New West Energy Grok
Can Smokestack Recyclers Save the Climate?
By Richard Martin, 12-01-06
Technology -- specifically the internal combustion engine -- got us into the climate-change predicament we find ourselves in. Can technology save us?The answer is a qualified yes, if you judge by the announcement on Thursday that GreenFuel Technologies Corp. has successfully recycled greenhouse gases from an Arizona power plant into "transportation-grade" biodiesel and ethanol. Speaking at the annual Platts Global energy Awards in New York, officials from Arizona Public Service and GreenFuel Technologies said that an algae bioreactor system connected to the smokestack of the 1040-megawatt natural-gas plant at Redhawk, near Phoenix, can recycle the CO2 in the waste gas into usable fuels. "Economically efficient" fuels are, for the moment, another matter; but this is potentially an enormous breakthrough of the kind we're going to need to forestall catastrophic climate change over the next two decades.
For a primer on how the system works, see Smart Economy.
In other energy news:
-- Aspen Skiing Co. has joined a coalition of states, environmental groups and others alarmed by climate change to urge the U.S. Supreme Court to force the Bush Administration into taking action on global warming. The suit, labeled Massachusetts v. Environmental Protection Agency, is the subject of an incisive story on Slate by Dahlia Lithwick. That's right: we are now in the position of suing our own EPA to get it to, uhh, protect the environment.
-- Saying that purchasing "green" power is not enough, a group called Ski Area Citizens Coalition has given credit to Vail Resorts for planning to buy all its electricity from wind generators, but notes that development work at Blue Sky Basin, which opened in 2000, negates the gains from Vail's move to wind power.
-- The inevitable backlash against the energy boom on the Western Slope has set in. Testifying at a congressional field hearing last summer, Mesa County Commissioner Craig Meis said Western Colorado would "do its part" to help satisfy U.S. domestic energy needs but will not stand for the region becoming a "national sacrifice area." Coal production in Western Colorado, meanwhile, is actually down this year, and San Miguel County commissioners have supported a petition that demands an increase in the environmental bond that mining companies would have to post before drilling a gas well. San Miguel County is the first governmental entity to support the measure.
-- Finally, a new study by the Bureau of Land Management -- officially ordered by Congress, at the behest of the energy industry -- has found that up to half the oil and more than a quarter of the natural gas on 99 million acres of federal land is off limits to drilling because of significant environmental and other restrictions. The new study contradicts earlier reports that found that far higher percentages of fossil fuels are available for extraction from federal lands in the West.
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Richard, you wrote: ""Economically efficient" fuels are, for the moment, another matter; but this is potentially an enormous breakthrough of the kind we're going to need to forestall catastrophic climate change over the next two decades."
How does this happen in our world with an ever expanding population that demands a modern life, with food, goods and services that support that raised standard of living, and a longevity that extends beyond 80 years becoming the norm? In my opinion, until the main driver of increassing greenhouse gas emissions--population is addressed all of the hope and fascination of a technological magic wand to save us is misguided and misleading.
It sounds like Vail will have the first $200 lift ticket if they are going to be powered by wind generation, which is 3 or more times as expensive as hydro or coal produced power.
I have to wonder how much of all the hoorah over global warming is results based science, like the kind used to end public land logging, the administration of the ESA and other like follies. Create a paper problem, and then find the science to justify the problem. I think when it all runs its natural life, we will end up in another ice age wishing we had some warmer clothes. That is, you know, the history of Earth: Ice ages getting more frequent and more intense.
China has made a serious population control effort by cultural happenstance and public policy: a son is needed to take care of mom and dad in their dotage, and only girls can reproduce. Hence, few female births, and fewer females making it to child bearing age. Draconian but effective. Still, they are the big dog in the use of fossil fuels and producing green house gases, and it appears now, the products of mining. On the west coast, irrigation pipe is stolen nightly to be recycled and sent to China, as is the copper wire in new construction. On many occasions, on monday morning the newly wired, still under construction house is discovered to have had all the wire cut and stripped from it. Recycling for meth. I wonder if it is like the old Dutch sugar to rum to money to slaves to the sugar cane plantation to the US rum distiller to the European booze buyers to Africa for slaves deal of long ago.. Mexican meth muled by illegals to US addicts stealing metals for China use, the Chinese goods sold in Mexico, ad nauseum.
It appears now we will not use our energy reserves, but our foreign owned mining outfits will be hard charging to extract all they can to satisfy the Chinese need for metals, all the while being the market maker in energy as they chase their insatiable need for btu's world wide.
Perhaps the Greenies and Protectors of all things Wild need to concentrate their efforts in China. I have this strange feeling that sometime down the road TNC, RMEF, Trust for Public Lands, all will be selling US land assets to China in some sort of Catch 22 Milo Minderbinder transaction to benefit the ecosystem, all the while telling us what a wonderful benefits it will bring.
In the meantime, I am going to make sure I have enough warm clothes.
One thing's for sure, mysticism isn't going to solve the problem. No vague mother earth worship or going back to some feudal system where mystics keep the serfs in a "sustainable agriculture" is going to be the answer.
Enviros would do well to ditch the mystical hangers on and ally themselves with science and industry and find a way that humanity can continue to increase it's standard of living while achieving some of the results it would like to see.