Saturday, May 05, 2012

Stolen thought of the day, plus riffs


Stolen thought:  if fracking is such a boon to the economy by cratering the cost of power, why can't we use a fraction of that economic benefit to sequester the resulting carbon?

Riff 1:  yeah! You tell 'em!

Riff 2:  preventing methane leaks in production and transmission might be just as important as sequestering.

Riff 3:  many people view sequestering carbon from coal to be economically achievable, maybe adding 20-40% to the price.  Let's generously assume the cost figure is true.  If it was economically achievable with coal, then that should indicate even more that it's economically achievable with natural gas because of the lower baseline.

Riff 4:  when coal was the cheapest baseline power then the argument that sequestration for coal was economically viable had the strongest claim.  Now that natural gas is cheaper it actually gets harder to argue for coal carbon sequestration.  Still justified, but harder.  Requiring gas to sequester just like coal could attract support from coal interests.

Riff 5:  maybe offsets in lieu of sequestration could be done.  Carefully.


(Update:  edited a stupid typo in first sentence, from "can" to "can't".)