The world’s first clean coal power station (discussed earlier here on LP) has been operating for a little while now. It’s working fine – except for one little problem. All the CO2 is still ending up in the atmosphere. As the Guardian reports, they can’t get a permit to use the proposed storage site because of local protests.
Mind you, it seems that wind farms are also suffering persistent NIMBY problems in the UK.
If climate change is an emergency – and it’s pretty clear that it is – haven’t we reached the point where the concerns of local communities are sometimes going to have to come second to the pressing need to find energy sources that don’t fry the planet?
NUMBY, had me thinking what you meant, and when I worked it out there was a laugh that caused people in the office to stare! hehe
(BTW – small typo – you have I’st instead of It’s)
Man, people need to get over this bollocks ESPECIALLY in regards to wind farms. Honestly, you would think they were psychedelic blimps spewing fumes, smoke and loud noise, instead of white, almost totally silent spinners. I really don’t see the big deal about windfarms.
That Liberal dude down near mornington peninsula got in on his promise to halt the windfarming there. Douchebags.
Worse than Hitler?
patrickg – the noise angle seems to be one issue. I don’t know the details, but perhaps one approach would be to not only compensate the owner of the land that they put the windfarms on but also those who have houses close by. There’d still be some who want to live in areas without giant man made structures though (and they are big!).
They are big Chris, but the ones I’ve seen are truly not that noisy. I think that Guardian article you linked to Robert is interesting, a range of legit concerns (peat destruction etc), and bollocks, e.g
” it would significantly affect a fifth of the main island’s desolate interior and industrialise the landscape.”
“It is both cheaper and less destructive to reduce energy need and waste, rather than cover the wild landscapes that define Scotland and its people with wind turbines.”
Those landscapes are only like that because you cut down _all_ the trees centuries ago. They’re about as ‘natural’ as Nicole Kidman’s forehead (though equally desolate. heh).
Furthermore as demonstrated Chris, no one is living near these windmills, and it’s the same with the ones at Sandy Point, they’re a good km away from the nearest habitation, and not near any large numbers.
I think people need to ask what’s more important – saving the planet, or saving a few acres which will be mostly unchanged, and which he have plenty more of? For me the answer is clear, back yard or no. It’s not like these are going up in true wilderness areas, or endangered biohabits.
Pretty stupid, the tech COULD be a game changer for AGW tech. Id suggest an application of cash would quieten the NUMBYs much cheaper than the legal process which will nor (undoubtedly) take place…
Heh – I like it, Robert. Clearly a distant cousin of the ‘nupty’.
While there is undoubtedly merit to opposing development in many circumstances, NIMBYism seems to be irrational more often than not. The list of good environmental policies stymied by NIMBYs was already long enough before the anti windfarm mob started up, let alone NUMBYism. I recall the imbroglio over the high temperature incinerator proposal from twenty-odd years ago, the result of which was that we still have sheds full of intractable toxic chemical waste in dotted all over the country, some of which occasionally explode. Thanks, NIMBYs.
NUMBY! Awesome term. In my area there are wind farms, a gas plant (though our town doesn’t have mains gas!) and CO2 sequestration – it can be done!
Another issue with windfarms is flickering light, which is very unpleasant, but limited in area. Where windfarms are away from homes, this isn’t an issue, but one of the windfarms would have been putting three farmhouses in the flickering shadow for at least 2-3 hours a day, depending on the time of year. That one didn’t go ahead, but others did. Every time a windfarm is proposed in this area, it goes far too close to houses, and then gets reduced in size and built. I would think this is a deliberate negotiating ploy, but it does create great hostility towards windfarms in general. It would seem wiser to keep the windmills away from homes in the first place.
I wish I could claim it as my own, but it’s actually from the Guardian article!
I’m disappointed.
I thought this post would be about selfish, anti-development New Zealanders.
We’re in the middle of a fairly concerted campaign from NIMBYs around Ballarat at the moment about proposed wind farms. There are complaints about the noise causing sickness, danger to bird life, etc.
This page is fairly representive – not terribly informed but passionate as hell.
But when you’re dealing with people in your own community you have to have other arguments besides ‘its for the planet’ – people can conveniently ignore that rather abstract aspect of the equation when they need to.
The issue round here at the moment is loss of manufacturing jobs which has cut a fair swathe through the city’s industrial employment sector. The potential for employment flow on, both from wind farm construction and component/tower manufacture are the kind of arguments that make sense in small-ish communities like this.
Think global, argue local.
While I would certainly grant your general proposition — the health of the biosphere does take priority over local amenity, when these are mutually exclusive, I would agree with blocking the CC&S storage points, mainly because these offer no viable solution to the problem of climate change. They are the equivalent of sweeping the stuff under the rug — and that at great expense and delay.
By all means though — stick a 5MW wind turbine in my backyard if the CF is high enough to justify it.
More sensibly though, a set off of between 250-400m from residences seems reasonable. The footprint of these is a fraction of that of coal and of course, unlike coal, these are non-emitting of toxics.
Governments have always over-ridden locals.
NUMBY and NIMBY are new names, but the phenomenon is scarcely new. Look at the submerged farmland under Snowy Mountain Scheme dams, houses removed for a new freeway (and noise barriers for the houses not removed), protests over the North-South pipeline going through farms north of Melbourne, etc. And the wind farm (claimed detriments) above.
Some factors, I think, are the greater willingness of local people to form ad hoc protest groups, the coverage these receive in the meeja, the requirements for Environmental Impact Statements, and the laziness and superficiality of journalists. Oh, and democratic sentiment.
That’ll be enough to be going on with.
Better under the rug than in the middle of the dinner party.
Robert @14
Not if there’s a prospect of it not staying under the rug for the whole of the party, and if sweeping it under the rug won’t be cdomplete until the party has been going for quite some time and if the only way it can be done involves the guests shelling out for someone to do the work, when the host could have avoided making the mess in the first place.
When there is a complete national energy plan developed, then national interest can be talked about. Until then claiming national interest for higgledy piggledy commercial interest’s developments is a non starter. Who would allow someone like Triguboff, or someone like
http://www.smh.com.au/national/digging-dirt-with-a-sledgehammer-20090729-e1lj.html?skin=text-only
to claim national interest (for profit) over that of their family’s and their community’s well being.
Then there is CCS. No way in the world is this going to be experimented with on land, where a leak could spell overnight disaster for entire communities, if I have anything to do with it. If they want to experiment with Liquid CO2 storage then they will have to do it off shore where the leaks will be visible and not risk CO2 innundation of valley communities. They should have thought this through before they started. It just demonstrates how little thorough research has been engaged in by the proponents of this experiment.
A little bit of reading to learn of the risks associated with accumulations of CO2.
http://www.gi.alaska.edu/ScienceForum/ASF10/1094.html
CCS intends to store astronomical amounts of CO2 under ground at very high pressure. Liquid CO2 can work hydraulically to seperated rock layers as volumes of the liquids increase. This hydraulic pressure has the potential to find or create fractures in rock beds. Such a leak under the wrong circumstances can lead to an event such as the Lake Nyros event. The worst case is a large leak that can continue for an extended period of years leaving large valley structures uninhabitable for humans and all animals.
BiulB@17
and of course return to the atmosphere CO2 that people expected would be sequestered and paid for on that basis.
For the record, Laye Nyos was worse — instant death.
Sounds like those that believe in AGW need to do a little more convincing out there.
Surely nobody reading this would think that yer average nimb-numb had even heard the planet was warming, let alone believe there was any cause for concern.
Nice to see the Greenies getting abit of their own served back up.
Look up Ted Kennedy and Nantucket sound and proposed wind farms – now that’s funny.
I’ve had to sleep in wind farms in Hawaii – bloody noisy and very irritating.
And they are ugly.
Right on Razor. Those awkward rotating arms are seriously ugly and threatening. The problem is that the design is left to us engineers and at times we get carried away with efficiency and cost cutting. The good news is that kite power may be better from an efficincy, reliability and appearance viewpoint.
Perhaps we need ideas on windpower asthetics – Those windmills on the skyline of Santorini look tremendous but those windmills on the hills opposite Kangaroo Island look seriously ugly. Perhaps vertical windmills would be a better idea even if there is an efficiency cost.
John, unfortunately at the moment kite power is only slightly better than 4th gen fission – there are test sites and some proposed full scale tests, but no actual plants. I think they could work, but whether they’ll be quieter than current windmills is not yet established – there’s lots of wires starting at ground level, and I can only hope that birds, planes and superheros fly around them rather than through them. That said, I’d like them to succeed.
I quite like the look of the turbines across from Kangaroo Island,[Starfish Hill?], I can see them from one of the sites I work on. I think they’re quite elegant.
I don’t really buy the “personally I find wind turbines quite elegant” schtick myself.
Whack them in a landscape otherwise unspoiled by human activity and they’re an ugly, impossible-to-ignore blot.
and you need base load constantly running in back up – scam.
Elegant is not strong enough – ‘magnificent’ is the term I’d use. The ones at Esperance in WA are in an unspoiled setting, and they look pretty fine to me.
The intermittency is undoubtedly a drawback, but constantly running baseload isn’t necessarily required – throttleable gas fired generators and load leveling ultracapacitors can do the job. In the long run, smart grids with multiple generators, including throttleable ones like geothermal, coupled with flow battery-style storage, should make baseload obsolete.
In the short term, though, the sheer preponderance of coal fired generators in operation right now suggests to me that a serious attempt at making CCS work is warranted. I don’t know about the eastern seaboard, but in WA, at least, most of the plausible sequestration sites are offshore, which mitigates leakage risks somewhat, although not entirely, obviously.
Tim M@26
Firstly and most obviously, storage sites for liquid or other CO2 are by definition, a very finite resource. Even if they never leak a molecule of CO2, once their capacity is exhausted it is exhausted for all time. It doesn’t even matter if there are indeed a lot of these sites because the logistical cost of either moving plants to take advantage of them or building huge pipes to pump over long distances imposes its own cost-benefit logic. And each one has to be properly surveyed, not just for its physical integrity but for the technical feasibility of doing the work of running the pipes to them. Since the current output of CO2 from coal plants is going to keep increasing we would be locked into a program of persistent searches for new places to sequester liquid CO2 on a shortening timeline. Forget “peak oil”. What about “peak CO2 sinkhole”? And unless there are good answers to these questions, who in their right mind is going to invest in retorfitting or building CC&S plant at commercial scale?
The CC&S proposal is madness — essentially an expensive feint to pacify those who are prattling on about the value of Australia’s coal to the economy.
Fran, those are all real technical and economic issues associated with CCS, and all would need to be addressed for any given proposal (in the same manner as similar issues must be addressed for oil and gas proposals). I don’t think anyone, apart from spruikers at the Australian Coal Association and like organisations, would suggest that CCS is some kind of magic bullet or that introducing it would somehow enable an increase in coal consumption to continue. However, it may have the potential to form part of the suite of technologies required to bring down emissions, and that warrants investigation.
Tim M@28
That’s precisely what they are suggesting in relation, for example, to China.
Fran, I agree that is what the spruikers are suggesting, which is why I excluded them from my point. The expansion of coal power in China (not to mention India) is a huge problem, in environmental terms, and given its importance to their economic development it’s an understatement to say that it’s not going to be easy to persuade them to stop.
Given the interests lined up behind CCS, I tend to agree with the view (can’t remember who said it, but I think it was James Hansen) that the only way to deal with the CCS debate is to give it a serious try by building some operational systems, within a short timeframe (no more than 5 years). If the technology does prove viable, the coal power industry will no longer be able to claim that it should be allowed to continue releasing its emissions. If the technology doesn’t work, whether for economic or technical reasons or both, the debate will be over and the need for the complete phaseout of coal will become unarguable.
I also agree with James Hansen’s point that there clearly needs to be an immediate moratorium on the construction of new coal fired power stations in the West.
I would rather live next to a high level nuclear waste dump than near a CO2 sinkhole.
Tim@30
The argument that CC&S is essential to deal with Chinese emissions is near universal amongst proponents of the tecnhology. It’s not merely the srpuikers from the ACA.
I don’t agree with a trial. The fact is that the coal industry had from 1991 to start doing something about this, but instead of doing it they bet on blocking emissions charges and kept building new capacity. They can’t ask for an extension now. Let them do it on their own dime if they think it’s worthwhile — that would ensure that they didn’t farnarkle about or use it as some sort of new diversion. And yes — no new coal fired capacity should be allowed until a suitable emissions trading scheme is in place and bedded down.
No disagreement that the coal industry has been playing a spoiler role in climate policy Fran. The amount of featherbedding they’re getting from the Federal Government is, frankly, disgusting. I wouldn’t be too put out if Mar’n Ferguson was knocked over by a Green at the next federal election. Although given his margin, that’s unlikely.
Tim M@33
One can dream though …
I’m in complete agreement, Jacques.
You might die of cancer, but at least you won’t be smothered when the damn thing leaks. Which it will.
David Irving@35
And given reasonable set offs, your chance of getting cancer from exposure before you died of something else would be zero.
Well, Fran, I’m nearly 60, so (given the amount I drink and the ages at death of my parents) I’m counting on a maximum of another 20 years. Cancer’d probably be better than liver failure anyway …
David Irving@37
Cancer comes in so many forms, nearly all of them utterly disastrous while you’re trying to evade death, that I couldn’t endorse that. Liver failure is a pretty quick death. Liver cancer on the other hand …
Jacques’ overall point was right. Unless you actually ingest the stuff, most of the waste is not going to affect you on any meaningful timeline. Waste with long half-lives isn’t able to do you harm in a hurry and waste with short half lives doesn’t stay that way for long. It’s the waste with half lives of about 20 years that is the problem.
I would recommend hanging out at or near a toxic nuclear waste dump, any more than I’d recommend making smoke filled rooms a place to hang out. But as Lake Nyos showed, living near a sudden release of CO2 (near being within a few miles) is to take on a lethal risk with no notice.
Further to NIMBY and NUMBY, can I add Morton’s Fork? According to Wikipedia, it is a choice between two equally unpleasant alternatives. I reckon the coal and nuclear lobby groups would have us skewered on a Morton’s Fork.
Totally agree with Fran Barlow that geosequestration, or CCS (carbon capture and storage) in its latest marketing rebranding, is a smokescreen. I had quite a bit to do with enhanced oil recovery, in a previous reincarnation, including detailed discussions and reviews of CO2 injection for improving oil recovery – it is damn expensive, even with the benefit of extra oil recovery (which is why it is rarely used). They won’t have any upside oil sales for most of the geosequestration/CCS sites, so it will be purely sunk costs, so to say.
I also had quite a bit to do with design of well plug and abandonment techniques. The unfortunate fact is that most plugged wells leak, regardless of the plugging material – to put it simply: concrete forms small cracks, resins pull away from the rockface, rubberised compounds break down, the ground moves and fractures open up, etc. This is not much of a problem for depleted oil wells, or even gas wells, as you are talking about residual fluids and low pressures and the microcracks and narrow annular spaces give a relatively low permeability to flow. It is also not much of a problem, because oil companies are not vigorously monitoring their abandonned wells (more interested in the producing ones) – what you don’t measure, you don’t notice. However, the guys arguing for geosequestration/CCS are talking about pumping gas in under pressure and holding it there for eternity, presumably.
Where are the studies showing that they have some new previously undiscovered method of plugging off wells full of high pressure gas? Where is the economic modelling for monitoring these wells into eternity, and re-entering the wells (at great expense) to reseal them when the seal fails? The big oil companies have done the modelling. They do their level best to avoid the plug-and-abandonment phase of old oilfields, selling them off to penny-dreadfuls who extract a few extra barrels then go leg-up. So who is keeping an eye on the old plugged wells, e.g. in the North Sea and other mature oilfields offshore? Will they tell you that the plugging process works 100%? What do you reckon?
Sorry, got on my hobby-horse there.
Actually, I wanted to make a positive suggestion. Has the Rudd government looked at using a combination of natural gas CCGT (combined cycle gas turbine) and solar arrays. Gas turbines have high turndown ratios, so would be synergistic with solar power, and CCGT has almost double the thermal efficiency of old coal-fired power stations. Gas turbines and solar arrays are also more modularisable than coal-fired or nuclear power stations.
Instead of a winner-takes-all argument over the alternatives, coal versus nuclear versus renewables, why not combine the best aspects of two different technologies, at least as a bridging step to get us to the 80/20 solution for 2050?
Thanks for the details there, Elise. I am confident that the Rud government have not looked at anything other than coal and (sneakily) nuclear.
What you have described there is exactly what the Hybride Solar Thermal system involves. In the hybride system baseload power is achieved by storing daytime energy (heat) in massive concrete blocks, then extracting that heat during non solar hours. To date that process is yielding up to and over 8 hours of operation per day. Beyond that during extended nonsolar periods gas is used to fire the boilers for the turbines. As the CSP system runs at 400 degC this is relatively efficient and can be improved with a well matched gas turbine combination. The experience that has been reported to me is that 13% of the power comes from gas in a complete baseload supply delivered over extended periods.
If this system is enhanced with geothermal power to aid during the non solar periods then you have a very stable supply structure. Gas turbines can be used for load balancing and are well suited to help smooth out flash power generated by wind farms in heavy blows.
Government had better hurry up and get off the energy fence, or they will be pushed off by an increasingly aware public.
The Fed Gov should go cap in hand to Ausra corp and say ‘please come home’.
Thanks BilB. I’m sure that some configuration along these lines would significantly reduce Australia’s carbon footprint. It is about time it was implemented, as the technology is already available. Rudd could then really claim to have achieved a measurable difference, not just symbolism.
The old coal-fired power stations have a thermal efficiency of about 40% I believe, and CCGT has efficiencies up to 75%, to say nothing of reduced particulates and reduced NOx and SOx from burning natural gas. This would give a MASSIVE reduction in emissions already. Then if say, conservatively 6 hours/day was met by solar (& perhaps wind), rather than carbon-based energy, you would have a further significant reduction of total emissions.
I can imagine a range of reasons the Rudd government is handing $billions of our tax money to the coal companies, rather than walking his talk about the environment.
The first and most obvious is that almost all pollies are technologically-challenged. They could easily have the wool pulled over their eyes with bull about “clean coal” and geosequestration/CCT.
Another related reason is that big money and multinationals are behind coal and nuclear. These types of power-stations are essentially large monopoly systems. By contrast, gas turbines and solar arrays are modularisable, decentralisable, and less amenable to milking for “monopoly rents” (ask Trujillo how that works…). Obviously these guys (coal and nuclear) are going to argue VIGOROUSLY for their power system, and AGAINST anything which competes. They have the money to buy bright technical people, to argue their cause. The technologically-challenged ones would have no show against a barrage of forceful arguments.
Another possible reason, I reckon, is politics and conmanship. For example, imagine that Bush wanted to claim that they were leading the world in “gun control”. Yeah, I know it’s a stretch, but it’s just a thought experiment. Now, say the US is the biggest manufacturer and exporter of guns. So, he marches off to the equivalent of Kyoto/Copenhagen to argue that they are a world leader in gun control. He would look like a hypocrite, right? Everyone would say he wasn’t leading any damn thing at all – he was actually increasing the number of guns, by being a major supplier.
So, what to do? Bush could claim that the US is working on a special, safe, non-killing kind of gun for the future. And back it up with an impressive pile of money – MUCH less than they would make from selling the guns, of course – but nonetheless a suitably impressive pile, and a new research institution to match. Then Bush could do a Madoff or FirePower style of confidence trick, where you get people to imagine that such a possibility (special, safe, non-killing guns) exists, and get them to buy into it heavily. Having invested, they are then psychologically hooked into his fantasy. Would people fall for it? Did they fall for Madoff’s Ponzi scheme and FirePower’s bull story about engine pills? Sheesh…
How does this relate to Rudd? Well, he wants to get global recognition for being a leader in climate change. Australia is THE biggest user of coal-fired power, and THE biggest exporter of coal. Oh, bugger. Now starts the conmanship…
How long does he think he can get away with it, before he gets found out? How long did Madoff think he could get away with pulling the wool over people’s eyes? As long as Rudd and the coal companies all sing from the same songsheet, and as long as they can get others to buy in, thus psychologically committing…
We could hope that Rudd is only technologically-challenged, but I do strongly speculate he may be playing the conman also.
Tim (41): ‘The Fed Gov should go cap in hand to Ausra corp and say please come home’
From my reading, Ausra’s business model has moved to just being plant supplier to power generators, they aren’t up for running the stations, and neither should they be.
So it’s not the Fed Gov that should go cap in hand, ( unless the Fed Gov is going into the power supply business, which doesn’t have to be out of the question, given state gov’ts have been doing it for yonks) but power companies, and not cap in hand ( unless you’re being punny, as in cap and trade) but Green Power Company prospectus/ payment schedule/ chequebook in hand.
I think it makes sense in lots of ways for superannuation funds to take a role here. There are precedents in that the Motor Traders Association Australia Superannuation Fund, and the Statewide Superannuation Fund, are part owners of the Loy Yang A power station: if super funds can get it up for Coal, in principle, why not solar thermal?
The gov’t is prepared to cough several thousands of dollars per household for feel good but inefficient ( in terms of watts per buck) semi-shaded suburban photovoltaic installs. How about households can put superannuation money into utility scale green power companiess (eg such as Ausra put up and turn on) and be allowed to deem the rebate (which their renewables investment should attract, akin to the way their suburban pv spend attracts a rebate) into green super power utilities?
The mandated renewable energy target means someone has to put up the productive capacity for 45 000 gigawatt-hours per year by 2020…. why not let it be ‘We The People Green Super’ that do the heavy financial lifting now to build a sustainable future, and leave the coal power generators to wallow in their badly managed debt and risk which is now maturing, and what your increased bills are going towards.
If Rudd and Gillard want to have tickets on themselves at conference, going on about a Green Corps National Service, comparing themselves to the great nation builders who built a national bank, and the snowy scheme, let’s see them do something substantial and significant, like building a national green power grid.
But it’s not likely is it, not with the major parties, that would upset some powerful industrial and union apple carts.
Elise,
“Then if say, conservatively 6 hours/day was met by solar”
“process is yielding up to and over 8 hours of operation per day ”
My sentence there was not that clear, that should have said over 8 non solar hours per day in addition to the regular solar output. In other words 10 hours of daytime output plus 8 hours of continued output into the night with the gas firing making up the balance till the parabolic solar arrays start collecting again.
CSP returns 50 megawatts per square kilometre of parabolic trough collectors. Or 20 square kilometres per gigawatt. Extra collectors are used to augment the heat storage for the night time period.
If you do the sums on it you will see that all of Australia’s electricity can be produced from CSP, geothermal and wind power with CCGT providing overpeak and backup capacity. The entire system can be installed before 2050 and funded from a simple 20% levy on retail electricity rates without any other tax burden at all. Even without global warming this would be a desireable “Nation Building” project with the objective of stretching the life of fossil fuel reserves. The period to build such an energy structure provides more than sufficient time for the coal producers to recover their investments as the coal use progressively declines.
Rudd is very much playing the con, and the victim is the Australian public. It will not end well.
Your clear vision is reassuring. Only another 10 million people to get onto the same page!
Elise, your information regarding the problems with plugging capped wells seriously needs to get out in the public domain more. It seems to me to be an absolute killer to the whole CCS idea.
Yes, thanks Elise.
Brown coal has the worst CO2 emission rate because so much of its combustion energy has to be used to dry the next heap of coal. Brown coal is approx 60-70% water. Has anyone tried drying brown coal using solar energy?
Or is that a very poor use of a renewable energy source. Just wondering.
In terms of poor uses for renewable energy, I reckon wasting the geothermal energy from the Flinders ranges project (that is gobbling up lots of renewable energy demonstration project funding ) on the Beverley and Olympic Dam Uranium mines takes the cake.
Clever huh, the old shell game, and no-one notices: diverting renewables energy funding to the uranium industry. Nice one Mar’n.
Ambi@46
Assuming you’re determined to use lignite, it’s a very good use of CSP. You can also use solar to heat water, meaning that less of the coal is used to get it up to the temperature needed to steam drive a trubine
You could also use it to make syngas for fuel via F-T
CCS is a con if we are talking about coal fired power stations. Even its supporters talk about an 80% reduction in total emissions for coal fired power. (Sorry, don’t have a link.) Wind life cycle is at least 95% lower. Might make a bit more sense if used for gas fired, since in theory, gas with CSS would be about the same as wind. May be better since my guess is that CCS for coal is only 80% because of all the greenhouse gases generated before the coal hits the furnace. Keep in mind that one m3 gas will yield approx. the same volume of CO2 after burning so the volume vacated by the gas may be sufficient for the CO2. (Needs detailed calcs that take account of deviations from ideal gas behaviour.) – None of this means that gas plus CCS will be competitive with alternatives such as solar plus heat storage.
The real benefit of CCS may come when we are trying to do something dramatic with cement, steel and other industries that generate significant CO2 and don’t have easy alternatives like wind that are going to allow dramatic cuts in emissions. For that reason, I think the development should be done now while pollies still think they are going to save the coal industry.
It is also time we started talking about cogeneration (power generation + heating) and trigeneration which does cooling as well. Works with quite small generators that are close enough to buildings or industries for the waste heat to be used for heating and cooling (Cooling can use waste heat in a similar way to the old kerosene fridges.) Means more bang per tonne CO2. Problem is that it doesn’t fit the big generator business model, would use gas instead of coal and avoids the need to boost the national grid. Would also avoid the power losses that are a feature of long power lines thus reducing the market for coal fired power even more. Its a bummer.
Thanks for the extra info BilB!
I also need to qualify my previous sentence about Australia being “the biggest user” of coal-fired power. It should read in percentage terms, i.e. about 85% of our electricity generation.
The other totally absurd thing about geosequestration/CCS is the number of power stations and the shear volumes of CO2 in the flue gases, which are going to be pumped somewhere every year, presumably for decades. If you think about the volumes involved, it just boggles the imagination how they could argue such nonsense.
I reckon there are at least 3 different aspects on which geosequestration/CCS could be challenged: economic, technical, and logistical.
The economic aspect is the enormous costs for drilling and completing (lining) wells @ $millions per well, then fine filtering to remove particulates and compressing the gas with massive high-performance compressors (you need MPa to pump the stuff into the ground).
The technical problem, as I wrote before, is how to plug the well to prevent leakage into eternity, and monitor continuously for leakage.
The most mind-boggling aspect though is the logistical problem of the quantity to be “shoved under the carpet” EVERY YEAR. Think how many power stations all over the world, and how many tonnes of coal are burnt each year to become more tonnes of CO2 to compress and hold underground…
For a wild thought experiment, imagine we decided to run a big pipeline from each coal-fired power station into outer space, to get rid of the CO2. The earth would look like a porcupine, with pipelines from all the power stations.
The coal lobby guys have the same idea in the other direction (downwards), EXCEPT they would have to keep drilling NEW HOLES every few years to find a new volume of rock to fill with CO2.
Most rock isn’t all that porous, and even our aquifers and oil reservoirs have less than about 20% porosity (i.e. hole space) most of which already has fluid in it, so you need a LARGE VOLUME of rock to take a given volume of CO2. The absurdity of the volumes required is mind-numbing. The outer space disposal concept at least only needs one pipeline, you have 100% porosity, and not least a huge empty volume to fill! (Jus’ kidding – not a serious proposal)
Even a back of the envelope calculation can show that geosequestration/CCS hasn’t a prayer of working, for the massive global CO2 output. We haven’t got enough suitable porous rock to take those volumes every year.
No wonder a CSIRO chap that was working on it some years ago looked so depressed, when I spoke to him privately about it. Pity that he didn’t have the courage to speak up, for fear of losing his research job. Presumably his boss either has no integrity in taking the money for the project, or is also desperate to keep his job. Or have they subdivided the CCS task so finely that few see the overall picture?
Honestly, how do Rudd and Wong keep a straight face when telling us that bull about international leadership on climate change? Same way Rudd and Gillard keep a straight face with the bull about “education revolution” with extra school halls, perhaps?
In view of Australia’s role in supporting and supplying coal-fired power, it is an absolute joke for Rudd to suggest that he is leading the climate change field, unless he means “leading” from near the absolute back of the pack.
Elise, it was my impression that the CCS researchers were saying that 1% leakage would be an acceptable upper limit. So at the upper limit the holding time would be 100 years, by which time the full amount of CO2 would be back in the atmosphere. I am completely unimpressed with arguments that go “the oil has been preserved under ground for millions of years, it is safe”. To that I say that “the oil deposits found are the survivors, what percentage success rate do they represent?, and how many depressurized themselves through leakage”.
Valid point BilB.
There are plenty of examples of reservoir rock with only traces of hydrocarbons, because it did not have a competant sealing or capping rock. Any petroleum geologist knows about this. Exploration programs look for porous rock with a decent layer of capping rock. We then break the seal by drilling into it…
There are also examples of surface oil leaks, which is incidentally how the early oil reservoirs were found. Shell “discovered” oil in SE Asia by noticing that the natives had bundles of twine dipped in a tarry substance from a surface leakage, which they had discovered burned well to make a torch. Guess who made all the money from those deposits? Venezuela has large amounts of tarry petroleum deposits which have leaked to the surface.
There is another aspect which needs to be considered for CCS, which is the “energy balance”. A significant proportion of the energy you produce from burning coal will then be needed for driving the process to clean, filter, separate and compress the waste gases. You need Megawatts of power even for a small oxygen separation plant. It is an inefficient way of producing power, if a lot of the power is already consumed by the process. The CCS tiger is just chasing its tail around the tree, without going anywhere.
Incidentally, all the processes involved in CCS are well-known and well-established, with decades of industrial use. Gas separation, gas filtering, gas compression, gas pumping, and injection well drilling and completion technology are all VERY well established. All that is proposed is to bolt this lot together.
We have plenty of consulting engineering companies that do this sort of work every day. This is NOT a research project, it would be an engineering design project, IFF it were viable. The “research” money is a scam and a smokescreen. It is a giant waste of taxpayers money.
So far, I don’t believe the public have been shown a decent flowsheet with mass and energy balances and preliminary costings – in other words a pre-feasibility study. Any decent engineering consulting firm could knock this out in no time. This household is willing to bet that it will show the whole thing is a con.
Taxpayers should demand to see this, FIRST, before the $billions of our tax money gets wasted on a pig that doesn’t fly.
“The “research” money is a scam and a smokescreen”
Yes, indeed. But foremost it is a stalling tactic. Standard government performance avoidance, commission a report, initiate research,,,,,etc. “we can’t start until we have all of the facts!!” This buys a clear space to get past the next election.
However, in this case, notice the language being formed up. “gearing up for ‘green jobs’”, without any definiton as to what nature they will take is pre election speak for “wait to see what good things we have coming in our next term”,leading into the big plunge into “Clean Coal”.
Underhanded is the word. Rudd is again trying to play the “green card” with a looming early election, you have to turn it over to see that it is black on the other side.
Fran Barlow @48, agree that we could use lignite to make syngas, to produce fuel via F-T. However, it is an expensive process and it generates a byproduct – piles of environmentally unfriendly and unsightly crud. NIMBY comes into it, even for the usual chemical dumping companies.
It would be much simpler and cheaper to use some of our NW Shelf gas (including Gorgon Gas) to make synthetic diesel – essentially an F-T process also, but without the lignite front-end. It would be a cleaner process than using lignite, and we have “sweet” natural gas (lucky us) which could make a clean-burning diesel, with negligible NOx and SOx.
There is an immediate large market for diesel in the Pilbara for the large mining fleets. It would be easier and cheaper to transport diesel to the east cost than LNG. Australia would have security of supply in a fuel-constrained future, and reduced crude imports would significantly improve our trade balance in a world of high crude oil prices.
On the environmental side, the new diesel cars have similar fuel efficiencies to the hybrid petrol cars (4-6 L/100km). This would be a significant improvement for our carbon footprint, compared to the current average fuel efficiency.
The purely electric cars are at best going to come onto the market in 2012, with many manufacturers promising that date. However, similar claims of 3-5 years were being made back in 2000, and every year since then. I’m taking that 2012 figure with a grain of salt, until further evidence is available. It seems like diesels and hybrids (either petrol-electric or diesel-electric) are going to be the dominant design for the next decade, barring some kind of calamity.
The Aussie car fleet probably cannot be changed out in under 15 years, without some draconian legislation from the government, or an equally diabolical fuel price rise. It is a simple case of 1 million new cars per year, and about 15 million cars in circulation.
Apparently about one third of new cars bought in Australia are diesel, so a home-grown supply would significantly improve our fuel efficiency (thus national carbon footprint), as well as our trade balance and energy security.
I really wish the government, state and federal, would make sure adequate natural gas is reserved for Australian use and not committed cheaply to the Chinese on long-term sale contracts. Rudd could also show some green leadership on the issue of developing a home-grown supply of clean synfuel from our abundant natural gas.
Elise@54
Agree about the lignite … leave the filthy stuff in the ground I say — I was just making the point. Mind you, syngas burners would still be better than running coal plants all night … One could also use other waste biomass — ground fuel, mallee or other invasive plant species that were local — even the carcasses of culled animals like kangaroos, camels and feral horses. There’s also a process called TDP which can be used to make liquid fuels.
While I accept that the best diesel vehicles are now comparable to hybrids, a serial hybrid diesel with plug-0in capabiliuty would be even better — especially if it was OK to use diesel sourced from waste biomass feedstock.
As I think I’ve made clear elsewhere though, I’d prefer to see governments investing money in infrastructure changes that can actually take cars off the road. I also would like to see money being spent assisting people to retrofit their existing vehicles with more fuel-efficient technology. Plainly, getting more out of our existing fleet is not only environmentally friendly (avoids new materials being forged) but good for local jobs since maintaining cars is something that could only be done here, and the engineering spin-offs would be considerable.
Fran
Fran Barlow @55, agree with the general concept of retrofitting existing vehicles with more fuel-efficient technology. Efficient use of resources, and good development and use of local Aussie skills.
We have been along to a couple of sustainability expos to talk to people who retrofitted their car with an electric motor and batteries, and we have downloaded articles on the topic.
We seriously considered it, but our car is a bit too old (17 years) for that cost of retrofit. The wheels might fall off before the batteries die, so to say. The retrofit cost also doesn’t make sense on a new car, when you can already get good fuel efficiency from the new small diesels. The bang-for-buck doesn’t work out. If the car had been 10 years or less, I reckon we would probably have done the retrofit, rather than buy a new car. We would have counted going electric as our BHAG – Big Hairy Audacious Goal. We like having one of them at least every other year, to keep us on our toes…! You could probably get a small diesel generator to recharge the batteries for a long trip.
A car mechanic workshop called the EV Shop (Balcatta, Perth) said they could do a retrofit for about $10,000 with lead-acid batteries, or about $20,000 with lithium ion batteries. You can probably save about 20% of the cost in each case by doing it all yourself, but you need a well-equipped garage and home workshop, and a fair bit of spare time.
Anyway, the cost of new, high performance lithium batteries is thought to be going down to about half to one-third over the next decade. As soon as that happens, electric cars will probably blow the combustion engine cars out of the water!
In the meantime, hybrids seem to be better bang-for-buck, or else small-to-medium high performance diesels. The pricing and performance figures seem to be neck-&-neck at the moment.
Agree with you that PLUG-IN hybrids would probably beat diesel, on consumption figures and carbon footprint, if they were available. Don’t know if the old car will hold out long enough for those to become available, though…!
Elise@56
You know best, of course, and in some cases, the conversion might simply not be practicable for one reason or another. People’s car needs change.
Still, as a matter of principle, I kind of like the idea of doubling the age of the existing car fleet over the next 15 years as an exercise in waste reduction: Less landfill; less new polymers to build so less petroleum waste; more local jobs;
At an aesthetic level it does have something of the culure of the fifties and sixties about it. I recall my nother insisting that my brown paper lunch bags and wax paper be reused for at least a week and so I would faithfully bring them home, whereupon she’s take out a small brush and clean the bag onto the garden and with a slightly moist cloth wipe off the wax paper and leave it to dry. This was in 1965 — way before anyone thought about the environmental benefits of recycling/reuse.
The cars of the 1990s aren’t that bad and I’ve no doubt many could be retrofitted to do a very good job for some years yet. It’s worth noting that much of the cost of buying a new car is stamp duty, on road costs, after market and depreciation, so if you’re not taking on thoie things you do have a budget to retrofit with. And of course if cars last longer, then it’s easier to cannibalise parts. We could even start engineering them here, if necessary. That’s a lot easier for a small market like ours to do than mass producing cars.
‘The old coal-fired power stations have a thermal efficiency of about 40% I believe, and CCGT has efficiencies up to 75%, to say nothing of reduced particulates and reduced NOx and SOx from burning natural gas.’ Elise
Thanks elise, this is the basic stuff about how our lifestyles are maintained public should be aware of. Am excited to read such informative discussion of things I know little about. The idea that thermal efficencies have to be very important in considering alternatives is worth getting out there to wider public.
Also sequestration ideas always looked suspicious from the start , glad someone can convincingly point to basic flaws other than the obvious one I was aware of that sequestration would require much off site transport problems. It does’nt seem add up on that basis alone. While not on power stations per se, Smil gives an indication of volume problems of co2 storage. Source Smil 2008 P.381 :’in 2005 the annual storage of the three experimental projects in oil and gas fields rated 1-2 Mt CO2, and fossil fuel generated more than 7Gt CO2. Even if the gas were stored entirely in the supercritical form(CO2 density 0.468g/ml at pressure of 71.4 MPa) putting away just 10% of its global flux would require annual handling of a volume equivalent to the world wide extraction of crude oil.’
(For a different thread sometime in future perhaps, cos present one very interesting and valuable)I was hoping some one out there who has been following these issue more closely and longer than I, can point me to reasons why Aubrey Meyer’s concept of ‘Contract and Convergence’ has disappeared from public debate. Did it have some flaw that I missed or what?
Paul C@58
AIUI the thermal efficiency of anthracite plants without cogen is about 35% and the old lignite plants about 23-27%.
Tim Macknay @45, Ambigulous @46, and Paul Chapman @58, thanks for your words of encouragement. I try to add what I have learnt to the debate, and am really glad if others read it and understand.
Paul Chapman, you make an EXCELLENT point about comparing the total volumes of CO2 to be pumped underground, with the pore space made available from global oil production. There is a limited amount of commercially viable, usable space under the carpet…
The impact of this point is probably lost on most people, when the coal lobby misuses the oil industry and injection wells to bolster their argument. I wish the Rudd government would make themselves better informed, before gambling large sums of our taxpayer money, backing losing horses.