Carbon Capture Is Turning out to Be Just Another Great Green Scam
Cleaner technology is possible, but Labour plans to introduce it so slowly that any benefits will be lost in higher coal output
‘Coal is so clean and fresh that the prime minister brushes his teeth with it, Downing Street said last night. Mr Brown said advances in coal technology meant it was now one of the cleanest substances on Earth, and an unrivalled remover of stains and scaling.” So says the satirical website the Daily Mash. The real claims are scarcely battier.
Ministers are about to decide whether to approve a new coal-burning power station at Kingsnorth in Kent. This would be the first such plant to be built in Britain since the monster at Drax was finished in 1986. As well as coal, it will burn up the government’s targets, policies and promises on climate change.
John Hutton, the secretary of state in charge of energy, has started justifying the decision he says he hasn’t made. “For critics,” he argued last week, “there’s a belief that coal-fired power stations undermine the UK’s leadership position on climate change. In fact, the opposite is true.” Quite so: if we don’t burn this stuff the Chinese might get their hands on it. Or could he be a true believer? Does he really think there’s such a thing as clean coal?
Clean coal’s definition changes according to whom the industry is lobbying. Sometimes it means more efficient power stations - which still produce almost twice as much carbon dioxide as gas plants. Sometimes it means removing sulphur dioxide from the smoke, which boosts the CO2. Sometimes it means carbon capture and storage: stripping the carbon out of the exhaust gases, piping it away and burying it in geological formations. None of these equate to clean coal, as you will see if you visit an opencast mine. But they create a marvellous amount of confusion in the public mind, which gives the government a chance to excuse the inexcusable.
In principle, carbon capture and storage (CCS) could reduce emissions from power stations by 80% to 90%. While the whole process has not yet been demonstrated, the individual steps are all deployed commercially today: it looks feasible. The government has launched a competition for companies to build the first demonstration plant, which should be burying CO2 by 2014.
Unfortunately, despite Hutton’s repeated assurances, this has nothing to do with Kingsnorth or the other new coal plants he wants to approve. If Kingsnorth goes ahead, it will be operating by 2012, two years before the CCS experiment has even begun. The government says that the demonstration project will take “at least 15 years” to assess. It will take many more years for the technology to be retro-fitted to existing power stations, by which time it’s all over. On this schedule, carbon capture and storage, if it is deployed at all, will come too late to prevent runaway climate change.
Kingsnorth will produce around 4.5m tonnes of CO2 every year; if all eight of the proposed coal plants are built, they will account for 46% of the emissions Britain can produce by 2050, assuming the government sticks to Brown’s new proposed target of an 80% cut. Aviation, using the government’s own figures, will account for another 184% (these figures are explained on my website). Even if we stopped breathing, eating, driving and heating our homes, the new runways and coal burners the government envisages would more than double our national greenhouse gas quota.
The government seeks to bamboozle us by arguing that the new power stations will be “CCS ready”, meaning that one day, in theory, they could be retrofitted with the necessary equipment. But even this turns out to be untrue. In January, Greenpeace obtained an exchange of emails between E.ON, the company hoping to build the new plant - yes, the same E.ON that broadcasts footage of fluttering sycamore keys, suggesting that its dirty old habits have gone with the wind - and Gary Mohammed, the civil servant drawing up the planning conditions.
Mohammed begins by sending an email of such snivelling obsequiousness that you can almost smell the fear on it. “Drafting the conditions for Kingsnorth. If possible I would like to cover CCS … I admit this suggested condition could be without justification and premature but no harm in trying to gauge your opinion.” (This “suggested condition” was actually government policy. Who’s running this country?) E.ON replied by claiming that the secretary of state “has no right to withhold approval for conventional plant” (in fact he has every right). All it would allow the government to specify was that the potential for CCS “will be investigated”. Mohammed wrestled with his conscience for all of six minutes before replying. “Thanks. I won’t include. Hope to get the set of draft conditions out today or tomorrow.”
This exchange took place in mid-January, a few days before the European commission published a proposed directive specifying that all new coal-fired stations must be CCS ready. Mohammed must have known that he was helping E.ON to win approval for the plant before the directive comes into force next year.
You might by now be beginning to derive the impression that carbon capture and storage is not the green panacea ministers have suggested. But you haven’t heard the half of it. Even if it does become a viable means of disposing of carbon dioxide, new figures suggest that it’s likely to enhance rather than reduce our total emissions.
For the companies bidding for contracts to bury the gas, one technique is more attractive than the others. This is to pump it into declining oil fields. The gas dissolves into the remaining oil, reducing its viscosity and pushing it into the production wells. It’s called enhanced oil recovery (EOR). The oil the companies sell offsets some of the costs of carbon storage.
A few weeks ago, the green thinker Jim Bliss roughly calculated the environmental costs of this technique. He used as his case study the scheme BP proposed but abandoned last year for pumping CO2 into the Miller Field off the coast of Scotland. It would have buried 1.3m tonnes of CO2 and extracted 40m barrels of oil. Taking into account only the four major fuel products, Bliss worked out that the total carbon emissions would outweigh the savings by between seven and 15 times.
So has the government ruled out enhanced oil recovery? Not a bit of it. Its memo about the demonstration project says that Hutton’s department “will want to ensure that the treatment of EOR and non-EOR projects are dealt with on a level playing-field basis”. Another document suggests that it favours this technique: enhanced oil recovery will lead to “increased energy security, domestic revenue and employment”. But, the government notes, this will have to happen before the North Sea’s oil infrastructure is dismantled. “Now is the perfect opportunity to realise the significant opportunities offered by CCS.”
Like biofuels and micro wind turbines, carbon capture and storage turns out to be another great green scam. It will come too late to prevent runaway climate change; the government has no intention of enforcing it; and even if it had, the technique is likely to boost our carbon emissions. This is what John Hutton calls “meeting our international obligations”. Heaven knows what breaking them might look like.
George Monbiot is the author of the best selling books The Age of Consent: a manifesto for a new world order and Captive State: the corporate takeover of Britain. He writes a weekly column for the Guardian newspaper.
guardian.co.uk © Guardian News and Media Limited 2008
any good idea can be done badly. It’s all about system design.
Carbon negative energy is tricky but must be done sensibly.
See this link for a good overview of the negatives and also the vast potential of carbon sequestration from Monbiot’s “enemy”, biofuels.
http://news.mongabay.com/2007/1106-carbon-negative_becs.html
Beats coal
The right PR campaign can make ANYTHING “green”.
A majority of the US electorate and politicians now believe that nuclear power production is “green”.
I’m not surprised, just repeatedly disappointed. The answer is staring everyone in the face: leave fossil fuels in the ground. No one in power, nor anyone who aspires to power, is interested in actually succeeding at stopping global warming. Profits over life - the corporate way.
New Labour needs to get off its dead arse and address the energy issue in Britain. North Sea oil, that subsidized Mrs. Thatcher’s insanity, is just about finished. It isn’t good solar country, and buying natural gas from the Russians isn’t a wise idea either. Wind and tidal can do a bit, but basically, Britain has nothing but coal upon which to rely. Carbon sequestration is just one part of an overall clean energy policy that no one in Whitehall or Downing Street is addressing with a single coherent approach.
It is just another shell game. Buying carbon credits from people who produce no pollution in order to keep polluting, and making money, at home is a bad hustle.
Our planet is an isolated system…
In physics, the law of conservation of energy states that the total amount of energy in any isolated system can not be created or destroyed, it can only be changed from one form to another.
Our planet is an isolated system…nothing created or destroyed, only changed in form.
Humans cannot have both the planet to live on and jobs\industry, as the very products of jobs\industry ~ the cars, big screen tvs, Nikes, microwaves, Barbies and Legos, Ipods, clothes, dvds, watches and staplers and computers and Ziplocs and toothbrushes and tires and tasers and Xboxes and jewelry and Tupperware and laser-firing-planes, etc. ~ are physically and irreversably made from the very substances of this very singularly accessible planet…
EVERYTHING WE MAKE IS MADE FROM NONE OTHER THAN THE ONE AND ONLY LIVING EARTH THAT SUPPORTS US…EVERYTHING WE MAKE IS NON-LIVING, AND, ONCE MADE, CANNOT BE MADE LIVING AGAIN…TAKING LIVING THINGS AND MAKING THEM INTO NON-LIVING THINGS IS WHAT WE ARE DOING, AND WE WILL KILL EVERYTHING ON THIS PLANET IF WE DON’T STOP…
Human industry = chemical transformation of the organic planet into a toxic dump.
Continued human industry = certain eventual ecocide (killing of the natural world)
Killing of the natural world = killing all humans and all animals and all plants
Continued human industry = suicidal insanity
Worldwide human de-industrialization is the only path to sustainable life
De-industrialization cannot succeed if attempted by individuals or small groups alone
The citizens of the world must unite in returning to a de-industrialized life
Together, we must plan, pick a Go date, and begin dismantling, cleaning and replanting…
This need is beyond nations, governments, corporations, religions, races, sexes, or ages…it is individual in nature, yet global in importance…humans must de-industrialize or perish with every other living thing on this earth…the planet will continue to orbit the sun, as always, of course…only, instead of a blue\green ball of life-filled waters and lands, it will be a reeking, toxic cesspool of plastics, rubbers and chemicals…this is happening right now…the days of America’s industry-driven riches are over…other countries are moving to emulate…we must all, citizens of the world, stop living as if the Earth is ours to remake as we wish…
Even time is unable to restore life where the seeds are no longer present
No plant can root and grow on a pile of plastic or rubber
What industry turns factories and industrial parks into fields and forests again?
The upcoming elections will not address this issue…the powers that be wish it to continue…
The Brits should just forget about those new coal-fired plants and start hooking up to the French grid. Connectors across the channel wouldn’t have much eye appeal, but they would be cleaner than coal fired plants. Maybe under the channel? The French are again building nuclear powered generators with an eye on exporting electricity. It shouldn’t take long as the Germans are going renewable and the Brits are undecisive, and both countries need beaucoup GHG free electricity.
I’ve read some articles about the Heathrow airport expansion by Brit Mark Lynas. We are ALL kidding ourselves if we think jet air travel can continue to expand while we reduce GHG. The only good thing is the vapor trails dim the sunlight a bit and take the edge off a hot / sunny day.
A nuclear/electricity/hydrogen energy structure could replace most aircraft with high speed rail and very fast nuclear powered ships.
Nukes would doom generations to cancer.
Nukes would doom generations to cancer.
solid-oxide fuel cells for coal have proven the ability to double the efficiency. So if you shut down a coal fired plant and setup one using solid-oxide fuel cell you’d have the same electrical energy with half the coal. Not bad.
Of course the Brits also have a huge amount of energy via waves and wind (waves are better) surrounding them as well.
As with America we need to look at the wealth of resources availeable to us that can provide us with our energy needs. We can all recognize the risk of maintaining an oil dependency.
That said I think carbon capture only makes sense if your able to actually use that carbon…pure carbon is highly valuable.
“ In order for humans to benefit from advances in technology, there must be a parallel moral progress in us.” F. Fukiyama
“We cannot live for ourselves alone (our cause). Our lives are connected by a thousand invisible threads, and along these sympathetic fibers, our actions return to us as results (effects).” Herman Melville
We need well-rounded human beings for the future not a generation of automaton-consumers hungry for capitalistic poopery.
Soldiers of truth! Get fighting!
Probably we will all need to become less wasteful. We all need to
change our way of life. Public transport is an obvious way.
But here is a way of improving our carbon footprint that is too
easy to overlook:-
We can begin to replace the internal combustion engine that we use for
cars with a compressed air one:-
http://web.aanet.net.au/webspace/BloodForOil/Postings/aircar.html
There are two often cited alternatives, hydrogen cars and battery cars:-
* Battery Cars: What is wrong with battery powered cars is that the
required sorts of batteries are very polluting to make. And very
polluting to dispose of. You may have reduced carbon production, but
you have laid waste to land, air and sea. Also, you only get a few
hundred charges out of them before you have to replace them. Also,
they are very dirty to dispose of.
* Hydrogen cars: What is wrong with hydrogen cars is that separating
the oxygen from the hydrogen in the first place is very inefficient.
You get about 1 Joule of energy out for every 10 you put in. And
then you have the inefficiency of the internal combustion hydrogen
engine.
Compressed air, on the other hand:-
* Is CHEAP. India may well have a million such cars in 2 years.
* Is CLEAN. (if given the energy to compress the air in the first place).
* Is SAFE. The carbon fibre tanks do not explode if ruptured.
* The engines are SMALL and LIGHT. No need for a gearbox or diff.
* Uses simple “low tech” technology.
* Have a range of 100 miles.
* The tanks are long lasting and do not need to be replaced.
Of course, the real elephant in the room is how to get the electricity
in the first place. Compressed air, like the other alternatives above
is only an storage mechanism. There are several alternatives, and a
combination of them should be used. But this solar power one proposed
in “Scientific American” is worthy of note:-
http://www.sciam.com/article.cfm?id=a-solar-grand-plan
It would provide 70% of all our energy needs (including transport
needs), but comes at a once off cost of $450 billion. For many people the idea
of spending such a huge amount of money is simply unacceptable. But, we
currently spend $1 trillion per year on “defence”, and we havent got any
country to defend against. So really, we CAN afford this easilly. If
dont need the oil, then we dont need the war, dig?
So if we really put our heart to it, this is solvable. So why dont
we…
CO2 caused global warming has to be one of the greatest hoaxes of all time, it seems that it has been bought off by amost every government in the world, not that its all bad, we certainly need to stop wasting so much energy. And the fact that Bush and CO. didn’t go along with it just convinced more people that it must be real, and it still seems to be keeping many people from looking at the real facts. Now if we could just forget about the biofuels and the nuclear power and just concentrate on conserving evergy, it could turn out to be not such a bad thing.
DUBET: Excellent posting. I have thought about this since childhood… from Dr. Seuss’s metaphorical “The Lorax” to watching what Joni Mitchell described as, “They pave paradise, put up a parking lot.” My studies have taken me into the esoteric and my conclusion for all of this is that those in charge, fostered by a patriarchal view of creator, seek to control Creation. Creation, the hybrid of demonstrable Yin and Yang forces (my favorite metaphor the molecule of DNA which is itself a dancing whirl of equal sums from each gender/parent) is the poetic expression of that great, ineffable Life force. When only god the father is given reverence, and when most governments are managed by males, the dual nature of creation is ruptured and instead replaced by this manmade model.
I remember when African mothers, exposed to advertising billboards, were firmly convinced their God-given breast milk was not as good as the new scientific MANMADE formula shit. And babies died. To me, that was one of the first great heists. Of course all Indigenous people recognize that the very claim to land ownership (it all belongs to the great Mother/Gaia) is the quintessential lie. Economists and those who see the world through the prism of history as a succession of conquests in pursuit of variously prized resources (oil, the latest), may attest to the concept and claim of private ownership. Both agendas dovetail, for the premise of ownership is itself a patriarchal derivative of control of things natural, and these stem both from Mother nature and Mothers… as in the control of progeny through birth lineage and conjugal marriage. Note the emphasis on this formality by rightwing practitioners of all patriarchal faiths? Note the punishment rendered on females who step out, seek to have reproductive freedom or lives lived as they wish…
I would also add that the US, “God shed his grace on thee” has made of the gift of its myriad resources, a battle ship republic… that goes about the world leaving a legacy of land mines, dead zones (at sea surrounding continents, as other “industrial nations” also do), and now DU is taking this Garden of “Eden” and making it everywhere lifeless and dis-eased. Civilization? To trade off so much wealth for so much depravity, is a posture that is anti-life, and some would say, anti-Christ. Bottom line: this devouring of resources to render them into manmade products that can be bought and sold without cause or care of the ruination of the web of life and its inter-dependent ecosystems is going to be the murder of us all.
I’d like to see a satire where human shit becomes the thing recycled as fuel. It would be perhaps a mockery, but maybe it would show people that they are consuming and excreting this world into ruin.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YuNLahhZFJ0&feature=related
George !
free public transit
http://frepubtra.blogspot.com
.
bbr-001 March 18th, 2008 4:07 pm
France and UK have been trading electricity, yes, under the channel for 50 years.