Wednesday
Aug102011
by 
Bishop Hill
Bishop Hill How representative?
Aug 10, 2011 Climate: Models While most of the Climategate disclosures concerned tree ring studies, one of the questions still to be answered is why so many of the emails selected for release were about SRES - the IPCC's estimates of how different things that affect the climate, including carbon dioxide, will vary in the future.
Now, via Richard Betts' Twitter feed comes news of the IPCC's latest version of these emissions scenarios, with a snazzy new name: the Representative Concentration Pathways. There is a paper describing how they were put together here.
I've only taken a quick glance, but I'm struck by how much carbon capture is predicted in some of the RCPs. Is this realistic? I thought CCS was something of an unproven technology.
Reader Comments (27)
BH
Thanks for posting this, an interesting question.
Worth noting a nuance of language here. The authors of the RCP paper say:
"The RCPs should not be interpreted as forecasts or absolute bounds, or be seen as policy prescriptive. The RCPs describe a set of possible developments in emissions and land use, based on consistent scenarios representative of current literature"
So they're not "predictions" - although they are supposed to be "possible", so your question is still a reasonable one.
If the authors predict the success of CCS, I hope they take into account popular resistance against CO2 capture underground. In my country (the Netherlands) several initiatives to test underground CO2 capture have failed due to this. People just aren't convinced that CCS is safe and they don't like the idea of the storage of gas below their feet.
How dose the pumping of Co2 underground at high pressure differ from hydrofracking?
CCS has not yet been demonstrated to be viable and has not been tried on an industrial scale anywhere. In a recent US case the utility pulled out of CCS after they where not given any clarity over being able to charge more for the Power. Just to sequester 1.4% of the plants CO2 was going to cost 30% of the plants output. You don't have to be a genius to know these figure don't add up. And it is not as if this is something of a revelation. Policy makers must know these figures, which make there rabbiting on about CCS bordering on the criminal.
http://wattsupwiththat.com/2011/07/15/high-costs-bury-aep%e2%80%99s-carbon-burial-plan/
Wasn't one of the authors of this paper, a Detlef van Vuuren, who authored a report that basically concluded that if humanity turned to veganism the planet would be saved from farting cows?
I think he was!
These authors maybe experts on modelling gaseous emissions but are they experts in dealing with reality.
Apply some common sense to the question. You dig something out of the ground, burn it, then push and shove to get everything back in the ground again like it never happened.
Is this likely to be a net source of energy?
State of play on EU CCS demo project:
http://www.caoling.eu/documentos/FP7LondonCaOlingProjectAnexerciseincarbonateLooping.pdf
http://www.caoling.eu/documentos/3rdCCSsummitBariv2.pdf
Recent London conference:
http://ccs-conference.eu/index.php?pid=7&lang=nl
Detailed agenda:
http://ccs-conference.eu/uploads/Draft_Agenda_24-26_May_2011.pdf
Future events:
http://www.acius.net/aci/conferences/eu-ecc4.asp
http://www.globalccsinstitute.com/community/events
An RCP paper came out in Nature, long back (with nice diagrams and all). Will go look for the citation.
I think Anoneumouse has the best of this exchange. I don't know what the scientific difference is between CCS and fracking but the political difference is that fracking will give us decades of cheap, relatively clean energy which, as Paul Ehrlich said, "would be the equivalent of giving an idiot child a machine gun."
This would be the same Paul Ehrlich who told us in 1970 that "In ten years all important animal life in the sea will be extinct." and "Five years is all we have left if we are going to preserve any kind of quality in the world."
Repeat after me: "it's not about the science; it's all about the politics." And always was.
MJ
For some reason Detlef van Vuuren is not keen on hoofed animals, especially pigs. Pigs are intelligent and sociable creatures that taste great when served on a bread roll with brown sauce.
I agree "it's not about science; it's all about politics."
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GKTsWjbjQ8E
it's not unproven. it's bloody expensive. that's the point. if it was cheap and easy it wouldn't be on the agenda. please tell me your just a very patient and diplomatic kinda' guy. you do get it, don't you?
"Repeat after me: "it's not about the science; it's all about the politics." And always was."
mike gets it, surely.
With regard to CCS, this exchange occurred in Westminster on 24 March 2011:
Andrew Bridgen (North West Leicestershire) (Con): Does my hon. Friend agree that, ................. the coalition Government need to ensure that the funding for large important projects such as CCS is as simple and straightforward as possible?
Charles Hendry: My hon. Friend is absolutely right, which is why the Chancellor made his announcement yesterday. This is a simpler way of getting the funding in; it provides the funding up front rather than it being based on output, and it is a significant step forward.
Malcolm Wicks (Croydon North) (Lab): ................Will the Minister assure us that public spending will be made available in addition to what has already been announced to ensure the future of this technology, which is absolutely vital to our fight against global warming?
Charles Hendry: The right hon. Gentleman has tremendous knowledge in these areas, ......................What the Chancellor announced yesterday removes the tremendous complexity from the levy and provides a much more straightforward scheme to drive this technology forward.”
Just remind me, where is this parallel planet located?
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If you want to see what an 800 MW coal-fired power station with CCS might look like, see:
http://tinyurl.com/6cgy25v
Look at the size of the exhaust gas proccessing plant required, bigger than 800 MW boiler/turbine hall combined, to get from hot boiler exhaust gas to cool, neat CO2 at 280 bar (about 4,000 psi in old money), having meanwhile absorbed about 240 MW in parasitic power.
Not forgetting that the the captured stuff has then to be piped at high pressure, threading between all the windmills, to get to the seaside.
Where, more huge power sucking installations will force the plant food out to thousands of new platforms in the North Sea and then inject the CO2 into spaces full of water hundreds of feet below the raging surface of the sea.
According to Sod's Law, the captured CO2 will eventually leak into the atmosphere. Of course, it could have done that directly at the power station without all this very expensive kit, no?
The paper is from 2009; how many more millions of man-hours have been wasted world-wide since on this dangerous futile enterprise?
In some ways, this paper alone is an excellent demonstration as to why the whole CCS farce should be abandoned now and not in 'n' years when the penny finally drops in Hendry's skull.
Thanks browned off - good report link.
In the conclusions (p20) they state:
"The efficiency penalty associated with CO2 capture based on Siemens advanced
process is -9.2 %-pts (validated with the lab piloting unit)."
So relating this to figure 9 (p14) State of the Art efficiency of 45.9% this suggests this becomes 36.7% (ie reduced by 9.2/45.9*100 = 20%) if CCS is fitted. Do you agree?
not banned yet --
I read the efficiency penalty figure the same way. However, as the report seems to be marketing material, I wouldn't be surprised the CCS penalty is more than 20%.
Certainly the figures from the up-thread citation by peter geany are far more pessimistic about CCS, as a small fraction of the carbon is sequestered at a cost of approximately one-third of the energy.
HaroldW - I've seen more pessimistic figures too but the Siemens doc. struck me as reasonably solid as a "best case" figure. IMO these numbers give an indication of the premium that will have to go onto the price of CCS coal generated electricity.
And people wonder why I constantly advocate a rapid build out of Gen III nuclear plant for UK baseload.
I've seen, but cannot readily recall where, a fairly number-rich analysis of CCS which concluded that the physical amount of captured CO2 being moved around the planet would vastly exceed any other substance (far in excess of current oil transport). Perhaps someone here can find this and provide a link.
CCS isn't going to work. Too expensive, too energy-hungry, too much CO2 to deal with, not enough suitable geological storage sites etc.
More energy fantasy stuff.
Brownedoff
Thank you for your persistence in continuing to track the un-economics of CCS.
I have had discussions on coal fired generation in three countries this year - all in the real world unlike Westminster. Two were relieved to find out that CCS was so extraordinarily uneconomic that they could forget about it rather than borrow money from future generations to impoverish their children while delivering no obvious benefit to anyone. They are proceeding without a thought to CCS and with economics that now have an outside chance of success.
The third has been taking CCS very seriously, but seems to be getting colder feet as each day passes. Enormous cost, unknown risk and limited if any benefit. "Browned off" with the idea as you might say.
I hope that the scientists reading this blog are not offended, but the economics out here where real peoiple need electricity that they can afford bear no similarity to those in the models. Personally I like to see poverty reduced with a consequential environmental benefit.
CCS will never come to pass. NEVER. No one has built an industrial scale plant yet and it would take more energy to sequester the CO2 than the plant gives up in the first place. All the theoretical numbers ignore many of the engineering and geological challenges ahead. Just ask why no one has yet done it and only talked about it??? Look at the real example from the American Electric Power Mountaineer coal-burning plant in Red Haven WVa. 30% of its output was required to sequester between just 1.1 and 1.4% of the CO2, this increasing the cost of energy from the plant by 50%, an unacceptable figure. Its a dud technology. Any other discussion is irrelevant.
Secondly there will be no money left. Just as the whole green movement has been about politics and not science, the financial problems we (the west) are shortly to encounter and have been studiously ignoring are about politics and not Banking. 2008 was just a quick rehearsal for the main event.
The solution to both issues will be the same. A change in the political map and our relationship with those that spend our money.
Aug 10, 2011 at 2:56 PM | not banned yet
Yes, I agree.
In the 1960s when the last big units in the UK were being designed, such as the English Electric 600 MW cross-compounds at Longannet, the target efficiency was in the range 33% to 35% (this is from memory, if I had known that I would still be wittering about these magnificent machines 40 years later, I would have quietly torn the performance requirements out of the spec - no slapping an open book on a Xerox in those days, we only had those "one page at a time pushed through a slimy slot" disgusting wet copiers where your feeble copy looked like re-cycled toilet paper and the image faded in daylight).
So, 50 years later and after billions of man-hours and trillions in research & development cash invested to get the efficiency to about 46%, the FIs in the HoC - Milipede, Dave et al want to take a "giant leap backwards to save the planet" and bring the efficiencies back to where they were half a century ago.
I know the above is hypothetical because, as PG says at 6 pm, it will never happen outside pilot projects funded by the poor bloody taxpayer - when the EU cash dries up, so will interest in developing CCS equipment.
Can you imagine the security of supply which would be available if there were 20 x 2.4 GW (3 units x 800 MW) coal-fired power stations distributed across the land? Forty eight thousand megawatts of hiss and p*ss humming away 24/7 keeping us all alive and at work.
I would bet a pint of Guinness that, if there was money to be made by politicians' relatives in constructing these useful things, we would already be well on the way to 96 GW of coal-fired by now.
This is an important point. To make the Cap-n-Trade bill appear to be very inexpensive, the American EPA not only made the assumption that CCS would be available at scale in 2020 but that it would be cheap. Those who are still in love with windmills and solar panels should also note that the EPA intentionally relied on estimating a big expansion of nuclear power because that's the only way to make it look inexpensive to combat global warming.
Since nuclear expanded rapidly in the US without a cap or a trade or a UN treaty or a carbon tax, the nut of the EPA's analysis is an admission that greens are real impediment to action on emissions.
Link to the EPA's analysis of cap-n-trade: http://www.epa.gov/climatechange/economics/pdfs/HR2454_Analysis.pdf
Aug 10, 2011 at 9:19 AM | Anoneumouse
Completely different.
I assume from your tone that you like the idea of CCSbeing deployed in order to save the planet?
If so, you are sorely mis-guided.
Hydro fracking is used to get a useful product out of the ground, which is then processed and pumped into the natural gas network, to be burned by gas turbines to generate electricity or used directly to heat your house. In other words a good thing, which, as more and more fracked gas becomes available, will eventually reduce the cost of of living a life in safety and comfort.
Storage of CO2 captured from power stations is a useless endeavour which would double, treble, quadruple (take your pick) your electricity bill.
The number of people in the UK who are having to choose, in winter, between eating or heating is staggering - IIRC, the figure is in the millions and this is a direct result of the insane policies enacted into the law of the land by those F.I.s in the HoC. And that is without CCS being in place.
The coming winter 2011/12 is probably going to be OK vis a vis electricity supply, but tight.
However, the winter of 2012/13 is going to be a different kettle of fish altogether. You had better be praying for an unseasonal heat wave. Excess deaths from not being able to afford heating will be unprecedented.
CCS is insane by any measure but fortunately it will not become a reality.
For that you should be thankful.
It seems to me that the whole CCS scam has been dreamed up purely to make coal look as expensive as BigWind and (actually) to scupper what's left of the British coal industry.
But one of the wonders of bullshit is the fact that its purveyors always end up believing it themself. So it is that CCS is also promoted as the 'essential backup we need to ensure continuity of supply' for those awkward times when the wind doesn't blow.
CCS has also been promoted as the 'saviour of the British coal industry'.
Yeah. I heard that one before. That was what they called it when they installed the flue gas desulphurisation plant at Drax and Drax (at the taxpayer's expense) just before the CEGB was privatised. Our ever generous Mr. Taxpayer also stumped up for installing the same kit at Ferrybridge at the same time (must have been around 1994?). The private owners got round to actually installing it there in the last couple of years!
So the snag of FGD is (a) huge capital cost, (b) huge ongoing revenue cost, (c) the need to dig huge holes in the Peak District National Park for the limestone and (d) the problem of getting rid of the gypsum produced - especially when the building industry is (again) on its arse and there is little demand for plasterboard. Some people believe it is worthwhiles because allegedly it reduces acid rain. There is some doubt about this but lets just park that one for the moment.
Yes, the saviour of the British coal industry. Unfortunately, after privatisation, the new owners realised it would be far more profitable to burn really crappy imported fuel because (with the FGD kit) they could do. And stuff British coal!
Now the technical and economic problems of CCS make FGD look like the problems of using a better grade of tomato ketchup in the power station canteen. As other commenters point out, there is no large scale operational kit anywhere in the world. And nobody is going to think of investing in coal whilst every political party represented at Westminster insists on CCS for any new plant.
So cynical scam or incompetent blunder. You decide!
Danish CCS plans shelved over residents' concerns
Norwegian study finds CCS health risks
"flue gas desulphurisation plant at Drax and Drax (at the taxpayer's expense)"
Drax & Radcliffe!
Where did the idea of CCS originally come from?? Something that doesn't help out people in any way and on top of that guarantees having more large steaming power stations dotted around the country, understandably a lot of people don't particularly want to live to near them, and being charged more for electricity as well.
This comment tries to answer the questions, where did CCS come from, and what are the barriers to using it?
Most aspects of CCS are technologically proven, in my view. For intance, there is a Norwegian project which has been injecting CO2 removed from North Sea natural gas wells into a formation about 800 meters under the sea bed nearby. But the costs of CCS need to come down.
Perhaps one reason underground storage of CO2 isn't as big an issue in the US as it might be elsewhere is that CO2 has been used for enhanced oil recovery (EOR) for about three decades in the US. With EOR, you push CO2 into an aging oil field, and drive toward the oil rig any oil that hasn't already been captured by pressure. So there is evidence that it can be done without harming anyone.
Much of the CO2 stays downhole. Since using CO2 to drive out more oil from long-tenured wells isn't designed to be a sequestration project, some CO2 comes up with the oil. It is recaptured and recycled downhole, to the best of my knowledge.
CO2 for these projects (mostly in Texas, increasingly in places like Wyoming) mostly comes from natural CO2 reservoirs today. CO2 is often found in domes, as are the kind of natural gas and oil depositsthat have already been mostly exploited.
The new idea is to capture CO2 from a source such as a power plant (or from a natural gas well that is particularly rich in CO2; CO2 has to be removed before natural gas can be put in a pipeline). Once captured, this CO2 can be used for EOR instead of the CO2 from the natural formation.
The problem to date is that even with the costs of piping the CO2 several hundred miles from Colorado to Texas, it is still cheaper to buy and ship the CO2 from Colorado, than to build the equipment to capture the CO2 at the power plant. Some plants do currently capture small amounts of CO2, we know it can be done technically, but getting the cost down is the issue.
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