I wonder why Stephen Chu wrote in Science magazine 25 September 2009 that "there are many hurdles to making CCS a reality, but none appear insurmountable. The DOE goal is to support R&D, as well as pilot CCS so that widespread deployment of CCS can begin in 8 to 10 years. This is an aggressive goal, but the climate problem compels us to act with fierce urgency".

I guess he hasn't figured out that the process can't work or will be too expensive and whatever else you and your guest agreed about.

The IPCC Special Report on Carbon Capture and Storage would make interesting reading for anyone who wondered about this technology. I suppose that wouldn't be you though, you already know what a pile of BS it is.

I wonder why the IPCC believes CCS will play a major role in the effort to mitigate climate change? I guess they are as stupid as Stephen Chu, eh?

And there is Lord Stern, David King... but you wouldn't be interested in anything that contradicted your story line that carbon capture is a load of hooey made up by Big Coal, right?

Where are we going to put the CO2 we have to take out of the atmosphere when emissions are reduced enough so that the level in the atmosphere is no longer rising?

All you people who love to oppose proving this technology at full scale, what is your answer for that? Or is the plan to go to whatever, at present rates of political action we are looking at what, 550 ppm, 650 ppm, 850 ppm? Then what? Leave it all there? Do you think our descendants will actually want to do that when they find out what happens to a planetary system that has that much GHG in the atmosphere?

I followed the "coal-related articles" link on the CoalSwarm home page, then clicked on "Carbon Capture and Storage", then on "Carbon Capture and Storage" in the list that showed up.

I examined the first statement that had a reference.

"Since every ton of coal burned produces 3.7 tons of CO2, the sheer volume of CO2 that must be disposed of makes CCS inherently impractical and overly expensive.[1]"

The study that this sentence refers to is the IPCC Special Report on Carbon Capture and Storage. The IPCC report does not say that CCS is inherently impractical and over expensive. Anyone who cites the IPCC as their reference who wants anyone else to believe that the IPCC believes that CCS is not practical and will be too expensive is lying. Read the IPCC report.

Mark Jaccard, who lives in B.C. hence you might want to interview him, has done a lot of work synthesizing the literature, including the IPCC report, to come up with rough figures understandable to the general public.

His estimate for the cost of CCS, transport and storage all in, goes like this: "carbon capture and storage would add 2-3 c/kWh to the cost of electricity from an advanced coal plant.... increasing its total production cost to 6-7.5 c/kWhr..." He then says "electricity prices vary by at least 3 c/kWhr from one jurisdiction to the next". Jaccard's book is called "Sustainable Fossil Fuels".

This type of cost is lower than anything I've ever seen regarding the so called baseload solar thermal power, i.e. solar thermal with salt storage. Last fall, the last time I looked, the largest generating station employing CCS, Schwarze Pumpe in Germany could put out more electricity in a year than the largest solar thermal plant then in existence, in Spain, yet the solar power types proclaim solar thermal is the future while CCS is non-existent.

I wonder why people who say they want to limit the amount of CO2 that enters the atmosphere such as yourself have decided, before examining impartial information such as what the IPCC puts out.

Hello David

While I appreciate your comments, I think you need to calm down a bit.

#1 Do not presume that as a host, I am saying everything my guests say. I'm always suspicious about the emotions behind statements like "you people"....think this or that. There is a wide diversity of opinions.

#2 If you look around the Ecoshock site, at ecoshock.org - you will find I recorded a speech by Mark Jaccard years ago. I have met him on several occasions, and we have discussed these issues.

#3. While there are "authorities" (like Mr. Chu and Mr. Obama), who promote "clean coal" - there are a great number of other experts and scientists who question such things as cost effectiveness, practicality, and the ability of humans to really keep that CO2 under the ground (or water).

Just the latest is that fringe critic (one of "you people" I presume) - Bill Gates, in his speech to the TED conference recently. Gates says the long-term storage is a problem which has not been solved.

Of course big governments, who are riddled with coal lobby people, and prefer no big changes in our economy, will support CCS. The German government, for example, still builds new coal plants - without capture in place.

These same institutions are failing to deal with the climate threat, as we saw in Copenhagen, and the rising emissions. I think we have a much better chance with more distributed electric systems, fostered by technologies like solar and wind.

#4 It is arrogant of you to presume that I would not, and have not read the IPCC Special Report on Carbon Capture and Storage. I read it shortly after it was released.

Why does this discussion about our energy future make you so angry, so ready to make personal attacks?
A question you might want to ponder.

Alex Smith
host
Radio Ecohsock

I wrote "All you people who love to oppose proving this technology at full scale" because you took a position during the interview.

I should have written I do not understand why statements such as what you and your guest made during the interview continue to be made by people who say they are concerned that CO2 be kept out of the atmosphere.

I brought up what the IPCC says about CCS, because the purpose the IPCC was set up for was to provide the general public and policy makers with an authoritative review of everyone reputable who had an opinion on a given subject, such as are the wastes of civilization warming the planet, or, can the emissions of coal fired plants be kept out of the atmosphere.

Your reply, that there are "authorities" who "promote clean coal", but then again, "there are a great number of other experts and scientists who question such things", is exactly how climate skeptics seek to disinform the public on essential matters such as is climate change happening.

I say, the IPCC reviewed the subject and takes an opposite position as that taken by you and your guest. It seems to me that if you want people to believe the IPCC when they say people should take climate seriously, you should ask yourself, are you really on sound ground as you say, by implication, that the IPCC simply blew it on CCS, that they either didn't do their job or they didn't understand that there are all these scientists you know about who think that CCS is bogus. How did the IPCC blow it that badly? What does this say about their entire AR4 report? How could they not have realized that CCS simply doesn't exist?

You said "it [CCS] doesn't exist anywhere", which is not correct, and given that you say you are up on this subject, I wonder how you can say this.

CCS doesn't exist at full scale anywhere. The technology exists at pilot scale, as large as the largest solar thermal plant existing at the time I last checked, last fall. That plant is Schwarze Pumpe in Germany. This isn't splitting hairs.

You would never say, I take it, that solar thermal technology doesn't exist. Yet you did say CCS does not exist. Why?

And, you went a lot further than this. If you did understand the IPCC report, you will know that the transport system and injection is the least of the costs, [10 - 15%] yet you trumped it up:

"they were talking about building a whole new pipeline system".

The entire fossil fuel production and distribution system is a very large enterprise, and doing anything about it, whether that would be using CCS, or converting the power source civilization depends on to solar, would be a very large enterprise. It is not meaningful to say the proposal, whatever it is, is very large therefore not practical. It would be have meaning if you put the cost into cents per gallon, cents per kWhr, dollars per tonne CO2 avoided, etc. The IPCC did put CCS into cents per kWhr.

Millions of tonnes of CO2 are injected into oil fields in the US to enhance recovery, and no one has expressed any concern about leakage coming out to kill people, yet once CCS became part of the debate, suddenly the big concern was either the CO2 will come out to wreck the climate sometime, or why not, lump it in with high level nuclear waste, as you did, throw in Yucca Mountain. This is what you said.

.

Hi David

I appreciate your response, and always try to re-think such issues when challenged.

I'm sorry I won't have time to continue this discussion, as there is always the next radio program to produce.

For blog readers, may I recommend the Greenpeace International assessment of carbon capture, as a downloadable pdf here:

http://www.greenpeace.org/international/press/reports/CCS-briefing

Or look up what Joe Romm, a former top level advisor on alternative energy for the Clinton Administration, has to say about CCS tech.

Meanwhile, one wonders why the Bush Administration, those fossil-friendly guys, gave up on their research of carbon capture and storage, after spending a billion on it. Or why the working "pilot plant" in the U.S. Northwest was discontinued? It just doesn't seem like it's going anywhere, and we have other technologies that can replace coal anyway.

My other problem with this tech is harder to explain. It boil down to something like: we can't presume that a technically powerful civilization will continue for another thousand years, or ten thousand. And yet that is what the storage of dangerous elements like nuclear waste or carbon dioxide require.

Even a century of total breakdown could mean radioactive waste, or stored CO2, could escape to damage the environment of a coming generation.

And why should future generations pay for our wasteful use of energy anyway?

There is an ethical, and perhaps survival, question involved.

There is some research going on in Ivy League universities which claims we could actually REMOVE CO2 from the air while burning coal. That was pushed by Papua New Guinea, acting for the company involved, to get CO2 removal into the Copenhagen accord. I haven't looked too far into that yet.

If that should prove true, and IF we find a magic way to store CO2 where NOTHING can bring it back out into the atmosphere... then I'll accept more coal power.

None of that is true in the present. Yet the promise of it encourages or allows the construction of more deadly coal plants. Which is what my interview with Ted Nace was all about.

Have you read his book? Have you read the Greenpeace Report mentioned above? Joe Romm's comments?

I'll look further into your suggestions, and you look into mine.

Meanwhile, sorry, I have to move on to some rather different climate science. But thanks for your input.

Alex Smith

The Papua New Guinea proposal to remove CO2 from ambient air was based, I think, on their acceptance of the existence of the technology Graciela Chilchinisky of Columbia University has been touting. I believe she was acting as adviser for them at Copenhagen, but I'm not sure. She has worked with them over the years as an economist. This is the same Chilchinisky who wrote the cap and trade section of the Kyoto agreement.

Chilchinisky is co-inventor of what she says is an air capture process for CO2, but you can't get too many details out of her, although she stands in front of audiences touting the idea, such as in her London School of Economics lecture "Climate Change, Are We Heading for a New Cold War?" which is availiable as a podcast. As far as I can tell the process uses waste heat from any type of industrial process, this could be a coal plant, to remove CO2 from the ambient air around the plant, and what she says is so much CO2 can be removed from the air with the waste heat it would turn the coal plant into a net carbon sink. In an email exchange with her she told me Global Thermostat is constructing a pilot plant in California to be unveiled first quarter 2010. She claimed to be in possession of an engineering study confirming that her process was far more efficient than anything else she was aware of in the world. She was calling for carbon trading credits under a Copenhagen agreement to be eligible to be applied to plants using this process in the developing world, so money could flow to the developing world that would end up removing CO2 from the air, net, while increasing energy supply there.

I'm wondering about this. I will be very interested in any independent assessment that becomes available when the pilot plant shows up.

Lackner, also at Columbia, was the first to start experimenting with air capture of CO2, and there are others, Keith at U of Calgary for instance. Gates is funding some of Keith's work.

Lackner, and Keith, just testified to the US Congress at a geoengineering hearing.

Air capture of CO2 is a "geoengineering" process I am very favorable towards.

Lackner's paper states he will initially be building units capable of capturing one tonne a day that he feels will remove CO2 for $200 a tonne initially, but he feels a goal of $30 a tonne is not out of line to aim for. He is less secretive about what he is doing than Chilchinisky.

Chilchinisky kept repeating at her LSE lecture that the Royal Society had somehow endorsed or stated that air capture was ready to go now, but if you read the Royal Society study "Geoengineering the Climate" Sept 2009, that she pointed to, there is only an intriguing ending comment to the section on air capture, i.e.:

"Proposals for new methods are still appearing (confidential submissions received) and it is very likely that substantial cost reductions are possible in future",

that might have anything to do with what she was talking about. But there might be something to it.

Richard Alley, commenting on Lackner's work during question period at his AGU lecture you did a podcast on, said it was his opinion of Lackner's technology that for the present, it will be more economical for us not to put the CO2 into the air than it will be to remove it.

Lackner's paper is worth reading as he thinks turning CO2 into sold rock is the way to go to satisfy types like you who want no possibility of CO2 reentering the atmosphere no matter what the preponderance of evidence is. Lackner has investigated how to do this is some detail, although he says it will be more expensive than injecting CO2 into the ground or sub sea floor as a liquid. Look up Lackner's testimony, it is on a link on this page

http://science.house.gov/publications/hearings_markups_details.aspx?NewsID=2722

The Greenpeace paper you posted a link to is a short position statement, that refers anyone looking for detail to another document of theirs:

www.greenpeace.org/raw/content/international/press/reports/energyrevolutionreport.pdf

Here, they discuss CCS. They admit that “experts from the UN Intergovernmental Panel on
Climate Change calculate the additional costs at between 3.5 and 5.0 cents/kWh of power” [page 134, Greenpeace: Global Energy Revolution A Sustainable Global Energy Outlook, link provided above ]

I looked around for a figure on what coal power costs now. According to the American Wind Power Association, which I chose as a group likely to overestimate the cost of new coal power, if you build a new coal plant in the US it will cost you 5 cents / kWh to produce the electricity.

http://www.awea.org/faq/wwt_costs.html

This means new coal fired electric power in the US, after you add CCS, according to Greenpeace and the American Wind Power Association, would cost between 8 and 10 cents / kWh.

Now take your Andasol 1 Concentrated Solar Power (CSP) plant. According to Paul Nava, managing director of the engineering firm that designed the plant, electricity from Andasol 1 costs 27 EU cents / kWh, or at today's exchange rate, 36 US cents / kWh to produce.

http://spectrum.ieee.org/energy/environment/largest-solar-thermal-storage-plant-to-start-up

But Greenpeace touts concentrated solar power such as Andasol 1 and dismisses CCS because it will cost too much. The position appears to be ludicrous.

Why? Greenpeace says they "oppose any CCS efforts which lead to"

"1. The undermining or threats to undermine existing global and
regional regulations governing the disposal of wastes at sea (in
the water column, at or beneath the seabed)."

[aside: Thou shalt not rethink any existing global regulations now that we understand how serious climate change is. end of aside]

Greenpeace does not want to see:

"2. Continued or increasing finance to the fossil fuel sector at the expense of renewable energy and energy efficiency."

[ Greenpeace defines financing energy technologies it doesn’t like to be at the expense of renewable energy and energy efficiency. What most other people are interested in seeing happen is effective policy aimed at reducing emissions of CO2 to the atmosphere as quickly as possible ]

Greenpeace does not want to see:

"3. The stagnation of renewable energy, energy efficiency and energy conservation improvements."

[This restates Greenpeace’s position that the way forward is their chosen path. Thou shalt not use nuclear or CCS. Each dollar going into R&D for anything other than what they support is a dollar taken away from what they support. They risk being seen as being the problem rather than as advocates for a solution. ]

Greenpeace does not want to see:

"4. The promotion of this possible future technology as the only
major solution to climate change, thereby leading to new fossil
fuel developments – especially lignite and black coal-fired power
plants, and an increase in emissions in the short to medium term."

Many climate activists see things in this zero sum way. Any action to control pollution on coal plants must necessarily cut into action on developing affordable solar power. Why not attack spending on pets? Why not attack all spending? Each dollar not spent on solar is a dollar not spent on solar. I think its time to advocate what is needed, i.e. reducing CO2 emissions to zero as rapidly as possible. Bill Gates did this in his TED speech recently.

Greenpeace does not advocate CCS on new coal plants. They do not say they want to see no new coal plants unless they are fitted with CCS. What they advocate is no CCS, if you add up what they are saying here.

Its not a credible position.

Bill Gates' TED speech:

You said Bill mentioned that storage of CO2 is a problem.

Bill's position is that he sees five technologies as candidates for playing a major role in reducing emissions of CO2 to zero by 2050, i.e solar photovoltaic, solar thermal, carbon capture, nuclear, and wind. He sees problems with ALL of them. He calls for agressive R&D aimed at solving the problems, and let the marketplace sort out who wins, under an umbrella of a carbon price.

I liked what Bill said far more than the rigid positions of groups such as Greenpeace, or individuals such as Joe Romm. If you want to understand more about Romm, just look up his rant about the Bill Gates TED speech.

http://climateprogress.org/2010/02/14/bill-gates-ted-speech-innovation-energy-miracles/

Then listen to the TED speech itself.

http://www.ted.com/talks/bill_gates.html

Ask yourself, did Romm contribute one useful thing to your understanding of where Bill is at?

Bill Gates sees the problem very clearly, it seems to me. He's saying we've got to aim for ZERO emissions in any sector where this is remotely possible, by 2050. This is someone who is facing the problem head on.

Bill is putting his bet down, it sounded like tens of millions of dollars of his own money so far, on an advanced nuclear design. His company is aiming to solve the problems most think nuclear power has while delivering massive amounts of affordable power.

His vision, or dream as he called it, is to put fossil fuel producers out of business by producing alternate CO2 emission free power for half the price. He supports putting a price on carbon to facilitate deployment and development of alternate technology.

He calls for hundreds of other venture capitalists, researchers and companies to do see what they can come up with, in all other fields and directions, towards this achieving this goal of zero emissions at less cost.

Its a breath of fresh air after wading through Romm's I'm the only one who knows what he's talking about rants, and Greenpeace its our way or the highway prescriptions.

Here are some figures comparing Andasol 1 to nuclear power.

Keep in mind that Romm, Gore, and Lovins all dump on nuclear because it is too expensive, and all tout solar thermal as the power source of the future. Gore calls nuclear power "the radioactive white elephant in the room".

The Andasol 1 plant is rated at 50 MW on the nameplate, but it only produces as if it were a 20.3 MW plant operating 24/7. This is a very high capacity factor for solar thermal.

Andasol 1 cost 300 million euros to build. I calculated that this works out to $19,963 US dollars per installed available kWh. The cost of the electricity produced is 27 to 36 US cents per kWh at today's exchange rate. All these figures came from

http://spectrum.ieee.org/energy/environment/largest-solar-thermal-storage-plant-to-start-up

which is an article written by a reporter who interviewed the manager of the design firm that designed this plant.

A 1 GW new nuclear plant puts out
full power 90% of the time. This is the experience of the US fleet for the last five years. So, a 1 GW plant allows you to build up your bank account as if you were selling 900 MW of electricity 24/7. According to the 2009 update to the MIT The Future of Nuclear Power study, corrected for the 90% availability, it is estimated that it will cost you $4444 / kWh of available capacity to build one of these. Multiply by 900 and you get $4 billion to build a plant. A detailed explanation of how cost figures are arrived at by MIT is in a sub report authored by Du and Parsons, that is clearly referenced in the MIT report. Your electricity can be expected to cost, again according to this MIT study, 8.4 US cents / kWh. It would take 44 Andasol 1 plants to produce the power that a 1 GW nuclear plant puts out.

I like to use the MIT figures because Gore refers in Our Choice to these particular MIT people who came up with this particular report as "the experts" on this subject. Amory Lovins, said to be the #1 guy in the US who has established in people's minds that there is something dreadfully wrong with the cost of nuclear power, also loves to cherry pick from this report as he argues how expensive new nuclear is. Romm loves to wave around the work of Craig Severance on nuclear cost as he proclaims how expensive it is, and when you look up what Severance says you see he also cherry picks from this report.

In summary: it will cost $19,963 per available kWh to build solar thermal, and $4440 per kWh to go nuclear. Your cost per kWhr is 36 US cents/kWhr solar, and 8.4 US cents/kWhr nuclear.

As people say, solar thermal with salt storage is the energy solution we've all been looking for, and nuclear power is just too impossibly expensive to even think about using. NOT.

Its time people stopped telling each other fairy tales such as the ones Gore, Lovins, and Romm spread around.

David

Do you have a blog?

I can't help but wonder, if nuclear is such a deal, why isn't Wall Street stepping up to finance more reactors?

Why does Obama think he needs another $50 billion of tax payers' money to build new ones, if nuclear is so cost effective?

Do you really believe a new nuclear plant will be built in the United States for $4 billion dollars?

Do the studies you reference include the cost of insurance? (Currently provided by the tax payers as well, since no private company would touch that kind of liability).

What about the cost of maintaining the waste a thousand years from now? All figured in?

Before you blame the environmentalists for "stopping" the construction of new nuclear power, recall that greens have been unable to stop much of anything that big banks or corporations could make money on.

If it paid, they would be doing it.

What will be the cost of monitoring all that solar plant waste, from Andasol 1, a thousand years from now?

Is the first big plant of it's kind indicative of all future plant costs?

I don't have time to look into all this, and it appears you do. You seem to have good material for your own blog - why not put it there, and let us know the url, so we can check it out?

Alex

You asked me to look into the Greenpeace material and about Joe Romm. It seemed interesting to debate someone as anti CCS as you who I also know is anti nuclear from your previous shows. You claimed to have an open mind.

If you read the MIT study, you see how it is that people can say a plant costs x dollars, 2x dollars, etc and all be correct, or not. It depends on how you do the accounting and whether you are doing it the same way when comparing different technologies. MIT published "levelized" cost figures for gas, coal, and nuclear, and published the figures for nuclear I've used. "Levelized" to MIT means to use figures in the same way for each technology so as to arrive at figures that are meaningful when comparing those technolgies. Unfortunately they did not publish a comparison of "levelized" cost figures for nuclear compared to solar thermal.

So I dug out the material from the company that built the solar thermal plant to see, as a rough guess what ballpark they were in. But the solar thermal advocates such as Gore talk about the "grossly unacceptable economics" of nuclear, and say that solar thermal or voltaic is the future, and there is no independent authoritative study showing the solar technologies can compete with nuclear now. So they say put subsidies in and see if costs come down for solar, and argue against any subsidies for nuclear and argue that nuclear costs can only go up. I am studying nuclear, and I am wondering why so many people are so opposed to it. It does not make sense. The present day waste problem disappears if next generation reactors are built to consume the waste. This is the type of reactor Gates is backing the development of. A thousand years from now the waste from these types of reactors will have declined in radioactivity to below the level of the ore that was mined. This is what the proponents of the technology are saying. I'm still wondering about it and looking into it more deeply. This is the technology Hansen is advocating.

The cost guarantees Obama asked Congress to grant are an insurance policy that the US government will make money on, unless the company building the reactor defaults on its loans, at which time the US government would be liable for the debt, and the US will own the partially completed reactor. There isn't $50 billion being handed out. There is $50 billion of risk being taken on, as an insurance company might take on risk, in exchange for a premium paid by the company proposing to build a new reactor.

An interesting article on how the US blew it completely on the last generation of plants such that Wall Street is leery this time around was published by Forbes, in 1985, "Nuclear Follies", by James Cook. Gore quotes from it, again, to make a case completely different than the one made by Cook. But there are plenty of quotes in there that would convince anyone new nuclear is a risky financial proposition, in the US. One reason is the 200,000 demonstrators who showed up outside the Shoreham plant in NY after it was completed, before it was started up, that caused the state authority to stop it from ever generating anything. The plant was thrown away. Polls are showing a changing mood about nuclear in the US however, a reason the government is interested in restarting the construction end of it.

The reason people would want new nuclear now is that it has been and is being employed as low cost baseload in the US and in other countries, and the need now is to completely replace all CO2 emitting sources of power. There is this need because civilization itself is threatened. I think anti nuclear people should think about their opposition to nuclear, at least by doing more due diligence than saying they don't have time to look into it while they remain opposed.

People made up their minds about nuclear when the dangers of CO2 emissions were not appreciated.

David,

Again, you have no idea what "due diligence" I may have exercised, before forming my opinions on nuclear power.

It's great to say the waste problem will be solved by new reactors sometime. Of course we also solved it by dumping "spent" radioactive waste on Iraq and Iraqi's, in an illegal war. Don't forget, in the flurry of reports, that we are placing dangerous technologies in the hands of irrational (at times) humans. That is the record of nuclear, whether arms or reactors (and reactors have too often morphed into weapons, as we know...

You will say that proliferation issues are also completely solved by Gate's new technology. 40 years from now. Maybe. Meanwhile that is not what is being proposed or built now.

Perhaps you misunderstood me. I do not have time to investigate and report back to you, on your ongoing research. Why not pull it together, and publish your facts and opinions? Surely they deserve a much larger forum, than this obscure blog.

Further, whatever I may have discovered about nuclear power over the last 30 years looking into it, the various professional journals and so on... you are tilting at the wrong person.

I don't claim to be an expert in nuclear affairs. In fact, I am always learning about these and other matters. That is why I phone up people I think may know more, and ask my simple questions, on behalf of other intelligent but busy listeners.

At the end, I am entitled to express my opinions as well, and even emotions.

I notice you don't answer my questions, and easily tend toward attacks, including against people not here to defend themselves. I suggest you contact Mr. Gore, Joe Romm, Avery Lovins and others, to express your facts and outrage.

Meanwhile, I will have to put this blog on moderation, while I focus on making radio.

Alex