Global Warming/Climate Change Super Thread
- Thread starter Cdn Blackshirt
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Two things that are keeping us out of Kyoto.Kirkhill said:
1 - It is pissweak. We have actually reduced the proportional amount of renewable energy we use, yet are still beating the kyoto targets we were supposed to sign on for.
2 - It is a pointless agreement without the US, China and India all signing up to a fairly stringent code.
- Reaction score
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I found the following:
Interesting...............
Power plan dooms world's poor
By LORRIE GOLDSTEIN
Environmentalists keep telling us they love humanity.
So apparently it's just people a lot of them have trouble with.
This tendency is being noted with alarm even by former environmental crusaders, as the hysteria over global warming escalates.
In the British documentary, The Great Global Warming Swindle, Patrick Moore, co-founder of Greenpeace, describes many in the environmental movement today as "anti-human", adding they tend to see people as "scum."
Moore says that's why they think "it's OK to have hundreds of millions of them go blind or die" and in particular why "the environmental movement has evolved into the strongest force there is for preventing development in the developing countries."
Paul Driessen, a former environmental campaigner and author of Eco-Imperialism: Green Power, Black Death notes in the same film: "My big concern with global warming is that the policies being pushed to supposedly prevent global warming are having a disastrous effect on the world's poorest people."
He means that if environmentalists succeed in their campaign to have developing countries abandon fossil fuels to produce electricity, and to substitute unreliable and expensive wind and solar power, it will doom the world's poorest to permanent poverty.
Without affordable, reliable electricity, human society is condemned to low productivity and to disease, famine and early death. Driessen complains global warming crusaders always talk about the speculative risks of using fossil fuels in terms of climate change, never about the known risks of not using them.
African economist James Shikwati, also featured in the film, describes First World environmentalists descending on Africa urging it not to use its coal and oil resources, as effectively counselling Africans to commit "suicide."
James Lovelock, a founder of the global green movement, criticizes selfish, ill-informed, affluent environmental radicals in his book, The Revenge of Gaia, for condemning millions of people living in the developing world to death from malaria because of their overly hysterical campaign against the pesticide DDT.
Richard Tren, director of Africa Fighting Malaria, makes the same point in "The Human Cost of the Anti-pesticide Movement" in the April edition of the Fraser Forum.
In his bestseller The Weather Makers, scientist/conservationist Tim Flannery discusses in a chapter titled "2084: The Carbon Dictatorship?" the possibility of an Earth Commission for Thermostatic Control (ECTC) one day zeroing in on the major cause of man-made global warming -- "the total number of people on the planet."
With that, he writes, the ECTC "will have transformed itself into an Orwellian-style world government with its own currency, army and control over every person and every inch of our planet." To be clear, Flannery is not advocating such a body, merely speculating on what could happen if we don't take action against man-made global warming in time.
But this idea that the major problem with the Earth's environment is that there are too many people is common in the environmental movement.
Of course, the more people you have, the more pollution there is. But that's not the issue. The issue is what do you do about it, and, as Moore, Driessen and others warn us, that's where the thinking of many environmentalists gets scary. Not because they set out to kill people, but because their low regard for humanity causes them to overlook, or to never see, the unintended consequences of their actions.
http://www.torontosun.com/News/Columnists/Goldstein_Lorrie/2007/05/10/4167971.html
Interesting...............
Power plan dooms world's poor
By LORRIE GOLDSTEIN
Environmentalists keep telling us they love humanity.
So apparently it's just people a lot of them have trouble with.
This tendency is being noted with alarm even by former environmental crusaders, as the hysteria over global warming escalates.
In the British documentary, The Great Global Warming Swindle, Patrick Moore, co-founder of Greenpeace, describes many in the environmental movement today as "anti-human", adding they tend to see people as "scum."
Moore says that's why they think "it's OK to have hundreds of millions of them go blind or die" and in particular why "the environmental movement has evolved into the strongest force there is for preventing development in the developing countries."
Paul Driessen, a former environmental campaigner and author of Eco-Imperialism: Green Power, Black Death notes in the same film: "My big concern with global warming is that the policies being pushed to supposedly prevent global warming are having a disastrous effect on the world's poorest people."
He means that if environmentalists succeed in their campaign to have developing countries abandon fossil fuels to produce electricity, and to substitute unreliable and expensive wind and solar power, it will doom the world's poorest to permanent poverty.
Without affordable, reliable electricity, human society is condemned to low productivity and to disease, famine and early death. Driessen complains global warming crusaders always talk about the speculative risks of using fossil fuels in terms of climate change, never about the known risks of not using them.
African economist James Shikwati, also featured in the film, describes First World environmentalists descending on Africa urging it not to use its coal and oil resources, as effectively counselling Africans to commit "suicide."
James Lovelock, a founder of the global green movement, criticizes selfish, ill-informed, affluent environmental radicals in his book, The Revenge of Gaia, for condemning millions of people living in the developing world to death from malaria because of their overly hysterical campaign against the pesticide DDT.
Richard Tren, director of Africa Fighting Malaria, makes the same point in "The Human Cost of the Anti-pesticide Movement" in the April edition of the Fraser Forum.
In his bestseller The Weather Makers, scientist/conservationist Tim Flannery discusses in a chapter titled "2084: The Carbon Dictatorship?" the possibility of an Earth Commission for Thermostatic Control (ECTC) one day zeroing in on the major cause of man-made global warming -- "the total number of people on the planet."
With that, he writes, the ECTC "will have transformed itself into an Orwellian-style world government with its own currency, army and control over every person and every inch of our planet." To be clear, Flannery is not advocating such a body, merely speculating on what could happen if we don't take action against man-made global warming in time.
But this idea that the major problem with the Earth's environment is that there are too many people is common in the environmental movement.
Of course, the more people you have, the more pollution there is. But that's not the issue. The issue is what do you do about it, and, as Moore, Driessen and others warn us, that's where the thinking of many environmentalists gets scary. Not because they set out to kill people, but because their low regard for humanity causes them to overlook, or to never see, the unintended consequences of their actions.
http://www.torontosun.com/News/Columnists/Goldstein_Lorrie/2007/05/10/4167971.html
- Reaction score
- 33
- Points
- 560
This may also be appropriate for the "Scary situation: no more oil" thread, but since the global warming crusaders are primarily against energy generation (i.e. what keeps us alive and with a decent standard of living), then this is also appropriate here (many embedded links in the post; link, follow and be amazed):
http://denbeste.nu/cd_log_entries/2004/06/AnewManhattanProject.shtml
http://denbeste.nu/cd_log_entries/2004/06/AnewManhattanProject.shtml
- Reaction score
- 35
- Points
- 530
My environmental plan remains:
1) Increase the price of electricity dramatically so that people have an incentive to conserve. Our current model which we have brought about ourselves as voters is that we literally subsidize our own electricity through our income taxes so that we can waste electricity at a horrid rate (running air conditioners with windows open, etc.) In short, until people pay AT LEAST the actual price of electricity, we will get zero real effort towards true conservation. Additionally, I would phase in a 15% premium on actual rates (which would bump current rates by about 30% total) with that 15% being dedicated to all green projects focused primarily on nuclear power and wind power. This will fund our ability to eliminate the coal plants in Ontario and elsewhere....
2) Build those new nuclear plants as part of an international plan to create the equivalent of a nuclear power plant assembly line. I don't care who we partner with whether it is EU or American, or somebody else, but our previous habit of spending billions on one-off designs is beyond stupid.
3) New investment for water clean-up. Specifically, a combination of low-interest loans and follow-on grants upon completion for water treatment facilities. Specifically any water we put back into rivers or our lakes should be drinkable and these lovely Ecoli blooms that we get each summer should be a thing of the past....it's just gross.
4) New air quality guidelines based specifically on airborne particulates and heavy metals, because that's the stuff that hurts people.
5) Enact new environmental trade legislation where-in tarrifs can be applied to nations whose emission impact the health of Canadians. Specifically, I'm looking at the new build Chinese coal power plants which are already putting up enough heavy metals into the air, that it's already causing smog days on the West Coast.
Getting those ducks in a row would be "Year One"....
Matthew.
1) Increase the price of electricity dramatically so that people have an incentive to conserve. Our current model which we have brought about ourselves as voters is that we literally subsidize our own electricity through our income taxes so that we can waste electricity at a horrid rate (running air conditioners with windows open, etc.) In short, until people pay AT LEAST the actual price of electricity, we will get zero real effort towards true conservation. Additionally, I would phase in a 15% premium on actual rates (which would bump current rates by about 30% total) with that 15% being dedicated to all green projects focused primarily on nuclear power and wind power. This will fund our ability to eliminate the coal plants in Ontario and elsewhere....
2) Build those new nuclear plants as part of an international plan to create the equivalent of a nuclear power plant assembly line. I don't care who we partner with whether it is EU or American, or somebody else, but our previous habit of spending billions on one-off designs is beyond stupid.
3) New investment for water clean-up. Specifically, a combination of low-interest loans and follow-on grants upon completion for water treatment facilities. Specifically any water we put back into rivers or our lakes should be drinkable and these lovely Ecoli blooms that we get each summer should be a thing of the past....it's just gross.
4) New air quality guidelines based specifically on airborne particulates and heavy metals, because that's the stuff that hurts people.
5) Enact new environmental trade legislation where-in tarrifs can be applied to nations whose emission impact the health of Canadians. Specifically, I'm looking at the new build Chinese coal power plants which are already putting up enough heavy metals into the air, that it's already causing smog days on the West Coast.
Getting those ducks in a row would be "Year One"....
Matthew.
- Reaction score
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Cdn Blackshirt said:
Matthew, I am not sure that I can agree with this point (the rest of it I can easily).
Back to TANSTAAFL. While individuals may be sheltered from the costs of providing energy, society isn't. You say yourself that the difference between what the consumer pays directly and the real cost is made up by the consumer paying indirectly through taxes. The costs are still covered. The difference is that it is society at large that bears the cost of the service with individuals paying a "nominal" user's fee.
Given that we have decided that providing energy is best handled "collectively/communally (where's that shudder emoticon when you need it?)" then we rely on politicians to make sure that the lights stay on. When they don't, we get rid of the politicians. When that doesn't work we take matters into our own hands and buy noisy, smelly gas generators at our own expense and then have to fuel and maintain them, or cut down tree lots to heat the house (that only works until you run out of trees).
In the meantime the regularly fired politicians get the message that "something must be done" in the immortal words of Mel Brooks "to protect their phoney baloney jobs". At the same time the population finds that they have been able to find a bit of extra cash for that generator and wouldn't be adverse to sending some of that money to a third party to supply the energy without all the fuss of maintaining the gear and having to worry about wind direction to avoid the smell.
Market prices for energy have already promoted conservation and alternative energy plans. Industry's interest in conservation has always been there but becomes especially acute from time to time (WW1, WW2, Arab Oil Embargo 1973....). Each time one of those events happen Industry responds by ratcheting itself up to a new efficiency standard. That is why we have gone from electric motors of 80-85% efficiency to a current standard of 95% efficiency. Industry currently is investigating new energy sources as it tries to trim costs in the face of rising energy prices. I have been involved in a few of these discussions already. The reality is that for the vast majority of industries energy is still a marginal cost, as is labour. Most projects that I have seen in my field (the food industry) the major cost drivers are: the cost of money, the cost of marketing and the cost of raw materials.
Energy impacts project profitability. It can even impact the decision to close down a facility that has paid itself off and the costs of money and marketing are no longer issues - maintenance then starts ramping up. But it is seldom the deciding factor in determining the feasibility of a project.
The projects that I have seen so far have yet to be encumbered with an energy supply cost anything close to the cost necessary to offset the capital and operating cost of investing in alternative energy sources. (Fish Oil is one that I have revisited a few times, along with biodiesel from slaughterhouse waste and I have had a chance to look at a remote Wind installation for a small community).
- Reaction score
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This in today's National Post by Lorne Gunter, commenting on the appointment of a Zimbabwean thug that can't grow corn on his previously productive purloined pharm, as the head of the UN's Council on Sustainable Development (CSD). Interesting that Mugabe has long been a Chinese client.....
China and India not signing on to Kyoto. Unsustainable Ministers of Sustainability. IPCC recommending more Nukes. Methinks the chorus needs to shout louder.
Louder Al. Louder Dave. Louder Stephane. Louder Liz. Louder Maude.......... Maybe that way you can win the argument.
China and India not signing on to Kyoto. Unsustainable Ministers of Sustainability. IPCC recommending more Nukes. Methinks the chorus needs to shout louder.
Louder Al. Louder Dave. Louder Stephane. Louder Liz. Louder Maude.......... Maybe that way you can win the argument.
- Reaction score
- 35
- Points
- 530
Kirkhill, you think electricity rates should be subsidized by our income taxes so it's cheaper to waste, and in doing so guarantee we put extra heavy metals into the air via our coal-fired plants?
In addition, do you not think we should have create an constant re-investment fund for both power generation and power transmission, rather than waiting for system failure and then having to borrow billions to after-the-fact clean it up?
Little help....
Matthew. ???
In addition, do you not think we should have create an constant re-investment fund for both power generation and power transmission, rather than waiting for system failure and then having to borrow billions to after-the-fact clean it up?
Little help....
Matthew. ???
- Reaction score
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Cdn Blackshirt said:
Oddly enough, that's exactly what is happenning here.
Since the early 1980s there has been little spending on power infrastructure here in Victoria, Australia, and it has bitten us. We now cannot cope with demand. This year a bushfire knocked out one line easement, and took 1/3 of the state's power with it.
Our state govt is in the pockets of the greens, and has refused a new electricity/synthetic fuels plant from opening, which has necesitated the continued running of the worlds dirtiest power station, Hazelwood. They will not build any more dams (necessary to take full use of wind power) either. Madness. We are now in a scramble to make up the difference via upgraded transmission, and gas turbines. Which isn't going to work. Wind is unreliable, and the last gas plant built was banned from operating between 9am and 5pm weekdays...which is when the highest demand is. The price of electricity is going to rise significantly, and system losses are going to increase, as we now have to run our lines hotter than before, just to meet demand.
- Reaction score
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Matthew, I think our electricity rates ARE subsidized by our taxes. Therefore we are either going to pay for investments in generation, transmission, distribution and emissions control (however emissions are defined) by paying higher rates or higher taxes. Rates are a directed tax or a mail paid either to the government or the supplier. We are already paying full price for the electricity.
The price of electricity doesn't have to rise. It just has to be reallocated.
If you are going to charge me directly for the full value of the service then reduce my taxes by a level commensurate with the subsidy I am already paying.
Generally I dislike handing the Government a lump sum of taxes for services in any case. I would prefer to dinged for a series of "Insurance Policies" where I know how much I am going to spend on Employment, Energy, Policing, Health, National Defence, Pensions etc. with those that are disadvantaged legitimately being individually subsidized and taxed back like all other tax payers.
The other point I was trying to make is that the current blended system of cost recovery through taxation and direct user fees is not without its feedback mechanisms. Those mechanisms have already served to induce industry to improve efficiencies. They have also served to push politicians to make changes to the supply system. Although not as efficiently as the market, the political process does produce change...eventually.
But somethings, like your heavy metal issue from burning coal, are best addressed centrally in central facilities - Beijing and Delhi currently, and most of Northern Europe in the 50s (London in particular) are great examples of the effects of individuals taking responsibility for supplying services with each household operating a number of open hearths rather than diverting the same coal to a coking plant and a generating facility.
I should have been more precise. It was the first sentence of that paragraph that I was disputing. Gut reaction to anybody telling me that prices should go up I guess.
The price of electricity doesn't have to rise. It just has to be reallocated.
If you are going to charge me directly for the full value of the service then reduce my taxes by a level commensurate with the subsidy I am already paying.
Generally I dislike handing the Government a lump sum of taxes for services in any case. I would prefer to dinged for a series of "Insurance Policies" where I know how much I am going to spend on Employment, Energy, Policing, Health, National Defence, Pensions etc. with those that are disadvantaged legitimately being individually subsidized and taxed back like all other tax payers.
The other point I was trying to make is that the current blended system of cost recovery through taxation and direct user fees is not without its feedback mechanisms. Those mechanisms have already served to induce industry to improve efficiencies. They have also served to push politicians to make changes to the supply system. Although not as efficiently as the market, the political process does produce change...eventually.
But somethings, like your heavy metal issue from burning coal, are best addressed centrally in central facilities - Beijing and Delhi currently, and most of Northern Europe in the 50s (London in particular) are great examples of the effects of individuals taking responsibility for supplying services with each household operating a number of open hearths rather than diverting the same coal to a coking plant and a generating facility.
I should have been more precise. It was the first sentence of that paragraph that I was disputing. Gut reaction to anybody telling me that prices should go up I guess.
- Reaction score
- 35
- Points
- 530
Kirkhill said:
In case, you missed it, my whole point was that they shouldn't be.....(Just read your last line, I think we're on the same page) :warstory:
This goes without saying.
Generally I dislike handing the Government a lump sum of taxes for services in any case. I would prefer to dinged for a series of "Insurance Policies" where I know how much I am going to spend on Employment, Energy, Policing, Health, National Defence, Pensions etc. with those that are disadvantaged legitimately being individually subsidized and taxed back like all other tax payers.
The other point I was trying to make is that the current blended system of cost recovery through taxation and direct user fees is not without its feedback mechanisms. Those mechanisms have already served to induce industry to improve efficiencies. They have also served to push politicians to make changes to the supply system. Although not as efficiently as the market, the political process does produce change...eventually.
But somethings, like your heavy metal issue from burning coal, are best addressed centrally in central facilities - Beijing and Delhi currently, and most of Northern Europe in the 50s (London in particular) are great examples of the effects of individuals taking responsibility for supplying services with each household operating a number of open hearths rather than diverting the same coal to a coking plant and a generating facility.
I should have been more precise. It was the first sentence of that paragraph that I was disputing. Gut reaction to anybody telling me that prices should go up I guess.
See if the prices went up for a "pay-as-you-go" model, and we kept your taxation at the same level, that would be gouging, and I'm not into that either....unless it's for debt reduction, but that's a debate for another thread (I'm a believer that Canada should have zero debt).
Matthew. ;D
- Reaction score
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Generation is certainly subsidized in Ontario.
The government of Ontario had to assume about $9 billion in Ontario Power Generation debt within the last 7 years because it was about to go bankrupt because the "company" had to pay real costs, but were legislated not to raise rates to consumers.
Matthew. ???
The government of Ontario had to assume about $9 billion in Ontario Power Generation debt within the last 7 years because it was about to go bankrupt because the "company" had to pay real costs, but were legislated not to raise rates to consumers.
Matthew. ???
- Reaction score
- 33
- Points
- 560
Cdn Blackshirt said:
They still do, and so the Ontario taxpayer pays peak rates for electricity generated by American coal fired generators. The irony of it all is quite amazing (anti Americans who want to end coal fired generation in Ontario paying Americans for coal fired electricity.....); and if carried out for much longer will probably spark the greatest financial disaster in Canadian history (Sorry Mr McGuinty, but these Government of Ontario Bonds just are not AAA grade anymore.....)
- Reaction score
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- Points
- 210
well at least the solar farm Ontario wants to build will power 2000-3000 houses EVERY SINGLE DAY!!!!
global warming is finally on the ropes
global warming is finally on the ropes
- Reaction score
- 33
- Points
- 560
FascistLibertarian said:well at least the solar farm Ontario wants to build will power 2000-3000 houses EVERY SINGLE DAY!!!!
global warming is finally on the ropes
And how will that small village be powered EVERY SINGLE NIGHT, on cloudy days, when it rains or snows? :
: :At the very minimum, there will need to be some sort of fossil fuel generator on permanent stand by to take up the slack when clouds roll in, or the grid will become unbalanced, with unpleasant knock off effects.
If we are serious about energy efficiency, we need to invest in technologies which wring the most out of every unit of fuel. Solid Oxide Fuel Cells consume hydrocarbons with 40-50% efficiency, and generate enough waste heat to serve as boilers for steam turbines or heat sources for gas turbines; combined cycles like that can get up to 70% efficiency from the fuel vs @ 30-40% for gas or steam turbines. Of course there is a LOT of energy loss in the transmission system, and further losses converting electricity into light and power in the homes and industries downstream.
Systems like that on the upstream side and high efficiencies in the transmission leg will provide equal or greater amounts of electricity with lower fuel inputs, and put a dent in real pollution like Ozone, Sulphur Oxides, Nitrous Oxides and so on.
Putting a dent in Global Warming will require adjusting the output of the Sun, a somewhat more ambitious project. Some evidence exists to suggest cloud formation is driven by the production of cosmic rays, which are a result of violent astrophysical process in the Galaxy. Controlling Supernovas and the accretion disks of Black Holes is certainly going to be a formidable task in the near term..........
- Reaction score
- 3
- Points
- 430
http://tinyurl.com/2pblgh
Canada should seize challenge of clean coal
NEIL REYNOLDS
From Wednesday's Globe and Mail
May 16, 2007 at 5:56 AM EDT
OTTAWA — In basic ways, Alex Fassbender's breakthrough in clean-coal technology retains James Watt's methodology from the 18th century. You pulverize coal into particles as fine as talcum powder, then burn it in a furnace surrounded by pipes filled with water. You direct the steam into turbines that spin to produce electricity. In other basic ways, though, it is very different. For one thing, there's no smokestack.
Mr. Fassbender is the American engineer whose invention - as tested last year in the federal government's energy labs in Ottawa - delivered clean electricity at a lower cost than the inventor himself had expected. Code-named TIPS (Thermo-energy Integrated Power System), the technology strips coal of its pollutants and captures its carbon emissions in power plants a 10th the size of conventional plants.
In his assessment of the technology, federal research scientist Bruce Clements described it as potentially the most competitive source of electricity - in cents per kilowatt-hour - in the world. A TIPS-based demo plant, he calculated, could produce zero-pollution, carbon-captured electricity for 8 cents a kilowatt-hour. In regular commercial operation, the cost would fall significantly. (The 2006 retail cost of electricity in Ontario ranged from a subsidized 5.8 cents per kilowatt-hour to 9.7 cents; the 2006 national average retail cost in the United States was 9.8 cents U.S.). By these calculations, the world's most abundant fossil fuel could supply clean, green electricity at the world's most economical prices.
Mr. Fassbender says the downsizing of power plants would enable them to fit comfortably into large cities, close to consumers - any place served by a railway line for the delivery of coal. "A conventional 500-megawatt plant has to be built in the hinterland," he says. "You lose 4 per cent of your electricity from the transmission lines." With an urban coal-fired plant, the captured greenhouse gases would be moved to storage sites either as a compressed liquid or as a compressed gas.
Indeed, everything in the TIPS process is compressed. You begin with a separate tank that fits alongside the furnace. You fill this tank with atmospheric air and put it under pressure -- 1,250 pounds per square inch. You separate the oxygen in the air from the nitrogen, and direct pure oxygen to the furnace to drive the combustion. Then you burn the coal under pressure -- again, 1,250 psi. You subject the steam itself to higher pressures -- from 2,500 psi to 3,700 psi. At the end of the combustion cycle, you have nothing left in the furnace except ash, used commercially in the making of concrete.
You capture the pollutants (sulphur oxides, nitrogen oxides, mercury, particulate matter) from the hot exhaust fumes that exit the furnace. When you pass these fumes through a condensing heat exchanger, you get very hot water. At 400 degrees Fahrenheit, this water becomes a significant energy source all on its own. "This is what the [high] pressure buys you," Mr. Fassbender says. "It means that the pressure pays for itself."
When the exhaust fumes release the water, they release the pollutants, which are easily separated and packaged for commercial use. You direct some of the carbon dioxide back to the furnace to exploit the residual energy in it. You cool the rest - still under high pressure -- to 87 degrees Fahrenheit, at which point it turns into a compressed liquid, ready for underground storage.
Clean-coal furnaces have existed in various forms for a decade or more, some more effective than others. In primitive form, chemical "scrubbers" captured pollutants as they vented from smokestacks. In advanced form, the furnace converts the coal into a synthetic gas from which pollutants are extracted before they reach the chimney. IGCC (Integrated Gasification Combined Cycle) plants, though, do not capture CO{-2} emissions. "They can be made to capture CO{-2} emissions," Mr. Fassbender says, "only by turning them into chemical factories." And they are expensive to build, costly to operate.
Canada and the United States have coal reserves that will last for hundreds of years.
Coal is thus an inherently sustainable, relatively inexpensive source of primary energy. The TIPS technology remains theoretical. It needs a real-life test. As a research partner, Canada is well placed to fund the demo TIPS plant - and help to rescue for future generations the most democratic of the fossil fuels.
Canada should seize challenge of clean coal
NEIL REYNOLDS
From Wednesday's Globe and Mail
May 16, 2007 at 5:56 AM EDT
OTTAWA — In basic ways, Alex Fassbender's breakthrough in clean-coal technology retains James Watt's methodology from the 18th century. You pulverize coal into particles as fine as talcum powder, then burn it in a furnace surrounded by pipes filled with water. You direct the steam into turbines that spin to produce electricity. In other basic ways, though, it is very different. For one thing, there's no smokestack.
Mr. Fassbender is the American engineer whose invention - as tested last year in the federal government's energy labs in Ottawa - delivered clean electricity at a lower cost than the inventor himself had expected. Code-named TIPS (Thermo-energy Integrated Power System), the technology strips coal of its pollutants and captures its carbon emissions in power plants a 10th the size of conventional plants.
In his assessment of the technology, federal research scientist Bruce Clements described it as potentially the most competitive source of electricity - in cents per kilowatt-hour - in the world. A TIPS-based demo plant, he calculated, could produce zero-pollution, carbon-captured electricity for 8 cents a kilowatt-hour. In regular commercial operation, the cost would fall significantly. (The 2006 retail cost of electricity in Ontario ranged from a subsidized 5.8 cents per kilowatt-hour to 9.7 cents; the 2006 national average retail cost in the United States was 9.8 cents U.S.). By these calculations, the world's most abundant fossil fuel could supply clean, green electricity at the world's most economical prices.
Mr. Fassbender says the downsizing of power plants would enable them to fit comfortably into large cities, close to consumers - any place served by a railway line for the delivery of coal. "A conventional 500-megawatt plant has to be built in the hinterland," he says. "You lose 4 per cent of your electricity from the transmission lines." With an urban coal-fired plant, the captured greenhouse gases would be moved to storage sites either as a compressed liquid or as a compressed gas.
Indeed, everything in the TIPS process is compressed. You begin with a separate tank that fits alongside the furnace. You fill this tank with atmospheric air and put it under pressure -- 1,250 pounds per square inch. You separate the oxygen in the air from the nitrogen, and direct pure oxygen to the furnace to drive the combustion. Then you burn the coal under pressure -- again, 1,250 psi. You subject the steam itself to higher pressures -- from 2,500 psi to 3,700 psi. At the end of the combustion cycle, you have nothing left in the furnace except ash, used commercially in the making of concrete.
You capture the pollutants (sulphur oxides, nitrogen oxides, mercury, particulate matter) from the hot exhaust fumes that exit the furnace. When you pass these fumes through a condensing heat exchanger, you get very hot water. At 400 degrees Fahrenheit, this water becomes a significant energy source all on its own. "This is what the [high] pressure buys you," Mr. Fassbender says. "It means that the pressure pays for itself."
When the exhaust fumes release the water, they release the pollutants, which are easily separated and packaged for commercial use. You direct some of the carbon dioxide back to the furnace to exploit the residual energy in it. You cool the rest - still under high pressure -- to 87 degrees Fahrenheit, at which point it turns into a compressed liquid, ready for underground storage.
Clean-coal furnaces have existed in various forms for a decade or more, some more effective than others. In primitive form, chemical "scrubbers" captured pollutants as they vented from smokestacks. In advanced form, the furnace converts the coal into a synthetic gas from which pollutants are extracted before they reach the chimney. IGCC (Integrated Gasification Combined Cycle) plants, though, do not capture CO{-2} emissions. "They can be made to capture CO{-2} emissions," Mr. Fassbender says, "only by turning them into chemical factories." And they are expensive to build, costly to operate.
Canada and the United States have coal reserves that will last for hundreds of years.
Coal is thus an inherently sustainable, relatively inexpensive source of primary energy. The TIPS technology remains theoretical. It needs a real-life test. As a research partner, Canada is well placed to fund the demo TIPS plant - and help to rescue for future generations the most democratic of the fossil fuels.
- Reaction score
- 1,304
- Points
- 1,040
We could do what the "Monolith Aliens" did in 2061: Final Odyssey. Make a bunch of monoliths that "shade" the Earth from the Sun! Of course, only Lucifer was effectively blocked, though the sun did "flicker" momentarily, according to some.a_majoor said:
;D
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