Richard North has been doing some interesting analysis of the new carbon capture and storage project in Saskatchewan, which was widely reported in a few days ago. Here's what the Guardian had to say at the time:
Canada has switched on the first large-scale coal-fired power plant fitted with a technology that proponents say enables the burning of fossil fuels without tipping the world into a climate catastrophe.
The project, the first commercial-scale plant equipped with carbon capture and storage technology, was held up by the coal industry as a real life example that it is possible to go on burning the dirtiest of fossil fuels while avoiding dangerous global warming.
And here is what they didn't tell their readers:
...of the total $1.4 billion plant cost, the reports put the actual cost of upgrading the 30-year-old plant at $400 million, putting the CCS at a cool billion, tripling the capital needed to provide a modest 110MW generating capacity.
But the omissions don't stop there. The original plant was rated at 139MW so, for the expenditure of $1.4 billion, the Canadians have ended up with an overall reduction of 29MW capacity. Here, Ibbett's dishonesty is compounded by that of the plant operator, SaskPower, which tells Reuters that the loss of the 29MW capacity represents an "energy penalty" of around 20 percent.
We have to go to a local report, however, to find that the upgrade, including a new, high-efficiency boiler and steam turbine, cranked up the nameplate capacity to 162MW. But the CCS unit needs about 34 MW to operate, resulting in a "parasitic loss" of about 21 per cent of plant's power. Then, another 18MW are needed for other systems, reducing the net output to 110MW.
This cost of 52MW represents a loss not of 20 percent, as the plant operator is stating, but 32 percent, just one point short of a full third loss in capacity. Effectively, therefore, efficiency is cut by a third, for a tripling of the capital cost.
Read the whole thing. You have to say, CCS looks as if it is going to be the most absurd waste of money since, well, windfarms.