Looking Closely at Coal - June 06, 2008
Coal is our most abundant biomass (life-based) fuel, and will be needed to replace diminishing supplies of oil and natural gas. But nuclear materials -- uranium and thorium -- if used efficiently, are our most abundant source for usable energy.
In 1970, when the U.S. lost the ability to recover enough oil to meet our demands, President Richard Nixon declared a national commitment to full and efficient use of nuclear materials for energy. The commitment was premature and was deferred by Presidents Ford, Carter and Reagan. It's time, perhaps past time, to look more carefully at the best use of coal and nuclear materials for America's future energy needs.
Clinton Bastin
Chemical Engineer and Nuclear Scientist
US Dept. of Energy, retired
Thanks for the more balanced piece on coal technologies and for not just parroting the claims of the National Coal Council.
There are very serious constraints on the availability of coal as most of the easily accessible coal has already been mined. It is time to have the courage to leave fossil fuels behind and to start looking to our truly endless renewable resources of wind and solar. We know we can run the country many times over on our wind and solar resources. We just have to have the courage to put our sights there.
We are burning coal to boil water to create steam to turn a steam turbine to generate electricity. We can boil water with "sunlight and mirrors" and there are many new Concentrating Solar Power technologies and companies coming on the scene almost every week.
Just this week e-Solar announced a 245 MW deal with Southern California Edison. E-Solar's modular solar power towers provide an important step forward along with Ausra's Linear Fresnel Reflectors, Bright Source's distributed power towers and the many concentrating photovoltaic technologies that are coming on line.
To fuel the country with carbon free electricity, we just need to follow the lead of American Electric Power in developing the national transmission grid so we can ship carbon free electrons freely around the country.
I look forward to future columns in Energy Biz Insider that chronicle the growing Concentrating Solar Power industry and the development of a 21st Century electric generating and transmission system that will put us on the path to rapid decarbonization. These are exciting times once we have the courage to envision the post fossil-fuel world.
Thanks for helping us to see that the claims of the coal industry are not always what they claim them to be!
Leslie Glustrom
Your discussion omits the central reason for coal's pending demise: the earth's CO2 overload is climbing at a blindingly fast rate. The higher the CO2 overload, the greater the global warming; the greater the global warming, the greater the climate damage. The greater the CO2 overload, the greater the damage to the health of the oceans.
Furthermore, replacing coal with renewables is much cheaper than replacing oil or natural gas. Coal energy produces 18 terawatt-hours/day worth of CO2 emissions in the US, but delivers only 6 terawatt-hours/day of end use energy. So one can replace 18 TWH/Day of coal-generated emissions with only 6 TWH/Day of renewable energy. Nothing else has as favorable a replacement ratio.
A smarter strategy for the coal industry is to begin now redefining itself as an energy generation industry, and to move its capital budgets into Earth-friendly technologies.
There's nothing sacred about coal. It has served its purpose, but its legitimacy is gone. Investors will not be well served by industry leaders who pretend this is not so.
Steve Johnson
Integrated gasification combined-cycle (IGCC), a commercially demonstrated technology for Carbon (CO2) capture is marketed as turnkey approach via Bechtel and General Electric's long-term alliance. The recent alliance with Schlumberger addresses the outstanding question of what to do with captured CO2. The alliance of Bechtel, GE and Schlumberger offers Electric Utilities a turn-key option to address Green House Gas Issues Carbon Capture and Sequestration [Storage] - promoting coal-fired power plants.
Integrated gasification combined-cycle (IGCC) has been operating commercially for several years at Tampa Electric's Polk Unit No. 5. IGGC was proposed, but aborted, for TECO's Polk Unit 6, a 630-megawatt coal-fired new plant.
GE Energy has signed a carbon sequestration alliance agreement with Schlumberger Carbon Services to accelerate the use of "cleaner coal" technology. The agreement aligns GE's experience in integrated gasification combined-cycle (IGCC) systems with proven carbon capture capabilities and Schlumberger's geologic storage expertise and capabilities for site selection, characterization and qualification.
This alliance offers electric utilities with a turn-key approach to implement IGCC technology. GE and Bechtel worked together to offer a packaged approach for IGCC implementation including: Engineering, Procurement, Construction, Equipment, Technology. The Schlumberger Alliance offers a solution to the disposition of captured CO2. Given suitable geological formation and known oil reserves, captured CO2 can be injected to achieve Enhanced Oil Recovery.
While the new arrangement provides technical and commercial expertise for moving forward with coal-based power generation, clear regulations and policies are needed for large-scale implementation. GE's IGCC plants can be built with CCS from the beginning or designed to be retrofit when clear policy and regulations create an appropriate environment.
Dr. Richard W. Goodwin, P.E.
Environmental Engineering Consultant
Coal holds the answer both short and long term. Fisher-Tropsch Synthesis to convert the coal to liquids for fuel in aviation and land transportation. Furthermore coal fired boilers are being mandated to close by government. These power plants can undergo life-extension methods and undergo current clean up techniques providing improved boiler emissions to comply with clean air policies. The answer to our energy problem is to open up reserves under lands that are not being employed to provide gas and crude.
A lot of gas has been passed in the halls of congress over the years. Sadly, it cannot be used as fuel to help solve our energy crisis. The halting of our nuclear program over 20 years ago was a calamity. We now must make up ground in nuclear we lost years ago through myopic government.
Michael J. Edwards
Belyea Co. Inc
I read with great interest your latest Editorial regarding the need for coal to "come clean" even as the coal industry simultaneously positions itself as the heavy-lifter in the energy world. But coal's future is pretty simple. Like new cars with no new gas, new coal has no new wheels.
Most coal delivery to its place-of-use (mostly power plants) involves bulk-delivery by train. And the US Rail System is already straining at the seams trying to meet current delivery demand! (Our river-barge system also has many choke-points and delays all along the Mississippi-River transport system as well.) And that means there is no cheap way to move new coal to new power plants. It is difficult to envision the massive convergence of conflicting interests required for the US Freight-Train system to grow fast enough to meet the ever-increasing demands placed upon it.
This is particularly true of the requisite physical rights-of-way that Rail needs; given the high-mass one-way nature of rail-transport. These massive momentous unidirectional trains must have routing priority over all other forms of transport. However, with the radical shrinkage of the Rail-Passenger Market, many Rail Rights-of-Way have simply been given-up; lost forever to backstop any future rail expansion. Many irreplaceable rail-line routes are now very nice bike-trails.
When the US Rail System was allowed to be eclipsed by more "modern" modes of transport, we lost most of our ability to site and build the key bridges, cross-roads, etc. that the once-mighty Rail-Barons took for granted during their Transport-Reign.
But while coal will become increasingly difficult to move, there is certainly an energy future for carbon. And instead of burrowing like moles in the ground, re-excavating sequestered carbon, we shall simply pluck it from the air to make natural gas out of it. And natural gas can expand its transport infrastructure as well as add cheap storage capacity.
Given the exponentially decreasing costs for renewable energy, and photovoltaic electricity in particular, the day where this Atmospheric-carbon delivery scenario becomes robust is approaching us faster than the day we can build the Rail we need to dig ourselves deeper into a hole.
Roy Johannesen, P.E.
Drilling Disputes - June 09, 2008
If the government, vis-a-vis the oil and gas companies, wants to drill on government lands I am all for it with the following caveats:
(1) Best available technologies are used to protect the people and the environment.
(2) The US Government must participate in the development of an Independent, Non-Political Energy Authority similar in scope and makeup to the Federal Reserve to evaluate, establish and enforce a US National Energy Policy.
This does not mean the grossly ineffective, inefficient and partisan US Energy Dept. It means an "Energy Authority" made-up of independent, non-political, non-partisan, Biologists, Chemists, Physicists, Engineers, Economists and Social Scientists brought together in a Manhattan project type of endeavor to vet the technical, social, and environmental issues, ask the tough questions, and establish practical and achievable goals that provide a long term (5, 10, 20, and 30 year) vision for the future. These individuals should come from the former technical ranks of the chemical, oil, gas, electric, water and technical consulting industries as well as academia. This country needs technical, social and business professionals to evaluate, assess, understand and make long term technical decisions balanced by social considerations to put the US back on the proper energy track.
Please note the following is personal opinion based on observations: I have excluded professional Environmentalists. Too many "Environmentalists" have little or no formal education in science or possess academic credentials in Law or Environmental Science which means that they are proficient in "Compliance Engineering" which further means they know little more than the politicians that write the laws. Scientists and professionals who prefer to be called Environmentalists and possess academic and professional credentials from accredited universities should be welcomed.
Phil D'Angelo
Something must be wrong with my knowledge of English. On the basis of everything that I have heard or found out since I began teaching and doing research in energy economics, I am forced to conclude that in the light of future demand, the United States has neither "ample" nor "abundant" supplies of energy, even if every square inch of onshore and near-offshore America was drilled.
The most interesting part of this fantasy for me though has to do with shale. That precious 'resource', ostensibly containing more oil than is found in Saudi Arabia or even the entire Middle East, is to my way of thinking directly analogous to the 'wonder weapons' that Adolf Hitler promised the German people toward at the end of WW2, which were supposed to stop the US Air Force and RAF from destroying German cities, and would keep the Soviet Army away from Berlin. We all know how that turned out.
On the basis of the concrete information now at hand, it is best to construct an energy policy that is not associated with hypothetical or illusory riches, even if in the long-run it actually turns out that resources in or near the US were 'super-abundant'.
Ferdinand E. Banks
Professor
Uppsula, Sweden
The Algae Attraction - June 11, 2008
Here's a link to the National Algae Association. It formed earlier this year to share information about this alternative feedstock in response to the interest expressed by biodiesel producers faced with increasing commodity prices.
http://www.nationalalgaeassociation.com/
You may wish to get more information about the ability of this technique to capture CO2. The estimates I've seen hold that algae will capture over 90% of the CO2 from coal fired exhaust where it is at 13.5% concentration that is typical.
Up to 1/2 of the carbon can be inexpensively recycled directly to biodiesel from lipids squeezed from the harvest (and burned cleanly in the boiler at times when that is advantageous) - what's left over is called "press cake". In addition to using it for high value animal feed or fermenting it to ethanol, there's an intriguing possibility of producing a charcoal based low-runoff "terra preta" fertilizer using pyrolization that captures nitrogen from the syn-gas effluent and stores it the carbon matrix (that also provides protective habitat from pesticides for nitrogen fixing soil bacteria).
Because the nutrients do not wash out during irrigation, if this product were widely adopted in the watershed, downstream rivers and bays (such as the Chesapeake that is suffering from agricultural run-off) would be freed from the cause of algal blooms that are currently choking many of them. And because it persists in in the soil indefinately, virtually all of the carbon produced for generation would be captured in the fuel cycle or sequested in the ground.
You alluded to it in the article but when you look at the numbers, the reality of how much faster algae grows is stunning. For comparison, growing corn for ethanol yields 100 gallons per acre per year. Depending on the strain that's cultivated, algae will yield between 4 and 30 THOUSAND gallons per acre per year.
The more I learn about this practice the better it looks - the only trick is figuring out how to cultivate algae effectively. It appears that where it has ready access to a CO2 source this crop will be profitable even without cap & trade credits. And then it appears very likely that that the regime will be established starting next year. It doesn't take 20/20 foresight to see how valuable algal carbon capture will be for operators and that there's nothing in second place - I'm surprised that there aren't more and more aggressive projects under way now.
Jeff Sutter
Step back and look at algae to capture CO2 emissions. There are 4 logic problems:
1. It will not be 100% effective; some percentage of the CO2 will not be captured, so we are looking at the potential to reduce, but not stop CO2 emissions from coal.
2. This is not sequestration, it is recycling. When the algae is burned, whether in a power plant or in an organism, it will again release its CO2. That delays the release of CO2, but we will end up with just as much CO2 in the atmosphere eventually, UNLESS the amount of coal being mined and burned is cut in half, and I don't think that is the intent of the R&D sponsors.
3. Parasitic loads for pumps and blowers, plus the capital and maintenance costs of the algae farm, plus makeup water for the huge evaporative losses, plus fertilizer for the algae, will further burden the economics and the power output.
4. Algae converts CO2 to plant sugars and cellulose by photosynthesis. Exposing all the algae to that much sunlight will require a very large land area. Photosynthesis efficiency is about 12%. The plant efficiency would be around 40%. Combined efficiency would be 4.8%. Solar PV efficiency is nominally 16%. So converting the same land area to solar PV would produce roughly three times as much electricity. New thin-film solar collectors now being produced at prices competitive with coal-fired generation.
These 4 logic problems combine to show that the algae scheme will produce less electricity, more CO2, and lower return on investment. Think outside the box, but put the algae scheme back in the box and bury it.
Michael P. Gembol
The prospect of 'killing two birds with one stone' is noteworthy--if is can be commercialized. Cleaning up the CO2 (and other harmful) emissions from coal burning seems to be an essential requirement right now. Algae technology WORKS on a small scale.
However, using algae to do the CO2 conversion is fraught with fundamental challenges we do not yet know how to master. The algae 'work' only in sunlight of course, but there are technically viable ways to scrub the CO2 out of stack gases and 'store' the scrubber liquid for algae food during the daylight.
A much more difficult challenge is how to distribute the 'food' and how to get and keep the algae exposed to sunlight so it will grow (and eat the CO2.) The mechanical challenge seems insurmountable to highly innovative engineers who have studied the issue. Sunlight does not penetrate very deeply into the algae slurry, so one must have LOTS of surface area exposed to direct sunlight. Reactor surface area means cost--and then there is a challenge of how to keep the surface clean (all biologic reactors have this issue-keeping the container walls clean).
Then one must 'harvest' the algae plants, dry, and then extract the hydrocarbon, then recycle the dead algae as fuel. Another capital-intensive, energy-consuming process yet to be developed, optimized, commercialized.
Personally, after spending lots of hours myself and many more hours of associates time really researching the potential--we decided it is not going to be mechanically feasible, much less economically feasible to use algae farms to convert power plant CO2 to hydrocarbons. The algae farm investment and operating costs will be a MULTIPLE of the power plant costs.
Gasification and F-T reaction like that practiced already is a much more attractive alternative. AND one can also install photo-voltaic farms on the land that would have been used by an algae farm and make electricity!
Keith E. Bowers
As someone who supported "clean coal" for more than thirty years, I have come to the conclusion that we had better not bank on clean coal because it simply will not happen due to both economics and climate change imperatives.
Coal will never be the answer to global warming and even though technologies like carbon capture in algae seem more promising that geological sequestration, the fact is the my state alone produces more than 134 million tons of CO2 each year, a figure which taken in proper context means that most of the farm and vacant land in the region I live in would have to be devoted to algae capture. I think the farmers around here will be very difficult to persuade to drop corn and soy for algae any time soon.
In any case, the fact that efficiency and conservation will keep us in the ballgame until renewables can fill the void also has merit.
Coal's day has passed, and no matter how much misinformation Peabody and others put out about its role in the future, it is clear that future coal plants will be very expensive and continue to be environmentally destructive, especially as they relate to cleaner alternatives like efficiency, conservation and renewables.
Placing a trillion dollar bet on carbon capture and storage is something the coal companies should do and not taxpayers or ratepayers.
John Blair
Cleaning Coal - June 13, 2008
Clean coal? What harmful impacts don't the scrubbers take care of, such as the embodied energy of harvesting, danger to miners and other carcinogens not removed by scrubbers? I just can't wrap my head around the rational for dumping billions of dollars into a finite resource with negative human consequences. I say human and not environmental because the truth is that we do not "harm" the earth, we merely harm our species ability to survive on it. The earth has been here for 5 billion years, our species has been here for 200k at best. Tell the treehuggers and the conservatives to do the math -- the earth was here long before we arrived and will still be here long after we kill ourselves off.
There are great solar technologies already emerging that capture a nearly infinite resource, the sun (when the sun burns out, electricity wil be the least of our worries). A west coast company, Nano-Solar, has created a technology that will cost about 1/2 the price per kw of coal. NJIT has infused nano-collector technology into paint, so anything with paint can be a collector.
The entire alternative energy is the biggest economic opportunity our nation has ever had and we are so stuck in doing what we have always done that we can't see the sun through the bright light in our eyes. I understand there are transition costs and jobs and an infrastructure all which need to be carefully transitioned or the economy will be devastated but when we talk about building new plants and investing billions to attempt to "clean" coal, that's when I am reminded of the definition of insanity -- doing the same thing and expecting different results.
Chris Miller
Development Director
Greenovation
I appreciate your discussion about cleaning up coal emissions at existing facilities. First, I would like to suggest that your quoted costs for the scrubbing projects are woefully understated. Second, I'd consider it most important to highlight the issue that utilities have looking forward which is climate change and GHG emissions from coal plants. That, itself, may be the prime mover in the retirement decisions that utilities face with coal plants. Without reviewing previous posts, I'd have to believe that this has been discussed before, so I'm not sure why this wasn't included in today's installment.
Michael Rib, P.E.
System Planning and Regulatory Performance
Progress Energy Florida
Your commentary indicates that the United States lags behind Germany by about a quarter-century in implementing pollution controls for coal power plants. This regressive state apparently has roots in the Reagan Era, which Earth-Day founder Denis Hayes once called a "Dunkirk without the boats" for the environment.
On the other hand, the United States is conducting more substantial investigations of carbon sequestration than is the case in Europe, due perhaps to the fact that certain options for its use are already in place. A CO2 pipeline network that feeds enhanced oil and gas recovery operations has been employed for decades. In addition, the California requirement for electrical power contracts at 1.1 pounds of CO2/kWh motivates producers to explore the potential of sequestration. At the same time, the withdrawal of federal funding from the FutureGen project reflects a dedication to cost-effective project implementation. By contrast, Europeans are being told to wait another decade to see if the technology works at all, while being presented a high bill for the incident expenses regardless of the outcome.
Carbon sequestration could require a coal power plant to expend up to 50% more energy for capturing, compressing, transporting, and injecting CO2 underground. I am therefore skeptical of any assurances (such as those habitually recited by certain German politicians) that it will be adopted on a worldwide scale. Mankind can hardly be expected to withdraw a third of its coal resources from economic use merely to delay the incidence of global warming by a few years.
Jeff Michel
I really appreciate your article on what it is going to cost the utility companies and therefore us in the future to clean up the coal emissions. You are such a prolific writer; however, I can not help but think that this expenditure, the energy companies are having to go through to clean the coal emissions from the sulfur and the carbon, is taking away form the real threat we face from coal emissions and that is Mercury contamination. I have been reading articles about the dangerously high levels of mercury in the worlds fish populations and was even surprised to see that the deep see base from off the coast of Peru and Chile are contaminated with high amounts of Mercury as well. I understand the mercury contamination is a by product of the coal burning plants around the world.
I really am surprised to see that fish populations in the southern hemisphere are being effected by emissions from the northern hemisphere? I thought the prevailing winds would protect the southern hemisphere from that kind of contamination. If this is so then would you not agree that mercury contamination of our global fisheries is a more immediate serious threat to the world than sulfur and carbon emissions? Is there any research or concern out there on this subject?
Orlando Vito Gallegos II
Canadian Fissures - June 16, 2008
When I hear the refrain "The nation cannot be disadvantaged if other major emitters in developing nations are not willing to agree to compulsory cuts in greenhouse gases" I am inclined to appreciate that the issue of child labor is generally no longer on the table here in the U.S., Canada, and most if not all first world countries. It is hard to imagine how we can compete against those economies which either do not have such laws or which do not enforce them.
Larry Miles
Respond to the editor.
