Goodell’s article in Rolling Stone is a case in point. He starts by saying Hansen believes “a complete phaseout of CO2 pollution from coal plants by 2030″ is necessary, and leaves out that Hansen calls for CCS. Goodell: “Perhaps some day a brilliant engineer will figure out a way to remove CO2 emissions cheaply and efficiently”, but for now all we can do is “shut them down”.

Perhaps one day Goodell will read the IPCC Special Report on Carbon Capture and Storage which states CCS is “well understood”, and “economically feasible under special conditions” right now. Special conditions mean a carbon tax or where CO2 is needed for EOR (enhanced oil recovery).

No cost figures appear in Goodell’s article, perhaps not surprisingly for someone who is proclaiming that the technology is not feasible. Goodell states CCS is “prohibitively expensive” making sure not mention IPCC, MIT, or McKinsey studies that clearly state all that is holding up implementation is the lack of a price on carbon to level the playing field between nonCCS coal fired plants and CCS ones.

The IPCC states, depending on how a CCS coal fired plant is constructed and what the exact economic conditions are where it is, CCS coal fired electricity can be expected to cost 6 - 10 cents kWh. Compare this to solar thermal which the builder of Mojave 1 says is approaching 12 cents kWh, i.e. more expensive but trending down to that.

Goodell brings up the Statoil North Sea project, and instead of remarking that this is an example of what a carbon tax can do, which all other observers I’ve ever read say, because only after Norway implemented a $50 a tonne tax did Statoil put this CCS in, all he can do is dump on it. Vaclav Smil is trotted out, he’s the guy who seems to think no one else, the IPCC, MIT, McKinsey, et. al, has ever realized that when you take a molecule of C and turn it into CO2 it increases in volume therefore, according to Smil, the task of dealing with this is not possible. Never mind the cost studies already mentioned that state that the transport and storage part of the CCS equation is the least costly part. We wouldn’t want to put a cost per tonne on transport and storage, I mean, not if we are Goodell. All we’d want to do is quote someone saying its too hard to do, pronounce its “prohibitively expensive” and move on. 3,000 km of pipelines move 50 million tonnes of CO2 annually in North America and inject it underground as part of CCS EOR (enhanced oil recovery) projects, which have operated without major concerns or incidents, so the costs are well known. Piping it costs $4 to $5 a tonne CO2 if less than 200 km, and storage costs range from -$6 to +$6 depending if someone wants to buy the CO2 for EOR. These costs, clearly, won’t be deal breakers, and Smil, however he wants to describe how much infrastructure this is, and Goodell, however much he wants to magnify the problems of CCS, aren’t going to be able to convince anyone who is not ignorant that these IPCC figures are distortions.

Goodell magnifies the risks of escaping CO2. The report that Greenpeace cherry picks for its “False Hope: Why carbon capture and storage won’t save the climate” “study” states “technical experts are confident that storage in carefully chosen and managed sites would be secure over the very long term”, but, obviously, only climate change deniers cherry pick facts out of reports to make preposterous arguments the well informed can see through in an instant. Anyone interested in my thoughts on the Greenpeace report can check DeSmogblog under one of their posts on Gore’s In reality there’s no such thing as clean coal video.

It may be that renewables will be cheaper than coal at some point in the near future, as Ausra CEO Fishman is quoted by Goodell as saying, and wouldn’t that be wonderful, but is this a reason to distort what is known about carbon capture? One very promising use for CCS is for biofuel plants that would end up as net extractors of CO2 from the atmosphere. I realize Big Coal has poisoned the atmosphere with their twenty year campaign to make sure nothing is done on climate, but I fail to see why dumping on the CCS technology, rather than calling for government to require that the coal industry implement it is the answer.

Great site.

pc