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Comment by rusteh1 | Hacker News Reader

The referenced research mentions Belchatow power plant in Poland as the most polluting of all. This was an interesting fact about efforts toward carbon capture at the plant I found. [1]

"Carbon capture initiative at the Belchatow thermal power plant PGE signed a memorandum of understanding (MoU) with Alstom in December 2008 for the design and construction of a pilot carbon capture plant (CCP) at the latest unit of the plant.

PGE signed a grant agreement of €180m ($245m) for the installation of carbon capture, transport, and geological storage facilities in May 2010.

The project was expected to be completed by 2015, but canceled in 2013 following environmental opposition to underground storage of carbon.

If completed, it would have captured 1.8 million tonnes of CO2 a year."

I don't understand why there would be opposition to storage of carbon?

[1] https://www.nsenergybusiness.com/projects/belchatow-power-pl...

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> I don't understand why there would be opposition to storage of carbon?

The biggest reason is that most of the time "we're gonna store carbon" is just smoke and mirrors and in practice never happens. It's the biggest excuse for fossil fuel companies to continue business as usual while promising some solution in the future that never comes.

But there's also practical risks, there have been leaks from carbon capture sites in the past if they aren't handled properly, see e.g.: http://insideenergy.org/2016/11/05/what-happened-in-midwest-...

Looks like the story is a little different: https://sequestration.mit.edu/tools/projects/belchatow.html

They didn't get the money from the European Union and therefore it wasn't built.

The opposition to carbon capture thing isn't even in the wikipedia article about the plant, looks like your source isn't the most trustworthy.

> The opposition to carbon capture thing isn't even in the wikipedia article about the plant, looks like your source isn't the most trustworthy.

That is a very strange inference to make.

Here's an abstract that claims environmental risks for ccs, and lack of political support (which I understand tends to come in the form of funding?) as a result: https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S03062...

This PDF says it was cancelled due to delays in "transposing" (implementing at country level I think?) the necessary regulations to allow funding: https://core.ac.uk/download/pdf/154669777.pdf

The Wikipedia article about the plant references this politico article, which does mention environmentalist opposition to ccs (that's not what they referenced it for, of course): https://www.politico.eu/article/paperthe-eus-failed-ccs-ambi...

I have noticed, more and more, energy concerns (like NS Energy seems to be) attempting to discredit environmental groups with this exact accusation:

"We, the energy industry, came up with a Green Solution but environmental groups stopped it for reasons x, y, z"

Where x, y, z is some plausible, fungible combination of "they care more about the spotted owl/some other endangered species" and "they care more about punishing us than being solution-focused" and "it's more of a modern-day religion" -- whatever the reader needs to be willing to accept the energy industry's story about how they're trying to do better but it's the environmental groups' fault.

What's interesting about this to me is, where seeing the propaganda round the Iraq War was obvious and obviously crafted, this is much sneakier.

But I think you'll see this more and more -- the energy industry is trying to solve our environmental problems, they say, and would be able to lead us to a greener world if not for those irrational, quasi-religious, badly-prioritizing environmental groups.

There may be propaganda here, but it also does happen. In California, every solar power station has been sued by the Sierra Club at some point. Usually over some endangered toad, but the real force (and funding) behind the suits is the labor unions, who want the projects to pay them more. It’s a big shakedown.

I cannot tell you how much "the labor unions are using environmental groups as muscle to shut down the good work the energy industry is doing" sounds like propaganda.

I know right? It is hard for me to repeat to be honest, because it sounds exactly like crazy Fox News fantasy. But, I have seen it with my own eyes. The phenomenon first came to my attention in the matter of "Kern County Citizens For Responsible Solar" versus First Solar's Willow Springs Project. The bogus citizens' group is a front organization for union labor who are trying to extract higher wages in project labor agreements. They file their objections on the draft environmental impact reports, which preserves their standing under CEQA to delay the project in the courts.

This site has an extensive archive of such DEIR comments and subsequent lawsuits for hundreds of projects around the state. It's just how labor negotiations are done in California, now. All the letters and motions are the same, all the front groups have the same name except with different cities or counties, and they are all drafted by the same law firm. A typical example is at [1].

https://phonyuniontreehuggers.com/

1: https://phonyuniontreehuggers.com/wp-content/uploads/2016/01...

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