Coal plants are shutting down because of a rise in the availability of cheap natural gas, largely as a result of hydraulic fracturing, which is opening up new deposits of the fuel in places such as the Marcellus Shale Formation in Pennsylvania. That's good news for the global climate because burning natural gas emits roughly half as much CO2 as burning coal. But it's also bad news for the climate because burning natural gas still emits CO2. "There are more than enough discovered hydrocarbons that if we burn them, we fry the planet," Lord Nicholas Stern told this reporter at the Durban climate conference last December while discussing carbon capture and storage. "You can do CCS or you can bust the 2-degree target."
As a result of the shale gas revolution in the U.S., the bulk of new CCS projects worldwide are in China, which hopes to become a leader in the technology. Carbon capture and storage even snuck into the Communist Party's 12th Five-Year Plan. Eleven projects are under development across the country, ranging from advanced coal-fired power plants to a chemical plant that will turn coal into liquid fuel.
The Chinese are even considering investing in a CCS project in Texas, known as the Texas Clean Energy Project. But the key there, as in most ongoing projects, is not a price on CO2 pollution that emitters want to avoid, but a price on CO2 that is used to help get more oil out of the ground—a process known as "enhanced oil recovery," a potentially large market given the world's thirst for petroleum.
Oil to the rescue?
Carbon dioxide is already used to scour hard-to-reach oil below Texas. But it is pumped more than 800 kilometers in a pipeline from a naturally occurring formation of CO2 in Colorado, which can prove expensive. CO2 from a nearby CCS unit might lower the price of CO2, storing some of the greenhouse gas underground as a kind of unintended side benefit.
Such enhanced oil recovery can also be done with steam, of course, which is why breakthroughs on the capture side are still required to make CO2 even cheaper. That work spans everything from Advanced Research Projects Agency–Energy projects to an X PRIZE Foundation effort to raise the money to launch a carbon-capture prize, according to Christopher Frangione, senior director of the energy and environment prize group for the foundation.
Making capture cheaper is particularly needed when the process is applied to natural gas power plants. As it stands, U.S. Environmental Protection Agency greenhouse gas emission limits for new power plants are set at the level of the discharge of a new gas-fired power plant, thus there is no regulatory incentive to put CCS on a gas plant. But at some point that technology will be needed if the world is to avoid increasing greenhouse gas concentrations in the atmosphere, which is why France-based CCS technology provider Alstom is investigating it at its Mongstad facility in Norway. The chilled ammonia process from the Mountaineer demonstration will be used to capture CO2 from burning natural gas. "The technology is there and it can be done," argues Bob Hilton, vice president for government affairs at Alstom.
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15 Comments
Add CommentI'm disappointed that the article doesn't discuss cost more specifically. A reasonable target is $100 per ton of carbon removed. A method that costs more than that will not be competitive with other ways of removing CO2 from the atmosphere -- and currently carbon capture costs a lot more than that.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisThe authors should have at least checked the temperature records first, before asking why CO2 sequestering has been cancelled. Other than for increased production of gas and oil... why would anyone, want to invoke the risks of CO2 underground injection??
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisThere must be an acute emergency requirement for such reckless actions. They certainly can't be found here at the CRU data.
http://www.thegwpf.org/wp-content/uploads/2012/10/HadCRUT4star1.jpg
In the words of a climate scientist:
Professor Judith Curry, who is the head of the climate science department at America’s prestigious Georgia Tech university, told The Mail on Sunday that it was clear that the computer models used to predict future warming were ‘deeply flawed’…
Many climatologist were waiting for the 15 yr mark to be exceeded before becoming skeptical of the GCMs. We can now expect to see a wave of warmist conversions to "normal" science. Thank gaia. GK
I am glad it has been cancelled and hopefully no one will attempt this further. The total insanity of you warmists is evident by the fact that you want to bury atmospheric Oxygen in the ground. That is right warmists, in your blind zeal to do something about CO2, your best plan is to bury the oxygen we all need to breathe in the ground with carbon, totally insane. At least the CO2 in the atmosphere can and will eventually be processed back into its component parts eventually. Bury the Oxygen underground and it is effectively gone forever.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisThe effects of losing all of that oxygen is unknown but what you warmists will do can be predicted. Once burying 2 oxygen atoms for every carbon has occured for a few decades, then you people will start complaining about all the missing oxygen, who knows maybe that will be predicted to cause the next ice age. Whatever the case may be, your next plan will likely be to artificially manufacture oxygen, to replace what you buried and this will likely cause its own problems. Either depletion of whatever the source of oxygen is or adding even more nasty chemicals into the air and the counter agents to each previous "solution" will continue until you people have replaced the biosphere with some sort of manufactured nightmare.
There is no possible way burying atmospheric oxygen in the ground will have a good outcome. Best to stop the attempt now before the damage is done and focus attention on something that might actually work without producing an outcome worse than the one trying to be mitigated.
I see the clown car containing the anti-science clowns has arrived immediately, as usual.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisYou can tell when they're having a hard time selling their global conspiracy theory (which is always) because they resort to bald-faced lying and their time honored tradition of cherry picking data with absolute disregard for any form of logical or scientific integrity.
Note the sensationalist media rag he's citing as "science". Note the usual cherry pick, they magically choose the year 1997 as the magic "starting point" for data that goes back to 1848. They *must* cherry pick their starting date because it's the only way to isolate a bit of variability from a secular upward trend that looks vaguely like a flat line.
Of course when your entire premise - that climate science is "fake" - is based on a global conspiracy involving every national academy of science in the world, every reputable scientific institute (including ones going back to the days of Newton), every reputable university and every research facility in any country on the planet are *all* conspiring to either publish rubbish science or to remain silent in the face of rubbish science being published, you really have to cherry pick data lest someone notice that your argument is based on a paranoid delusional global conspiracy theory.
Questions to ask the paranoid delusionals (if your idea of fun is watching some try desperately to run and change the subject at the same time)
1. What specific evidence would scientists have to produce to convince you that AGW theory is correct?
2. What is your definition of global?
3. What is your definition of climate?
4. What specific criteria do you use to determine which science is "fake" (e.g. Mann's hockey stick diagram or the instrumental surface temperature record) and which science is "real" (e.g. the records of the MWP or the increases in Antarctic precipitation)
5. If climate models are abject failures then why do they reproduce the MWP and project the increase in Antarctic precipitation?
6. If climate can't be predicted, why was Mann and others able to project a continuing warming trend more than 30 years ago?
Watch the clowns fall out of the car and honk each other's noses while waving their hands and trying to change the subject to tree ring data from Formosa between August of 1873 and July of 1874 and how it constitutes *absolute proof* of the global conspiracy against young earth creationist/anti-science climate conspiracy theorists.
That's not a random epithet, it's a fact that most are creationists too.
All of your questions should be directed at the EAU ClimateResearchUnit (CRU) as it is their issued report. They chose the time-frame, NOT skeptics. You might also direct your questions to Phil Jones, as I think, you will like his avoiding answers.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisCO2 has NOT caused any detectable warming for 16 years, at least, of any significance.
We must now, start looking for a new modality, with CO2 in it's proper niche. Who knows, there may be catastrophe out there, but we won't see it coming, through the CO2 smokescreen. Clear vision is what is really desired... isn't it? GK
Another shameful Big Oil infomercial from Sciam and Biello.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisCarbon capture is simply one of the tools Big Oil uses to hold off zero carbon nuclear while gas takes the place of coal. It won't work, can't work and doesn't work but by using shills like Biello to make nice informercials about it, the low information voter is convinced Big Oil's solution is well in hand.
Not a word from Big Oil's Biello about the 100% casualty rate in any nearby towns and villages when that pipeline breaks. What insurance company would cover that risk - none.
Gas is not clean energy killing thousands of Americans annually with its noxious emissions still bad but less than of the tens of thousands done in by coal. As our shill Biello well knows but never states, gas is a worse global warming producer than even coal because of the massive methane leaks within the production and distribution system.
Note that the world nuclear doesn't appear in the informercial, as nothing scares Big Oil more than today's dirt cheap, clean and green, zero environmental cost nuke power at 4 cents a kwh when built by public power.. With today's gas domestic gas at $2/mcf only a $2/mcf LNG tanker ride to a $18+ /mcf international market, seems like all of Obama's Big Oil sponsored gas plant will seen be costing the suckered rate payer over 15 cents a kwh.
Seems like a lot of folk are being suckered by Big Oil propaganda. Should - they spend a lot of money producing it, as we see here.
http://www.cbc.ca/technology/story/2009/09/23/carbon-capture-study.html
The morons/crooks in the Obama admin have spent two orders of magnitude more on carbon capture than they have on the real already developed ready to build Gen IV nuclear like the GE Prism (IFR) or the MSR (thorium) reactors.
What I don't understand is why a multi-billion dollar
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisinternational energy company needs Government dollars ?
Current CCS projects are running from $100 (for pure CO2 streams) to $400 per tonne of CO2 sequestered (hopefully). And add to that about 20% higher energy consumption or in other words a 20% drop in the efficiency of energy production. Who wants that?
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisEven the worst case analysis would put the cost of Nuclear electricity at 5 cents per kwh levelized for the first 20 yrs then after that 0 or negative cents per kwh for the next 40-80 yrs. And costs less than 1/3rd of that for Nuclear Heat Energy. 5 cents/kwh / avg 0.7 kg CO2 avoided per kwhe = $70/tonne CO2 avoided for 20 of 100 yrs, and after that CO2 avoidance is just a freebie that comes with electricity almost as cheap as legacy Hydro - the cheapest electricity on the planet. And that is using pessimistic numbers that DO NOT account for factory construction or assembly line production of Nuclear power.
So the INESCAPABLE FACT is - for CO2 avoidance CCS cannot come REMOTELY close to the favorable economics of Nuclear.
So why stupidly waste your time with an economic dead-end?
The Why is of course because Big Carbon wants the CCS scam as a way of pretending they will do something about their high emissions so as to short circuit the RATIONAL alternative, namely Nuclear Energy. And the sad fact of our political landscape is that they have UNLIMITED funding to buy politicians, media, lobbyists and ENGO's to ensure that their bait-and-switch scams are the dominant effort to mitigate emissions.
Whether you consider it prudent or not, even the most ultra-right wing governments are jumping into the CO2 mitigation money-pit. Harper, the most right-wing denier politician in Canada is dumping 10's of $billions into CCS, Agro-fuels, Wind & Solar and the Hydrogen Economy SCAMs.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisAnd I can give you a 100% guarantee - no chance of being wrong - that Romney will do the same. So since that is gonna happen anyway, wouldn't it make sense that what monies are being spent on CO2 mitigation go to RATIONAL methods - and Nuclear Energy is at the top of that list?
As far as I'm concerned, we are better off to just continue burn-baby-burn than throw precious capital down the sewer on these nutty CCS, Agro-fuels, Hydrogen Economy, Wind & Solar power SCAMs. Save the dollars, spend it on R&D or helping people who need help, and just let the Peak Oil/Global Warming/Middle East energy dependence/terrorist problem just deteriorate to the point it becomes unbearable. Then maybe sleazy politicians might just find the backbone to ACTUALLY do something, rather than an unending spiel of total BS and SPIN.
I meant to say that even the worst case analysis would put the cost of Nuclear electricity at 5 cents per kwh levelized for the first 20 yrs then after that 0 or negative cents per kwh for the next 40-80 yrs ---- ABOVE the cost of Coal or NG power generation (even at today's record low North American NG prices).
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisMIT study "Canada’s Bitumen Industry Under CO2 Constraints" concludes that "… with CO2 emissions caps implemented worldwide, the Canadian bitumen production becomes essentially non-viable even with CCS technology."
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisSure high-cost CCS will bankrupt oil sands. But even low-cost CCS will do the same if the world actually cuts total CO2 ever.
The reason is that oil sands are a relatively dirty and expensive source of oil. So they will need to pay more than competition to get to any particular CO2 level. In a world of declining CO2 the oil sands can't compete either with or without CCS.
Case in point. These people can't be reasoned with. I don't know whether their grasps of chemistry or environmental science is more appalling.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisHottest 16 years on record in order of warmest first
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to this2010
2005
1998
2003
2006
2009
2002
2007
2004
2001
2011
1997
2008
1995
1999
2000
sailrick
9:20 PM PDT
Last decade – warmest on record
Every year starting with 2001 and through 2011 – was warmer than any year in the 20th century, before 1998 which is now the 3rd warmest year on record.
2010 – warmest year on record
2005 – 2nd warmest year on record,
2011 – warmest year with a cooling La Nina event on record
10 warmest years on record in the last 12 years
12 warmest years on record in the last 16 years.
looking at my list of warmest 16 years, the only year since 1995 that is not on this list is 1996. So the 15 warmest years on record, were in the last 16 years.
But for those wearing blinders, warming stopped 16 years ago.
And such statements ignore that atmospheric warming, which is what we are usually talking about, only represents 3% of the warming. Over 90% of the excess heat is going into the oceans.
In the Arctic, much of the excess energy goes toward melting ice, instead of raising air temps.
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There is time lag in the climate's response to the enhanced greenhouse effect, due to the thermal inertia of the oceans, which is where 90% of the excess heat is going.
"Breaking News...The Earth is Warming... Still. A LOT"
{at Skeptical Science - 3/16/11}
"how can you work out whether the Earth is warming if you don't take account of all the places where it may be warming? And most commentary seems to only focus on surface temperatures. Which is only 3% of the Total Heat Content change.
Global Ocean Heat Content increase in the last 50 years
How much heat is that?
"This is a rate of heating of 133 Terawatts. Or 0.261 Watts/m2
133 Terrawatts is 2 Hiroshima bombs a second. Continually since 1961.
It would boil Sydney Harbour dry EVERY 12 HOURS!
But why don't we notice this? Because instead of all this heating happening just in Sydney Harbour, this is spread out through out the worlds oceans. And they are huge: approximately 2,300,000,000 times the size of Sydney Harbour.
So HEAT THAT BOILS THE HARBOR (every 12 hours) WOULD ONLY WARM THE ENTIRE OCEAN BY A FRACTION OF A DEGREE .
(my emphasis)
So we don't notice it much. Not that it isn't real, just that we don't notice it.
And if this much heat had instead gone into just warming the atmosphere - you know, that thing we call Climate -
it would have raised Air temperatures by around 42 °C (or 75.6 F) over the last 1/2 Century! "
No one disputes the warming trend. Globally we have warmed fractionally as the world tends to do after centuries immersed in the coldest period of human history (LIA).
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisHowever, for the last 16 years we have not warmed, despite the fact that we have increased our CO2 emissions significantly.
To say, CO2 correlates with temps would contradict current data.
So yes, we have warmed, are indeed warm, however, the temperature increase has paused for 16 years. This may indicate the top of a sine wave curve where, of course, the warmest years will ALWAYS occur.
None of the above indicates CO2 is causing the warmth. Kicking the dog, when your football team loses, may make you feel better, but don't kid yourself... the dog has nothing to do with your team's loss. Leave him alone. GK
"""No one disputes the warming trend. Globally we have warmed fractionally as the world tends to do after centuries immersed in the coldest period of human history (LIA)."""
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisSome factual inaccuracies, but mostly true.
"""However, for the last 16 years we have not warmed, despite the fact that we have increased our CO2 emissions significantly."""
Outright lie.
"""To say, CO2 correlates with temps would contradict current data."""
Outright lie.
"""So yes, we have warmed, are indeed warm, however, the temperature increase has paused for 16 years. This may indicate the top of a sine wave curve where, of course, the warmest years will ALWAYS occur."""
First sentence: lie. Second sentence: your point?
"""None of the above indicates CO2 is causing the warmth. Kicking the dog, when your football team loses, may make you feel better, but don't kid yourself... the dog has nothing to do with your team's loss. Leave him alone. GK"""
Outright lie and nasty remark. Sheesh.