"The Coal Nightmare" on ABC (Australian Broadcasting Corporation)
On September 7, 2009, ABC (Australian Broadcasting Corporation) first aired a detailed, 45 minute investigative report on the current status of carbon capture and sequestration (CCS) technology around the world. The segment, titled “The Coal Nightmare”, shows just how little progress has been made in actually building a single demonstration that it is possible to separate CO2 from flue gas, compress that gas, pump it underground, and monitor the results to prove that the gas does not later seep out.
The largest project that the show covers that appears “almost” ready to begin operating a full cycle is one in Virginia that actually only takes a tiny 1.3% slice of the flue gas emissions from a large coal facility, but even that project is not yet operating to sequester CO2.
None of the guests interviewed even mentioned that nuclear energy is a proven, large scale, affordable, reliable power alternative to burning coal and doing something with the CO2. There were even several who dramatically stated that they had to figure out how to make CCS work because “there is no plan B.” I would sort of agree, nuclear energy should not be considered a “plan B” to try if other things do not work; it is a terrific plan A that makes most other energy efforts uncompetitive.
One thing that the segment makes clear is that the real coal nightmare for Australia would be for some or all of its international customers to agree to rules that force its customers to either pay a price for CO2 emissions or to capture the emissions even when there is no affordable, reliable way to do so. The reason that this is a nightmare for Australia is that even though the country has a small population and only contributes a small amount to the total world CO2 emission burden, it is the world’s largest coal exporting nation. Those exports are a large source of wealth for the country; they are at risk if the rest of the world slows down its coal consumption due to higher costs or newly competitive alternative power sources with lower emissions.
As I have shown on Atomic Insights with certain “smoking gun” entries, the Australian coal industry knows just how threatening uranium fission is to its future prosperity. Heck, they even pay to run advertisements with that explicitly stated in the text of the ad!
The ad campaign run by the coal industry succeeded in its goals. The recommended Labor government got elected. It has paid its debt to the coal industry with its recent passage of a law providing more than $2.25 billion in support for carbon capture and sequestration projects. It is interesting to note how the ABC reporter focuses on the effects of increases in cost to build plants but brushes over the increases in coal consumption (and coal sales) that would result if the plants actually do get built. Even if they do function as promised, only some of the CO2 produced by burning coal would actually be scrubbed and buried; at the same time, it will take 20-40% more fuel input in those new plants with CCS to produce the same quantity of power output. No wonder the coal mining industry likes CCS!
For those of you who are fans of ClimateProgress.org, Joe Romm is one of the Americans who gets a lot of face time on the program. I kept wanting to ask him when the natural gas industry was going to start investing in CCS; he gave the coal industry a lot of heat for resisting a price on CO2 and for its unwillingness to invest its own money into the technology.
If you go to the linked site, you will find not only the full show, but links to extended interviews with some of the featured guests, a full transcript of the show and links to other recent work by ABC on the topic. I want to thank Chris for sending me the links to the shows – it is great to have interested readers from around the world.
The Labour party getting into government had more to do with unpopular new industrial relations laws (since replaced by the new government).
I’ll give the coal industry in Oz points for being honest about their opposition to nuclear. At least the fight down there will be open, with everyone’s cards on the table.
Does everyone look at the energy arena as a zero-sum game, where the pie is only so large and if one entity becomes more predominant, then the others are necessarily diminished?
I realize rule number one is: “don’t mess with my rice bowl” — meaning, my income/profits/lifestyle/market-share demand first consideration. And I don’t disagree with that, at least in general. However, where is the imagination with these miners companies’? Isn’t coal-to-liquid technology more advanced than CCS? And more defensible and sustainable long-term?
It seems to me that if the coal interests were looking long-term, from a purely mathematical standpoint and neutral on CO2-AGW considerations, they would team up with nuclear instead of fight them. They may win the battle but lose the war.
Doc, you’re dealing with the “path of least resistance” phenomenon. Water always flows downhill.
Now ask yourself, which is easier: to kick an industry when it is down and has yet to be firmly established locally, or to give up one’s bread and butter only to put oneself out on a limb of a technology that has neither a firm industrial base nor a proven, dependable market?
The coal industry itself probably won’t put their cards on the table (even though the unions are honest enough to, or maybe that should read as desperate enough).
@DocForesight – The alternative to looking at energy as a zero-sum game where market gains by one type of supply must come at the expense of another is to treat energy as an ever expanding market like that for electronic gizmos or software.
Unfortunately, even though I sometimes ascribe to the idea that with fission, we could adapt Dorito’s old tag line and tell people “use all you want; we’ll make more” there are still huge problems with driving an energy market expansion rate that is even close to that seen in many technologies.
That leaves us with an existing market demand that will probably continue to grow at a modest 1-3 % each year as the population increases and as people think of great new ways to put power to use to make their lives more abundant. With that kind of market, competition for share always entails winners and losers. The alliances may get a little strange sometimes – I truly believe that nuclear heat can be a boon to coal to liquids, tar sands, gas to liquids and shale oil. However, the resulting liquid fuels will compete for market share against less energy intensive oil that comes out of the ground more ready to be refined. The entities that produce and transport that “easier” oil or gas may not be so happy about losing some of their market dominance or their ability to control prices during what they expected would be a very tight market.
The sickest part of this shite is that Australian coal mining jobs aren’t threatened at all. Revenue on sales is threatened and as such profits from those sales. but the sales themselves? No way. Australia’s got the most competitive mines in the world. If demand for coal goes down (and it will never dry up with what’s needed for steel and concrete) then Australia will be the last producer left standing.
I never had a much trust in carbon capture and sequestering. Maybe instead of pouring billions into that rat hole we should invest technologies that make coal power much more efficient, getting more bang for each ton of coal used. Or maybe instead of sequestering the CO2 deep underground we should find ways to utilize that byproduct for growing crops, algae or industrial uses. Another idea is that we should invest in underground coal gasification. At least when the gas comes up from the ground it will be cleaner than raw coal.
We will never ever make coal clean but that does not mean we cannot make it cleaner.
@bobcat – what you propose is just about what the coal extraction industry is doing. About the only investment of their own money that they appear to be willing to make in CCS is in marketing literature and PR events. On the other hand, if the investment is government money, they will tell you that we are not spending it fast enough to achieve the desired goal.
The environmentalist movement was one of the major reasons why no new nuclear plants were built since the 1970ies. Now they won’t admit they were wrong so they “only possible way” to emit less is the crazy idea of CCS. They want to have the cake and eat it.
No environmentalists opposed nuclear power.
Those who opposed nuclear power may have called themselves that, but that just means they were deluded about what they were.
The environmentalist movement was one of the major reasons why no new nuclear plants were built since the 1970s.
I though the main reasons for the end of the first atomic age were:
1) The oil crisis of 1973, which prompted energy conservation which destroyed the demand for new power plants
2) The high interest rates (and cheap oil and gas) of the 1980s, which ensured that when demand for electricity recovered, it was gas, not nuclear, that was the most economic option.