Putting bad air down under (in the Up-Goer Five Way)

(I made this in the Up-Goer Five way, using Up-Goer Six.  Also, Up-Goer Five does let me say "Mr. William" and "Goer", so there.)


Mr. William says putting bad air way down under takes too much money, and then says why keep trying it?  One answer would be that it's not working out right now but may in the future, and given we use so many things that make bad air, it's too important to stop.

An even better reason to me is do it because it could make good party-office sense even if it doesn't make the best money sense.  It will be a lot less hard in party-office work to put the bad air business through change that will hurt it than to kill it (not to mention the fire air business down the road that we will need to do something with too).  It's the same reason for saying yes to getting power when we break apart really really small things - the only little-bad-air choice that the party-office right does like - I'll say yes to some of it as part of a big deal to act on bad-air change.

As I've done before, I see this as a lot like the office-party stuff at my water office-work.  We have the most-big city in the US that hasn't put stuff in its water to help keep the hard part of our mouth we use to eat from getting hurt because of the sweet things we eat or drink.  A poor part of the city has many problems in children with this.  While a personal story is not very good way to help reason out this party-office fight, I can say I've felt really bad mouth pain and would never want a small child to feel the same.  So we're going to put that stuff to the water.

But, many people are very angry about this and come when we meet to try to either change our mind or tell us what bad people we are.  One reason they give is that of the three things we can use in the water to help the hard part of our mouth, the one used most is just no-good stuff that comes out from the end of making other no-good stuff, and they say we're being made to drink bad water just as an easy way to throw away the no-good stuff.

I don't really buy that reason, but right now I might say that if we have to pay only a little more for the other two things than that one thing they don't like, then we should use those instead.  As a matter of party-office things, it gets us to a good choice when the "perfect" money-sense choice might cause a lot more of a party-office fight.

For a decision on how to fix bad air over a long time, same thing - we can't keep the party-office side out of it.

Useful with a boulder of salt

Shell has a good, simple explanation of a planned carbon capture and sequestration facility in Alberta:



So the good stuff first:  they're not using it for enhanced oil recovery, which creates additional emissions.  They're injecting CO2 into salty groundwater 2 kilometers down, which is also supposed to maximize retention.  And they claim it will start in 2015, soon enough to know in short order if this is a real project or just an excuse to keep going after the tar sands.

OTverybigOH, it's tar sands, with plenty of environmental problems in addition to climate change.  While this project may recover emissions from the refining process, it won't from the extraction process, where the sands have to be heated to extract the bitumen (and of course there's the emissions from end use).  No word in the video about what percent reduction of CO2 they expect to achieve with the project.  And my understanding is the biggest problem with CCS is cost, so we'll have to see how well they handle that issue.

So it's an interesting component of a bad overall project.  More on CCS from Shell here.

UPDATE:  lots of good comments as usual, and in John's post on the same issue.

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".)

Open-air carbon capture economically unfeasible for decades

See the report from the American Physical Society. They spotted the not-hard-to-spot issue that it's a lot easier to capture CO2 at concentrated power sources than in dilute amounts in the atmosphere, and that transport doesn't overcome that issue (UPDATE: on second look, doesn't seem to deal with transport - the one advantage of open air capture is that you can position it where your sequestration sites are instead of where your power plants are. Good luck with having that overcome sequestration as a cost savings, though).

Hansen's idea of carbon sequestration from biomass power isn't affected by this, since he still relied on point source capture and can still achieve carbon negative results. Roger Pielke Jr. doesn't do so well however in his dream of an unnamed technological solution that will make all the problems go away for a low low cost. The report's dated April 28th, and we'll see when he gets around to discussing it.

Volokh Correction #27: open air carbon capture not easier than capture at power plants

Jonathan Adler cites a Robert Bryce article criticizing carbon capture from power plants as too expensive and then thinks it supports open-air carbon capture because open air capture reduces the need to "pipe carbon great distances." That's a poor argument on a bunch of levels, starting with the likelihood that Bryce himself would disagree.

Bryce talks mainly the cost of reducing power plant output to capture carbon and the large volume of carbon to be sequestered, with piping given a secondary billing. If we're going to sequester under the ocean (or misguidedly, into the ocean as Roger Pielke Jr appears to like), then piping would still be necessary for open-air capture. The volume problem for open air capture is the same as at the power plant, and the energy cost should be a lot higher to remove CO2 when is much less than 1% of the atmosphere compared to power plant exhaust which I think is in the range of 30-60%.

I don't have much in the way of numbers to critique Bryce and Adler, but they have even less.

In general, I was unimpressed with Bryce's article - coal is cheap, and adding substantially to its price might still be in the range of feasibility. Adler's thought that the argument supports open-air capture (an option I won't rule out, btw) is even less impressive.

Friends of Earth UK's questionable support for chemical open air carbon capture

Maybe I'm biased because of Roger Pielke Jr.'s misrepresentations in favor of chemical air capture, but I was a little surprised at the partial thumb's up given by FOE UK to chemical capture.  Because they're sane they give priority to reducing emissions over geoengineering fantasies ("Mitigation has to be the priority for action, action far in excess of currently being considered by politicians is needed.").  Still, they give chemical capture some props, including favoring it over biomass power plus sequestration:

The use of large-scale afforestation, bio-char production and biomass carbon capture and storage have some limited carbon reduction potential but there are very significant land use issues associated with these. These geoengineering techniques could seriously compete with land needed to produce food (the quantity of land required varies hugely dependent on diet) and land for the protection of ecosystems. Until these land-use issues are better understood Friends of the Earth cannot support the use of large-scale afforestation, bio-char production and biomass carbon capture and storage.

Chemical air capture of carbon is the most promising carbon reduction option, although some research is still needed into safe storage sites. This is a very expensive option which is far more costly than mitigation. However rich countries have already far exceeded their fair share of “environmental space” through releasing far more than their fair share of carbon emissions over the last 200 years. If safe storage sites can be identified rich countries should carry out significant air capture of carbon, in additional to very significant cuts in emissions.

The problem with this analysis is the apples and oranges comparisons of costs.  Chemical capture can only be done at great cost per unit of carbon reduction, so FOE assumes that large costs are allowable for chemical capture but not for the biological techniques.  OTOH, if you assume you're allowed to spend the same amount on biomass or biochar, you can solve at least some of the problems that FOE identified with them.  At least you could provide incentives to use non-agricultural land for biomass production.  This might still produce pressure on natural habitat, but if we're assuming lots of money, there's ways to deal with that too, like paying for increased productivity on farmland instead.

Of course I'm just waving my hands at cost figures instead of crunching them, but that still puts me one step ahead of FOE.  Somebody needs to do the numbers.  Roger claimed to have done the numbers, but 1. his work generally raises doubts in my mind and I'm not going to spend time checking every citation to determine whether it says what he claims it says; 2. he only examines capture costs, not sequestration costs, transport, monitoring, technology development etc ("In this paper I explore some of the economic considerations associated with air capture of carbon dioxide, and do not address issues of storage, which are explored in depth elsewhere"); and 3. he does his own apples to oranges thing of comparing the partial costs of capture to full costs of mitigation in the Stern Report and IPCC (in part 4.1:  "If air capture technology could be implemented at [lowest rate cited by Roger], then the cost to stabilize emissions over the 21st century would be less than the Stern median estimate....The IPCC median value of 1.3% [of global GDP] is less than the costs air capture [sic] at $360 cost per ton of carbon, but almost three times the cost at $100 per ton.")

I hope FOE reconsiders its analysis sometime on an apples to apples basis.  I wouldn't rule out chemical capture, but it needs to considered realistically.

Nuclear power is a bargaining chip. You don't just give away your bargaining chip.

There are only two things that Republican congressmembers actually want that also could play a part of an effort to fight climate change.  One of them - capturing and sequestering CO2 and other pollutants from coal - isn't an optional bargaining chip.  We don't know if it will work adequately and cost effectively, and we do need to know exactly that, so funding research and pilot projects has to happen.

The other Republican desire is for nuclear power.  While I think nuclear power could play an expanded role in countries that already have it, it's at most a limited solution and not one with such expansion potential that a year or two of delay is a problem.

Given that most Republicans have been incredibly irresponsible on climate change, it's clear that they should not be rewarded with help for their nuclear power corporations.  Thanks primarily to Republicans and secondarily to those on the left who won't support cap-and-trade, the chances for comprehensive climate legislation are dimming, and they will only get worse from fall elections through January 2013 (unless the EPA steps in and saves us all).  If we can't get a comprehensive bill, then an energy bill is possible, and this is where the Republicans shouldn't be rewarded.  I could see giving them a taste with modest support and additional research, but that's all.

These $54 billion loan guarantees to nuclear industry that Obama is pushing are more than a taste.  They're not the long-term deals that Republicans want either, but they're more than Republicans deserve.

Some interesting discussion at the link above on this issue, but I have some questions about loan guarantees in general - they seem to be a classic Republican Party idea that corporate profits belong to stockholders while corporate losses should be paid off by taxpayers.  Given that half of previous nuclear power plant proposals were started but never finished, there seems to be a large chance of defaults.  I also think it would be possible to structure the parent company/subsidiary relationship so the parent company makes money even if the project collapses by charging interim expenses to the subsidiary.  So the parent company profits, subsidiary goes poof in a paper bankruptcy, banks gets their money back plus interest, and taxpayers pay everyone for no result.  Just guessing on that one worry.  And loan guarantees should have include some upside for government, maybe a profit participation.

Maybe I just need to learn more about this financing stuff.

Back to the FutureGen

TPMDC notes the Senate stimulus bill includes $2 billion for "one or more near zero emissions powerplant(s)." Lots of renewable energy qualifies as near zero emissions, maybe even nuclear power, but Sen. Durbin says it's for carbon capture plants. Durbin plays cute about it, but that means clean coal and almost certainly the reincarnation of FutureGen demonstration plant back at its Illinois site, where Durbin and Obama are from.

FutureGen was intended to demonstrate whether clean coal with carbon sequestration was possible, and its previous collapse obviously didn't bode well for the concept of clean coal. I'd disagree with TPMDC that environmentalists are wholly opposed to it, though. We might as well see how expensive it really is. If it works at a feasible price, then we have something to offer the coal industry other than complete destruction. If not, then we'll know and plan accordingly.


Bonus climate blogging - a website on the history of climate change science via Weart's Discovery of Global Warming. Time for a new wikipedia article, I think.

Gore's carbon-free challenge includes carbon sequestration

The We Can Solve It campaign has a video remix of Gore's challenge to have 100% carbon-free electricity sources in the US in 10 years.

One question I had of his idea was whether he rules out carbon sequestration - he doesn't:

The electricity system can be a mix of carbon-free baseload and distpatchable sources like solar thermal with storage, geothermal, wind, solar photovoltaics, biomass, existing nuclear and hydropower, and coal and natural gas power if they are able to capture the carbon.

I have mixed feelings about carbon sequestration. On the one hand, it might occupy the political sweet spot of requiring the least amount of change in power sources in order to eliminate carbon. Instead of needing sufficient political power to completely eliminate the entire coal industry, we just need the power to force them to pay extra to sequester carbon. On the other hand, the technology and most importantly the costs are undetermined. While many environmentalists noted the collapse of the FutureGen project as just one more failure of the Bush Administration, it's also a big setback for carbon sequestration.

So it's an open question in my mind whether carbon sequestration as an unproven technology with unknown costs, but great potential, can play a significant role within ten years. I think Gore's challenge is a reasonable one and that he is completely serious about it, but some results might not be reached by the deadline.

Gristmill writes a bad analysis so I don't have to

Here are some thoughts I had while reading this Gristmill guest post criticizing carbon sequestration because of the danger that CO2 would leak:

"Crud - someone's gone and written the post that I was going to write. I've seen very little discussion of leakage issues."

"Well, the author's language really seems overblown."

"Did NRDC really say that? Did Joyce Foundation really fund that?" (Clicks links, reads.) "No they didn't!"

(Reads another link.) "What the hell - IPCC says geological sequestration has a leakage rate of less than 1% per century, maybe less than 1% per 1000 years? This 'issue' just collapses."

So I left a nasty note in the comments. The argument against sequestration claims to be based on the precautionary principle, but you need some actual evidence of risk IMHO before the precautionary principle makes any sense. It doesn't work here, at least for geological sequestration that's properly managed.

I haven't seen much about mid-ocean and deep-ocean sequestration though - leakage and other environmental impacts might be an issue, if anyone's still taking about those ideas.

UPDATE: some good discussion in the comments. I suppose if I were really diligent I could pull out the IPCC cites and read those for flaws, but I'm not that diligent. If the Gristmill author had disclosed the IPCC view and then written an argument for why the leakage rate is wrong, he might have had a better case, but he doesn't really try.

Edwards on coal and nukes

I originally posted this on the Edwards website as a diary post. I attended an Edwards fundraiser early last week, and he said he wanted no more new coal plants and that (unlike Hillary and Obama) he doesn't support nuclear power.

My diary post attracted some comments and eventually this video - Edwards probably meant to say last week that he would fight to stop any new coal plants that didn't have the potential to sequester carbon, which is much less drastic than no new coal plants and not even as far as Senator Dodd's proposal that new coal plants must sequester carbon. I haven't found any elaboration on his stance over nuclear - I suspect he meant no subsidies for nuclear power, but not a ban on new nuclear power plants. I've no problem with cutting subsidies for nukes, but I'd oppose a ban on new ones.

So his position on coal is better than anything from Obama or Hillary, but not as good as Dodd. My guess is that he reasons that he supports an overall carbon cap and rather than force sequestration on new plants, he'll give them a choice of doing it or buying credits. Understandable, but it would just be safer to require sequestration.

It's interesting that Edwards has one of the most fleshed out position on issues of any presidential candidate, and it still hard to know exactly what he wants to do. The other candidates really are blank slates then in terms of figuring out what they want.