A landmark Energy Department project to bury carbon dioxide produced by humans has begun as workers sunk a huge drill bit into Illinois ground this week, signaling continued support for a climate change mitigation strategy that has fallen out of favor in many circles.
The start of drilling marks the launch a geological sequestration project that will deposit a million metric tons of carbon dioxide into the ground by 2012.
While that’s nothing compared to the several billion tons of CO2 that humans emit yearly, it’s the geology of the site that makes the development exciting. The CO2 will be piped into a geological formation that underlies parts of Illinois, Indiana and Kentucky that could eventually hold more than 100 billion tons of CO2.
While I find the term ‘clean coal‘ to be absurd, I still think this sort of technical investment is critical for the future health of the climate. Thanks to years of foot-dragging on alternatives, the entire world has gone on a fossil-fueled power plant building spree. Carbon sequestration may never pan out. It’s, sadly, one of our few remaining shots at averting environmental catastrophe.
Take Shell’s move today, as a portent:
Shell will no longer invest in renewable technologies such as wind, solar and hydro power because they are not economic, the Anglo-Dutch oil company said today. It plans to invest more in biofuels which environmental groups blame for driving up food prices and deforestation.
….
The company said it would concentrate on developing other cleaner ways of using fossil fuels, such as carbon capture and sequestration (CCS) technology. It hoped to use CCS to reduce emissions from Shell’s controversial and energy-intensive oil sands projects in northern Canada.
Well, what of the alternatives? Wind is going to be a challenge, particularly in the context of climate change. Biofuels—at least fuels from bioengineered organisms—are intriguing, but we’ll have to get around our discomfort of genetic modification of organisms.
And then, there is nuclear power. (For a primer, I suggest my series on nuclear power, written a bit ago.) The Obama administration paused work on the Yucca mountain waste repository, exacerbating the waste problem (perhaps in a good way, for the long term.)
A growing consensus of scientists, however, are recognizing nuclear power as one of our better shots out of this mess:
Nuclear power is safe, affordable, and the waste problems are much more manageable than the public realizes. That was the take-home message from this year’s American Association for the Advancement of Science meeting in Chicago, where a group of experts from the US and EU participated in a session called “Keeping the Lights On: The Revival of Nuclear Energy for Our Future.”
My personal impression is slightly less rosy—with a deeper concern about waste management—but I still believe we should be investing massively in nuclear technologies.
We’re well past the point of being able to consider only the most pleasant energy sources. Looking at the number of people on the planet, and the increasingly dire reports of damage caused by the burning of fossil fuels, we need to be realistic. These steps, by the scientific community and the Obama administration, are heartening steps in what seems the right direction.
Bull.
Just impose a carbon tax (a hefty one, which can only be spent on wind, solar, tidal, algae biofuel, geothermal) and the market will right itself.
Change is good. Green is now. Greed is so last century.
“Clean coal” is not as absurd as “a cure for cancer.”
At least “clean coal” isn’t a catch-all term for 500 different, tenuously-related things that we only think could possibly exist some day. Of course if you make your living cashing checks from those who hope for “a” cure then you don’t dwell on the absurdity of it much. Who would?
Q: What would emit more CO2-equivalent greenhouse gases, 1) using an average American’s energy from dirty coal, 2) driving a Hummer H2 for an average American commute every day, 3) eating an average American’s amount of beef?
A: #3, and it’s not particularly close.
elenchos:
There’s actually an interesting story there. Back in the 1970s, when the phrase ‘cure for cancer’ was coined, the idea that viruses cause cancer was all the rage.
Since humanity had such success conquering most of deadly viral illnesses in the prior few decades by vaccination, it was felt that if you identified and vaccinated against these cancer causing viruses, you’d cure all cancers.
Of course, we now know that cancer is “500 different, tenuously-related things” (as you put it), and this notion has fallen out of favor. Except for HPV / cervical or penis cancer. And Merkel cell carcinoma. And some leukemias. And so on.
I hope you weren’t trying to be an ass. Don’t want to ruin your fun, or anything.
I’m serious. You could be just as pessimistic about a cure for AIDS as for cancer.
I support spending money on cancer and AIDS research, even if I don’t see any immediate breakthroughs. I expect more small steps, improvements around the edges. Help for some and for others, only hope. In other words, more of the same.
And “clean coal” is no different. To quibble over semantics is unhelpful and immature.
I would say trying to pretend that “clean coal” is unworthy of research because we won’t see some sweeping breakthrough that will solve everything all at once is what is asinine. Especially when few other ambitious research goals of this stature are any more promising.
The nice thing about wind, in the context of its challenges, is that it’s fairly portable: If wind patterns change, you can either move the turbines, or just build new ones.
Solar is neat and fun, and has tons of potential, but its erratic nature wreaks havoc on system operators. Personally, I think it’s much more suited to small generation to offset load, although PG&E is doing some pretty amazing large-scale stuff, and Germany is really going to town with it. (Solar fun fact: The biggest state in terms of solar generation is New Jersey)
I agree that transmission lines are the greater problem. They’re expensive, and people hate them.
As far as coal and nuclear are concerned, I hate them. But I don’t see how we can get along without them, barring some huge technological breakthrough.
Seriously, nuclear? We’re such dipshits only about 10% of us can even pronounce it correctly. I don’t like the potential for careless mistakes causing huge disasters.
Just curious (excuse my ignorance)…but would it be a good idea to pump CO2 into our earth? Wouldn’t it come up through the ground and pollute the earth from below (like radon)? What would that do to our crops and our water?
You totally drank the Klean Koal Koolaid, didn’t you?
#8: Basic geochemistry: CO2 in an oxygen-free environment would lead to reduction to carbon and oxygen.
CO2 in our groundwater? It would acidify it. Carbon dioxide is currently acidifying the oceans.
What are the consequences of it? We don’t know. We should study it. But you’re probably thinking on the wrong track. Carbon dioxide isn’t radioactive, like radon. It probably wouldn’t affect crops because we are talking about pumping it deep into the earth, way below our crop lands.
#5: Sure. But I think we need to stop (okay, cut down on) using coal until your miracle-cure materializes. In the mean time, we’re just using it to kill ourselves.
As a research scientist specializing in solar energy, I realize I’m biased, but I think it’s pathetically short sighted for anyone to write off solar energy, especially since it has orders of magnitude more yield potential than all the other “green” energy sources put together.
Global solar energy harvesting is not economically viable right now, but a huge amount of research is focused on designing solar cells that are cheap to produce and robust enough to last for decades.
Carbon sequestration is a good move for immediate mitigation. And I think nuclear energy is a good strategy for the short term, but it can’t be a permanent solution – for the waste management issues that Jonathan mentioned and also because there is ultimately a limited supply of fissionable materials. Granted, there’s a lot of Uranium out there, but it won’t outlast the human race. The sun, meanwhile? By the time it runs out of energy, all life on Earth will be long gone. Fusion is a possibility, but it’s a more difficult problem than bacteria-driven fuel or solar energy. We’ll call that the long-long term.
Shell can do what it wants, but it would be fucking idiotic if the federal government followed suit. Think of the technological progress we’ve made in the last 100 years. Between biofuels, water splitting, solar, and other directions, I’d be amazed if there isn’t a better solution than nuclear within 50 years. Probably 20.
One Word: “Geothermal”
@12 really! Let’s punch a mohole into the base of St. Helens & get us some STEAM. the Clean(er) Coal Coalition is drilling at Wallula & Hanford, aren’t they? That plant that was gonna be built near Kelso decided they’d wait & see on that technology, rather than try to bottle up (or otherwise process/trade/ whatever) their CO2.
Nobody’s talking about Conservation, obviously. Why not? Are we there, already?
@3 yup… cows Rule as CO2 emitters… but it provides Such a positive business model… like bottled H2O, cocaine, and mortgaged-backed securities… ^..^
@2 – a Scottish researcher at Wellcome Trust discovered a cure for half of all cancers back in 2005.
Pay attention. It’s only breast cancer and HIV we’re that worried about.
no mention of solar? y’all need to get educated about this problem.
Nuclear energy is only “economical” because it’s massively subsidized at every stage of the process.
we already have wind and solar technologies. we don’t have clean coal technologies, or workable nuclear storage options. it’s a bullshit mirage designed to distract us. becasue the fight is not about green vs. fossil… it’s about capitalist profiteering vs. decentralized self sustainability. think about it: we already have the technology to put a wind turbine and solar panel on every roof in our country. but then we wouldn’t have to buy our energy (or as much) from dick cheyney. so fuck yeah they want us to invest in “clean coal” instead of recycling a bunch of old car alternators from the junk yard into wind turbines. lets start the fucking revolution already!!!!
and “clean coal” is only talking about burning the crap, not how you basically have to turn entire forests, mountains, strems and all, into a toxic heap to extract the stuff.
I will sink the CO2 into the cities of the world — then they will declare world peace and unite against Dr. Manhattan, the Indestructible Man!
http://nymag.com/daily/entertainment/06_…
If people would just pull their heads out of their asses regarding fast-neutron breeder reactors (EBR II, IFR, …), we could have the spent fuel problem solved in 10 years.
The basic problem with most current nuclear reactors: the spent fuel is still radioactive. For thousands of years. Releasing energy. For thousands of years. And we’re putting it in the ground. Where we can’t use it. For thousands of years.
What current LWRs (Light Water Reactors) call “waste”, a breeder reactor calls “yummy”. Put this “spent” fuel into a breeder reactor, and the breeder reactor can squeeze a huge amount of additional energy out of it (something on the order of 10 times more than what LWRs can do with a single-pass fuel cycle, which is what we use in the US). Once the breeder reactor is done with it, the tiny bit of remaining waste is only radioactive for ~200 years. (Technically, it’s still radioactive after that, but it’s less radioactive than the naturally occurring raw ore that you dug out of the ground.)
To top it off, breeder reactor designs tend to be better than LWRs at passive safety. Ignoring the LWR family itself, nearly everything from the most complex breeder reactor down to the dumbest pebble bed is designed such that an overheating core pushes the fuel farther apart, slowing down the reaction and forcing the core to cool back down. Meltdowns are impossible, and the reactor isn’t built like a pressure cooker, so there’s no catastrophic failure mode. Basically, the LWR is the only reactor design that’s dumb enough to require an active safety system to keep it from tearing itself apart. Every other serious design is accident-proof, many are even sabotage-proof (in the sense of a radiological incident, rather than just forcing the reactor to shut down for an extended time), and a few like the pebble-bed are outright terrorist-proof (i.e. crash a plane into the reactor, and at best you merely scatter the tightly sealed, nearly indestructible, practically inert pebbles).
(Which reminds me, it’s a shame you can’t build a pebble bed breeder reactor. That would be awesome.)
Regarding the non-renewability of uranium, I actually consider that a feature. Rough estimates suggest that, counting on continued exponential growth at a constant doubling rate (and no faster), the world has enough uranium to meet our energy needs for ~100 years. What happens as we approach the 100 year mark? The price of uranium shoots up, because nearly all of it has been used up in reactors on the electricity market. Nuclear arsenals are dismantled to sell the fissile materials to the energy companies. Nuclear weapons become so fantastically expensive that owning one is unreasonable, even if you’re a sovereign nation (or have the backing of one). And if you’re a terrorist, forget it: building a moon base would be cheaper than building a nuke.
After that, hopefully fusion is ready for prime time. Even if it’s not, solar photovoltaics should’ve made some serious strides in that time. In the worst case scenario, thorium is also fissile but much more common than uranium in Earth’s crust, and you can build breeder reactors for thorium as well. That should last for decades/centuries longer.
sequestering co2? that’s like hide the pickle, right?
i mean, the pickle is still there and all, its just that nobody can see the pickle anymore.
more great ideas: bury our garbage in landfills. sequester lepers. vote democrat.
If Shell wants to abandon the “Green Revolution” that’s fine, nobody said an oil company has to care about sustainable energy. However, Shell and other companies like it have gained an enormous public relations boost by claiming to “go green”. If Shell continues to try cashing in on that image, we need to give them hell for it.
I don’t believe for one second that solar, wind, and hydroelectric energy aren’t economical/profitable/whatever. The Hoover Dam provides water and power to millions of people, that’s not economical? My home state of Iowa is now fucking covered in wind turbines, that’s not profitable? Solar Power would be economical if we could get away from the power plant paradigm and put them on the roof of every building.
The bottom line is this: In the future, we’re going to have to plan our power generation based on where we live, instead of just plopping down a coal or oil plant.
Unfortunately several planned gigantic wind-farm mega-projects located just offshore in various places around Britain are in big trouble also, as reality comes crashing down:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/London_Arra…
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Atlantic_Ar…
The issues with nuclear are all political/religious wars, not technical. I love it how people think that closing projects like Yucca Mountain (located in the middle of the already-radioactive Nevada Test Site) represent some great victory, while all the various waste-products of the past 60 years remain scattered around the surface of the country.
And when the ground burps? Carbon dioxide bubbles suffocate and kill. It happened in India a few years back. Just saying.
Jonathon,
There are no technical challenges to completely eliminating the use of fossil fuels. There are only political and economic obstacles. There are so many things we could do but I’ll go through the example of geothermal/biofuel because my company has studied this model.
If you look at the MIT study of geothermal resources in the US, the entire western half of the country has readily accessible geothermal reserves. Even so I know of at least one geothermal plant in Massachusetts of all places. The oil companies have the technology today to drill geothermal wells anywhere in the country.
As far as fueling vehicles and transmission are concerned existing (non-genetically modified) algae can be grown TODAY, from light produced by geothermally-derived electricity TODAY. Existing oil refineries can substitute algal oil for petrochemical oil.
Finally, if you want to reverse the CO2 pollution in the atmosphere all you have to do is pump algae into old oil wells (which is what the oil started out as). We have put a staggering volume of carbon into the atmosphere and putting it back where it came from is the only realistic thing we could do with it.
None of what I describe needs anything to be invented. You just have to decide to do it. But the only people with the money and expertise to do it are the oil companies. And as long as they are allowed to use cheap fossil fuel they will continue to do so. A top of the line 100,000 barrel per day refinery costs about 2 billion dollars which is the same price to build a 100,000 barrel per day algal bioreactor. For companies that make 10+ billion dollar profits in a single year this is well within their means to do.
We don’t do these things because we don’t choose to. Look at the Cape Wind project of the coast of MA. This has been held up for years by people who simply don’t want their view to be spoiled. Fuck the plant, I don’t want the scenery to be altered. Okay, but live with the consequences while the earth is still habitable.
Neat photo you used. New Jersey, right? Did you take the photo yourself or are you going to credit the owner? Just making sure science still has its ethics.
Also? Biofuel made from used coffee is an industry Seattle could easily start, what with cafés aplenty and Venture Capital right in our own backyard.
I just don’t see why we don’t hear more about geo-thermal and tide and ocean current generators. These two alternative and renewable energies have such great potential.
Hi James: Go ahead and click on the picture–like I suspect many other readers have already tried before throwing accusations around.
It’s Creative Commons, and specifically licensed for commercial use. I always use one of my own images, or use an appropriately licensed image. Thanks!
Throwing accusations? Ouch. My only faux pas was incorrectly identifying a photo subject.
With regards to the image, I asked because I didn’t see a byline for the photo and in your newspaper you always credit the artist. Clicking on a picture to view a photographer’s flickr page, whilst adhering to the CC license, doesn’t appear to be the norm on SLOG.
I don’t see how anyone from this state could earnestly support America investing in nuclear power until it cleans up its giant fucking mess at Hanford.
The federal government has completely neglected and underfunded the cleanup project and the recontainment of the nuclear waste stored underground (which is already seeping into the groundwater). The project was supposed to be done years ago and is less than half finished.
Of course it’s possible to implement nuclear power in a safe, responsible manner but the DOE’s handling of Hanford is ample evidence that America isn’t ready to do that.