Comments on: Old King Coal Needs New Energy Team

By: Wilmot McCutchen

Wilmot McCutchen — Sat, 14 May 2011 15:58:00 +0000

Does this sound sincere or salesy to you: “The WCA reports on its website that over 53 million tons of CO2 are being stored underground, an amount that increases every second.” Who (name please) wrote this?

Reality check: “Over 53 million” is not much. The EIA projects that by 2035 the CO2 emissions from coal fired power generation in the US will be 2.4 BILLION tons EACH YEAR. And even this paltry 53 million is in enhanced oil recovery (EOR) operations to help oil companies get more oil out of depleted reservoirs. Extrapolating from EOR to deep saline aquifers is what “sequestration” depends on, and CCS depends on sequestration. “Clean coal” needs some serious rethinking.

The lifetime emissions from just one coal plant would require the pore space of a giant oil field. There are just not enough depleted reservoirs to accommodate the CO2 emissions from coal.

The “sequestration” element of “clean coal” has been called by petroleum engineering experts “a profoundly non-feasible option for the management of CO2 emissions.” That’s because depleted reservoirs are like empty tanks, so there is room to squeeze in supercritical CO2 and the flow would be from high to low pressure. But deep saline aquifers (the only place for the requisite pore space for utility-scale CO2 storage) are like full tanks, where the pore space is presently occupied at high pressure by brine that is three times saltier than seawater. That highly saline brine will have to be pumped to the surface to make way for the CO2, and then what do you do with it?

Desalination projects are having trouble disposing of their reverse osmosis reject brine, which is less saline and therefore should be easier. Or is the plan just to hammer billions of tons of supercritical CO2 into the deep saline aquifers and push that highly salty brine elsewhere, possibly polluting the groundwater?

By: Anonymous

Anonymous — Sat, 14 May 2011 14:15:00 +0000

Really?

By: Anonymous

Anonymous — Fri, 13 May 2011 22:03:00 +0000

We haven’t permitted or begun construction on a new coal plant in the US for over two years. It’s unlikely we will build any more coal plants. We’ve been closing existing plants and have scheduled many more for early closure. (We do have a handful under construction that will be completed over the next couple of years, but they won’t offset the closures.)

Europe is getting coal off its grid.

China is building some new coal but concentrating on renewables and hydro.

Indonesia is investing heavily in geothermal.

Japan is turning toward wind, solar and geothermal.

India isn’t talking coal.

The UK is deciding between nuclear and renewables.

“Old” coal is not cheap if one includes hidden costs. “New” coal is as expensive or even more expensive as new nuclear, definitely more expensive if one includes subsidies and hidden costs for both.

Exactly where is the WCA expecting all those new coal plants to get built?