Showing posts with label Clean Coal. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Clean Coal. Show all posts
Sunday, June 01, 2008
Thursday, April 03, 2008
Seeking clean coal science 'only option'
The Age, April 2
Australia has no alternative to seeking "clean coal" technology, says Federal Energy Minister Martin Ferguson.
"Australia's coal resources alone - assuming the advent of successful clean coal technologies - are so large that they could be significant in the global energy mix for several hundred years," said Mr Ferguson.
Coal and other fossil fuels will continue to provide much of the world's energy for the foreseeable future, Mr Ferguson told about 100 spectators in a windswept paddock near Nirranda South, 240km west of Melbourne.
The minister opened the world's largest demonstration of the deep geological storage of carbon dioxide, the Otway Basin pilot project - partly funded by the New Zealand government and state-owned miner Solid Energy - which will inject 100,000 tonnes of carbon dioxide 2km deep over the next two years.
The gathering of people sheltering from squalls of icy rain in a fancy marquee included executives of Solid Energy, National Party energy Spokesman Gerry Brownlee, and Genesis electricity chief executive Murray Jackson. There were also officials from the Ministry of Economic Development who are planning a new regulatory framework for carbon capture and storage.
Mr Ferguson predicted that the success of the programme would confirm the carbon storage technology as a viable option to reduce the carbon footprint of coal, which generates 80 percent of Australia's electricity.
The $A40 million Otway Basin project would also encourage community acceptance of the technology over the next two years. Project officials predicted enough data would be collected over the next two years to create models able to show that carbon could be injected into secure geological formations and left there for thousands of years.
Carbon dioxide is a major greenhouse gas contributing to global warming, and companies selling and burning coal want to be able to literally bury the unwanted carbon from the process.
Solid Energy chief executive Don Elder told NZPA that it is likely that only tiny, almost negligible, amount of the carbon dioxide pumped underground will escape.
Regulatory matters would be the real issue about carbon capture and storage - such as whether companies injecting carbon had to provide assurances that 99.99 percent of the carbon remained below ground for 10,000, or 100,000 years.
He argued that if 10 percent was lost over 100 years or 20 percent over 1000 years, the technology would still have a beneficial effect on global warming.
"If regulations drive industry towards 99.99 percent storage of 10,000 years, then we will not have carbon capture and storage," he said.
Governments seeking security in such a regime would have to require companies to pay bonds equivalent to the full cost of buying emissions credits.
"There's going to have to be a pragmatic approach - this is a transition solution," said Dr Elder.
Australia has no alternative to seeking "clean coal" technology, says Federal Energy Minister Martin Ferguson.
"Australia's coal resources alone - assuming the advent of successful clean coal technologies - are so large that they could be significant in the global energy mix for several hundred years," said Mr Ferguson.
Coal and other fossil fuels will continue to provide much of the world's energy for the foreseeable future, Mr Ferguson told about 100 spectators in a windswept paddock near Nirranda South, 240km west of Melbourne.
The minister opened the world's largest demonstration of the deep geological storage of carbon dioxide, the Otway Basin pilot project - partly funded by the New Zealand government and state-owned miner Solid Energy - which will inject 100,000 tonnes of carbon dioxide 2km deep over the next two years.
The gathering of people sheltering from squalls of icy rain in a fancy marquee included executives of Solid Energy, National Party energy Spokesman Gerry Brownlee, and Genesis electricity chief executive Murray Jackson. There were also officials from the Ministry of Economic Development who are planning a new regulatory framework for carbon capture and storage.
Mr Ferguson predicted that the success of the programme would confirm the carbon storage technology as a viable option to reduce the carbon footprint of coal, which generates 80 percent of Australia's electricity.
The $A40 million Otway Basin project would also encourage community acceptance of the technology over the next two years. Project officials predicted enough data would be collected over the next two years to create models able to show that carbon could be injected into secure geological formations and left there for thousands of years.
Carbon dioxide is a major greenhouse gas contributing to global warming, and companies selling and burning coal want to be able to literally bury the unwanted carbon from the process.
Solid Energy chief executive Don Elder told NZPA that it is likely that only tiny, almost negligible, amount of the carbon dioxide pumped underground will escape.
Regulatory matters would be the real issue about carbon capture and storage - such as whether companies injecting carbon had to provide assurances that 99.99 percent of the carbon remained below ground for 10,000, or 100,000 years.
He argued that if 10 percent was lost over 100 years or 20 percent over 1000 years, the technology would still have a beneficial effect on global warming.
"If regulations drive industry towards 99.99 percent storage of 10,000 years, then we will not have carbon capture and storage," he said.
Governments seeking security in such a regime would have to require companies to pay bonds equivalent to the full cost of buying emissions credits.
"There's going to have to be a pragmatic approach - this is a transition solution," said Dr Elder.
Monday, March 31, 2008
NASA scientist urges PM to stop coal exports
NASA chief climate scientist James Hansen has written to Prime Minister Kevin Rudd asking him to consider halting plans for mining and export of coal in Australia.
Dr Hansen is one of the world's leading climate scientists and in a letter addressed to Mr Rudd, he has asked him to show leadership on the issue.
He says the "continuing mining of coal, export of coal, and the construction of new coal-fired power plants" should be halted and a transition is needed to solve the global warming problem.
He says choices of alternative energy sources are local considerations, but a decision to phase out coal use is a "global imperative".
The letter has been delivered to Mr Rudd's office today and has also been sent to the state and territory leaders.
Former head of the CSIRO's Climate Impact Group Barrie Pittock supports the letter and says Australia must take urgent action if climate change is to be addressed.
"We're increasing the global emissions at the rate of about 3 per cent every year now, and what we have to do is decrease emissions by 2 or 3 per cent every year," he said.
"That's the only way we are going to keep global temperatures down to something that might be safe.
"What he is asking [is] for us to not to do any more until the carbon capture and sequestration is in place."
Sunday, March 30, 2008
Burning Coal at Three Minutes to Midnight
The Corporate Watch report on HRL, for Friends of the Earth, ‘Burning Coal at Three Minutes to Midnight’ has been released. Shedding light on the government grants and business interests behind the proposed HRL coal fire power plant in the Latrobe Valley of Victoria.
With $150 million of state and federal government grants this new coal fire power station has benefited from a large injection of taxpayer money to continue Victoria’s reliance on coal based electricity.
The proposed HRL coal fire power plant is one of the first of the so-called ‘clean coal’ power plants scheduled to be built, and if allowed to go ahead will expand Australia’s reliance on polluting fossil fuel sources of energy such as coal, to the detriment of the clean, green renewable energy solutions available to us.
Download a copy of ‘Burning Coal at Three Minutes to Midnight’ here
Burnt Out
The government’s plans for clean coal are another great green scam.
“Coal is so clean and fresh that the prime minister brushes his teeth with it, Downing Street said last night. Mr Brown said advances in coal technology meant it was now one of the cleanest substances on Earth, and an unrivalled remover of stains and scaling.” So says the satirical website the Daily Mash(1). The real claims are scarcely battier.
Ministers are about to decide whether to approve a new coal burning power station at Kingsnorth in Kent. This would be the first such plant built in Britain since the monster at Drax was finished in 1986. As well as coal, it will burn up the government’s targets, policies and promises on climate change.
John Hutton, the secretary of state in charge of energy, has started justifying the decision he says he hasn’t made. “For critics,” he argued last week, “there’s a belief that coal fired power stations undermine the UK’s leadership position on climate change. In fact the opposite is true.”(2) Quite so: if we don’t burn this stuff the Chinese might get their hands on it. Or could he be a true believer? Does he really think there’s such a thing as clean coal?
Clean coal’s definition changes according to whom the industry is lobbying. Sometimes it means more efficient power stations (which still produce almost twice as much carbon dioxide as gas plants). Sometimes it means removing sulphur dioxide from the smoke (which boosts the CO2(3)). Sometimes it means carbon capture and storage: stripping the carbon out of the exhaust gases, piping it away and burying it in geological formations. None of these equate to clean coal, as you will see if you visit an opencast mine. But they create a marvellous amount of confusion in the public mind, which gives the government a chance to excuse the inexcusable.
In principle, carbon capture and storage (CCS) could reduce emissions from power stations by 80-90%. While the whole process has not yet been demonstrated, the individual steps are all deployed commercially today: it looks feasible. The government has launched a competition for companies to build the first demonstration plant, which should be burying CO2 by 2014.
Unfortunately, despite Hutton’s repeated assurances, this has nothing to do with Kingsnorth or the other new coal plants he wants to approve. If Kingsnorth goes ahead, it will be operating by 2012, two years before the CCS experiment has even begun. The government says that the demonstration project will take “at least 15 years” to assess(4). It will take many more years for the technology to be retrofitted to existing power stations, by which time it’s all over. On this schedule, carbon capture and storage, if it is deployed at all, will come too late to prevent runaway climate change.
Kingsnorth will produce around 4.5 million tonnes of CO2 every year(5); if all eight of the proposed coal plants are built, they will account for 46% of the emissions Britain can produce by 2050, assuming the government sticks to Brown’s new proposed target of an 80% cut(6). Aviation, using the government’s own figures, will account for another 184% (7)(these figures are explained on my website). Even if we stopped breathing, eating, driving and heating our homes, the new runways and coal burners the government envisages would more than double our national greenhouse gas quota.
The government seeks to bamboozle us by arguing that the new power stations will be “CCS ready”, meaning that one day, in theory, they could be retrofitted with the necessary equipment. But even this turns out to be untrue. In January, Greenpeace obtained an exchange of emails between EO.N - the company hoping the build the new plant (yes the same EO.N that broadcasts footage of fluttering sycamore keys, suggesting that its dirty old habits have gone with the wind) - and Gary Mohammed, the civil servant drawing up the planning conditions(8). Mohammed begins by sending an email of such snivelling obsequiousness that you can almost smell the fear on it. “Drafting the conditions for Kingsnorth. If possible I would like to cover CCS … I admit this suggested condition could be without justification and premature but no harm in trying to gauge your opinion.” (This “suggested condition” was actually government policy. Who’s running this country?) EO.N replied by claiming that the secretary of state “has no right to withhold approval for conventional plant” (in fact he has every right). All it would allow the government to specify was that the potential for CCS “will be investigated.” Mr Mohammed wrestled with his conscience for all of six minutes before replying. “Thanks. I won’t include. Hope to get the set of draft conditions out today or tomorrow.”
This exchange took place in mid-January, a few days before the European Commission published a proposed directive specifying that all new coal-fired power stations must be CCS ready(9). Mr Mohammed must have known that he was helping EO.N to win approval for the plant before the directive comes into force next year.
You might by now be beginning the derive the impression that carbon capture and storage is not the green panacea that ministers have suggested. But you haven’t heard the half of it. Even if it does become a viable means of disposing of carbon dioxide, new figures suggest that it’s likely to enhance rather than reduce our total emissions.
For the companies which will bid to bury the gas, one technique is more attractive than the others. This is to pump it into declining oil fields. The gas dissolves into the remaining oil, reducing its viscosity and pushing it into the production wells. It’s called enhanced oil recovery (EOR). The oil the companies sell offsets some of the costs of carbon storage.
A few weeks ago, the green thinker Jim Bliss roughly calculated the environmental costs of this technique. He used as his case study the scheme BP proposed (but abandoned last year) for pumping CO2 into the Miller Field off the coast of Scotland. It would have buried 1.3m tonnes of CO2 and extracted 40 million barrels of oil(10). Taking into account only the four major fuel products, Bliss worked out that the total carbon emissions would outweigh the savings by between seven and fifteen times(11)*.
So has the government ruled out enhanced oil recovery? Not a bit of it. Its memo about the demonstration project says that Mr Hutton’s department “will want to ensure that the treatment of EOR and non-EOR projects are dealt with on a level playing field basis.”(12) Another document suggests it favours this technique: enhanced oil recovery will lead to “increased energy security, domestic revenue and employment”(13). But, the government notes, this will have to happen before the North Sea’s oil infrastructure is dismantled. “Now is the perfect opportunity to realise the significant opportunities offered by CCS.”(14)
Like biofuels and micro wind turbines, carbon capture and storage turns out to be another great green scam. It will come too late to prevent runaway climate change, the government has no intention of enforcing it and even if it had the technique is likely to boost our carbon emissions. This is what John Hutton calls “meeting our international obligations”(15). Heaven knows what breaking them might look like.
www.monbiot.com
*Jim Bliss has now been in touch to say that he was misled by the wording of BP’s press release. The scheme would in fact have stored 1.3m tonnes of CO2 per annum, which means that it would have resulted in a net CO2 saving (of around 50%). My apologies for this mistake.
References:
1. http://www.thedailymash.co.uk/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=782&Itemid=59
2. John Hutton, 10th March 2008. The Future of Utilities. Speech to the Adam Smith Institute. http://www.berr.gov.uk/about/ministerial-team/page45211.html
3. The commonest technique for flue gas desulphurisation is the limestone gypsum process. As well as making the power station slightly less efficient, the chemical reaction produces CO2. The two key reactions are:
CaCO3 + SO2 = CaSO3 + CO2
and
CaSO3 + _O2 + 2H2O = CaSO42H2O
See: Dept of Trade and Industry, March 2003. Flue Gas Desulphurisation (Fgd)
Technologies For Coal-Fired Combustion Plant. http://www.berr.gov.uk/files/file20875.pdf
4. BERR, 19th November 2007. Competition for a Carbon Dioxide Capture and Storage
Demonstration Project. Project Information Memorandum. http://www.berr.gov.uk/files/file42478.pdf
5. Greenpeace, 2007. Letter to Alistair Darling. http://www.greenpeace.org.uk/files/pdfs/climate/kingsnorth_objection.pdf
6. Here’s how Greenpeace makes this calculation:
“In December 2007, Gordon Brown said he aspired to an 80% cut in emissions by 2050.
That would give us a carbon budget of 117.8mt/CO2/per year. The new coal plants
currently proposed – 10.6 GW of capacity - would emit more than 54 million tonnes of
carbon dioxide which represents almost half of that quota. (10.6 GW x 7884 hours of
generation per year, assuming 90% operational = 83.57 TWH/y. 83.57 TWH/y x 0.65 = 54
mt/CO2/y).”
7. This is 80% of the 1990 level, namely 161.5MtC (please note that this weight refers to elemental C, not CO2). That leaves 32.3MtC.
The Dept for Transport’s conservative figures suggest aviation emissions will rise to 15.7 MtC by 2050. The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change estimates that net radiative forcing from aircraft emissions is 2.7 times that of the CO2 alone, which gives a nominal carbon equivalent of 42.4MtC. The government’s figures systematically underestimate the UK’s contribution, by assuming that British people are responsible for 50% of the seats on flights leaving or arriving in the UK. The true figure is 70%, which means the total equivalent figure is 59.35MtC.
8. You can read these emails here: http://www.greenpeace.org.uk/files/pdfs/climate/FOI-1.pdf
9. Commission Of The European Communities, 23rd January 2008. Proposal for a Directive of the European Parliament and of the Council on the geological storage of carbon dioxide and amending Council Directives 85/337/EEC, 96/61/EC, Directives 2000/60/EC, 2001/80/EC, 2004/35/EC, 2006/12/EC and Regulation (EC) No 1013/2006. http://eur-lex.europa.eu/LexUriServ/LexUriServ.do?uri=COM:2008:0018:FIN:EN:PDF
10. BP, 30th June 2005. BP’s plan to generate electricity from hydrogen and capture carbon dioxide could set a new standard for cleaner energy. Press release. http://www.bp.com/genericarticle.do?categoryId=97&contentId=7006978
11. Jim Bliss, 17th January 2008. Oil companies and Climate Change. http://numero57.net/?p=224
Jim Bliss was asked to do this by the environmental writer Merrick Godhaven.
12. BERR, 19th November 2007, ibid.
13. The North Sea Basin Task Force, June 2007. Storing CO2 under the North Sea Basin – a key solution for combating climate change, p9. http://www.berr.gov.uk/files/file40159.pdf
14. ibid, p9.
100,000: The Number of New Wells Needed to Store America's Carbon Underground
Carbon capture and storage (CCS) would take coal out of the ground, burn it for energy in coal plants and put the leftover gas back in the Earth where it came from.
It’s an idea whose time may never come, and here’s another reason why, from a new article in the Energy Tribune, Carbon Sequestration: Injecting Realities: The number of new wells needed to store the CO2 at large scales is likely to be huge and unrealistic.
As many as 100,000, in fact, depending on geological factors.
The writer of the analysis is Dr. Xina Xie, a research engineer out of the University of Wyoming. She took a hard look at the petroleum industry which has been shooting the Earth full of carbon dioxide for 30 years already to see what can be expected.
If the Kyoto Protocol emission standard (5 percent below the 1990 emission level) is executed, or if emissions are kept at the 2005 level, enormous amounts of carbon dioxide will have to be injected, requiring thousands of wells to be drilled.
The industry uses a process called enhanced oil recovery (EOR) to do the job, and it works like this:
EOR injects CO2 into depleted oil wells where expands and forces oil that was once impossible to obtain to the surface, essentially prolonging the lifespan of the well. So Dr. Xie looked at the option of injecting the carbon dioxide that's captured from CCS straight into existing oil reserves. Makes sense, right?
The reserves have already been proven suitable for sequestration. And, instead of just burying a coal plant's CO2 into the Earth with nothing to do, it would give the CO2 a purpose: to produce more oil or natural gas.
However, in a CCS nation, those tens of thousands of wells couldn’t do the storage job. Not even close. Not if the goal is wide-scale deployment of the technology.
Dr. Xie found that up to 100,800 new wells would be needed by 2030 in America if Washington commits to meeting the Kyoto Protocol emission requirement and keeping total carbon emissions at 2005 levels. Daunting, if not totally impossible. Business-as-usual would require far more.
In sum, if today’s existing wells were to be deployed for large-scale CO2 storage, they would quickly run out. And thousands and thousands and thousands of new ones would have to built.
Thursday, December 13, 2007
Climate Change Debate Fuels Greenwash Boom
, December 11,
On the Indonesian island of Bali, thousands of senior government officials are negotiating a plan to slow global warming. The meeting, which will focus on how to limit the greenhouse gas emissions that cause climate change, will run for the first two weeks of December and include 192 countries. This year’s conclave is the 13th in a series launched by the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change that came into force in 1994.
The coal, gas and oil companies that are major producers of greenhouse gases are finally taking notice of these high-level political discussions, and many have mounted spirited public relations exercises to defend themselves, and even win endorsements of their products.
For example, the weekend before negotiations began, Neste Oil announced plans to build the world's largest bio-diesel facility a few hundred miles northeast of Bali, in the Tuas industrial zone on the island of Singapore. The Finnish company is betting that widespread concern, as well as mandatory limits on greenhouse gases generated by fossil fuels such as coal and petroleum, will increase demand for vegetable-based fuels.
Neste’s proposed $800 million plant will use palm oil, which is readily available throughout the region. The company has pledged to buy palm oil certified by the Roundtable on Sustainable Palm Oil and to use proprietary NExBTL technology that produces fuel with lifecycle greenhouse gas emissions 40 to 60 percent less than those of conventional diesel fuel.
"We have a very clear principle that we are aware of the source of all raw materials used in our biodiesel, including palm oil ... and that it is produced by sustainable methods," Neste CEO Resto Rinne told reporters, explaining that he expected this market to expand substantially. "In Europe alone, [annual] production will be well over 10 million tons by the end of the decade, and our share of this production will be some 800,000 tons."
Some environmental groups charge that Neste's claims are "greenwash": misleading public relations masking unsustainable practices. Greenpeace, for example, explains that the new plant in Singapore is likely to cause more environmental problems, not fewer, by increasing demand for new palm oil plantations that displace environmentally sensitive forests or wetland areas. In addition to destroying endangered habitats, the scheme could exacerbate global warming.
"Certification does not stop the rainforests from disappearing, for there is no doubt that the increase in demand for palm oil will lead to further destruction of rainforest. There is absolutely no way to grow enough sustainable palm oil for all the producers," said Harri Lammi, the program director for Greenpeace Finland. The week before the climate meeting got underway in Bali, his group attempted to highlight Neste's environmental record by blockading its ships in waters off of Finland.
The clash between Neste and Greenpeace highlights one of the key ideological debates over climate change: Business and politicians believe that a "technological" fix such as alternative fuels can solve the problem and also generate profits; many environmental groups believe the real solution to global warming lies in reducing consumption.
Guaranteed Markets, But Are They Guaranteed Green?
The arguments of the alternative fuel lobby are finding significant political backing. Earlier this year the European Union agreed to binding targets: By 2020, ten percent of its transportation industry’s annual 300 million ton fuel consumption must come from alternatives such as biodiesel. China has predicted that it can switch 15 percent of its transport fuel consumption to biofuels, and India has set an ambitious target of 20 percent by 2020.
Even U.S. President George Bush in his January 2007 State of the Union address pledged to “increase the supply of alternative fuels by setting a mandatory fuels standard to require 35 billion gallons of renewable and alternative fuels in 2017 -- and that is nearly five times the current target."
Palm oil is one of the three key biofuels that governments and corporations are promoting as alternatives to fossil fuels. (The others are soy and rapeseed.) An edible vegetable oil obtained from the fruit of the oil palm tree, palm oil has been used as a popular cooking oil in West Africa for centuries. In recent years, it has become a key component of processed foods ranging from KitKat candy bars to Pringles potato chips to Oreo cookies.
The biggest producers of palm oil are Indonesia and Malaysia, where the crop has been grown on plantations established by British colonists in 1917. It was first exported for use as an industrial lubricant and as a base for Sunlight and Palmolive soaps.
The new green boom in biofuels has accelerated the demand for plantations, which in turn has led to widespread forest and peatland clearing. Indeed, a 2007 United Nations Environment Program report earlier this year, found that oil palm plantations are now the leading cause of forest destruction in Indonesia and Malaysia. And more is to come: The Indonesian government wants to put 10 million hectares of land into oil palm cultivation by 2015, up from the current total of 6 million hectares. In Malaysia, palm oil producers are targeting the island province of Sarawak for major expansion.
Local groups have spoken out strongly against this new trend. Meena Raman, head of Friends of the Earth Malaysia, said "Agrofuels is a disaster in the making. Their production, development and trade largely stem from unsustainable energy demand in industrialized countries. We are strongly urging our government to reconsider its decision of turning Malaysia into a major agrofuel producing country, as it is leading to further destruction of our forests and violations of the customary rights of indigenous peoples."
A new Greenpeace report, "Cooking the Climate," points out that razing of forests to create the oil palm plantations is, in itself, a major cause of greenhouse gas emissions. The environmental organization calculates that the burning and drying of carbon-rich peatlands on the Indonesian island of Riau releases about 1.8 billion tons of greenhouse gases a year. The removal of the forests also eliminates one of the planet's crucial air-filtration systems.
A British government report estimated that clearing land for agro-fuel cultivation creates two to nine times more greenhouse gases than the cleaner-burning fuel saves.
Fossil Fuels in Green Packaging
Another company ratcheting up the green rhetoric on climate change is General Electric (GE). Its television advertisement for "clean coal" technologies portrays scantily-clad models working in a coal mine, while an announcer sums up the message: "Thanks to emissions reducing technology from GE Energy, harnessing the power of coal is looking more beautiful every day."
The ad is part of GE's "ecomagination" campaign to promote "green" products such as lower-energy houses, wind turbines, solar power and water-purification systems, as well as a range of new coal technologies.
The company has joined the U.S. Climate Action Partnership, a coalition of industry and environmental groups that claim to be concerned about global warming. "The time has come for constructive action that draws strength equally from business, government, and non-governmental stakeholders," said Jeffrey Immelt, CEO of Connecticut-based GE, in a statement timed for the day before George Bush's backing of alternative technologies.
While some of the technologies GE sells -- such as wind and solar power -- are indeed carbon neutral, others -- such as its "clean coal" integrated gasification combined-cycle coal power plants -- are questionable.
The term "clean coal" refers to a variety of new technologies under development: chemically washing the fossil fuel of minerals and impurities, burning it at higher pressure and temperature, and increasing efficiency by trapping and burning waste gases that would otherwise have escaped out the smokestack. Another "clean coal" technology is "carbon capture and sequestration," or CCS, which captures coal plant emissions before they enter the atmosphere, and stores them underground.
Many environmental activists note that these "clean coal" technologies are only marginally more efficient and far more expensive. Others, such as CCS, are still on the drawing board and may never work. (In fact, GE has yet to convince any of its clients to buy these new "clean coal" plants, according to California-based Rainforest Action Network, or RAN.)
"Why waste billions of dollars to research an uncertain technology when safer, cleaner energy solutions already exist?” asks Matt Leonard of RAN. “Even if we could capture coal's dangerous emissions, why create such massive waste streams in the first place? All fossil fuels, including coal, are running out. The longer we keep relying on them, the worse off our environment, climate, and society will be."
Immelt has admitted that the new promotion campaign was based on tapping public opinion and profits. "I can't lay claim to be a big environmentalist or nature lover here,” the GE head told NBC television this May. “I know that when society changes its mind, you'd better be in front of it, and not behind it. And this is an issue on which society has changed its mind. I came to the conclusion that technology that my company makes can help make it [the climate situation] better, and I can make money doing it, and I can do something good."
Do Nothing, Collect Praise
Other companies have managed to win environmental praise for effectively doing nothing. A case in point is the much heralded $45 billion purchase of Texas state utility TXU by private equity firm Kohlberg, Kravis and Roberts and Texas Pacific Corporation. The buyers won backing from Washington DC-based environmental groups Environmental Defense and the Natural Resources Defense Council in exchange for scrapping plans to build eight of 11 proposed coal plants.
Not everybody is convinced. RAN executive director Michael Brune is skeptical of the scheme, pointing out that TXU could easily shelve its concessions in the future. "The commitments by TXU's new owners should be binding, not voluntary, and the three Texas coal plants TXU still intends to build are three plants too many," he said.
Warning: Greenwash Ahead
The cases of TXU’s non-binding concessions in Texas, GE’s amorphous “clean coal” promises, and Neste’s palm oil strategy in South Asia illustrate a widening trend: As the climate change issue becomes mainstream, more and more companies are jumping on the public relations bandwagon. If these examples serve as models, they will try to win endorsements for agreeing to do nothing, promise things that they cannot guarantee, and take advantage of the debate to profit from environmentally unfriendly technologies.
Activists attending the Bali gathering say that the real answer to climate change will not be generated by profit-motivated corporations, but by the concrete commitments of political leaders backed by the force of law. Raman of Friends of the Earth International, puts it simply: "We need Northern countries to develop stringent policies to reduce their energy consumption and attempt to find solutions to their energy needs locally."
On the Indonesian island of Bali, thousands of senior government officials are negotiating a plan to slow global warming. The meeting, which will focus on how to limit the greenhouse gas emissions that cause climate change, will run for the first two weeks of December and include 192 countries. This year’s conclave is the 13th in a series launched by the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change that came into force in 1994.
The coal, gas and oil companies that are major producers of greenhouse gases are finally taking notice of these high-level political discussions, and many have mounted spirited public relations exercises to defend themselves, and even win endorsements of their products.
For example, the weekend before negotiations began, Neste Oil announced plans to build the world's largest bio-diesel facility a few hundred miles northeast of Bali, in the Tuas industrial zone on the island of Singapore. The Finnish company is betting that widespread concern, as well as mandatory limits on greenhouse gases generated by fossil fuels such as coal and petroleum, will increase demand for vegetable-based fuels.
Neste’s proposed $800 million plant will use palm oil, which is readily available throughout the region. The company has pledged to buy palm oil certified by the Roundtable on Sustainable Palm Oil and to use proprietary NExBTL technology that produces fuel with lifecycle greenhouse gas emissions 40 to 60 percent less than those of conventional diesel fuel.
"We have a very clear principle that we are aware of the source of all raw materials used in our biodiesel, including palm oil ... and that it is produced by sustainable methods," Neste CEO Resto Rinne told reporters, explaining that he expected this market to expand substantially. "In Europe alone, [annual] production will be well over 10 million tons by the end of the decade, and our share of this production will be some 800,000 tons."
Some environmental groups charge that Neste's claims are "greenwash": misleading public relations masking unsustainable practices. Greenpeace, for example, explains that the new plant in Singapore is likely to cause more environmental problems, not fewer, by increasing demand for new palm oil plantations that displace environmentally sensitive forests or wetland areas. In addition to destroying endangered habitats, the scheme could exacerbate global warming.
"Certification does not stop the rainforests from disappearing, for there is no doubt that the increase in demand for palm oil will lead to further destruction of rainforest. There is absolutely no way to grow enough sustainable palm oil for all the producers," said Harri Lammi, the program director for Greenpeace Finland. The week before the climate meeting got underway in Bali, his group attempted to highlight Neste's environmental record by blockading its ships in waters off of Finland.
The clash between Neste and Greenpeace highlights one of the key ideological debates over climate change: Business and politicians believe that a "technological" fix such as alternative fuels can solve the problem and also generate profits; many environmental groups believe the real solution to global warming lies in reducing consumption.
Guaranteed Markets, But Are They Guaranteed Green?
The arguments of the alternative fuel lobby are finding significant political backing. Earlier this year the European Union agreed to binding targets: By 2020, ten percent of its transportation industry’s annual 300 million ton fuel consumption must come from alternatives such as biodiesel. China has predicted that it can switch 15 percent of its transport fuel consumption to biofuels, and India has set an ambitious target of 20 percent by 2020.
Even U.S. President George Bush in his January 2007 State of the Union address pledged to “increase the supply of alternative fuels by setting a mandatory fuels standard to require 35 billion gallons of renewable and alternative fuels in 2017 -- and that is nearly five times the current target."
Palm oil is one of the three key biofuels that governments and corporations are promoting as alternatives to fossil fuels. (The others are soy and rapeseed.) An edible vegetable oil obtained from the fruit of the oil palm tree, palm oil has been used as a popular cooking oil in West Africa for centuries. In recent years, it has become a key component of processed foods ranging from KitKat candy bars to Pringles potato chips to Oreo cookies.
The biggest producers of palm oil are Indonesia and Malaysia, where the crop has been grown on plantations established by British colonists in 1917. It was first exported for use as an industrial lubricant and as a base for Sunlight and Palmolive soaps.
The new green boom in biofuels has accelerated the demand for plantations, which in turn has led to widespread forest and peatland clearing. Indeed, a 2007 United Nations Environment Program report earlier this year, found that oil palm plantations are now the leading cause of forest destruction in Indonesia and Malaysia. And more is to come: The Indonesian government wants to put 10 million hectares of land into oil palm cultivation by 2015, up from the current total of 6 million hectares. In Malaysia, palm oil producers are targeting the island province of Sarawak for major expansion.
Local groups have spoken out strongly against this new trend. Meena Raman, head of Friends of the Earth Malaysia, said "Agrofuels is a disaster in the making. Their production, development and trade largely stem from unsustainable energy demand in industrialized countries. We are strongly urging our government to reconsider its decision of turning Malaysia into a major agrofuel producing country, as it is leading to further destruction of our forests and violations of the customary rights of indigenous peoples."
A new Greenpeace report, "Cooking the Climate," points out that razing of forests to create the oil palm plantations is, in itself, a major cause of greenhouse gas emissions. The environmental organization calculates that the burning and drying of carbon-rich peatlands on the Indonesian island of Riau releases about 1.8 billion tons of greenhouse gases a year. The removal of the forests also eliminates one of the planet's crucial air-filtration systems.
A British government report estimated that clearing land for agro-fuel cultivation creates two to nine times more greenhouse gases than the cleaner-burning fuel saves.
Fossil Fuels in Green Packaging
Another company ratcheting up the green rhetoric on climate change is General Electric (GE). Its television advertisement for "clean coal" technologies portrays scantily-clad models working in a coal mine, while an announcer sums up the message: "Thanks to emissions reducing technology from GE Energy, harnessing the power of coal is looking more beautiful every day."
The ad is part of GE's "ecomagination" campaign to promote "green" products such as lower-energy houses, wind turbines, solar power and water-purification systems, as well as a range of new coal technologies.
The company has joined the U.S. Climate Action Partnership, a coalition of industry and environmental groups that claim to be concerned about global warming. "The time has come for constructive action that draws strength equally from business, government, and non-governmental stakeholders," said Jeffrey Immelt, CEO of Connecticut-based GE, in a statement timed for the day before George Bush's backing of alternative technologies.
While some of the technologies GE sells -- such as wind and solar power -- are indeed carbon neutral, others -- such as its "clean coal" integrated gasification combined-cycle coal power plants -- are questionable.
The term "clean coal" refers to a variety of new technologies under development: chemically washing the fossil fuel of minerals and impurities, burning it at higher pressure and temperature, and increasing efficiency by trapping and burning waste gases that would otherwise have escaped out the smokestack. Another "clean coal" technology is "carbon capture and sequestration," or CCS, which captures coal plant emissions before they enter the atmosphere, and stores them underground.
Many environmental activists note that these "clean coal" technologies are only marginally more efficient and far more expensive. Others, such as CCS, are still on the drawing board and may never work. (In fact, GE has yet to convince any of its clients to buy these new "clean coal" plants, according to California-based Rainforest Action Network, or RAN.)
"Why waste billions of dollars to research an uncertain technology when safer, cleaner energy solutions already exist?” asks Matt Leonard of RAN. “Even if we could capture coal's dangerous emissions, why create such massive waste streams in the first place? All fossil fuels, including coal, are running out. The longer we keep relying on them, the worse off our environment, climate, and society will be."
Immelt has admitted that the new promotion campaign was based on tapping public opinion and profits. "I can't lay claim to be a big environmentalist or nature lover here,” the GE head told NBC television this May. “I know that when society changes its mind, you'd better be in front of it, and not behind it. And this is an issue on which society has changed its mind. I came to the conclusion that technology that my company makes can help make it [the climate situation] better, and I can make money doing it, and I can do something good."
Do Nothing, Collect Praise
Other companies have managed to win environmental praise for effectively doing nothing. A case in point is the much heralded $45 billion purchase of Texas state utility TXU by private equity firm Kohlberg, Kravis and Roberts and Texas Pacific Corporation. The buyers won backing from Washington DC-based environmental groups Environmental Defense and the Natural Resources Defense Council in exchange for scrapping plans to build eight of 11 proposed coal plants.
Not everybody is convinced. RAN executive director Michael Brune is skeptical of the scheme, pointing out that TXU could easily shelve its concessions in the future. "The commitments by TXU's new owners should be binding, not voluntary, and the three Texas coal plants TXU still intends to build are three plants too many," he said.
Warning: Greenwash Ahead
The cases of TXU’s non-binding concessions in Texas, GE’s amorphous “clean coal” promises, and Neste’s palm oil strategy in South Asia illustrate a widening trend: As the climate change issue becomes mainstream, more and more companies are jumping on the public relations bandwagon. If these examples serve as models, they will try to win endorsements for agreeing to do nothing, promise things that they cannot guarantee, and take advantage of the debate to profit from environmentally unfriendly technologies.
Activists attending the Bali gathering say that the real answer to climate change will not be generated by profit-motivated corporations, but by the concrete commitments of political leaders backed by the force of law. Raman of Friends of the Earth International, puts it simply: "We need Northern countries to develop stringent policies to reduce their energy consumption and attempt to find solutions to their energy needs locally."
Friday, November 16, 2007
Aust power stations among world's worst CO2 polluters
Australia's energy industry representatives have admitted Australia does have some of the world's dirtiest power stations and is the world's worst per capita greenhouse polluter.
According to the study by the Washington-based Centre for Global Development, Australian power plants produce more carbon dioxide emissions per person each year than the United States, and almost five times as much as China.
But clean coal advocates say the Australian energy industry is working on a cleaner, greener future.
Early on Wednesday morning, 15 Greenpeace activists snuck into the Munmorah Power Station on the New South Wales central coast.
They chained themselves to the plant's coal-feeder belt. All were arrested, but they claim to have reached their objective of disrupting production at the plant.
Greenpeace says the Munmorah Station represents an old style of power production and its carbon emissions are harmful to the environment.
Greenpeace campaign director Steve Campbell says the activity is part of a fight against coal-fired electricity generation, and he has warned other electricity generators to expect similar treatment.
"Greenpeace around the world has been campaigning against coal for some time and in the last couple of years of course we've been very active to stop the opening of a coal mine in the Hunter Valley, which is Anvil Hill," he said.
"But we are also escalating our focus on coal-fired power generation because clearly this is the biggest issue for Australia in terms of our own CO2 emissions."
Bayswater and Eraring
Two other New South Wales power stations could be on their hit list. The Bayswater and Eraring plants in the Hunter Valley have been identified within a list of the top 100 greenhouse gas emitters in the world.
They are named in an international study of the world's 50,000 power stations, which ranks Australia as the world's worst greenhouse gas emitter on a per capita basis.
The study says Australian power plants produce more than 11 tonnes of carbon dioxide emissions per person each year.
By comparison, the United States comes in second at more than nine tonnes per person, while China is down the list with two tonnes per person.
Frank van Schagen is the head of the Cooperative Research Centre for Coal in Sustainable Development. He says the numbers speak for themselves.
"Australia's average efficiency for coal-fired generation is about 36 per cent in energy conversion - internationally, if you took a global average, it's about 30," he said.
"So Australia has some of the best, and it also has some of the oldest, but it doesn't have the worst, shall we say."
Each of these stations produce more than 18 million tonnes of carbon dioxide a year. The operators of the two plants declined to comment on the study.
Brown or black coal
Both the Bayswater and Eraring Plants burn black coal.
To Greens Senator Bob Brown, the whole picture of CO2 emissions from electricity production must include the impact of brown coal-fired power stations such as the Hazelwood plant in Victoria.
"It doesn't take into account the fact that some power stations are putting out two, three, four times as much as electricity as others," Senator Brown said.
"When you look at it per unit of electricity, those brown coal-burning stations in Victoria go right to the dirtiest top of the league.
"Coal itself is a huge menace in terms of greenhouse gas production going into the atmosphere and the threat that's now creating for the world's environment and economy.
"But brown coal is 30 to 50 per cent worse in greenhouse gas emissions for the amount of electricity being produced, even than black coal."
But Mr van Schagen says the future of coal-fired electricity generation is not all bleak.
He says the rapid development of clean coal technologies is making it an environmentally sustainable option.
"What we have is a legacy in Australia of a dependence on cheap coal-fired power electricity, and what's been happening over the last number of years is organisations such as mine and others around the world have been working to look at potential ways of reducing emissions from power stations," he said.
"Hence we have activities that are looking at capturing the CO2 and storing some in aquifers, so potentially reducing emissions from coal-fired power stations to, say, 10 per cent or less than they currently emit."
Federal Environment Minister Malcolm Turnbull and Labor's environment spokesman Peter Garrett were not available for comment.
Munmorah operator Delta Electricity says Greenpeace's actions have not disrupted power generation.
Thursday, November 01, 2007
Clean coal a furphy: Dr Karl
Paul Bibby, November 1, Sydney Morning Herald
Celebrity physicist Karl Kruszelnicki has described clean coal as a "complete furphy" and likened it to Nazi propaganda.
"Goebbels, the Nazi propagandist, said if you're going to tell a lie, tell a big one, and this is a beauty," Dr Kruszelnicki said today.
The scientist is running for the Senate on the Climate Change Coalition ticket.
"It is a furphy, a pork pie to cover up the fact that there is no such thing as clean coal," he said at Customs House in the Sydney CBD.
Dr Kruszelnicki used a scale model of Sydney and a $10 tent to demonstrate what he said was the "myth of carbon capture".
Sydney alone would produce a cubic kilometre of compressed carbon dioxide every day as a result of the process, far more than could possibly be stored under ground, he said.
"You can't build a box big enough to store that every day, there is nowhere big enough under ground to put it and the ocean is not an option,"
"One cubic kilometre of CO2 to get rid of every day? It's not possible! But they don't tell you that that's what they've got to get rid of. They make reassuring noises that they're spending millions looking for underground caverns. But I'm here to tell you that they're not going to find it.
"Carbon dioxide is always carbon dioxide - it isn't going anywhere. It will get back into the environment. The point is that they can only store 1000 of 1 per cent, not all of their daily output."
Dr Kruszelnicki was joined by fellow Climate Change Coalition candidates, who are seeking positions in the Senate and House of Representative seats across the country.
AAP reports: Dr Kruszelnicki said political promises including a $20 million plan for exploration of underground caverns would be a waste of taxpayer dollars.
As well, any storage facility would eventually wear down and would release the stored carbon dioxide back into the environment, he said.
His political party is recommending a 40 per cent reduction in carbon dioxide emissions by 2020 and a 70 per cent reduction by 2050.
Underground thermal energy accessed in South Australia could provide 100 per cent of Australia's baseload electricity for the next 75 years and then be supplemented by other renewables, he told reporters.
"If we tried really hard we could have all of the electricity in Australia made without carbon by 2020 using a mixture of renewable energies including hot rocks and the wind and the waves and the sun."
Dr Kruszelnicki was joined today by his running mate on the Senate ticket, Patrice Newell, a resident of the Hunter coalmining region, who challenged suggestions that the coal industry would suffer major job losses if Australia made a dramatic switch to renewable energy sources.
"I know that for a fact that they would be quite happy to have a job in the renewable industry," Ms Newell said.
"It's not that it's a commitment to a coal job, they want a commitment to a job."
Dr Kruszelnicki said Australia must decide where it wanted to focus its energy prospects for the future.
"We've got two choices in 15 to 20 years from now," he said.
"Either to make money, we sell dirt overseas, coal, or we sell the (renewable energy) technology without burning dirt."
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)
