Carbon Capture and Storage is a ruse!

November 19, 2008

In my book www.strategicbookpublishing.com/ZEROGreenhouseEmissions.html presented in plain language for the layman to understand I explain why CCS is a ruse -

The premise being, we can continue to generate energy from polluting nonrenewable sources by the burning of fossil fuels, as long as when we intentionally release the trapped carbon, we run around and catch it before it leaves the building!
Over the coming years there will be a great deal of investment in CCS. Billions of dollars of public funds, your money and mine, will be directed to it. Some would argue that CCS is a convenient diversion by the pro-coal lobby. Some would say the investment would be better placed to fast track renewable energy supplies and increase energy efficiencies. The European Union and the United Nations Climate Panel along with many researchers, place high hopes on the development of CCS. Indeed many of their hopes and much of their forecasting for emissions reductions over the coming years rely heavily on the success of the technology and its wide deployment. By 2020 the EU has committed to overall CO2 emission reductions of 20 percent, but plans to construct 50 new coal-fired power plants by 2013.
CCS, while technically feasible, according to industry experts (can we trust these guys?), is expensive, while decreasing the average efficiency of power plants by up to 20 percent, and so far globally there are only a smattering of small “demonstration projects.” In Norway they are demonstrating they can capture and store a million tonnes of carbon dioxide per year. Do the numbers add up? 12.77 billion tonnes of CO2 from coal-fired energy generation by 2020? Retrofitting the over fifty thousand coal-fired power stations presently operating globally—and rising? Various scenarios put forward by its supporters suggest that CCS could account for between 15 and 55 percent of the reduction of greenhouse gases by 2100.
The International Energy Agency estimates that world energy demands will soar by 60 percent from current levels by 2030, with 85 percent of that being from the burning of fossil fuels. It reports that Germany is planning twenty new plants in the coming decades while China is expected to install a further 800 gigawatts of new electrical power capacity by 2015, of which, 90 percent will be from coal. The IEA highlights that 800 gigawatts is equivalent to all the power capacity installed throughout the European Union member countries since 1945.
So how do we catch Elvis before he leaves the building? Some researchers studying CCS point out themselves that their models and scenarios in many respects are based on insufficient factual foundations, unrealistic assumptions, and major oversimplifications. One report by Anders Hansson of Linkoping University Sweden states: “In full scale this technology only exists in the imagination of the people developing it and that it is overly optimistic to place such great faith in CCS considering all the uncertainties found in current scientific literature.” Is it a diversionary tactic by those with vested commercial and political interests wishing to continue down the fossil fuel burning path? By the coal industry lobby and suppliers, who will benefit while we blindly follow them down this well-trodden proven path of pollution? Is it politically easier to offer hope to us that a solution may be found, so that all of us can keep the energy consumption drug we are addicted to? Do the numbers add up? To live up to the hopes placed on CCS requires the storage of billions of tonnes annually, meaning carbon dioxide would become the world’s largest transported good.
But there is another complication. Some may suggest that it means that CCS, even if successfully developed and deployed to all the coal-fired power stations in the world, would save such a minuscule amount of the CO2 pollution resulting from the process of extraction and burning coal, that it is a thorough waste of time and of the billions that will be spent in coming decades.
It again comes back to externalities. It is the hidden environmental consequences resulting from the very process of getting the coal out of the ground.
If we revisit the basics: coal is formed in ecosystems where the remains of plants were preserved by water and mud from oxidation and biodegradation. Over time geological processes apply pressure to the dead matter and under suitable conditions, it transforms into coal.
The fact is that coal mining doesn’t just dig up the coal. Mining the volumes now consumed around the world means that most coal today comes from opencast–open pit coal mines. As we know, methane, carbon dioxide, and carbon monoxide (the stuff that kills the canary!) is released in the process. These emissions start as soon as the layers above, called the overburden, are stripped away.
The damage starts right then.
Conservative estimates from experiments going back as far as the 1960s and reported by Brame and King in Fuel, show that these gases alone account for about twice the emissions of the burning of the coal that has been mined. In other words, for every 1 kilogram of coal burned, producing 1.83 kilogram of CO2, a further 3.66 kilograms of CO2-e emissions result.
And again, back to the basics; not all that is disturbed, or dug up, is coal. In fact, around 98 percent of what is mined is not coal. A large portion, on average 25 percent or ten times the amount of coal that is extracted, will be shale and mudstone, with a carbon content of 50 percent of that of coal, in other words, the carbon content by mass of 250 grams per kg. So 1 kilogram of successfully mined coal (50 percent carbon by mass or 0.5 kilogram of carbon), has an externality in unwanted mudstone and shale of around 6.25 kilogram of carbon. This shale and mudstone cannot be burned due to its high ash content, but it still oxidizes if exposed to air, producing CO2. These along with other unwanted workings are tipped as part of the mining process waste. Again, conservative estimates give this carbon source the potential to emit three to four times as much CO2 as the mined coal.
So if we revisit the question as to the value of investing in carbon capture and storage at the power station, we see that if successful these would account for a result of between 5–10 percent maximum of the emissions attributable from the process of working/mining and burning coal. Personally, I think Elvis has left the building!

END
Bob Williamson
Greenhouse Neutral Foundation

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