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DOE Pumps $126.6 Million Into Carbon Sequestration
RickRussellTX writes "The DOE awarded $126.6 million in grants today to projects that will pump 1 million tons of CO2 into underground caverns at sites in California and Ohio. Environmental groups call carbon sequestration "a scam", claiming that it is too expensive and uncertain to be competitive with non-coal alternatives like wind and solar. I just hope nobody drops a Mentos down the wrong pipe."
..."claiming that it is too expensive and uncertain to be competitive with non-coal alternatives like wind and solar."
Why can't we do both? Damn environmentalists meddling again. Never wanting to compromise or find some benefits in alternatives.
Carbon sequestration is like burying a ticking bomb in your backyard. A much better solution is carbon mineral sequestration - turning the carbon into rocks of some kind. That way, unlike underground sequestration (which has the potential to leak straight back into the atmosphere), the carbon stays where it is put.
To make laws that man cannot, and will not obey, serves to bring all law into contempt.
--E.C. Stanton
Actually, my main concern is "what if it escapes?". Considering that CO2 is heavier than Oxygen, I wouldn't like to be anywhere near (i.e. within tens of km if not more) a site that stores thousands of tons of CO2.
Opus: the Swiss army knife of audio codec
That's the main problem with environmental groups. At their core, many of them are just as immune to rational argument and unwilling to consider proposals that don't line up with their pre-conceived notions as the fossil fuel industries and their pet politicians.
The arguments against sequestration are (so far as I've seen) just as bogus as the anti-nuclear waste disposal arguments. I'm glad that these groups recognize when there are problems with any given technology, I just wish their response to any attempt to address the problem wasn't a knee-jerk claim that the proposed fix was a scam and that the only solution was to abandon the technology and switch to moonbeams.
--MarkusQ
Can't we just plant trees? I heard that natural swamp ecosystems can be used to purify water better than our industrial plants. We could create a project that actually does something useful.
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that's why all the plans involve putting it down somewhere. I'd oppose sequestration in huge towers outside of major metropolitan areas, but putting it deep down in the ground makes a lot of sense.
--MarkusQ
1. Grow Bamboo 2. Drop down old salt mine or other large hole. 3. ??? 4. Profit!
meh
I like how 'environmental groups' is a link to a single source: Greenpeace.
As we all know, they're the kind of people that we can have a good intelligent discussion with, right? Of course, anyone that doesn't fall in line with their philosophy is some sort of heretic, even if they happen to be one of their own founders that disagrees with a long-standing platform of the organization.
I'd have a lot more respect for them if they also condemned Al Gore and his pimping of useless carbon credits that happen to fatten his own pockets...
"We'll need 2000 crickets, 4 cans of Easy Cheese, and the fluid from 18 glowsticks for this plan to work...." - ph0n1c
"many of them are just as immune to rational argument"
Your statement hinges on the fact that coal industry has indeed given any rational arguments to support the burying of CO2 (A very literal way of 'burying your head in the sand', don't you think?). Let's step back and look at the problem. The main issue we have the moment is global warming being caused by an excess of greenhouses gases, predominantly CO2 in the atmosphere. We need solutions. Renewable energy is a solution. Cutting back on energy usage is a solution. And yes, even sequestration is a solution. However, what are the best and most effective solutions to take? Cutting back our usage can be done now and it can have significant effects in the area of reducing CO2 output. Renewables are already a proven technology and lack only significant funding to make them more common. That said, in many countries and states funding is significant and renewable energy targets are set to be met. Now let's look at sequestration. Is it proven? Only in laboratories. Which if you consider the scale and possible ramifications of the process is a fairly useless sticking point. Is it safe? Well you decide for yourself. Pumping millions of tonnes into underground caverns? Versus building windmills, hydro plants and solar farms. Does it solve our problems? In the short term it prevents CO2 from immediately going into the atmosphere but burying it can't continue indefinitely, and it does nothing to reduce our reliance on coal - a finite source.
The idea virtually is a scam, it's the coal industry asking for grants and subsidies all across the world to support a dying business instead of looking the facts in the face and realising that renewables are the way of the future. No amount of exaggeration (Moonbeams?) on your part will change that.
"Cutting back on energy usage is a solution."
What you really meant to say is that massive depopulation of the earth is the solution, since at this point we can only reduce the rate at which energy consumption grows, not the overall rate at which energy is consumed.
It makes the people doing it feel good. That's all it does and all it needs to do.
Good, inexpensive web hosting
Hey neat, we're making our own Balrog.
I wonder if Greenpeace realizes the choice isn't between coal plants with sequestered carbon and windmills. In reality, barring some fortuitous breakthrough in solar power, as oil gets more expensive the choice will be between coal plants with this technology and coal plants without it. I believe Greenpeace has completely overestimated the average person's willingness to make lifestyle sacrifices for the sake of atmospheric carbon reductions.
I wish organizations like this would try to be part of the solution instead of just trying to limit our options. You can't accuse the coal companies of proposing a technology that isn't economically feasible on the one hand and then propose wholesale conversion to technologies that are even less economically feasible.
We wouldn't even have this problem if the very same people hadn't killed the nuclear industry through scaremongering and excessive litigation.
How much CO2 is generated in the process of accumulating, pressurizing, and delivering it? When you have worked through all of the ripple effect, I bet they generate a pound of CO2 for each pound they sequester.
This is no different from Wile E. Coyote's electric fan-powered sailboat.
Or the ethenol believers who conveniently neglect the big fire they have to put under that still.
One way CO2 is being sequestered now is with enhanced oil recovery (EOR). Even though it sounds like you're just pulling more hydrocarbons out of the ground (e.g. bad), think of it this way: if you're pumping more CO2 into the ground then produced from combustion of the oil taken out, you've just made all that oil carbon neutral.
that's why all the plans involve putting it down somewhere.
If it was stored in gas form at atmospheric pressure, it wouldn't be a problem (it would just be silly). The problem is that if it's stored in highly compressed or solid form, then if something goes wrong and it goes back to gas, it *will* go up and escape, potentially killing anyone in the area.
Opus: the Swiss army knife of audio codec
Sticking them in the ground is not a sane nor rational plan for, as you put it 'managing atmospheric gases'. However, this seems to be a common theme at the Department of Energy. Waste problem? No problem - bury it in the ground and hope we are dead before the chickens come home to roost, so to speak. The simple fact of the matter is that while man might dump 8 gigatons of carbon into the environment, the biosphere is churning through nearly one hundred times the amount I'm afraid this smells of made up statistics. Perhaps you have a source? Most atmospheric CO2 comes from fossil fuel emissions. If you are going to manage atmospheric gases, then manage them. Otherwise, quit moaning the about the threat of GW This confirms your status as a skeptic, which is generally to be encouraged, but you're completely out of your depth and it shows. 'Managing' atmospheric gases does not mean hiding them like a corpse or feces and hoping no-one notices. It means reducing consumption, primarily, as this reduces overall emissions. Increasing emissions while relying on unproven technology to be your saviour is extremely juvenile and short-sighted.
If they had a workable model for storing the CO2, long-term, this might be possible, but as of now, it's all smoke and mirrors. 'Hey, look - the US is no longer dragging it's feet on CO2 emissions!' Which is of course, untrue. It's like designing a car around a power source that has not yet been invented.
The American generating plan through 2030 is...coal, and lots of it. New scrubber technologies and filters. Of course, many plants have not even complied with current standards, let alone new ones. After all, who wants to lower profitability in the name of infrastructure investment? Paying fines for being noncompliant is cheaper than making the plants compliant since your enviornmental laws are so toothless - and that's in comparaison to other first world nations, who for the most part also have extremely lax laws.
$126M buys 126000KW, i.e., 126MW of installed wind power. At a power factor of 30% this produces 38MW of power.
A coal powered plant would produce 300000 Tons of CO2 a year to generate this power. Three years of operation would mean 1M tons of CO2 not released into the atmosphere.
For a gas-powered plant, it would be 6 years. For an oil powered plant, 4 years.
A 38MW plant is not really much power, and is a drop in the bucket. On the other hand the research benefits from this project are not easily quantifiable. So I'd go with the research on this one!
References:
http://www.seen.org/pages/db/method.shtml
http://www.windpower.org/en/tour/econ/index.htm
All bow to his Noodliness!! His Noodle Appendage has touched me!
Doesn't nature provide carbon sequestration in the form of Wood? Wouldn't cutting down a forest and building stuff out of the wood, meanwhile letting the forest regrow, effectively remove carbon out of the system?
Seriously. How about c.f. the $110 million awarded to the MPAA? This carbon program is chump change.
This may not be the brightest idea out of Washington, but it is by far not the worst.
And yet, a natural carbon dioxide is the least of our worries - its mostly unpredicatble. However, human emissions are predictable - and forecast to grow at exponential rates
... what happens when Africa decides to get air conditioning?
There's so many problems here I don't even know where to begin.
China now exceeds the USA in CO2 emissions. Part of this is economic growth, but a surprising share is because of a massive coal seam fire that is expected to burn for at least another 50 years. The coal fire alone already produces more emissions than all US cars combined. The Chinese are exempt from Kyoto...
SO, US EMISSIONS CUTS CANNOT POSSIBLY WORK BECAUSE THE CHINESE ALREADY PRODUCE MORE CO2 THAN THE USA. Even if we go to ZERO emissions, the net CO2 balance in the atmosphere will continue to grow. Given that China has more people than the USA and EU combined, it stands to reason that China will reach a point in CO2 emissions where complete and total sequestration by all of NATO will not be sufficient to halt an increase in greenhouse gases.
Now if you think China is going to suddenly see the light and change its act, think again. China is spending billions of buckazoids a year to commission ever more coal plants. She's also making Coal to Liquids plants and is investing heavily in oil exploration off of her own shores, off Africa, and is working to build ties to the middle east.
'Managing' atmospheric gases does not mean hiding them like a corpse or feces and hoping no-one notices. It means reducing consumption, primarily, as this reduces overall emissions. Increasing emissions while relying on unproven technology to be your saviour is extremely juvenile and short-sighted.
No. Managing atmospheric must include sequestration. Please see above, and while you are at it, also add carbon emissions for the developing third world
We have to be able to take CO2 out of the air, and put it somewhere. Sorry, that's just the case. Anything that doesn't include sequestration is just a fantasy.
This is my sig.
Citation please. Heck, I'll provide one. MIT's "Tech Review" says "Solar power cost about $4 a watt in the early 2000s". That's less than half of what you say.
FalconShould there be a Law?
Man, I would not want to live anywhere near one of these storage facilities.
On the other hand, from wikipedia "To further investigate the safety of CO2 sequestration, we can look into Norway's Sleipner gas field, as it is the oldest plant that stores CO2 on an industrial scale. According to an environmental assessment of the gas field which was conducted after ten years of operation, the author affirmed that geosequestration of CO2 was the most definite way to store CO2 permanently. [4]
"Available geological information shows absence of major tectonic events after the deposition of the Utsira formation [saline reservoir]. This implies that the geological environment is tectonically stable and a site suitable for carbon dioxide storage. The solubility trapping [is] the most permanent and secure form of geological storage." [4]"
This sounds pretty exact-opposite of what the greenpeace hippy terro... activists are saying.
Ace
I disagree with your calculations, even though I don't really follow...at all.
Burning 1 gallon of gasoline produces 18 pounds of CO2.
OP is being generous - EPA estimates are more like 19.4 lbs per Gallon
It only takes 111 gallons to equal a ton
a 'ton' (idiotic 'short ton' in the U.S.) is 2000 lbs so 2000 lbs per ton / 18 lbs per gallon = 111 gallons per ton of CO2
or almost $500 of gas[oline].
$3.50 per gallon is about the current average price, so, I'll agree that the figure $500 is a little high. Perhaps $388 (say $400) is better.
For their 126M, they are going to sequester 100M tons [the heading says 1 million not 100 million], so they are paying over 126M per ton of CO2 sequestered . Are they completely frigging nuts???
By my math this should be $126 per ton, which is about 1/2 - 1/3 of the price of the gasoline required to produce that same amount of CO2. I think that's relatively inexpensive. (How much CO2 is produced to power the sequestering is another issue)
However. The amount of CO2 that is to be sequestered is a drop in the ocean, it's the equivalent of about 1/3 of 1 day worth of gasoline consumption in the U.S. or less than 1/10th of a percent of the CO2 emitted by gasoline consumption per year(which accounts for only a relatively small part of total U.S. CO2 emissions (approx 7Billion tons per year) ); so, by this standard, although the sequestering seems cost efficient, it is still a total waste of money because it is eliminating a mere 1/100th of a percent of the annual CO2 emmissions. Should we build 7,000 of these things for a cost of $882 Billion Where would we put them. California would need to find room for about 700 of them, L.A. would need over 300 , one for every square mile (yep, you'd have one in your neighbourhood)
What erks me is that this was sceduled to be in down state Illinois where there is a lot of high sulfur coal and a lot of coal burring power plants in the area. The DoE killed the project and now its raising its head in California or elsewhere west. The whole freaking point was for Illinois Coal Fired Power Plants to use Illinois Soft Bituminous Coal which are higher in pollutants than the Harder Coal variety. This part of the country has been depressed since the mid 1980's or at least when "Regan's Trickle Down Theory of the Economics didn't trickle down". The technology could have really cleaned up the air quality and the Jobs could have really helped the area as well. Also the Coal Industry and State and Local Governments really layed the ground work ($$$)out for this. It was Cut short for PURELY POLICATAL REASONS based on location which back out of at the last minute on the project as part of the "BUSH Whitehouse's Energy Policy" what ever the hell that is.
If Carbon Sequestration meant that the Carbon was placed into a solid form, I might like it.
:(
Imagine:
coal --> energy + diamonds
That's not a bad formula! Or:
coal --> energy + carbon (bricks, fibers, nanofibers, etc.).
We could use that for building materials. No problem there. But:
coal --> energy + high pressure gas buried in an old mine shaft underground waiting to escape
is not a good idea.
I knew this sounded familiar - its the plot of a Beverly Hillbillies episode from September 1970.
http://www.tv.com/the-beverly-hillbillies/the-pollution-solution/episode/72982/summary.html
Jed: This fellow's gonna drill a tunnel through the San Bernardino Mountains, put in a great big fan, and draw all the smog out of Los Angeles.
Drysdale: Why, that's a preposterous idea.
Jed: Yeah. We like it too. (edit)
Good episode
It is better to be the hammer than the anvil.
This is interesting... $126.6 million dollars to remove 1 million T of carbon through sequestration.
A forest removes about 2 T a year of carbon from the atmosphere.
http://www.ucsusa.org/publications/catalyst/fa04-catalyst-forest-carbon-sequestration.html
It would take 500,000 acres to remove 1 MT of carbon from the atmosphere. (follow me so far?)
It costs approximately $68/ acre to plant forest.
www.alliancechesbay.org/pubs/projects/deliverables-77-7-2004.ppt
For $126,600,000, you could plant 1,861,764 acres.
This would remove 3,723,528 tons/ year of carbon. Roughly 3.7 times more carbon sequestration annually.
This DOE project removes one million tons once. Forests would remove 3.7 times more each year.
Tisha Hayes
I find your characterization flawed.
10,000 MILE footprint in the desert does bother me. Besides the animals and plants it would impact do you have any idea what that much of a heat sink would do to the WEATHER in the area?
I dont.
I do know that cities absolutely modify their enviroments and what we discussing is MASSIVELY more complex. For example FOrt Hood is 335 square miles and its enviromental impact is noticable. Weather CHANGES when hits it. Most cities have a differnce in tempature of a few degrees then surrounding areas but have a bigger footprint then their limits.
So as treehugger i would be concerned that not just Fauna and Flora might be changed/damaged but that we have NO CLUE what it might do to the surrounding environs.
Some Enviros absolutely would just care about the desert rat..and who can blame them, that rat has EXACTLY as much reason for life as you. I prefer to think of long term consequences and what we might have fix in the future that we mess up without giving due consideration to ALL the problems we might cause. The Law of unintended consequeces is my friend.