What is a resource?

Fossil fuels? Uranium? Land? Carbon dioxide?

Probably all four.

When we generate electricity we need to balance these against each other.

This means that understandably people can be as against wind power as they are against coal power.

I realise that we need all forms of power to keep this country going - which brings its own challenges of intermitency, as shown in this article by the scotsman.

Of course we could use gas, rather than coal - but it needs to be fossil.

I like the way that WWF argue that we don't need to plan for the worst possible scenario.

Hang on - actually we do.

Moron.

CCS in Norway - 2014

Reuters is reporting that Statoil (from Norway) is looking to expend on their Sleipner experience (which has been sequestering carbon under the north sea since 1990) and fit CCS to a power station.

Details are, quite frankly, sketchy - but it looks like they will start sometime between 2010 and 2014, with an amine capture system being fitted to the oil refinery and attached CHP plant.

The Democratic National Convention

As we all probably know the Democratic National Convention (DNC) has been going on in the states for some time now.

It's being attended by a few people from a America's Power - an industrial pressure group who are lobbying candidates and generally keeping an eye on what is being said.

They were delighted to hear that new coal power stations (with carbon capture and storage) were mentioned in a speech by Jay Rockefeller, a Senator from West Virginina (lots of coal over there - it's one state over from the coal research centre I was recently at).

"We need a leader who will re-establish America as an energy superpower by pursuing every resource at our disposal: alternative fuels, drilling and our most abundant domestic resource, tomorrow's clean coal".

Yep, that's the American way.

Carbon Capture Ready consultation

I was asked to put together a response to question 15 of the governments CCS consultation.

Here's what I wrote - it's not exactly brief.

What might be the impact of the potential costs of CCR [carbon capture ready] for 100% biomass power plants and so the implications for their future build? Should the Government explore excluding 100% Biomass schemes from the proposed Article 32?

The implication of a CCR requirement is that the plant will, one day, be required to fit CCS technology.
As a fuel biomass contains more hydrogen and oxygen than coal – meaning that it contains much less carbon (perhaps only 45% for Switchgrass whereas a bituminous coal may contain 85% carbon). Equally the calorific value of biomass is normally lower than that for coal. BCURA report a calorific value of approx 34 Mj/Kg for Pittsburgh No. 8 (daf basis), whilst Bridgeman et al (2007) report a value of around 17 Mj/kg for switchgrass.
This suggests that the flue gas coming from a 100% biomass plant is likely (on a constant energy out basis) to not only be of substantially greater volume (perhaps twice the volume) but also to be of lower CO2 intensity. Both these factors will combine to make CCS with amines more difficult and expensive.
As such it is likely that the cost associated with any CCS (and therefore by extension CCR) requirement for 100% biomass plants would be – when compared against the cost of the plant – greater for a biomass plant than for a coal fired plant.

This suggests that power generation companies may choose to spend their capital by investing in co-firing facilities (where the small biomass component will have a marginal effect on the CO2 stream) rather than dedicated biomass plants.
This decision will of course be influenced by many other parameters (including the RO) upon which I don’t feel qualified to comment.

I know of 5 reasonably sized proposed / existing 100% biomass plants in the UK. Lockerbie (44MW, Eon), Ely (38MW, EPR), Sheffield (Proposed 25MW, Eon), Bristol (Proposed 150MW, Eon), Port Talbot (Consented / Under construction 350MW, Prenergy Power).
I would suggest that to date there is no conclusive evidence as to the optimum size of a 100% biomass power station (largely it depends on what fuel can be made to be available). As such any requirement for 100% biomass plants to be CCR (and by extension for future CCS) may have the effect of limiting the size of such plants to sub 300MW.
As such it is probably desirable for the government to investigate excluding 100% biomass plants from the mandatory CCR requirement.

This assumes that 100% biomass plants continue to be seen as carbon neutral whereas they should probably be seen as low carbon (especially the Port Talbot and Bristol 100% biomass plants which may emit large quantities of green house gasses in the transport of their fuel from North America).

Energy windfall taxes

Compass (direction for the democratic left) has made the headlines today by calling for a windfall tax on energy compaines.

They argue that with the rising cost of oil these companies are making extra un-earned profits, to which the state is as enititled to as the companies are.

I'm not sure that I agree. If you tax a multi-national too heavily you risk driving their investment abroad.
Equally something does need to be done about insulating the homes of the worst off.

It comes down to the conflict for investment - does the government know what to do with it better than the energy companies - and believe me, there are some large financial calls on the electricity generators at the moment.

CCS - ready when?

Getting CCS ready for commercial use is a complex affair - it's never been tried before at the scale required on power stations.

This is something which requires money - and if this money is not available the whole project can be set back.

Theage has just published something suggesting that CCS won't be in a position to contribute to the countries energy mix before 2020.
That's possible.

We shouldn't forget though that this applies to economies as a whole, and that to get it this far we need to apply the technology to individual power stations - which means CCS will be used well before this date.
For example, if we could get two learning cycles in before this date we're likely to assist in strenghening this deadline.
http://www.co2storage.org.uk/Publications/UKCCS/Gibbins08.pdf

Largely this is happening - amine capture (which is regarded as the most promising type of CCS in the short term) is being demonstrated with RWEnpower at Didcott, and then Aberthaw by around 2010.
I would guess that the governments CCS competition winner would also use this technology.

So;

CCS by 2020? Yes, of course.

CCS capturing 90% of the emissions of a power station by 2020? Probably a policital rather than a technical challenge.

CCS in in all of the countrys power stations by 2020? Possibly not.

Price rises

Implementing low carbon electrical systems costs money - as does the need to fix the looming energy gap (as power stations reach the end of their lives and need to be decomissioned with new ones built to replace them).

Eon's biomass Bristol biomass press release was surprisingly candid about the investment program that they are undergoing, which struck me as odd at the time.

I now realise that they were warning the general population about forthcoming price rises - which were announced yesterday.

Two things stike me:

The price of gas is rising by more than the price of electricity. This suggests that we would do better to minimise our dependence upon gas within electrical generation (actually this is probably too simplistic since the price they can charge is set by the market, and is only marginally driven by costs - this can be seen by Scottish & Southern putting up their prices immediately after Eon announced their price rises).

We really now have a choice between cheap fuel and renewable energy - we can't have cheap renewable energy. I would hope that we would keep piling on down the renewable energy path as hard as we can - after all, if a rich nation isn't going to do it, how can we expect a poor nation to?

There really is only one way out of this problem - and a recent Friends of the Earth press release has hit the nail right on the head.

Biomass in Bristol

Eon have just announced that they intend to build a 150MW power station in bristol - powered by biomass.

The fuel for this station, much like the one proposed for Port Talbot, will probably come from places such as Canada, or perhaps Scandinavia.

The proposed bristol plant is pretty small - using 1.2 million tonnes of fuel year. That's still such a large amount that you wouldn't consider shipping the fuel in by road - so the vast bulk of it is going to have to come in by ship.
This is the problem with such stations - fueling them is very difficult. Coal moves from a point source (mine) to a point source (power station), whilst wood moves from a distributed source (many different forrests, one cannot provide enough fuel) to a point source (power station).
I don't want to argue that coal is more sustainable than biomass, but it does have the advantage that it doesn't tend to move around the country quite as much - creating less noise polution and generally not getting in peoples way as they try to get to work.
That's got to be seen as a benefit.

Interestingly I've also just noticed a protest site for the Port Talbot development. Largely their concerns are baseless - for example they are trying to smear the development by refering to Chenobyl, and complaining about an extra 17 HGV's a day leaving from a large industrial estate and docks complex.
Rather this is a classic case of NIMBY (not in my backyard!), where people with access to the internet, and who don't really understand what they're talking about, can try and sway the general population.

The difference between that and this blog?
I understand what I'm talking about.

Coal is clean...

...but it wasn't always like this.

I think that part of the problem with public acceptance of coal today is the association within people minds of how it was used in the past. Take for example this recent news story from the BBC.
They quite rightly talk about the heavy emissions from coal which have ended up in the artic - before moving on to talk about how the game has been changed, the emissions have been cleaned up, and the problem of increased heavy metal emissions (from what is know as BAT - best available technology plants) has largely gone away.

Such emissions are relavtively easy to clean up, since most metals are contained within the smoke from the boiler - by collecting most of the particles which are in the smoke the metal emissions are drastically reduced.

A good example of this mindset is when I recently flew back from the United States - I had some coal samples with me which I couldn't take on board the plance, since they are a "fuel".
Fine, but by the time the samples would have started to do anything the cardboard box and plastic bags they were wrapped in would have been turned to ash.
As would all the clothes of everyone on board.

So it comes down to public perception - as you read the article do you think that coal is a dangerous technology, or one that has cleaned up its act (at least inside the EU) sufficiently well to be included in todays energy mix?

Aussie tax payer to pay for CCS?

According to the the Age the Australian Federal Climate Change Minister is proposing that the tax payer support the cost of carbon capture and storage (probably just the demonstration) as the technology is so much in the public interest.

This is exactly what is needed over here - if we want things to happen.

Now of course this doesn't guarentee it, but this is certainly a step in the right dirrection.

Britains shrinking coastline

I don't live near the coast, my home is not under threat.

I can't afford to live near the coast, or buy a house.

This is why I'm quite pleased to see that the government has finally realised that we can't protect the entire coastline.

What grates is that Lord Smith doesn't take the view that I do.
I can't decide whether or not he understands the problem. I'd like to say that he doesn't, and that he's not spouting short-termism.

Coal power stations take years and years to build. That's the problem.

If we sat back until CCS was technically ready to go there would be (at least) a 6 year lag time between when the power station could go, and when it is ready to go.

With coal power stations being shut down now there is a need to replace them now - or we'll just build gas fired plants in their place, and the UK will move away from Coal and CCS.

As a concequence we'll have higher CO2 emissions (more emissions from gas than abated coal) and we'll loose the chance to be a global leader on this technology.

Another sequestration project

The folks down in New Mexico are doing some more sequestration work.
Actually 31 000 tonnes isn't very much, and I suspect that it's only being done to get the methane out, rather than to lock the CO2 away.

If it didn't demonstrate the technology (which I supose it does) I wouldn't be much of a fan.

As expected

It sounds like the kingsnorth climate camp is going to turn into a climate village - the protesters are talking about not leaving.

I think that's harsh on the farmer who's land they've taken.

They'll laugh at me and say "bigger issues exist" and wheel out their scientists to say that they're right.

Here's the thing - I've just noticed that their scientists say that their wrong.
Takes James Hansen - NASA guy who knows about global warming.
He's been advocating biomass and CCS as a method of generating power and taking carbon out of the atmosphere.

He knows that you need to big source of carbon to make the CCS (and hence carbon negative electricity) efficient - i.e. a coal fired power station co-firing biomass, right?
Provided (e.g.) 11% of the carbon going into the boiler is from the biomass whilst (e.g.) 90% of the carbon dioxide is captured from the boiler you generate carbon negative electricity.

Presidential electoral pledges

With the candidates for the presidency announcing their energy policies I thought that I might take a quick peek.

What surprised me was what Mr. Obama was proposing - an 80% reduction in America's CO2 emissions by 2050.

Wow.

What surprised me more is that McCain is also talking about reductions - and this time with interim targets. He's only talking about 60% by 2050. All the same, the extra interim targets could make this the better plan - which makes a bigger difference to global warming (imagine if all of Obama's 80% reduction came in 2049...).

He's also talking about investing in CCS, electric vehicles and smart meters.

Now, I suspect that Obama would do the same thing - he's just not yet published enough details for us to work out the details.

So, in summary, if either the Democrats or Republicans get into the White House, and keep their promises, the world could become a very different place.

Malcom Wicks

Our energy minister recently gave a speech on fuel poverty where he was heard to say that "we are not going to sacrifice fuel poverty on the altar of climate change".

It's almost a statment of the obvious - no democraticaly elected government is going to remain elected if they bankrupt their voters.

Of course, with the recent rise in oil prices (which for reasons that I don't understand force a rise in gas prices), coal is once again one of the cheaper options of generating electricity.
CCS will of course make it more expensive and I've heard that it may double the cost of generation (but remember that the cost of electricity is set by much more than the cost of generation).

Where does this leave UK energy policy? Probably somewhere between improving insulation and energy efficiency, increased winter fuel payments, and higher taxes / bills for the test of us.

...oh yes, and a new government (one which can point out that the price hikes were the fault of the previous one, and not theirs).

An article by Reuters

I just found this article by retuers.

I was struck by it's balance, and thought that it deserved a link.

CCS in texas?

NRG energy have just formed an agreement with the environmental defence fund and the Texas clean air cities coalition to limit the CO2 produced as they increase the size of an existing power station by building a new coal powered boiler.

Under the terms of the agreement they will have to offset or sequester 50% of the carbon generated by the new unit.
The agreement mentions several ways in which this could be done:

Agricultural or forestry sequestration

Retiring older, less efficient generation assets

Bringing new wind or solar generation online

Postcombustion carbon capture and storage technology (at a different power station).

At first glance this could be a road map for kingsnorth - except of course that Eon (who as you know own kingsnorth) are already doing (or in the case of carbon capture and storage are into the last round of the governemnts competition and if they win they will do) all of the above, and extra.

It's nice to know that we're further ahead than the americans, however I can't imagine any NGO doing a deal with Eon over kingsnorth.
Everyone seems to have latched onto the proposal, and don't seem as though they want to budge - regardless of the benefits which could be traded with Eon for their tacet approval of the plant.

Seems a shame.

Do we really need coal?

A report published today by Poyry Energy suggests that we don't.

I'm not sure I believe them. A few reasons:
1) The report has been comissioned for WWF and Greenpeace. Greenpeace are opossed to coal regardless of how clean it is. WWF are taking the correct approach of "when CCS is being used it's fine".
2) The report assumes that the electricity this country will use will decline! This is the first report I have ever seen which makes this assumption! I was always taught that GDP has linked to electricity consumption (yes, I know that graph comes from an oil company, but I don't believe that they will have deliberately plotted it wrongly - you have to trust someone at some point it time).

For me, this assumption is enough to kill the report.