Coal CEO admits that ‘clean coal’ is a myth
reneweconomy.com.au
reneweconomy.com.au
...
“It is neither practical nor economic, carbon capture and sequestration,” he said last week. “It is just cover for the politicians, both Republicans and Democrats that say, ‘Look what I did for coal,’ knowing all the time that it doesn’t help coal at all.”
People saying "you can make clean coal power, it's just really expensive," are saying essentially the same thing as this article. Over 90% of American coal is burned in power plants. Coal's big selling point is (was) producing cheap electricity. Once you make it clean, it's no longer cheap; see last week's declaration of surrender for the Kemper clean coal plant. It was 3 years behind schedule, $5 billion over budget, and still unfinished:
https://arstechnica.com/business/2017/06/7-5-billion-kemper-...
It's just going to burn natural gas now.
If you can't build new dirty coal plants in the US, and new clean coal plants cost significantly more than other clean electricity sources, then coal output will slowly decline another ~90% from last year's lows. Metallurgical coal is still going to be used for a long time but companies like Murray Energy would be doomed.
What we're really seeing are fossil fuel industries finally starting to have to actually compete under a real Free Market as society becomes less tolerant of letting them ignore their massive externalities. If coal is more expensive taking into account not being able to dump expensive pollution into the wider world, then it can and should go away. In fact that cost should have always been taken into account.
Coal is dying anyway.
"Clean coal" generally refers to coal => gasification => carbon capture. This is possible, just more expensive than burning raw coal, which itself is now more expensive than natural gas.
Mostly because of fracking, at least in the US, natural gas is much cheaper than buying coal. Compounding that, renewable energy creates high flexibility in peak demand, so plants designed to operate as baseload sources cannot amortize costs as effectively.
Additionally, HVDC lines are making regional proximity less important, so gas/coal locality plays less of a role in pricing.
The market is shifting to peaker plants, like natural gas, which have very low capital costs and can turn on/off quickly. This kills of coal and nuclear anyway, which have to run 24/7 to stay cost competitive.
Barring some energy storage miracle, we'll eventually end up with ~35% renewables, 15% hydro, 50% natural gas in the US, with HVDC interconnect.
(source: climate and energy R&D group)
I guess you are talking more about whether it is a competitive investment, but if we aren't fully on solar the faster construction time and easier siting of natural gas plants will drive some investment (siting mostly in terms of land area/MW).
[Robert] Murray yesterday commended President Trump's announcement that he would try to boost some coal exports, but he said that ultimately what the sector needs is for EPA to nix the endangerment finding.
[Energy Secretary Rick Perry] also has touted carbon capture and sequestration technologies for coal plants, even as he questions whether climate science is settled.
Murray said carbon capture won't help, either.
"Carbon capture and sequestration does not work. It's a pseudonym for 'no coal,'" Murray said while waiting for a ride outside DOE headquarters. "It is neither practical nor economic, carbon capture and sequestration. It is just cover for the politicians, both Republicans and Democrats that say, 'Look what I did for coal,' knowing all the time that it doesn't help coal at all."
Murray acknowledged that the legal fight over the endangerment finding would be "tough." He thinks that's because climate activists and renewable power producers want to keep making money off climate change.
"All these people will be jumping on this on the other side because it's all about money, but it is not about America. America needs reliable, low-cost electricity, and that is a mix of different fuels," he said.
Murray's stance refers to the 'endangerment finding', which holds that greenhouse gases are pollutants under the Clean Air Act -- a 2009 finding by the EPA after the 2007 Supreme Court case Massachusetts v. EPA. He disagrees with this interpretation -- particularly about carbon dioxide being classed a pollutant -- and is arguing that the decision should be reversed under the Trump administration, while pointing out that carbon capture and sequestration (CCS) is largely a phrase that has been hijacked by politicians to tout too-good-to-be-true solutions.
I mean, even Philip Morris eventually started saying cigarettes cause lung cancer and kids are better off staying away from them...
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Frank_Luntz#Use_of_language
You might recall the whole rephrasing "global warming" as "climate change" thing too
https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2003/mar/04/usnews.c...
The remarkable thing about a coal CEO saying clean coal is bullshit is that it is seemingly against his own interest. CEOs rarely speak out publicly against their company's own product. It's the equivalent of Philip Morris eventually coming out and admitting that smoking causes cancer.
""Carbon capture and sequestration does not work. It's a pseudonym for 'no coal,'" Murray said while waiting for a ride outside DOE headquarters. "It is neither practical nor economic, carbon capture and sequestration. It is just cover for the politicians, both Republicans and Democrats that say, 'Look what I did for coal,' knowing all the time that it doesn't help coal at all."
Nevertheless, my point still stands. Even if it were cheap it would still be more expensive, and this coal CEO would be making the exact same claims.
It is, however, a very cheap way of removing carbon from the atmosphere.
It's just that the organization who is properly incentivized to remove carbon dioxide from the atmosphere is society, not coal companies. In this sense it is much cheaper to scrub exhaust, which is practically 100% carbon dioxide than to scrub the atmosphere.
It's irrelevant what the coal ceo thinks is cost effective, because he's not the one who benefits.
Compare the cost of exhaust sequestration for all of the fossil fuels and I'm sure you will find that coal is still the cheapest.
But I doubt CO2 capture and sequestration makes any sense with coal. Might work for really efficient natural gas plants which emit half the CO2 per thermal unit of energy and can be made nearly twice as efficient thermodynamically, meaning that for the same unit of electricity, you only need to sequester a third to a quarter of the CO2.
...but still would be incredibly expensive. You're going to be better off with solar, wind, geothermal, hydro, and nuclear in a broad mix with a few hours of grid storage to smooth things over.
Upfront costs also generally go down over time. The infrastructure required to perform carbon sequestration is extremely nascent. There's a lot of specialty equipment, and drilling to sufficient limestone deposits. These things will scale well though. Especially with government funding.
The most efficient place to capture carbon dioxide in the atmosphere is before it enters the atmosphere.
Therefore, any attempt to lower the amount of carbon in the atmosphere should necessarily start with removing the carbon dioxide from exhaust.
All fossil fuel plants should have scrubbers, it is by far the most cost effective measure that we can take to dramatically reduce increases to atmospheric CO2. The argument that "clean coal is no coal" is assuming that there should be no similar requirement on natural gas.
Another thing about natural gas that makes it better than coal is that the hydrogen in natural gas reacts with oxygen in the atmosphere to form water. This actually reduces the total amount of the atmospheric gas and therefor reduces the greenhouse effect. I have yet to find a scientific paper that describes the magnitude of this effect and I haven't found where this phenomenon is taken into account in climate models. Most people don't realize that the pressure of the atmosphere at the surface is a more important factor for "greenhouse effect" heating than its composition. The surface of Venus is so hot not mostly because of the high % of CO2 in the atmosphere but the surface pressure is 93 bar as compared to Earth's 1 bar.