“CLEAN” COAL NOT READY - SWEDISH STUDY

IF. The biggest little word in the English language. IF “clean” coal was actually clean and IF carbon-capture-and-sequestration (CCS) worked on a large scale at affordable prices and IF somebody figured out a way to safely store nuclear waste and IF the cost and complexities of making hydrogen fuel from water could beat just making electricity…IF all that was done, global climate change could take its place next to Y2K among distant memories of catastrophes that never were.

But NONE of that IS. Perhaps the biggest surprises on the list are the ones about “clean” coal and CCS. Don’t political leaders keep saying “clean” coal will make it possible for the U.S. to become “the Saudi Arabia of coal” and for China and India to go on building coal plants and growing like weeds?

The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) puts enormous hope in CCS, saying it could account for between 15% and 55% of world greenhouse gas (GhG) reductions by the end of this century. Some have even coined the phrase “sustainable coal.”

Anders Hansson, doctoral candidate, Department of Technology and Social Change/Linköping University: “In full scale this technology only exists in the imaginations of the people developing it…It’s overly optimistic to place such great faith in it, considering all the uncertainties found in the scientific literature.”

Scale matters. The amount of GhGs to be stored would make them the world’s biggest transported good, bigger than the amount of oil or the amount of food the world moves. A good idea is one thing. Executing it on such a scale is quite another.

Caltech Professor Nate Lewis has half-jokingly pointed out that storing so much CO2 gas in the earth’s crust could be an added protection against the rising sea levels of global climate change by raising land elevations.

The most immediate unknown is cost. Several experimental projects have been cancelled in the last year because the undertaking is just too expensive.

Hansson’s basic conclusion is that much more needs to be known: “CCS needs to become known and be debated…Otherwise there is a risk of a backlash similar to what happened with nuclear power.”

The first questions in the debate are just how clean and safe and desirable a continuing commitment to coal in any form really is. Hansson: “After all, we all agree that fossil fuels will run out. Renewable energy is the only long-term path. In that perspective, a large-scale commitment to CCS seems to be an unnecessary detour.”

The basic idea. (click to enlarge)

Carbon Dioxide Capture and Storage: Grasping At Straws In The Climate Debate?
May 9, 2008 (Linkoping University via Science Daily)

WHO
Anders Hansson, doctoral candidate, Department of Technology and Social Change/Linköping University; Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC)

DOE found out it's a complicated and expensive process. They had to bnack out of FutureGen. (click to enlarge)

WHAT
Hansson’s doctoral dissertation affirmed the extent to which carbon-capture-and-sequestration (CCS) technology is still unproven.

WHEN
- Small facilities in Norway have stored millions of tonnes of GhG emissions. The quantity it will be necessary to store is in the billions and billions of tonnes.
- Another test project is scheduled to begin in eastern Germany in Summer 2008.
- EU assumptions have CCS at full capacity within 15 years. Yet it is presently unproven.

Even if the CO2 is captured, there are still environmental devastations. (click to enlarge)

WHERE
Linköping Universityis in Sweden.

WHY
- The ability to capture emissions may be overestimated and the risks associated with storing them may be grossly underestimated.
- Hansson is not the first researcher to point the limited or flawed facts, unrealistic assumptions, and significant oversimplifications in CCS models.
- Polls show barely 20% of the general public know anything about CCS.

GreenPeace has decided coal is just not ever going to be "clean." (click to enlarge)

QUOTES
Hansson: “There are a number of small facilities, in Norway, for instance, where they capture and store a million tons of carbon dioxide per year. Swedish Vattenfall is starting a pilot facility in eastern German this summer.”