The Oil Drum

I must begin by stating that I really don’t think I am that old! Why, you might ask, do I need to say that? Well, I have just finished reading “Coal – a Human History”, which, as I mentioned at the time, was recommended by Tim Appenzeller during his talk on coal, at the Emerging Technologies Summit in Santa Barbara last month. The presentations for which have now been posted, and the DVD’s will follow soon. Since I have also just finished Big Coal by Jeff Goodell, and Time had an article on Chinese coal it seemed a good time to revisit the subject. Particularly since there were a couple of papers at the Summit that spoke to one of Jeff Goodell’s issues.

So why do I need to start by commenting on my age? Well it is because I can remember the smogs of England before the Clean Air Act came in, I can light not only a coal fire (piece of cake) but also a coke fire (you try!), I have lain on my back to hand-load coal in a seam that was, at the time, some 20 inches high, I have “black-leaded” a stove, and holystoned a curb after shoveling coal into the “coal hole”. Which made reading the book, by Barbara Freese, to some degree a voyage down Memories Lane. And, I must admit, that, not having learned my lesson, this will be, not only a book review, but also a comment on where I think folks are making a bit of a mistake in remaining complacent about the future of the world energy supply, particularly as it relates to the old King of the fuel business.

The New York Times business section has an article that starts with the following paragraph:

Subsidiaries of BP and Edison International said yesterday that they were planning to build a power plant that would run on oil residues, and that 90 percent of the carbon dioxide would be captured and pumped into an oil field, where it would help push more oil to the surface.

According to the article, the gasification process that will be used in the California plant is said to be similar to what Bush talked about in the SotU when he mentioned "zero-emission coal-fired plants".