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from the my-solar-panels-are-covered-in-soot dept.
Ken_g6 writes:
Wired today reports on continued coal use around the world and efforts to promote carbon capture and storage (CCS).
Today coal produces more than 40 percent of the world's electricity, a foundation of modern life. And that percentage is going up: In the past decade, coal added more to the global energy supply than any other source. Nowhere is the pre-eminence of coal more apparent than in the planet's fastest-growing, most populous region: Asia, especially China.
Many energy and climate researchers believe that CCS is vital to avoiding a climate catastrophe. Because it could allow the globe to keep burning its most abundant fuel source while drastically reducing carbon dioxide and soot, it may be more important - though much less publicized - than any renewable-energy technology for decades to come. No less than Steven Chu, the Nobel-winning physicist who was US secretary of energy until last year, has declared CCS essential. "I don't see how we go forward without it," he says.
Meanwhile, Goldman Sachs projects that solar power will be cost-competitive with other electricity sources in the US by 2033. So will we build more coal plants or tear them down?
(Score: 3, Interesting) by geb on Thursday March 27 2014, @11:46AM
Kentucky has several groups working on the use of algae farms as carbon capture systems. The systems require vast arrays glass pipes exposed to sunlight so that the algae have enough energy to grow and absorb CO2.
They are quite seriously attempting to build coal-fired solar power plants.
The motivation for this is explicitly not to close the loop. The algae is treated as a waste product, sold as biofuel feedstock so that the carbon ends up in the atmosphere anyway. In the meantime, the power plant still keeps buying coal.
I find it hard to imagine a society so hopelessly addicted to coal that this seems like a good idea.
(Score: 1) by mascot on Thursday March 27 2014, @11:55AM
Actually I think this is not a terrible idea.
CO2 enrichment is the key to raising yields in algae biofuels so the first algae biofuel projects are built near fossil fuel plants so they can use the C02.
The C02 does end up in the atmosphere anyway but its better to get energy out of oxidising carbon twice rather than once no?
What we need is a hefty tax on the extraction of fossil fuels (rather than crazy subsidies). Trying to tax carbon and measure emissions is a buerocratic mess. Trying to craft individual subsidies and grants for each renewable technology is even worse. Easier by far to tax fossil fuel extraction because its hard to dodge, easy to measure and simple to administer.
Maybe we could offer a rebate to petrochemical companies.
(Score: 2) by geb on Thursday March 27 2014, @01:35PM
The technology by itself is interesting, and could be used in sensible ways.
My objection to it is that it was quite nakedly being used to support the continued use of coal, while appearing vaguely environmentally sound. It would be much better used as a closed loop, incinerating dried algae for power, rather than greenwashing coal and hiding the emissions elsewhere.
(Score: 3, Informative) by wantkitteh on Thursday March 27 2014, @12:15PM
Altering the energy generation, distribution and application processes of a long-established global society is possibly the toughest engineering, social, political and scientific upheaval the human race has ever considered self-imposing. It's not that we're addicted to coal, we're just resistant to change and I'm not at all surprised how long the argument for doing this has gone on for.
The biggest head-scratcher is how to power our transportation infrastructure. That's a hell of a lot of portable energy to find new sources for. The maths I've seen from several sources on opposing sides agree that nuclear and renewables cannot power everything without burning through all the known and proven exploitable nuclear fuel in a few decades. You can't mass-motivate people to change through fear alone, you need an achievable golden future to point to before they'll get off their arses and open their wallets.
(Score: 1) by mascot on Thursday March 27 2014, @01:11PM
The maths I've seen from several sources on opposing sides agree that nuclear and renewables cannot power everything without burning through all the known and proven exploitable nuclear fuel in a few decades.
Citation needed
If we want to it is possible to power our current energy consumption from nuclear power alone for several hundred years.
David MacKay estimates http://www.withouthotair.com/c24/page_161.shtml/ [withouthotair.com] that known uranium reserves could provide over 1000 years;
0.55 kWh per day per person using once-through reactors
33 kWh per day per person using fast-breeder reactors
420 kWh per day per person using fast-breeder reactors and oceanic uranium extraction. This is more than current consumption.
This is before counting Thorium or renewables.
It's not impossible!
(Score: 2) by wantkitteh on Thursday March 27 2014, @02:01PM
That link 404s, but never mind. Thinking back, the article I was paraphrasing was written by a douchebag on The Register and is one of the reasons I stopped reading it, so I really shouldn't have said that. So, time for some bag-of-an-envelope maths with hastily procured and unverified figures! Yay Internet! (NB: I'm not anti-nuclear power, I'm most definitely pro nuclear with a mix of renewables and a tail-off for fossils as the technology and usage patterns improve.)
Starting with: http://data.worldbank.org/indicator/EG.USE.ELEC.KH .PC [worldbank.org]
Using these figures to calculate per head electricity consumption in KWh/day:
US = 36.29 kwh/day
UK = 15.11 kwh/day
That's without factoring in replacement of petroleum and natural gas with their nuclear-powered equivalents (if they exist/are viable), and assuming we can replace solid fuel use with renewable clean wood burners. Bad assumptions, hate them!
Let's move on to these:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gasoline_gallon_equiv alent [wikipedia.org]e l_Economy [wikipedia.org]
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Corporate_Average_Fu
(God, Wikipedia, I feel dirty already)
Using these figure for gasoline gallon equivalency, using the base figure in US gallons of 33.41kwh/gal, and (kinda randomly) assuming the mid-size vehicle CAFE 2020 target figure of 42.5mpg works out... yeah, it's lunch time, and I can't be that bothered ;)
That works out to an ambitious-seeming equivalent of 1.272 Miles / kWh for personal transport.
I don't have time to figure out how to factor transport of food and other shop-purchased goods into this personal allowance, so please post a working link to that article. I'd love to read it but it seems hopelessly optimistic to me right now.
Thus we see a perfect example of the problems facing the human race - even people who sit down and work out the math will never agree on a course of action. Curse those statistics...
(Score: 1) by atan on Thursday March 27 2014, @02:44PM
Fixed link: http://www.withouthotair.com/c24/page_161.shtml [withouthotair.com]
(Score: 2) by wantkitteh on Thursday March 27 2014, @03:43PM
Hmm, it's somewhat ambiguous there, it doesn't state whether what that 16kg of fossil fuels includes indirectly consumed energy for manufacturing and transport of consumed goods. Does that text go into that figure anywhere?
Also, from the next page:
"...no-one has yet demonstrated uranium-extraction from seawater on an industrial scale"
If no-one figures that technology out and industrial/transport energy use isn't included in the calculations, those uranium lifetime calculations are meaningless.
The figures he uses are crap too. The personal allowance calculations are also based on a planetary human population of 6 billion, not 7.1, so the actual figure for breeder reactors and ground uranium is more like 27.9khw/d per human and dropping on a daily basis. Let's not murky the waters further by uttering the words "energy poverty" either, this really isn't the place to open that can of worms.
I still can't find that article asserting the decades-long lifespan of the uranium supply given certain usage cases, it's bugging me now. I remember it was published on The Register a few years, but that's all. I think it may have been from a UK-only standpoint now I think about it, I'd love to run the figures by you. Kerr!
(Score: 2) by geb on Thursday March 27 2014, @01:30PM
"The maths I've seen from several sources on opposing sides agree that nuclear and renewables cannot power everything without burning through all the known and proven exploitable nuclear fuel in a few decades."
You make it sound as though renewables are fundamentally useless without nuclear to back them up.
If we chose to build enough infrastructure to capture it, there's enough sunlight and wind to meet our current energy needs thousands of times over. We're not going to run out of places to put solar panels or turbines.
It's not a question of whether renewable energy is available, it's a matter of how much to spend in capturing it for use.