BAU trajectory. Renewables is primarily hydro; I’m guessing the tiny increase in renewables represents an enormous percentage increase in wind and solar.
According to the NY Times, FutureGen is kaput:
The Energy Department said it would pay for the gas-capturing technology, but industry would have to build and pay for the commercial plants that use the technology. Plans for the experimental plant were scratched.
Top Energy Department officials said the change [to another technology a few years from now] would save taxpayers money, generate more electricity and capture more than twice as much carbon dioxide.
But independent energy experts largely criticized the move, saying it would require two to four more years for new designs, plans and approvals, let alone budget tussles and eventual construction.
From the Toronto Star, Climate Neros fiddle while Rome burns:
How many radio or television debates have shown an environmentalist pointing out the devastating effects of oil sands and power production in Alberta, only to have industry officials tout concepts like “clean coal” or “carbon capture and sequestration” – as if the solution is here and the problem is being overcome as they speak?
The average listener is likely to walk away thinking that action is being taken and that there’s no need for concern. Problem is, we keep waiting and waiting and nothing really happens.
Professor David Keith, a chemical engineer and director of the University of Calgary’s energy and environmental systems group, warned at an oil sands conference last week that there’s tremendous uncertainty around the viability of these large projects. This reality, he pointed out, is overshadowed by all the hype.
“We’re not actually doing very much,” he said. “We’re in a world where there’s an enormous amount of talk but very little actual action.”
As Keith pointed out, there’s been no shortage of press releases. According to Emerging Energy Research of Cambridge, Mass., more than 20 major carbon-capture power generation projects were announced around the world last year – most of them proposed in Canada, the United States and Australia.
Not one, said Keith, is certain to move forward….
Keith, during his conference talk, said it’s one thing to capture carbon and another to store it. On the latter, he said there are just three large-scale projects underway worldwide and only in areas of the world where a carbon tax exists.
Oil companies and utilities are reluctant to move forward for several reasons. For one, there’s been a lack of clear policy direction in North America. Second, natural gas has stayed cheaper than expected so there’s been no urgency to lean on coal. Another major reason, cited by Keith, is that project costs are skyrocketing.
There’s a shortage of labour. Skilled workers and engineers are being lost to retirement faster than new workers are entering the market. The demand for resources, such as steel, continues to rise as countries such as China and other industries, such as nuclear, rush to lock up contracts.
“Nobody, to my knowledge, really knows whether this enormous run-up in capital costs is a bubble or not,” said Keith….
The largest carbon capture system in testing is about 2 megawatts – versus about 500 megawatts for a small coal plant. That has to be scaled up 250 times to prove it’s ready for prime time. Meanwhile, the largest underground storage project is injecting only 1 million tonnes of CO{-2} per year, compared to 6 million required for an average-size coal plant.
Let’s put this into perspective: in the U.S. alone there are nearly 1,500 coal-electricity generators in operation that are capable of providing all the power needs of Ontario 13 times over. More than 100 new plants are on the drawing board.
And China? What’s happening there is just plain scary. In 2006 alone, the Chinese added 100,000 megawatts of coal power to its grid – nearly four times all the power generation in Ontario. The rate of construction is expected to accelerate, not slow down.
A warming Earth (picture from NASA)
We need to increase research spending. Past president of the American Association for the Advancement of Science, John Holdren, was part of a research panel looking at current spending:
The White House points to what it says is spending of almost US$3 billion (€2.3 billion) a year on energy-technology research and development as its major contribution to combatting climate change. But Holdren said other calculations put spending at under $2 billion (€1.5 billion), and it’s “far from proportionate to either the size of the challenge or the size of the opportunities.”
Tuesday’s report [Confronting Climate Change: Avoiding the Unmanageable and Managing the Unavoidable] said such research budgets worldwide are badly underfunded, and require a tripling or quadrupling, to US$45 billion (€34.2 billion) or US$60 billion (€45.6 billion) a year.
Billions more should go toward work on cellulose as a biofuel, overcoming the problems of nuclear energy, reducing solar electricity’s cost, and developing other cleaner energy sources, Holdren said. He said intensified research is particularly needed for carbon capture and sequestration — technology to capture carbon dioxide in power-plant emissions and store it underground.
How much would a $10 billion dollar research tax cost if paid for only by electricity consumption? US electricity use was 4 million million kWh in 2006, so $10 billion would be 1/4 cent/kWh, presumably more for coal and natural gas kWh.
How much would a $10 billion dollar research tax cost if paid for only by gasoline consumption? In 2006, gasoline plus aviation gasoline plus kerosene-type jet fuel came to about 4 billion barrels in the US, about 160 billion gallons. So $10 billion would be a 6 cent tax/gallon.
It looks like we can afford to more than triple our research dollar. We certainly can’t afford not to.
