Below are a few letters received at EnergyBiz Insider on topics that appeared in the past few weeks. They capture the essence of how many readers say they feel.
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Reinventing Carbon Dioxide - December 04, 2009

I missed this article until I saw the comments today. I concluded a while back that once emissions get to the CO2 stage, we are pretty much sunk. CO2 is a very stable compound. It takes a lot of energy to convert it to anything else, like methanol or gasoline.

I concluded that the place to intervene is at the CO -- carbon monoxide -- stage. Carbon monoxide is much less stable than CO2 and takes much less energy to convert it to something else. It may be physically possible and economically viable to do something with carbon monoxide. Your article hints at this.

An integrated gasification combined cycle power plant initially produces syngas consisting of carbon monoxide and hydrogen. It is possible to separate the carbon monoxide from the syngas. Here is an opportunity to do something with the carbon monoxide. The power plant would then be fueled exclusively with the hydrogen part of the syngas.

A few months ago, I published an article on this in Energy Pulse. Your article talked about converting the CO2 or CO to liquid transportation fuels. My plan was to convert carbon monoxide back to carbon and oxygen and then re-use the carbon. I got crucified even worse than you did by the readers for violating the laws of thermodynamics. (In my reader comment at the end, I tried to clarify that I was not violating the laws of thermodynamics. I had not included the reaction that produced the vast majority of the energy that drives the process. I am not reversing that reaction. I am suggesting reversing the reaction that provides only a little of the total energy and takes only a little energy to reverse.)

Some parts of your article sound like using a gasifier to turn coal into CO-rich syngas and then turn that into liquid fuel, which is just traditional Fischer-Tropsch gasification. The Germans did this in WWII and Sasol did it in South Africa. The problem is that CO2 emissions are still given off when the fuel is burned.

This is, by the way, how I figured out that IGCC plants are fueled by water (when sequestration is employed). Consider if it was possible to pull the carbon monoxide or carbon dioxide out and convert it into a solid. What would you do with this solid -- there would be a lot of it. The answer is really simple -- put it back in the coal cars, haul it back to the mine, and put it back in the ground. Basically, an IGCC plant with (solid) sequestration would dig coal out of the ground, put it in a coal train and send it to the IGCC plant, use the carbon in the coal to extract hydrogen from water and make it into syngas, separate the CO and hydrogen in the syngas, make the CO into a solid and send the hydrogen from the syngas to power plant, put the solidified CO/CO2 back in the coal train and send it back to the mine. Note that the CO/CO2 never enters the power plant (in this case and also in the case of geologic sequestration of CO2). With sequestration, CO or CO2 are separated out before it enters the power plant -- it does not produce power. It goes from the coal mine to sequestration without being physically used for generation. Its purpose is only to extract hydrogen from water. My thought was why not re-use the carbon to extract hydrogen from water rather than bringing in more new carbon in the form of coal.

Chris Neil

Blue Skies for Green Investment - December 16, 2009

Are they going to feel silly investing in this inefficient technology in the name of "global warming"? Junk science gets exposed always, sooner or later, and now global warming is being exposed for what it is, a wealth redistribution hoax.

Real growth requires real power. The wind and solar power generators will never be able to produce the power per area requirements on demand as real generation equipment. While I won't turn away any source of power, I do hold wind and solar in contempt in their struggle to supplant area concentrated generation. I also cannot fathom why the environmentalists aren't screaming about the loss of land that solar requires and impact to birds that wind produces.

Thom Peschke

The renewable energy market is a market that includes a complex of technologies, some new, some old. For example using waste products for generation is something that has been in the generation mix for at least fifty years and had nothing to do with "carbon reduction". A boiler used in a coal fired plant is considered "old" but a boiler used in a trash-to-cash plant is considered green. Both spew carbon dioxide, nitrogen oxides and particulate matter into the atmosphere. Windmills have populated the Altamont pass in Northern California for over 30 years. Suddenly in the last decade, these windmills are saving polar bears.

We are faced with a marketing campaign that is endorsed by governments, utilities, and advocacy groups around the world and few understand the impact these will have on our ability to deliver safe, clean electricity to the world. The growth of green technology probably has as much to do with its ability to sell products as it has with any concern for the environment. The problem with any estimate of the growth of "green" technology is that there is no way to clarify that products such as inverters, underground cables and batteries are green. Quoting growth in a marketing mantra as signs of anything other than success in marketing messages is misleading.

We need better measures that consider results rather than hype. A much more valuable measure would be the cradle-to-grave carbon cost of a technology. Putting up solar panels on steel supports that are manufactured using coal could easily generate more environmental damage than a combined cycle gas turbine if we accounted for the steel and solar panel manufacturing in the carbon measure of the panels. The problem with this lifetime measure is it is inherently complex and difficult to develop on anything other and a worldwide scale.

Alan Gartner
Managing Director
EnerTechnologies

Wind's Blues - December 18, 2009

It surprises me that power generation developers would think they could take shortcuts and think they would not have to perform due diligence in meeting the letter of the law and regulations, but also outreach to the local citizens. My experience goes back to the '70s and '80s and we spent more time and money in defending weak analysis and thinking that we knew better than the local residents. That is a useless battle. Getting buy-in from the local community is the way to go, realizing some will never like the results.

Douglas D. Tuckhorn

Your article portraits the arrogance and greed taking place in the energy industry. All developers are looking at the profits that they will make. They lure the local population and government with the prospects of jobs and a tax revenue stream. They hope these items will let them run rough shod over siting and environmental laws. Never mind that they are also seeking "Stimulus" money from the federal government. They are quick to cite "no scientific evidence" when complaints come to the forefront.

I live in Long Island NY. The local population shut down and had dismantled the Shoreham nuclear power plant. Yet the industry did not learn from that. Broadwater, a LNG barging facility was proposed for the smack dap middle of Long Island Sound. No need for the facility, just a quick way to get potential New York City market share. I guess the smart people at Broadwater are now wondering why the people of Long Island, the New York State and local governments as well as our senators and congressmen have opposed the project. Thank the good and reasonable people of Connecticut who also had concerns and joined in for reasonableness. Thank goodness that Broadwater is dead.

Take a look at the bat kill numbers. This is not an incidental take permit item. There is a non-ignorable indication that the bat population could be wiped out in that area. And so it goes with all areas. Our flying creatures must be protected from these giant silent killers. Rachel Carson's book, Silent Spring brought forth the devastating effects of DDT on our bird population. It took decades to recover from the effects. You may well find that the hundreds of thousand of these windmills are doing the exact same thing.

Just the opinion of a 39-year veteran of the electric and gas industry.

Edwin Jakubowski

Demonstrating Storage Devices - December 21, 2009

I guess you guys only think in terms of "utility scale" storage, but storing cold water or ice also shifts cooling loads and thus electrical loads to off peak as well. A well orchestrated cool storage strategy may be the most viable of all if the price signals are adequate. Also, the use of electrical vehicle fleets could have an impact. SMVs (Slow Moving Vehicles) used on campuses and military bases could add their share.

The biggest constraint seems to be having a consistent and fair price signal that applies to all off-peak installations. So far, I have yet to see a significant enough spread between on- and off-peak pricing to warrant much investment in this sector. What really is the long-term cost spread between on- and off-peak and how can that price signal be incorporated into cost effective long-term grid planning? No spread means no investment, just like cheap energy means no conservation.

Mac Collins

In promoting energy storage technologies as the panacea to intermittent technologies like wind, we do need to keep in mind that storage technologies have individual time horizons and response windows. Pumped storage, for example, really doesn't do well for 5-10 minute swings of +/- 30 percent output due to, say, wind gusts -- the hydroelectric storage pump/turbine simply cannot respond that fast. Similarly, diurnal fluctuations do not match well with the sub-cycle to five minute response and capacity of flywheels. The point is there are several storage technologies, they are all at different stages of development and it will take many to succeed to solve the multiple integration issues for intermittent technologies. Multiple and sequential miracles.

Thomas Tanton
President, T2 & Associates
Sr. Fellow, Energy Studies, Pacific Research Institute

The discussion of energy storage falls victim to the silo mentality of the regulated electric industry. Storage that can help meet peaks is challenging to the industry because the duration of the peak, while extremely short compared to the length of a year, is much longer than many storage technologies can provide. Unmentioned in the article is the energy problem of storage. Hydro storage and batteries consume about 25 percent of the energy used to charge them or pump them up. To get 100 MW of power out of storage requires putting about 133 MW into it.

There is a storage technology that is being ignored even though it consumes little, if any, energy, and it costs much less than batteries or hydro storage. The technology for commercial scale customers to make ice at night and melt it during the afternoon air conditioning peak is well established, energy efficient, low cost (relatively), and ignored. It is ignored by commercial customers because utility prices lie to them about the difference in costs to provide night time power vs. air conditioning peak power. It is ignored by utility planners and the likes of DOE because they are interested only in utility scale applications. Never mind that thermal storage could be much bigger in total than a few dozen utility scale projects.

Your article should be pointing out the limits of silo thinking along with the environmental and economic damage that results. You should continuously point out non-silo solutions may be superior the schemes you report about. This silo problem needs to be in everyone's face until it is solved.

Dick Maclay

While the concept of storage as an alternative to more peaking generation sounds great, there is an economic impediment to many storage technologies. If you compare baseload plants to peaking plants, the baseload plant is capital intensive (lots of dollars per MW to build) but cheap on fuel. The peaker is the opposite: lower capital costs and higher fuel costs. High capital costs need high capacity factor so they can spread their intensive capital more thinly over more hours. Peakers need cheap capital costs because they have many less hours to spread them over. Peakers can absorb their higher fuel costs penalty because they don't run as often. In essence, a peaker has to be cheap enough in terms of capital to sit idle waiting to serve, but a baseload plant does not.

Now look at flywheel, chemical, capacitor or compressed-air storage systems. Plus they typically have high losses in and out of storage (except maybe batteries at something like 4 percent each way), effectively raising their capital per effective MW even higher. They all have extremely high capital costs and very low fuel costs. They are upside down to what they should be to be peakers and even less so to be super-peakers. There is a very small niche that needs very high power density (virtually instantaneous ramping, e.g. AGC, VAr control) but the capital costs really get high per produced MW, so the application must be very high value. Right now, most jurisdictions do not pay for VAr support, because they can effectively steal it from the generators. If it had a proper price-tag, maybe more of it would be built.

It would be great if technology would be able to squeeze down these technologies to the point that they were less expensive per nameplate MW than a peaker, but that's going to take a long time, I'm afraid.

Allen Crowley

Natural Gas' Fortunes - December 23, 2009

We should not forget to thank T. Boone Pickens who put up his own $1 billion to tell everyone in the U.S., maybe even ExxonMobil, that natural gas makes the most since as a bridge power and transportation fuel until something better can be developed. With all the stimulus money that the President and congress throw around why not encourage natural gas transportation.

With the likes of ExxonMobil in the game we can have good hope that they will be willing to encourage that effort since they can distribute and sell through their existing distribution network. Create tax incentives to switch from gasoline to natural gas for some significant percentage of existing vehicles to effect near term desired results. This would be the more expensive option verses original equipment design but the rationale would be to accelerate the cumulative benefits which must include some part of the existing fleet. That also creates a lot of jobs.

Development of the distribution along the interstate system and large population centers, more jobs, would greatly accelerate the desired transition and benefits of a cleaner and domestic fuel. The domestic production brings with it a boatload of attending benefits such as upstream and downstream jobs, taxes, and royalties to citizens who spend those revenues in our economy.

I see the move by ExxonMobil as a game changer which has the potential to make the T. Boone Pickens vision come to reality in my lifetime. This is good for business, the economy, the environment. This may not be the full solution but it sure looks like it could be a very significant piece of the energy puzzle for the next 20 to 30 years.

Jack Moody, RPG
Mississippi Asset Development Office
State Mineral Lease Program
Natural Resources Development Program

The Copenhagen Talks - January 04, 2010

"The non-binding agreement promises to achieve "deep cuts in global emissions" and to hold the rise in temperature to below 2 degrees Celsius this century."

"A goal without a plan is just a wish." -Antoine de St. Exupery

It is not possible to achieve "deep cuts in global emissions" while the largest emitter continues to grow its emissions faster than the developed countries are reducing their emissions. It would only be possible to achieve deep cuts in the rate of growth of global emissions.

"Corporations, of course, are keeping a close eye as they would be required to invest billions so as to make the economic and environmental transition."

U.S. corporations would be required to invest tens of trillions of dollars in new, low/no carbon emissions facilities and equipment to achieve the Obama Administration's 83 percent carbon emissions reduction target. Global investment would be on the order of $150 trillion.

"Regardless of any one nation's position, a trend is developing and one that will pilot the adaption of new technologies and a carbon-friendly future. The bigger question is whether that evolution will occur at a rapid pace or whether it will take place over decades while the world deals with other more imminent problems."

The future might be many things, but it would definitely not be "carbon friendly". Also, even the Obama Administration realizes that achieving its 83 percent reduction target would take decades -- four of them to be "exact".

China's "commitment" to reduce its carbon intensity by 50 percent, even if achieved, would merely reduce the growth rate of its carbon emissions from about 10 percent per year to about 5 percent per year. Granted, that would be a deep cut in emissions GROWTH, though hardly a cut in emissions.

Edward A. Reid, Jr.
President
Fire to Ice, Inc.

 

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