CO2 capture and storage: The economic costs
Posted by Rembrandt on July 30, 2007 - 9:55am in The Oil Drum: Europe
Topic: Environment/Sustainability
Tags: carbon, carbon dioxide, CCS, coal [list all tags]
Capturing carbon dioxide from coal (and gas) fired electricity plants. Subsequently transporting the carbon dioxide from the plant and storing it underground in (abandoned) oil/gas fields, in other geological formations or on the ocean floor. It seems like an excellent solution for continued fossil fuel use in the coming decades.
The European Union wants to have 12 large CO2 capture and storage demonstration projects in place by 2015, requiring an investment of 5 billion euro. The expectation is that this development will lead to significant cost reductions, making the technology affordable by 2020. There are however two large drawbacks, it will keep costing large sums of money and the process is quite energy intensive. In this post the economic viability of the process is scrutinized. In a previous post the impact of the extra energy cost of the process on coal depletion was quantified.
Not so long ago, I visited a discussion evening about possibilities for the Dutch economy in capturing and storing carbon dioxide. After two interesting talks, one outlining the technical possibilities for storage in the Netherlands and the other the commercial possibilities, one of the other participants made a remark that was spot on. No matter how wonderful the idea of capturing and storing carbon dioxide may sound, it will always be costly to do so.
The additional costs are estimated by the IPCC in their special report on carbon dioxide capture and storage at 1 to 5 dollar cents per kilowatt-hour. The difference depending on the type of power plant, the technology employed for capturing, the reservoir in which the CO2 is stored, the transporting distance and so on. The largest share of the costs originate from the extra energy needed to capture a pure stream of carbon dioxide for storage. The IPCC estimates the costs from a broad range of publications for different power plants as follows:
“Application of CCS to electricity production, under 2002 conditions, is estimated to increase electricity generation costs by about 0.01–0.05 US dollars per kilowatt hour (US$/kWh), depending on the fuel, the specific technology, the location and the national circumstances. Inclusion of the benefits of EOR would reduce additional electricity production costs due to CCS by around 0.01–0.02 US$/kWh”
More specifically:
“The application of capture technology would add about 1.8 to 3.4 dollar cents per kWh to the cost of electricity from a pulverized coal power plant, 0.9 to 2.2 dollar cents per kWh to the cost for electricity from an integrated gasification combined cycle coal power plant, and 1.2 to 2.4 dollar cents per kWh from a natural gas combined-cycle power plant. Transport and storage costs would add between –1 and 1 dollar cents per kWh to this range for coal plants, and about half as much for gas plants. The negative costs are associated with assumed offsetting revenues from CO2 storage in enhanced oil recovery (EOR) or enhanced coal bed methane (ECBM) projects. Typical costs for transportation and geological storage from coal plants would range from 0.05–0.06 dollar cents per kWh.”
Presently the Industrial base price of electricity in the Netherlands resides around 7 eurocents per kWh or 9.6 dollar cents per kWh. This is in the high range relative to other European Countries. For the most likely application, a pulverized coal power plant, the additional costs of capture & storage would amount to 20% to 30% on top of the industrial base price. This is confirmed by a recent study yet to published in Energy Policy, volume 35, Issue 9, September 2007, pages 4444-4454: “Cost and performance of fossil fuel power plants with CO2 capture and storage“. The authors, E. Rubin et al, come up with a cost increase figure of 15% to 30%. They base this on a wide range of previous publications.
To cover these costs, companies are looking at two distinct options. Firstly they hope that carbon capture and storage will become a part of the European emissions trading scheme. Secondly, they are investigating the possibility of enhanced oil recovery by carbon dioxide injection in oil fields.
The European emission trading scheme is an initiative under the Kyoto protocol. It provides Europe with a market to trade greenhouse gas emission allowances or emission reduction units. Each individual company is given an assigned amount of Kyoto Protocol Units or Carbon Credits which can be increased or decreased through several mechanisms. Every carbon credit is equivalent to a reduction of one ton of greenhouse gas emissions. Within the trading scheme, a party is allowed to transfer their carbon credits to or from another party. An unlimited number of units may be acquired by emissions trading while only a limited number may be transferred to another party. At the moment, carbon capture and storage is not incorporated as a possibility for mitigation under the emissions trading scheme.
Thus far the European carbon credit market is in it’s test stages and will become effective in 2008. During the test stage it has not functioned very well because too many credits were handed out, thereby putting a downward pressure on the price of a ton of carbon. We can see this in figure 3 below. In april 2006, when news came out that countries had a surplus of credits, their value dropping significantly.
Currently the price for a carbon credit resides between 20 to 26 dollars euro’s per ton CO2. In relation to the costs of carbon capture and storage this is too low. In table 2 the cost estimates from the IPCC can be read for a pulverized coal power plant. Giving between 30 to 70 dollars per ton CO2 or 20 to 50 euro’s. The present price would make the technology only economically viable at the cheapest locations. It is difficult to predict whether the price of carbon will increase because of the development of the market is heavily dependent on political negotiations. For instance, are more countries outside the European Union going to join in the trading in the future? Will the air transport sector be incorporated in the emissions trading scheme? And most important for carbon capture and storage, will it be added as a full possibility for mitigation under the trading scheme?
Next to emissions trading there are high hopes for enhanced oil recovery. To my opinion overblown hopes, given that the technique can only be applied commercially at very few oil fields. This was recently highlighted by Statoil and Shell. The companies dropped plans to store CO2 at the Draugen oilfield in Norway because economic analysis showed that it was uneconomical to do so. Nonetheless, enhanced oil recovery is often considered as a possible option as explained in the case study below.
Pioneering Carbon capture and Storage: Rotterdam Harbour
One of the 12 large CO2 capture and storage demonstration projects that the European Commission wants to develop by 2015 could very well arise in the Dutch harbour of Rotterdam. Recently the environmental agency of the Rijnmond Region, in which Rotterdam Harbour lies, has calculated that it would be possible to capture and storage up to 20 million tons of carbon emissions from the region Rotterdam annually for only 24 euro per ton of CO2 (PDF in Dutch, 3.6 MB, 56 pages). A price that is much lower than normal thanks to efficient usage of energy. A significant amount of heat created by the local industry is wasted which can be applied for usage in the capture process. The environmental agency has assumed that this waste heat can be utilised for free as input in the capture process, hence the huge reduction in costs for capture and storage. However, it still remains to be seen whether the local companies will comply with giving away their waste heat for free, no one has asked the companies formally thus far.
If the price of 24 euro’s per ton of CO2 proves to be real, then it would be viable under the current price in the European emission trading scheme. Additional funding could be gained by the application of enhanced oil recovery according to the environmental agency of Rijnmond. Their basic assumptions being two additional barrels of crude oil production for every ton of injected CO2. In their cost/benefit an oil price of 30 dollars per barrel is assumed. However, this income flow is very variable. When applicable at an oil field, the injection of carbon dioxide will only be maintained for a few years. Beyond that period it does not deliver additional production benefits slowing down and halting the income flow. Also time is running out, because many fields that appear to be suitable for carbon dioxide injection will be closed down in the period of 2008 to 2012. By 2018, very few oil fields will be available for injection purposes.
Summarizing
While the idea of carbon dioxide capture and storage seems excellent, the costs are a large hurdle that might cancel this option altogether. Only with continued political support will this technological mitigation option for climate change become viable. The best option is full support of carbon dioxide capture and storage in the European emissions trading scheme, to make pioneering projects such as the one proposed at Rotterdam harbour viable. For larger application beyond a few projects, the price of a ton of carbon needs to increase, or the costs of capture and storage will need to come down significantly.
This looks incredibly cheap to me. Electricity only has to become a third more expensive to mitigate most of the CO2 emissions? I'm firmly of the belief we could cut our electricity consumption by 20-30% within a decade with relatively simple and politically acceptable moves (incandescent lamps, appliance standby load, industrial motors etc.). Such efficiency improvements would pay for CCS?
Hansen has shown how coal (rather than oil) is the critical issue for climate change (Implications of "Peak Oil" for Atmospheric CO2 and Climate) and if we can aggressively deploy CCS to coal infrastructure and leave unconventional hydrocarbons largely untouched we stand a very good chance of keeping emissions below 450ppm. Can it really be as easy as paying 20-30% more for our electricity?
If you could apply Carbon Capture and Storage (CCS) to the world's 2,000 largest fossil fuel power plants (about 90% of them coal) you would reduce world CO2 emissions by something like 25%.
I am assuming in this:
- that electric power production is c. 40% of world CO2 output
- that coal is about 7/8ths of that (coal is 1/2 US electric power output, and about 80-90% of CO2 output for the US electric power sector; it is c. 90% of Chinese electricity output, c. 80% I think of Indian, I can't remember the Russian fraction (about 20% I think), about 30% of Canadian, about 60% of Australian, 40% of German, 90% of Polish etc.
- that CCS, including the additional energy costs, would reduce total CO2 emission per plant by about 70%
(sorry for all the handwaiving, I haven't done a good model)
This would cost something between $100-200/tonne of carbon abated (might be as high as $300 or $81/tonne CO2).
Now it's likely that in the early stages, costs would be at the upper end, or beyond, what the IPCC estimates. The IGCC (Intermediate Gasification Combined Cycle) technology is relatively expensive and tricky, compared to Ultra-Critical pulverised coal technology.
The MIT coal study also shows that the technology pathway is not entirely clear: it's not certain that IGCC with CCS is better than conventional pulverised coal (PC) with CCS. We need to build the plants and find out.
As you point out, a systematic programme of improving building efficiency (c. 30% of greenhouse gas emissions) could sharply reduce the demand for electricity at the same time. It's entirely within current technology to double current building efficiency on average (new buildings, 80-90% better ie using 10% of the energy they do now; retrofitting buildings up to 50% better).
It's really quite sad, because that says we could reduce world CO2 emissions by 35-40%, simply by doing what we already know how to do, and by fully developing CCS technology. We could do that in 30 years (time to replace all power plants and bring all buildings up to standard).
By contrast, transport is much, much harder. There is a 'quick win' (US passenger vehicles) but after that, abatement costs per tonne of carbon are quite high.
(saving the rainforests is actually cheapest: as little as £10/tonne of carbon. Even cheaper is stuff like insulating your home or changing to CFLs, which have *positive* costs ie they *pay* you to do them)
Having watched the UK drown this summer (having nearly melted 2 summers ago) and watching Greece burn, and noting the continued disbelief in global warming in the US (and the prevalent belief that GW has something to do with Al Gore's political ambitions ie that it is a partisan issue) my conclusion is things really haven't gotten bad enough. Humans need much bigger threats to make them change their ways.
In 20 years time we'll be ready for these solutions. But we'll do everything to drag our heels in the meantime.
This week's Science Magazine (? couldn't find the cite, it might be Nature) has a debate between Sir Nicholas Stern and William Nordhaus. Nordhaus, the doyen of sceptical environmental economists, basically argues we should concentrate on economic growth, and making the future rich. Then they'll be rich enough to do something about global warming. He doesn't think our obligation runs any deeper than that, ie to do what we would normally have done.
The world, and the IPCC, as James Hansen points out in New Scientist this week, may be massively underestimating the risk of accelerated glacial melt.
Let's hope the earth's climate gives us that time to make up our minds to do something.
If you could apply Carbon Capture and Storage (CCS) to the world's 2,000 largest fossil fuel power plants (about 90% of them coal) you would reduce world CO2 emissions by something like 25%.........
OK - where do you put the CO2??
It doesnt matter if we capture it. If you burn 1 km3 of coal per year where do you put [x]000km3 of CO2..
answers on a postcard please
...well the oxygen I can live with -we don't want to get rid of that!!
Also, we don't necessarily need to get rid of the carbon from the atmosphere at the source -just remove it from the carbon cycle. That's after all how the carbon got down into Ghawar and the like in the first place.
A problem with any CCS idea is that is uses energy from the very fossil fuels it aims to cut the emmissions from. Therefore the pie either needs to expand ("oops1" after PO) or we get less energy out the end ("oops2" after PO).
In his book "The Millenium Project" Marshal Savage envisages using Ocean Thermal Energy Conversion (OTEC) to power and overproduce algae blooms that are then encassed and sunk to the sea floor. The OTEC gets it's power from outside the current non-renewable system so it expands the pie, not decreases it.
I really think that unless we can come up with a solution that does not detract from NET energy then once we hit PO the GW thing will just take a back seat as we scramble to merely keep the lights burning...
Nick.
Hello everyone,
I just wanted to make sure Terra Preta was included in this discussion.
I am from the American site and we are talking about the current energy legislation (or lack thereof) and the prospect of a recession resulting from the sub-prime fiasco. If there is a recession and it spills over into the global economy then the chances of GW and PO being addressed are going to be slim.
So, I wanted to bring up Terra Preta because it is cheap carbon capture. Essentially Terra Preta is the practice of making charcoal and working it into the ground as fertilizer. Some of the carbon is released into the atmosphere during the process but the rest is sequestered in an inert form in the soil. Grow a tree, turn it into charcoal, bury it, repeat. I think this is going to be important because it is cheap, low tech, accessible to individuals and small groups, and it pulls the carbon directly out of the atmosphere instead of at the source. These are all going to be important factors should governments and industry fail to act in time.
Additionally, I didn't see any mention of algae photobioreactors using the flue gas from the coal power plant. A decent amount of biodiesel can be generated this way. It doesn't keep the carbon out of the atmosphere, but the carbon gets used twice. Once for electricity and once for liquid fuels.
Cheers,
Tim
The IPCC looked at this if you look at the report.
Roughly speaking this would be 2 bn tpa of carbon or 7.3bn tpa of CO2.
There is enough subterranean storage. Bottom of ocean storage is far fetched, but may eventually be practicable.
Nordhaus, the doyen of sceptical environmental economists, basically argues we should concentrate on economic growth, and making the future rich. Then they'll be rich enough to do something about global warming. He doesn't think our obligation runs any deeper than that, ie to do what we would normally have done.
What a jerk.
Here's what's going to happen---based on what is happening now.
Global economic growth will enable a few people to get even damn richer. At that point, they will be personally better off by buying property in those regions least affected or beneficially affected by global warming.
They'll be strong demand for those so you'll have to be rich.
Large scale socialized (i.e. taxed) schemes to alter global warming for generations in the future will be seen as irrelevant (since by then global warming will be an irreversible train) and fiercely fought by the people who have all the money (since that taxation (of the rich of course, since they have the money) will strongly hurt their ability to ameliorate global warming now for themselves and their families.)
Everybody else will be encouraged to go f@ck themselves.
By the way, that argument of Nordhaus---if you assume continuous exponential growth in prosperity endlessly---appears superficially to be a 'time-free' operator, in that it will give exactly the same answer at any moment in time: "do it later".
E.g.: Well, with enough economic growth I guess we'll be able to cure cancer for (inflation adjusted) 25 cents a head, so why bother working and worrying about it now.
And later: 25 cents? Why bother? In a few years it will be only 1 cent.
I've mounted a few desultory searches for the source of the efficiency loss numbers, and not found them. How do we know, f'rex, that an IGCC plant would actually become less efficient than a PCC plant with recovery?
An IGCC plant could become far more efficient through the use of a few recent but simple technologies. Take, for example, Acrion's CO2 Wash process. This is a fractional distillation system designed to remove CO2 and contaminants from landfill gas, but it would work equally well to remove CO2, H2S, COS, H2O and the like from a syngas stream. This leaves mainly H2, CH4 and CO. This in turn could be fractionally distilled (a la air separation plants) to remove the hydrogen. Carbon monoxide and methane go to solid-oxide fuel cells ($500/kW sometime soon), with the spent fuel gas sent to sequestration. The air stream for the SOFC's is the combustion air for the gas turbine of an IGCC plant, heated by the hydrogen after exiting the SOFCs (to reach optimum turbine-inlet temperature).
I haven't taken this concept apart far enough to calculate a net efficiency for it, but my SWAG is it ought to be well over 50%. Nearly all of the carbon, plus 99.9%+ of the sulfur and all the condensible pollutants such as mercury, will be removed from the combustion fuel stream in the two separation steps. Energy supply for the separation is mostly as low-pressure steam to run the refrigeration system for the first distillation.
All we need is for the sub-$500/kW SOFC to come through, as Delphi and others have claimed they can do. The rest is mostly re-plumbing a gas turbine.
The place to look is the MIT sequestration study (came out this year).
http://web.mit.edu/coal/
IGCC is, from memory, about 42-44% efficient, v. about 32% for a supercritical coal station, and maybe 35% for an ultra supercritical PC station. (I'm doing that out of memory).
What MIT says, is that it is not clear whether IGCC is the best technology for sequestration, and a strategy of subsidising IGCC stations *without sequestration* for future retrofitting, in preference to USC PC, is wrong. That was the main 'new news' for me.
I'll have to look at that. Unfortunately, I'm swamped with work this week (just when I need to look at that energy bill). :(
Since this is driven by Big Coal and their captive legislators it needs careful monitoring. We’ve recently seen double counting in tree planting offset schemes since the promoters figured people wanted the feelgood factor, not hard numbers. I’ll just make a couple of points now about some conflicting claims. First CCS will speed depletion. If a world coal peak without CCS was expected by 2025 it will come sooner if extra coal has to shovelled into the furnaces to power the scrubbing, compression and pumping process.
However coal peak deniers say in situ gasification will exploit all those hard-to-get seams or maybe left-behind pillars. Huh? Either gas stays below the surface creeping into hidden layers or it rushes up towards the well head. CCS and UCG are therefore opposite so I don’t see we can have both.
My third point for now is that surely a well head steam boiler has to be cheaper than enhanced oil recovery using CO2. I know ‘green’ dry cleaners use liquid CO2 rather than fluorocarbon solvents. Their customers are cashed up yuppies, not labourers. To me the EOR line sounds like another greenwash so I’d like to see some comparative cost figures.
This could be mitigated by achieving 20-30% electricity consumption reductions. Say coal burn per kWh increases by 20-30% but electricity consumption reduces by the same amount then coal tonnage burnt remains the same.
'peak coal' is tendentious, although perhaps an article of faith amongst some here.
Global Warming is real, and now.
If we've run out of coal in the 22nd century, then we'll find an alternative source of energy.
The problem is going to be getting through the 21st century without cooking the planet.
Only a fool would take the mid point of the IPCC case, and not worry about the right hand tail of the distribution.
What chance do we need of a 6 degree C rise in temperature to panic, now? 1%? 0.5%
With the usual 'thank you' to those who make the effort to post stories..but a pile of prices tells me nothing.
I cant be bothered to revise the chemistry. Can anyone actally say how much CO2 we could realistically stuff underground [athough it sounds a complete waste of energy to me] and the FUNDAMENTAL answer to this - how much stuff do you burn to make this much CO2/pressure?
Thanks in advance
The energy costs of CCS are covered in the previous article: CO2 Capture and Storage: The Energy Costs
Thanks for the reply, but what Im asking is:
How much ff produces the volume of CO2 that is envisaged being stuffed down the wellpipe to squeeze out oil? Is it 1000 draxes or 1/1000 drax?
As some inspiration I offer this useful site:
http://www.cockeyed.com/inside/howmuchinside.html
OK I did it myself, because none of the propaganda 'lifestyle' sites which appear on a google search of Carbon give any facts:
I reckon that coal~graphite therefore:
2267kg per m3/1.98kg per m3 = 1144.95
1144.95 x 44/12 [allows for the weight of O2 in CO2]
= 4198.15
So for example 1 km3 of coal gives 4198.15 km3 of CO2
Of course this may be wrong because I am supposed to be doing other things now anyone else?
I think you've got too much carbon per m3 there.
There's some good information from the EIA on CO2 and coal here: Carbon Dioxide Emission Factors for Coal
Which includes this:
Seems the CO2 emissions are just over 200 pounds of CO2 per million BTU. Which is absolutely meaningless to me but it also corresponds to just over 90kg per 300kWh or 0.3kg/kWh. That's kWh of heat not kWh of electricity. This also ties in with the0.43kg CO2 / kWh UK grid average for generated electricity (considering the thermal efficiency of the plant and the mix of nuclear and natural gas).
Anyway - one tonne of coal produces 2.86 tonnes of CO2. The density of a coal is between 1.1 and 1.5 tonnes per m3, lets assume 1.4 as we're working with good stuff here. The density of CO2 at standard temperature and pressure is 1.98 kg/m3 so coal is 707 times denser.
In volume terms then 1 m3 of coal will produce 2.86 x 707 = ~2000 m3 of CO2. I guess the trick is not to store at standard temperature and pressure?
2000m3 sounds feasible - especially if Graphite =~4000m3 CO2
So..if we burn 1km3 of oil per year and [x]km3 of other ff that's... what? 10000km3 of CO2 per year?? bloody big hole that is...per year..
What's your pressure assumption?
CO2 liquifies under pressure.
Fair enough, the volume may be 1000 times less [made up number] at depth, but mother nature gave you oil/gas at 10000 psi because of plate tectonics. You have millions of tonnes of rock crushing the impervious dome that squirts out oil when you make the hole. You have to remake that pressure to inflate the void. And its not lined with rubber - it has collapsed once, so now it has fissures and leaks. I skimmed a bit of the IPCC report [Chap 5]. I havent turned google furlongs and terrapascals into meaningful units but I dont have to..Look at their diagram of a well head with huge flanges and gaskets, and their diagram of how to cap old wells - welded steel dome and 3 concrete plugs. You think there is much energy from ff left after we have compressed CO2 to those pressures? It talks about dissolving CO2 in water etc, so now we have acid groundwater, carbonate erosion..
Sorry to be argumentative, but I think focussing on 'capture technology' misses the flaw in the plan
ref your comments on CO2 storage options
There are basically two options out there, re-use of depleted oil / gas fields and injection into aquifers.
Both have merits, there is far more volume available in aquifers, but oil fields may be most practical in the first place. Aquifer storage is the longer term best but there are more uncertainties regarding the long term fate of CO2 and its migration will need to be more carefully monitored. Statoil are doing this in the Ut Sira formation in Norway today and it is not treated as such a big deal to be honest.
The comments made on oil reservoirs collapsing as the oil is produced is only semi correct, it depends on
a) the strength of the rock matrix (may not collapse)
b) the mechanism by which pressure is maintained as oil is produced
A lot of fields have compacted to some extent, particularly chalk fields, and non-consolidates sandstones etc. This does not mean that all the pore volume is gone.
There will be an energy requirement to compress CO2 to a high enough pressure to pump it subsurface. This is however still quite a bit less than the energy consumed in the capture processes (today).
A lot of the reasons we have high focus on caåpture technology today is that it is rather inefficient and as the biggest energy consumer, has the most potential for improvement as technology is developed.
Storage is important though - and probably underfocussed by the power / energy industry as it is not such known teritory. Research in this area is also going on, and real tests are being done (eg. Zerogen in Aus.)
I go on the basis of how much natural gas do we extract every day, week, month, or year. If we extract 10 trillion cubic feet of natural gas per year, then I would say that is about how much CO2 your could store. I envision an network of pipes, much like natural gas pipes, that go back to extracted wells.
OK that works for natural gas because 1 x CH4 = 1 x CO2, what about the CO2 from coal? Where do we put that??
Another question would be:
Couldn't CO2 be used in another reaction providing some kind of energy, like methane or something like that? I don't know the specifics, but if it could be used rather than be put underground, the co2 price would fall even more.
This one I do know. You have to add energy to turn CO2 to methane. If you could do it 100% efficiently [impossible] then you would add exactly as much as you get when you burn the methane to make CO2 - you see the catch??
CO2 to Methane is exothermic. Its creating the Hydrogen thats endothermic.
Methogens actually use this reaction for energy. The hydrogen comes from reduced carbon sources.
So the correct answer is you have to add hydrogen. The reaction itself however produces energy.
Co2 is a recognised industrial gas, and piped or shipped long distances for same (packaging, and things like electronics manufacture).
The main use is enhanced oil recovery. The Weybridge project in Saskatchewan pipes CO2 from the US coal gasifier in North Dakota (built during the 70s Energy Crisis as a demonstration project) under ground to enhance oil recovery.
Largely though, CO2 is a waste gas.
There is a problem, which is going to make Carbon Capture and Storage (Sequestration) -CCS a serious political problem.
CO2 is heavier than air, and in concentrations above 10%, AFAIK, lethal. It also *sounds like* Carbon Monoxide, which is lethal in very small concentrations (and kills people with cooking stoves, all over the world, all the time).
Near Lake Cameroon, a CO2 leak (geologic) caused the death of several thousand people.
So you are going to have pipes with a lethal gas (which will leak, from time to time) running hundreds of miles to put the gas back underground, where it might leak.
Now the world accepts this with natural gas (CH4) because natural gas is heat. It accepts that we ship petrol around and store it, even though it is explosive, forms deadly vapour at room temperature, and causes horrific burns.
But humans are not rational in weighting risks. Tell someone of a new CO2 pipeline, which sounds a heck of a lot like a carbon monoxide pipeline and you can bet the NIMBY brigade will be out in force. Unless the government underwrites the industry liability (as it does with the nuclear industry) to an accident, it ain't gonna happen.
I'm a big fan of CCS, but if, as a society, we find it impossible to build windmills because they are ugly, then CSS really will be a tough fight.
If you talk to people on the street, they think:
- global warming is something that is just happening, not something they can do anything about
- global warming is inevitable
- it's something to do with the ozone layer and spray cans
- it's a plot against China
- it's a plot by socialists to stop them driving and enjoying life
- it's something our kids will worry about
- CO2 couldn't cause global warming
- it's another massively overstated environmental panic, a la the Population Bomb or the Y2K
- humans don't cause CO2 to rise in the atmosphere
I've been told these things not just by Daily Mail readers, but by businessmen, with degrees in engineering and geology, people who manage billions of dollars in the City. If you rhyme off scientific facts to them, they just quote you back some sceptic argument they heard on Channel 4.
It's ironic, we're quite capable of polluting the planet with nuclear waste for 10s of thousands of years, but when it comes to something like CO2 (naturally occuring), we are incapable of saving the planet from our CO2, in the next 200 years.
(you'll notice that people love nuclear power: businessmen are quite prepared to overlook the subsidies, and they think it is just Greeny politics that complains about the waste)
That creature that started climbing, at Olduvai Gorge, has more or less reached the limits of his ability, I suspect-- we're so high up in the tree, that when the branch breaks we will finally fall to earth. The brain case just isn't well adapted enough to a global environmental challenge.
I 'feel your pain'. It is frustrating. I think some of the finest minds on the net are right here on TOD, looking at practical ways of solving problems. They do, however, see things with the typical human viewpoint: To a man with a hammer, everything looks like a nail. To oil industry technicians, everything looks like increasing demand and a problem to be solved with pipes and pumps.
The problem of CO2 isn't a matter of how much of the carbon we use makes it into the atmosphere; it's that we are digging or sucking the carbon out of semi-permanent storage in the first place. Most of the activity of the human race is simply wasted effort to create more effort (can you say "job creation" and "market creation", "price war" and "free market"?).
Increased prices are necessary to assign the proper value to the resource being used (all resources are currently under-priced because of petroleum-enabled technology). Cheap food has destroyed farms and sterilized soils via cheap oil. Cheap oil has devalued the planet to the point of destruction (mountaintop removal?). As long as people think they can get things for little or no cost, they don't care about how it is obtained, or what it does to their children's future. Cheaper gasoline means they can save more money to send their kids to college to become automobile engineers.
"If you want Change, keep it in your pocket. Your money is your only real vote."
You mean Weyburn.
Let's say that it would cost the consumer 20% more for this. Let's says that 25% of the power comes from coal fired power plants that are using the new methods. That might mean that the consumer might have a $100 per month electric bill go to $105 per month. Would the majority of average consumers be willing to pay $5 more per month to get this? I think the answer is YES! But they will not get the opportunity to chose because the choice is not being offered. This is called policy at the national level and so far we have been lacking the leadership required in this area.
It ain't just the consumers energy bills, it's the cost of absolutly everything to some extent... that increase, whether 5% or 20%, would hit every commercial enterprise too - and while electricity might not be the biggest bill companies face, all the other services or materials they have to buy will also cost more.
Ultimatly, the full gross cost of the increase must be bourne by consumers - not just the fraction that is residential power.
I've no idea what percentage of electricity is non-residential use?
--
Jaymax (uber-techno-conucopian-doomer)
Let's say half of all electricity used is non residential and 10% of the cost of producing a product or service is the cost of electricity. It is easy to see that a 5-20% rise in the cost of electricity would not raise the prices much for services and goods.
Look at fuel prices increasing 100% in the past 5 years. The same could be said for the percentage of the cost of delivering goods and services and this seems to be factored in over that period. My point being, we can pay the price, the question is are people willing to pay the price to slow Global Warming and Climate Change?
Are they willing to pay the price for the extra insurance or are they going to roll the dice and buy into the propaganda that there really IS no problem? They are told that coal is the cheapest fuel, so lets build more plants without sequestration. They are told this because the corporations can make more money without sequestration and they will charge you higher prices for electricity anyway, because they can.
This has been looked at in some detail.
One industry (aluminium smelting) has a very high electricity content (something over 1/3rd of total costs). That is why they are building a huge smelter in Iceland (cheap geothermal power).
The other industry that will be hit fairly hard is server farms-- again why Google is moving some to Iceland, so is Intel.
but broadly electricity is 5% of production costs at most. So a rise of 2.5%. Big range: some industries (papermaking) it might be a 20% rise in total cost, many it will be relatively small.
Again, the US is a strikingly inefficient user of electricity. Since 1980, California per capita electricity use has been static, whereas the US as a whole it has risen by over 40%. So there is lots to go for there in terms of efficiency.
Which brings up the subjet of geothermal, I understand the DOE has dropped research into the idea of deep well geothermal, why so? It should be worth the effort.