Tag Archives: Carbon Sequestration

Carbon Sequestration: A Surreal Carbon Solution

What was once a mountain. image courtesy of Appalachian Voices. AppVoices.org

Writing in the New York Times, here, Joe Nocera, says,

Sometime this summer, in Odessa, Tex., the Summit Power Group plans to break ground on a $2.5 billion coal gasification power plant. Summit has named this the Texas Clean Energy Project. With good reason.

The people behind this project want people to believe that the energy the plant produces is clean. Mr. Nocera continues.

Part of the promise of this power plant is its use of gasified coal; because the gasification process doesn’t burn the coal, it makes for far cleaner energy than a traditional coal-fired plant.

The plant doesn’t burn SOLID coal. It gassifies the coal, then burns the gas. It’s still burning the coal. Only this process uses energy to gassify the coal. It then uses more energy to capture and sequester 90% of the carbon. Think, Mr. Nocera, how can this make CLEANER? Answer: It Can’t and it Doesn’t. But it can – and does – make it more expensive.

And what about the Arsenic, Mercury, Uranium that are embedded in coal? And the processes that dig coal out of the ground? Refer to Appalachian Voices for more on mountaintop removal.

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Earth Day, 2011, Where Are We?

Earth from Space, courtesy of the American taxpayer. Reto Stöckli, Nazmi El Saleous, and Marit Jentoft-Nilsen, NASA GSFC

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Earth Day, 2010, I looked to the future on Popular Logistics. In 2009, I wrote about water pollution and agricultural waste in the Chesapeake. Today I am looking at the present and recent past. While a comprehensive look at where we are can be found on the web pages of the World Watch Institute, the New York Times, and the World Factbook of the Central Intelligence Agency, I want to make a few points.

Our energy policy is “when you flip a switch, the juice gotta flow.” It ain’t magic. It’s engineering and classical physics, with an understanding of radioactive fission and decay and a profound lack of long term thinking. It ain’t magic, but it might as well be. But we really need to base our energy policy on an understanding of ecological economics and sustainability.

We’ve had a few problems with nuclear power and fossil fuel in the last few years. Yet, there’s some light on the horizon.

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Coal: More Radioactive Waste than Nuclear Power

Alex Gabbard at the Coal pile in front of the Oak Ridge National Lab

Strange and counter-intuitive as it may seem, burning coal produces more radioactive waste than nuclear fission. And it’s not regulated.

Back in 1993, Alex Gabbard, of the Oak Ridge National Laboratory, published “Coal Combustion: Nuclear Resource or Danger” in ORNL Review. Gabbard built on the work of J. P. McBride, R. E. Moore, J. P. Witherspoon, and R. E. Blanco, also of Oak Ridge, in their article, “Radiological Impact of Airborne Effluents of Coal and Nuclear Plants,” Science, Dec. 8, 1978.

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Sustainability and Carbon Sequestration

Abstract. By burning fossil fuels we have put 3.6 trillion tons of Carbon Dioxide, CO₂ in the atmosphere^¹ in the last 200 years – most in the last 60. This has changed the concentration of atmospheric CO₂ from 270 parts per Million, ppm, to 390 ppm, an increase of approximately 31%. This increase of atmospheric CO₂ is resulting in changing precipitation and rising temperatures, from the equator to the poles.

The typical modern reductionist approach is to simplify the problem to develop a solution:

“Burning coal, oil, and natural gas puts CO₂ into the atmosphere. All we need to do to solve the problem is modify the machines so they burn fossil fuel without releasing CO₂ into the atmosphere. How do we do that? We should capture the carbon dioxide, and the arsenic, mercury, other heavy metals, radionucleotides, etc, and store it somewhere.”

But we need to remember that we are burning coal, oil, and natural gas for a reason: to generate heat, hot water, electricity and transportation. There are alternative energy technologies, including nuclear, solar, and wind.

Coal with Carbon Sequestration is estimated to cost $10 to $15 Billion per gigawatt, without considering the costs of mining, processing and transporting the coal, cleaning up after mining, and isolating the arsenicals, mercury, and radionucleotides released from burning coal. Solar is estimated to cost $6.5 Billion per gigawatt – with no fuel and no wastes. Wind $2 to $3 Billion per gigawatt – with no fuel and no wastes.

We at Popular Logistics think, feel and believe that we need to replace coal with solar and wind immediately.

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Coal Plant With Carbon Sequestration

Tweet SCS Energy, of Concord, Mass., wants to build a new coal plant in Linden, NJ.

18cleanmap According to Kate Galbraith, reporting in the NY Times, “A Plan for U. S. Emissions to Be Buried Under Sea“, 90% of the carbon dioxide will be captured, compressed, pumped thru a 24 inch diameter pipe, approximately 70 miles south-east, past Staten Island, New York, and Middlesex, Monmouth, and Ocean Counties in New Jersey, to a point 25 or 30 miles east of Atlantic City, New Jersey,and injected by a well drilled a mile beneath the sandstone floor of the Atlantic Ocean. The Atlantic is about a half mile deep at that point.

Gailbraith reports that the plant could cost $5 billion if completed on time and on budget. And it will need $100 million a year in Federal Government subsidies, which amounts to another $4 billion over the plant’s 40 year operating life span.

The carbon sequestration is projected to use 25% to 40% of the energy released from burning coal, so the 750 megawatt plant will be a 450 to 562.5 mw plant. That’s $16 Billion to $20 Billion per gigawatt or $16 to $20 per watt, depending on the overhead costs, of sequestering the carbon.

Solar is roughly $6.50 per watt with no subsidies, no fuel costs, very low maintenance, and no loss in transmission. Offshore Wind is $3.00 per watt, with no fuel costs.

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California Reforestation – Johnny Appleseed Redoux

On a recent trip to San Francisco, along with tours of the Muir Woods, the Legion of Honor and the de Young Museums, I took a side trip off the beaten path into a redwood forest in Oakland. The redwoods and Sequoias are truly majestic, even the ones in Golden Gate Park, yet most of the hillsides are deforested, most of the trees are gone.

And U. C. Berkeley wants to chop down more trees to build an athletic field. I understand the sentiments of the “treehuggers” who are opposed to the idea, who question the relative importance of athletic fields and old growth forest. But like Treehugger.Com, I think a compromise is in order. About 10 years ago, my wife and I planted a willow and a white pine in our backyard. They grew from whips five or six feet in height and less than an inch in diameter to about 30 feet in height and 12 to 18 inches in diameter. I have a two suggestions. First, we all plant one or two trees each year. Second, for each of the trees they cut down, U. C. Berkeley plants ten trees this year and two trees per year in perpetuity. These should be Redwoods, Sequoia, Oaks and other native species, and they should be planted all over the Bay Area and northern California until the deforested areas are reforested. John Chapman – aka “Johnny Appleseed” – would be proud.

The positive environmental impact, in terms of sequestered carbon, restored animal habitat, and what in Bhutan they call Gross Domestic Happiness – GDH – would be terrific.