, spa or water
feature application. With its onboard computer, your pool
professional simply programs the rate of ? ow to suit the
application. It can be programmed to manage multiple
functions. And, it automatically sets itself and adjusts as
needed since it is constantly monitoring water ? ow and
electrical current.
An **********: Standard pool pumps can
consume as much energy as all other home appliances
combined — often costing more than $1,000 per year!
*********** pumps can
typically cut energy use by 30% to 90%, generally
saving $324 to $1,356 in utility costs annually — more
where rates are higher than average.*
*Savings based on comparison pump running between 3.6
and 12 hours per day at the national average of 15¢/kilowatt
hour in a 20,000 litre pool.”
The 30% bit is Lawyer speak – actual tests show savings of 80%+.
Huggy
Huggy, how much does that pump cost and what do its competitors cost?
GregM:
Dunno how much it costs but at $1000:00 pa you would get your money back in a few years tops.
Tuesday I will find out if you like.
I’d take those pool pump figures with a grain of salt. Some of it just doesn’t add up. Nobody runs a pump for 12 hours per day in a 20,000 litre pool unless their pump is way undersized. Our 36,000 litre pool has the pump going about 6 hours per day in summer and about 6 hours per month in winter. It is a 1.5Kw unit so about a dollar per day in summer.
The blurb posted also is just marketing speak for a sensor and computer to tell when the water is ‘clean’. Unfortunately a bit of wind (dumps dust and junk in pool) and other highly variable factors – including the number of people swimming – make this all a unlikely to work quite as advertised. I have had a pool long enough to see lots of innovations that just don’t cut it. I’m not saying there can’t be improvements, but 90% is highly unlikely. Judging by most other pool stuff it will also cost a small fortune.
Huggy, I’d be grateful if you would. Thanks. The economics of it interests me. As you point out a lot of the technology we use is pretty ancient and inefficient.
Peter forget price- as I have said electricity is way underpriced. You are using 9 kWh/day in summer to pump your pool; this is close to the total daily energy used in an energy efficient home for all purposes. Well done.
Huggy
Huggy said:
I must have a really inefficient home then – the pool electricity usage is only 1/5 the total ( I know because I can claim a tax deduction for it ).
I hope you aren’t trying to make us pool owners feel guilty. A pool is one of the great joys of suburban living.
Thanks!
Peter;
Guilt; no the Huggy dictatorship does not do guilt.
Monster plasma screens, really crappy air conditioners, totally shit house design with black tile roofs, no eaves and brick veneer, monster pools, monster pool pumps, Doric columns out the front (Aesthetic crime). The HD will simply send in monster bulldozers or charge you about 90 cents per kWh either way you will submit. However the Doric columns will have to go.
Huggy
There is no phrase more idiotic on this fair planet then “clean coal”. It is proof that stupid white people are crying out for religious consolation, and are not the least bit interested in sustainability. “Clean Coal” even beats “bottled water” as a testimony to the stupidity of white people and to the proposition that stupidity is now upwardly-mobile in Western Civilisation.
Mani
Yep “Clean coal” is an oxymoron up there with “honest politician”.
It is all about metaphysic more than physics.
I share your obvious frustration with the situation. It’s not as if there are no non nuclear methods for the generation of virtually unlimited amounts of energy. One of the problems is that otherwise intelligent academics are proposing equally stupid nuclear generation schemes in a desperate attempt to side-track the issue.
The bullet needs to be bitten – to coin a phrase.
A combination of energy efficiency programs and the exploitation of known renewable resources will easily solve the problem of greenhouse gas emissions as far as electricity generation goes.
Then we start on electric vehicles and then we clean up industrial processes. Trouble is we have these meddlesome academics who want to derail the program as was evidenced on another thread.
Huggy