Dethroning King Coal
‘Clean’ Coal Faces Grimy Future
By Richard Martin, 11-02-07
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“Clean” coal suffered another significant setback this week as Xcel Energy said it would put off a decision on a proposal for a billion-dollar-plus coal-gasification plant. “At least 10 proposals for coal-gasification plants in the U.S. have been delayed or canceled this year,” according to Steve Raabe of The Denver Post.
Xcel’s delay in considering trying to build a clean-coal plant is particularly significant because the proposal included a carbon-sequestration system to inject and store CO2 underground.
Montana Gov. Schweitzer’s ambitious plans to create a coal-to-liquid-fuel industry in the state have also largely been derailed. Last month the backers of a $1.5 billion coal gasification plant near Roundup abandoned their attempt to use an expired air quality permit to build the station. A second new-age coal plant, announced by Schweitzer last October, has become an embarrassment: the companies cited by the Governor’s office as “primary developers” of the Bull Mountain facility denied any involvement when contacted recently by the Missoula Independent.
These disappointments come on the heels of a Scientific American editorial that said “Liquid coal would produce roughly twice the global warming emissions of gasoline.”
The fact is we in the U.S. are not going to quit using coal in the next two decades, to say nothing of the Chinese. Unacknowledged in this debate is a split between two so-called “clean coal” technologies. The first, “integrated gasification combined cycle,” or IGCC, uses pressure and heat to convert coal to a gas that burns more cleanly and efficiently than raw coal to produce electricity. The second then converts the gas to liquid transportation fuel, whether for cars or jets. IGCC combined with carbon capture systems is a proven way to clean up our current use of dirty coal – it’s just expensive. It should be developed and made cheaper. Making gas out of coal is almost certainly a net contributor to greenhouse gas emissions, whatever Gov. Schweitzer says.
In other energy news:
-- The fact that no large-scale geothermal power plants have been built in Colorado didn’t stop a group of company executives and potential investors from gathering last week in Montrose for the Geothermal Investors’ Forum, part of the Delta Montrose Electric Association’s weekend Renewable Expo. Though Colorado’s geology presents certain challenges to geothermal energy production (heat anomalies lie almost four miles underground, for one thing), officials at the gathering, which brought potential investors from as far away as Iceland, believe that geothermal production could begin in the next five years.
-- Calling the failure to gather accurate health information about the health risks of rampant drilling for natural gas “inexcusable,” Daniel Teitelbaum, a medical toxicologist with the Colorado School of Mines, told U.S. Congressmen last week that the West stands a chance of repeating the nightmares of asbestos and mining. “Despite the extraction activity under way, the toxic impact on the human and animal populations of the resource areas is unevaluated,” Teitelbaum testified to the House Committee on Oversight and Government Reform, according to the Rocky Mountain News.
-- “The Aspen Skiing Co. and Colorado Rocky Mountain School hope to build a solar farm in Carbondale that would be the largest system of its kind on the Western Slope,” reports the Aspen Times. The group is seeking approval from Garfield County for a one-acre facility that would include 28,800 square feet of solar panel arrays. Scott Ely, president Carbondale company called Sunsense, which would install the array, said the system would produce 147 kilowatts – enough to power one building on campus and feed excess electricity back into the Xcel grid.
COAL IS KING....i SUPPORT COAL BURNERS ,
We also need to build nuclear reactors
Liberals who drink fair trade coffee in Made in China cups while driving suvs with anti bush stickers have been sticking their hypocritical noses into other states business way too long.
these whiners oppose everything from Nuclear energy, to coal to refineries. Yet, have no problem disposing of the unborn like they were garbage.
These whine babies who try to convince us that global warming is man made will do whatever they can to destroy our nation .
A prime substitute is likely to be coal! We already use coal for most of our electricity. We've known how to make coal into high-grade diesel and gasoline since 1913, and we have about a 200-year supply of it in America, safe from geopolitical disruption.
Coal conversion into synthetic gasoline or "synfuel" isn't exactly an unproven or textbook-only technology as most other alternative energy solutions are at this stage. Germany had 14 synfuel plants humming by 1939, supplying Germany's immense war machine during World War II. I can think of no other alternative energy that has actually been deployed in real life at that scale.
We must go Nuclear or Coal. I do not have the figures to back it up but I doubt if all Solar, geothermal and wind produced power in the USA equals a noticable % of the necessary energy use by us. I bet it is less than 1/10 of 1%. If of you liberals have the figures I would like to see them. Please compare to all energy sources.
Comment By Hal Herring, 11-04-07These comments are great. One wants us to go back in time to a Nazi-era wartime-desperate industrial concept. The other chimes in to cry "we must go to Nuclear or coal." as if the world hasn't been choking and wheezing on those two things for decades now.
No hope for anything better, huh, guys? No chance that the USA, the most educated populace, the world's largest brain trust, did the old Manhattan Project, put the guy on the moon in the 60's, won the Cold War, produced the Constitution, you know, little things like that, couldn't maybe, just maybe, come up with some solutions to energy needs that aren't based on Nazi-era technology?
Dang, I forgot, it's them liberals that are wrecking the move to the future- that coal and nuclear paradise that awaits us.
I doubt if them liberals got any figures.
Fatalism combined with pure fear, add a dose of hatred and bitterness, toss aside all the facts and the science, mix well in a bowl made out of blindness to consequences, and presto- a potion guaranteed to poison any nation.
Hey, while you were posting here, you missed the Fox update on the Lacey Peterson case! And the hour-long combined presentation by the American Nuclear Power Plant Construction Assoc, presented as an infomercial detailing the hopelessness and antiAmericanism of the wind power industry...hurry, turn it up, you still have time to catch the Fox exclusive President's address "The Future of America is Coal! (and God)(and with a rousing afterword on Family Values presented by Ted Haggard!)"
Yeah, man! Rush is Right!
We have always been at war with eastAsia...doubleplus good!
London Times had a nice magazine piece on underground coal gasification couple weeks ago -- something that Wyoming's Wold family is pursuing as well.
See: http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/uk/science/article2631117.ece
WOW! Coal and Nucular are now an invention by Hitler. What a crock! I didn't know that family values powered any house or car. Hot Air might if we could harness it. There seems to be lots of it coming out of someone. Did Hitler put the gasoline in your car. I do know that the use of natural resources is considered UnAmerican by some. Unfortunately everything they use is made from those natural resources.
Comment By Hal Herring, 11-04-07The use if natural resources is certainly not "un-American," as you phrase it.
The squandering of natural resources certainly is, especially at this late date. So is the insistence on those who make billions of dollars keeping our nation chained to the filthy energy resources they produce and sell. That is so "un-American," in fact, that I will call it by another, more accurate name: treason.
Something else "un-American"? The destruction of precious and publically-owned air, land, and water resources caused by the continued reliance on coal (which was first outlawed in London in 1272, King Edward I of England, who proclaimed, “Be it known to all within the sound of my voice, whosoever shall be found guilty of burning coal shall suffer the loss of his head.”). Gee, 1272, that's not so long ago. Not much has changed since then, let's "get back" to coal. It's working so great for China!
Nuclear? I don't know. Chernobyl worries me. So does the endless conflict over the waste. So does the corruption of safeguards due to the quest to maximize profits. We've just watched as a federal government hollowed itself out, on purpose, to remove anyone who might try to safeguard the public good and interfere with the profits of selected businesses. From Chinese toys to pet food to coal fired power plants, from big pharma to FEMA, I think my confidence, and the confidence of most Americans, has been a bit shaken in the desire of our government to monitor potentially dangerous industries. So, I'm a little hesitant to embrace the "nucular" power option.
Why do you reject the idea that the world could be a better, less polluted, less destructive place? Why insist on these old, destructive technologies?
Do you not read the news about coal-caused pollution? About mercury in fisheries? Ever read the FDA fisheries advisories for mercury? Have you ever been to, say Black Mesa in AZ, or to the coal mines of Wyoming and Montana and seen what it takes to get it out of the ground? How about to West Virginia, where whole communities are being made unlivable, water resources of fantastic value are being filled in and ruined forever?
Do you trust the federal government to regulate the nuclear industry so that it produces power in a safe manner? If so, you are more of an optimist than your posts suggest.
Or do you just trust the power companies completely to do it all perfectly, even if it means sacrificing profits? Ever been to Bhopal? Or Libby, Montana?
You just toss off "coal and nuclear" as if these were just words, clean of all ramification.
What I have, what I hope you share, is confidence in my country to come up with the technological fixes to make the world a better place, man. Fantastic strides in efficiency, first, in the use of every form of conventional energy, while developing new sources, hopefully renewable ones, ones that don't require us to strangle ourselves and our children while we use them. In the meantime, we'll demonstrate good old ingenuity-California has done alot of it already- replacing all the energy wasting appliances, from lightbulbs to trucks to boilers to furnaces....it'll be a new economy, a postive, conserving economy, a race to see what entreprenuer can do it best and take home the wagonloads of cash...hell, this will happen anyway, slowly, as natural gas skyrockets, as gasoline hits $4.50 next summer...as fuel oil burners in the east cost $1000 a month to heat a little two bedroom house...why wait for the market to make it happen? Isn't it a national security issue?
Who will do this if we don't? Why have we waited so long?
Why do you insist on the lethal technologies of the Dark Ages, or technologies that will always depend on strenuous oversight by somebody to keep them from rendering huge expanses of the nation uninhabitable?
Is it just some "I hate nerds who worry about clean air and stuff" backlash? Or what?
I really think it would be fascinating to hear the well-argued viewpoint of someone who wants the US to "return" to coal.
Hal
Hal, I reject your over exagerated descriptions of our use of existing energy sources BUT I do agree with you on conservation and the development of new science HOWEVER this country cannot support new science unless we keep the wheels turning and to do that and to find the time to convert after new science is developed we must continue to develope the resources now available. If we get new science in 5 years and it takes 15 years to convert over to that energy source we must rely on existing knowledge and source and expand those resources to cover us and continued growth for that long. I think 15 years is very optimistic!!! We use tremendous amounts of energy!! We use energy in thousands of different ways. We can't throw everything in the garbage can and start over. PS: Thank God for those wagon loads of cash. It can only be spent by investment in new facilities, development and techniques. It certainly can't be spent for consumer goods and it's not put in grandma's socks. Our air is cleaner now than it was 50 years ago. I was there.
Comment By Hal Herring, 11-04-07Well said, Sweed7, and I know you are correct about air quality, overall, today. My parents were in Birmingham, Alabama, then, my grandfather was on the road selling tires in Copper Hill, Tennessee, where the air -and peoples clothes- were yellow. The regulations put into effect in '72 have paid off. My worry is that we have lived under those regs so long that we have forgotten what it could be like if we cast them out-as we have seen attempted recently-The population is far more than double what it was then, and energy needs are astronomically higher. Also reclamation for coal mines in the west is ten times better than it was then. But I feel that, if we are to continue using coal as a transition fuel to something better, we'd better tighten up every reg from reclamation to air quality. I am not seeing that happening. I am seeing a move in the other direction, right as the risk becomes critical. I honestly think that the use of coal has the potential to cause irrevocable damage to our nation- we may be condemned to use it for as you say, fifteen more years, but we as a people better demand every safeguard in that period. The short term profits are calling the shots-look at West Virginia, look at the abandonment of new source review- and we'll be paying the costs for generations to come. There is also a real danger that the enormous profits are being used as an excuse not to make a needed transition. that seems to me to be a clear danger here.
Thanks for your reply. I've enjoyed the exchange.
Hal
Hal, I still differ with you about the huge profits. People think about earning as spending. Actually huge earnings cannot be spent for the things folks usually thing of buying. Those earnings must be invested and every company invests them to make their companies better and more efficient so they can pay dividends and compete better. More research and development is done by Company earnings than by Government. The huge coal companies would like nothing better than to develope clean use of coal and get enviros off of their back. They are working at it.
Comment By Marion, 11-05-07First of all the guilt for over use lies with the consumer, not the producer. There would not be one lump of coal come out of the ground if folks did not NEED the heat and electric it produces. Pay attention to your use of resources first of all, then accept the fact that we have to use what we have available until and unless we can come up with an alternative.
Certainly we may have to consider rationing....based on need, not wealth.
Again the energy producers are not the bad guy we are! The more sq feet in your house, the more guilty you are, the more fuel you use, the more you are the problem. This is not something that can be pushed off on the other guy, it is YOUR responsiblity.
Certainly you can insist the environmental groups you donate to spend some of that moeny on research, not just law suits and big offices.
Well said Marion-The big Corporations spend a lot of money on research and development-The enviros on litigation and politics. Without the responding cost of litigation and politics the Corps could do even more research.
Comment By Hal Herring, 11-06-07Well, Swede, I guess all that R&D;money the big guys saved not having to change their scrubbers and pollution controls over the past few years have been funneled into the PR division. And it seems to be working real well for them, judging by your posts.
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