Clean Coal: The New Weapon of Mass Delusion?

Bill Georgevich reporting

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You heard McCain talk about it, you heard Obama support it in the presidential campaign as well. The clean burning of coal by means of capturing and sequestering its carbon exhaust. Let’s be clear. There is no tested technology existing today to produce "clean coal". Scientists don’t even know if it will work. It’s just a concept brought to you by the coal industry.

Keep in mind that coal plants supply roughly one-half of all electricity in the US! And since it is a domestic source of energy, this dinosaur of energy production has been looking real attractive to our leaders.

The clean coal concept refers to an array of technologies that sharply reduce pollutant emissions from coal-burning power plants. In the 1980s and 1990s, efforts focused on reducing emissions of sulfur, nitrogen oxides and soot — which cause acid rain, damage forests and pollute watersheds.

The latest and larger concern about burning coal is the production of greenhouse gases, especially carbon dioxide. This has presented the coal industry with an engineering challenge it has not been able to pull off.

Traditional coal combustion emits far more carbon than other fossil fuels. Thus, maintaining coal as an option for power generation (electricity), will require dramatically reducing these emissions. A breakthrough is critical to the long-term energy needs of the US, which is considered the "Saudi Arabia of coal." Coal represents some 90 percent of the nation's recoverable fossil fuels, with reserves sufficient for 200 years, at current rates of use.

Clean coal depends on being able to ‘capture’ carbon dioxide emissions and then to safely dispose of them indefinitely underground, in a process known as sequestration, capabilities not expected to be commercially deployable until 2020.




There are two leading approaches to meeting the challenge. The first is an advanced steam cycle technology, known as ultrasupercritical (USC) cycles. The other is integrated gasification combined cycle (IGCC) technology.

USC promises significant efficiency gains, which could reduce carbon emissions by about a third. The US, long a leader in advanced coal combustion technology, has 170 supercritical units in operation.

IGCC, which is still a few years from commercial deployment, promises a potential quantum leap, approaching zero-emissions. Full-deployment, however, depends on overcoming another technological challenge — not just the ability to capture carbon but also to safely dispose of it indefinitely underground, in a process known as sequestration. This is not expected to be commercially deployable until 2020.

The choice of technology is hardly academic. In planning for new base-load (constant) power plants, utility companies must choose plants with carbon capture capabilities or face steep future costs under anticipated new laws establishing a cost to carbon.

There are just four commercial-sized coal-fired IGCC plants in operation. Two are in Europe and two in the US, one each in Florida and Indiana.

There have been significant capital and engineering investments made in IGGC technology in recent years by a small number of industry leaders, including Conoco Phillips, Shell and GE.

The federal government made a significant commitment to advancing this technology through its $2 billion FutureGen project, but support was withdrawn in January 2008 because of cost overruns and concerns the technology might quickly become obsolete. The next administration is expected to revive support.

Despite the compelling need, there are precious few IGCC projects still being pursued. Known plans include one by Duke Energy and a joint project undertaken by Hydrogen Energy and Edison Mission Energy, a subsidiary of Edison International.

Are there other potential solutions?

Anticipation of some form of carbon controls (most likely a market-based cap & trade system) has stimulated investment in other ways to capture carbon. Most are a variation on how other pollutants have been controlled.

For instance, liquids or solids (or static electricity) are injected into the plant’s flue gas exhaust to capture particles. Carbon is currently captured by exposing flue gas to an ammonium carbonate solution, which is then heated under pressure, reversing the absorption process so pure carbon is recovered. Georgia Tech University researchers recently reported using a solid adsorbent called "hyperbranched aminosilica" to capture seven-times more carbon. The substance can be recycled and reused.

Another capture method uses chilled ammonia, with which Alstom has demonstrated (in a lab) a capture rate of more than 90 percent and at a far less cost. The company is running a pilot project at Wisconsin Energy’s Pleasant Prairie Power Plant.

Technologically-based upstart companies — as well as infrastructure firms — offer investors limited entry into this sector, which is for the most part dominated by large firms.

Is global warming dead?

Bill Georgevich reporting

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Many Republicans who already thought carbon cap and trade regulation was bad for the economy, now say that with the growing global economic crisis, American energy companies cannot afford to be green. Like the “Drill, baby, drill!” hysteria promoted by Governor Sarah Palin in the Vice Presidential debate, Republican congressmen and senators are warning that global warming will just have to wait.

The AP reports:

Democratic leaders in the House and the Senate, and both presidential candidates, continue to rank tackling global warming as a chief goal next year.

But the focus on stabilizing the economy probably will make it more difficult to pass a law to reduce carbon dioxide and other greenhouse gases. At the very least, it will push back when the reductions would have to start. As one Republican senator put it, the green bubble has burst.

"Clearly it is somewhere down the totem pole given the economic realities we are facing," said Tom Williams, a spokesman for Duke Energy Corp., an electricity producer that has supported federal mandates on greenhouse gases. Duke is a member of the U.S. Climate Action Partnership, an association of businesses and non-profit groups that has lobbied Congress to act.

Just months ago, chances for legislation passing in the next Congress and becoming law looked promising. The presidential candidates support mandatory cuts and a Democratic majority is ready to act on the problem after years of the Bush administration resistance.

But the most popular remedy for slowing global warming, a mechanism know as cap-and-trade, could put further stress on a teetering economy. Under such a system, the government would establish a market for carbon dioxide by giving or selling credits to companies with operations that emit greenhouse gases. The companies can then choose whether to invest in technologies to reduce emissions to meet targets or instead buy credits from other companies who have already met them.

In an interview with The Associated Press, Representative Rick Boucher (D-Va.), said that in light of the economic downturn, a bill that would give polluters permits free of charge would be preferable. "The first way we can control program costs is by not charging industrial emitters," said Boucher, who released a first draft of a bill this past week with the chairman of the House energy and commerce committee, Representative John Dingell ( D-Mich.). Giving away right-to-pollute permits was one of the options.

Other Democrats, however, see a cap-and-trade bill - and the government revenues it would generate from selling permits - as an engine for economic growth. Democratic presidential nominee Barack Obama supports auctioning off all permits, using the money to help fund alternative energy.

"If you see this as a job creation opportunity for the U.S. to develop the products that are then sold around the world, then you should be optimistic about what the impact of passage would mean for the American economy," said Representative Edward Markey (D-Mass.).

Conservative Republicans, who were never fans of a law to curb greenhouse gases, have used the economic downturn as a rallying cry. Oklahoma Senator James Inhofe, the senior Republican on the Senate environment and public works committee, in a blog entry this month, criticized 152 House members for releasing a set of principles to tackle global warming in the midst of the economic turmoil. "The current economic crisis only reinforces the public's wariness about any climate bill that attempts to increase the costs of energy and jeopardizes jobs," Inhofe said.

Representative Joe Barton (R-Texas) took the argument a step further when he said the Boucher-Dingell bill could lead the country "off the economic cliff." Even supporters of federal regulation of greenhouse gases acknowledge the difficulty given the state of the economy.

Senator John Warner (R-Va.), a lead sponsor of a Senate bill to curb greenhouse gases that failed this year, acknowledged that the economy could delay when reductions in carbon dioxide would start. Warner told The AP that any bill should allow the president to decide. "We must continue to think and devise a piece of legislation that will enable the president of the United States to control timing ... dependent on the president's analysis for the ability of the economy to assume the financial burdens," he said.

The U.S. is not alone. As the economic crisis has spread to markets across the globe, work to curb greenhouse gases elsewhere has stalled.

Earlier this past week, Rajendra Pachauri, head of the UN climate panel, said discussions about global warming solutions were "on the back burner."

Pachauri shared the 2007 Nobel Peace Prize with former U.S. vice-president Al Gore for their work on climate change."I'm absolutely sure that climate change will be the last thing people will think about at this point in time," he said. "Sooner or later, they will come back to it."

The upside is that in hard economic times, and with high energy prices, the amount of pollution in the air tends to decline. But environmentalists say it won't be enough to stop temperatures from rising.