<Herman Daly: Towards A Steady-State Economy The Oil DrumDrumBeat: May 6, 2008>

21 comments on Congressman Roscoe Bartlett's Peak Oil Special Order Speech May 1, 2008

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Cslater8 on May 6, 2008 - 2:52am Permalink | Subthread | Comments top

No sense in even trying anything like this until there is a new president.

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beggar on May 6, 2008 - 6:43am Permalink | Subthread | Parent | Comments top

Our lame duck president may or may not veto such legislation.

However, it looks like both Dems and Reps cosponsor this, and a significant number at that.

The legislation seems to me to contain mostly positive credits related to renewables.

I've not had a chance to read through everything, but do these efforts leave out the issue of raising taxes on oil companies? At least this makes it more palatable for those who consistently oppose legislation that raises the tax burden on the oil industry or gasoline.

After renewables get a boost, then the issue of taxation on non-renewables, or a carbon tax, or tax policy related to the oil industry could be addressed seperately -- either this year or next.

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Petrus on May 7, 2008 - 7:33pm Permalink | Subthread | Parent | Comments top

Is this the bill that requires coal power station to sequester produced CO2? That would drive the electricity bills throught the roof, further increase prices of Oil and Natural Gas, kill all economic Electrical Vehicle ambitions and make US even more dependent on foreing Oil and gas. Poor people already don't have the money to heat their houses!

Beware of silly (or evil?) politicians. They can ruin this country much faster than any Peak Oil could.

Desperate people already started harvesting and burning US forests. And burning wood is couple of orders of magnitude dirtier than burning coal!

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Engineer-Poet on May 7, 2008 - 11:12pm Permalink | Subthread | Parent | Comments top

Define "roof".  If coal is 25 million BTU/ton and 60% carbon by weight feeding a plant of 33.3% efficiency, a $50/ton tax on CO2 would cost $110 per ton of coal or 4.5¢/kWh; over the ~2000 billion kWh/year generated from coal in the USA, it would amount to about $90 billion/year.  Peanuts compared to the war.

Retrofitting plants to capture CO2 would pay off nicely, especially when you consider that the CO2 could be used to get huge amounts of oil out of abandoned fields from Texas all the way back to Pennsylvania.  If repowering a plant with IGCC and carbon capture costs $1500/kW, doing 200 GW of base-load plants would cost a whole $300 billion or about 3.3 years of carbon taxes at $50/ton.

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Petrus on May 8, 2008 - 12:40am Permalink | Subthread | Parent | Comments top

Few points you missed:
- You have to lose energy to thermodynamic somewhere. On the scale of centralized Power Station you lose the least.
- Note that additional $0.045 doubles the electricity from coal price.
- Additional $110/ton of coal doubles the wholesale coal price
- 2000 billion kWh/year is not goin to be enough in the future. Higher Oil prices will mean shift to more coal.
- The only long-term stable way to capture CO2 make it back to coal - a net energy loss
- The unstable sequstration ways (underground) take half the energy, therefore doubling the need for plundering coal reserves
- You do not need CO2 for squeezing oil from abandoned fields, any gas will do.
- We cannot afford to sequester CO2. We will need every molecule above ground to foster the growth of biomass. Because when coal is gone, biomass is the only one we have left to live on.

Abd BTW, it is not *compared* to war, it is *in addition to* war.

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Engineer-Poet on May 9, 2008 - 10:36am Permalink | Subthread | Parent | Comments top

Of all the ignorant nonsense....

You have to lose energy to thermodynamic somewhere.

Quite right.  A gas/steam turbine IGCC system loses 55-60%, but this is quite a bit less than a legacy steam turbine at 67-70%.  Conversion to an SOFC or MCFC topping cycle would cut losses substantially.

Note that additional $0.045 doubles the electricity from coal price.

Yes it does.  It makes it substantially more expensive than wind, but not as expensive as natural gas.

Additional $110/ton of coal doubles the wholesale coal price

This may still not internalize all its external costs.

2000 billion kWh/year is not goin to be enough in the future.

You're assuming the growth is going to be in coal rather than nuclear and wind.  Given that coal supplies are depleting, this is debatable.

The only long-term stable way to capture CO2 make it back to coal

Limestone proves you wrong.  Injection of CO2 into e.g. sandstones will eventually create carbonates.

The unstable sequstration ways (underground) take half the energy

Chilled-ammonia capture allegedly takes 7% for a conventional coal plant.  An IGCC plant which strips roughly 25% of the carbon in the syngas scrubbing would have even lower power requirements, and an IGCC plant which converts to a fuel cell topping cycle and routes the reaction gases straight to cooling and compression would have zero.

You do not need CO2 for squeezing oil from abandoned fields

Is that an ignorant falsehood, or a lie?  There is a maximum amount of oil which can be pushed out of reservoirs with immiscible fluids like water (or gases) because the oil becomes immobile ("fractional flow").  Supercritical CO2 is a miscible solvent.

We cannot afford to sequester CO2. We will need every molecule above ground to foster the growth of biomass. Because when coal is gone, biomass is the only one we have left to live on.

Garbage on several levels.

  • People had food, firewood and everything else when atmospheric CO2 was just 285 ppm of the atmosphere.
  • Our major renewable energy sources (by kWh/m²/yr) are going to be solar and wind, not biomass.

You sound like a coal-industry propagandist.

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Petrus on May 11, 2008 - 4:49am Permalink | Subthread | Parent | Comments top

Poetic Engineer,

You essentialy agree to all but last three points. Let's look at those.

Limestone proves you wrong.

You do not mean it seriously. It does prove my sentence "wrong", but to lock CO2 in Limestone, you would need lot of free Ca, CaO or CAOH and that is manufacturesd from Limestone using lots of head and releaseing same amount of CO2 it later seqesters. I cannot share your optimism for creation of carbonates with other elements than Ca, since most of the rock it finds will be SiO2 and Al2O3 which do not dissolve or react in weak Carbonic acid (pH > 3.5). You can at most find traces of other elements that would be willing to create carbonates.

Chilled-ammonia capture allegedly takes 7% for a conventional coal plant

- And how much energy requires production and chilling of ammonia?
- How many TONS of ammonia is needed to capture CO2 from mere 50lb of Coal?
- Do you indend to sequester this ammount of ammonia or is is only a transport agent and the sequestration can only begin after the ammonia is heated?

Is that an ignorant falsehood, or a lie? Supercritical CO2 is a miscible solvent.

Now you are talking! I am actually glad that you exposed this lie and falsehood for ignorants!
So CO2 is actually not quite meant to end up sequestered. It is meant to dissolve more oil locked underground and and then pumped with the not-so sequestered CO2 solvent to the surface, so that the all the "sequestered" CO2 plus carbon from the oil can be released to the atmosphere.
Now, I like that. I only oppose prepaying for this opposite to "sequestration" under the guise of sequestration before they pump the oil in my tank.

* People had food, firewood and everything else when atmospheric CO2 was just 285 ppm of the atmosphere.

Is this a lie or an ignorant falsehood? More people were startving to death throughout centuries when population was fraction of today's. Only in the last half of CO2 rich 20th century famine has been steadily declining.

Why on earth am I here exposing CO2-phobia if not so save lives lost to Global Warming delusion. Have you checked the corn prices lately?

* Our major renewable energy sources (by kWh/m²/yr) are going to be solar and wind, not biomass.
Absolutely Agreed. But let's classify all our sources:
- Solar energy is available when you use it directly - during daytime on some days.
- Wind is solar energy blowing more randomly.
- Biomass is concentrated stored solar energy with high water content usable round the clock, yet cannot be poured into fuel tanks.
- Coal is twice as concentrated stored solar energy that is hard to pour to fuel tanks.
- Oil is three times as concentrated stored solar energy in liquid form.

I LOVE solar energy. I always buy full tank of it.

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mdsolar on May 12, 2008 - 8:56am Permalink | Subthread | Parent | Comments top

No. This is not the bill that requires coal plants to sequester CO2. That is obvious from the article.

Chris

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Aniya on May 7, 2008 - 5:54pm Permalink | Subthread | Parent | Comments top

Hi Cslater8,

Why do you say this? i.e., what's your reasoning?

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