Friday, June 30, 2017

U.S. "Clean Coal" Flagship Project Killed - Instead will burn Natural Gas

This is the end of the effort at "clean coal", at least in the short term. Billions in cost overruns in an effort to get CO2 recapture (carbon capture and sequestration - CCS) to work. Reports from the MIT Technology Review and, originator of the story, the NY Times.

It costs much, much less ,and creates less CO2, if the project ... just keeps burning natural gas!

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Update, July 2017 -- I just heard a podcast interview with Mark Jacobson of Stanford, one of the authors of a much-discussed 100% renewables scenario paper. His comment on CCS:

1. Takes 25% more energy to run the CCS project, so you burn a lot more coal than a normal project.
2. 1/3 of the pollution and CO2 associated with coal is "upstream" - mining, transport. That remains despite CCS. In fact, it increases by 25% since you need more coal!
3. CCS does not reduce the OTHER, awful pollutants associated with coal, which do not exist with renewables.

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