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The Bullroarer - Tuesday 6th May 2008
Posted by Phil Hart on May 5, 2008 - 6:39pm in The Oil Drum: Australia/New Zealand
The Age: Greenpeace rejects 'clean coal'
CLEAN coal technology has been labelled a "scam" by Greenpeace, which says it cannot possibly be ready in time to prevent dangerous climate change. The Greenpeace report False Hope said that Carbon Capture and Storage (CCS) technology would not be ready on a commercial scale until 2030 at the earliest. "If CCS is ever able to deliver at all, it will be too little, too late," the report concluded.
Sydney Morning Herald: Burying coal fumes a 'smokescreen'
Contrast The Age & SMH coverage with this from The Australian:
The Australian: Greenies deny the reality
ENVIRONMENTAL fundamentalists such as Greenpeace attacking low-carbon technology as pie in the sky are missing the basic point that much of the science is already in place.
The Age: A better connected city
IF MELBOURNE 2030 provided a road map for the city's transport future, then five years into the journey we already appear to be lost. The trouble is that the map no longer matches the landscape.
ABC: Rescue package for rail grain transport
The New South Wales Government says an agreement has been reached to secure the future of rail grain transport in rural NSW. For the past couple of months, farmers across the state have faced an uncertainty over whether the next harvest would reach the export market after Pacific National's decision to stop transporting grain.
What will the Victorian Government do with it's grain harvest?
The Australian: Rates, petrol hurting services sector
HIGH interest rates and the soaring cost of fuel caused the Australian services industry to contract in April, a survey says.
Scoop NZ: City transport Plan built on fantasy, not fact
The just released draft transport Plan for Wellington City is based on fantasy, not fact says Wellington City Councillor and Greens' spokesperson Iona Pannett.
The draft Ngauranga to Airport Corridor Plan has been released ahead of deliberation this week by Wellington City Council and Greater Wellington Regional Council. The Plan can be found on the City Council's website (link below).
"The Plan ignores Wellingtonians' huge support for more public transport, their opposition to new tunnels and Wellington City's commitment to carbon neutrality," said Cr Pannett. "Instead, it includes a commitment to two new tunnels in the long term, a flyover by the Basin Reserve in the short term and it dismisses the possibility of reducing greenhouse gas emissions through better public transport.
Stuff.co.nz: Tunnels on hold as transport plans cut
A $96 million transport plan for central Wellington puts controversial new tunnels on the backburner, and does little to curb severe congestion or emissions.
However, the plan's authors say the projects - including a $33million Basin Reserve flyover - are required to prevent total gridlock within 10 years.
ABC: Conservation group want Budget changes to fuel subsidy
The Australian Conservation Foundation (ACF) wants mining and transport companies excluded from getting fuel subsidies in next week's Federal Budget. The ACF estimates mining companies like BHP Billiton are benefiting by up to $138 million a year in subsidised fuel through the fuel tax credits scheme.
Stuff.co.nz: Transport giants look to switch freight to rail
Transport operators are hopeful of shifting more freight from road to rail after the Government's $665 million deal to buy Toll NZ's rail and ferry business.
NZ Herald: Petrol price probe to await Australian studies
More work is needed before petrol companies will face any tougher probes into how they set prices, Commerce Minister Lianne Dalziel said.
Speaking after a meeting with the Automobile Association yesterday, Ms Dalziel said she had asked officials to report on whether a price warning system requiring oil companies to tell consumers their petrol prices a day in advance could work in New Zealand.
Scopical: Iemma 'flying blind' over energy privatisation anger
Unions and party delegates are furious at New South Wales Premier Morris Iemma's decision to defy their vote on energy privatisation.
The party at the weekend held it's policy conference and debate in Sydney, with officials and unions voting down the Premier's plans to privatise areas of the energy sector by 7 to 1.
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Pffft. CCS is a crock. Tony Maher's just supporting it because unions are clueless about this stuff. They aim to keep union members in the exact same jobs they're in today, forever. As though construction workers building coal-fired stations would be worse off if they had to build wind turbines instead... No bloody imagination. But that's the Australian way. "New! Different! Will make us heaps of money! Bugger that, let's just keep digging stuff up."
It is interesting that the CCS idea is getting some exposure. There is no doubt that overall it is at best problematic. What concerns me as a geologist is that a great deal is being made of the one component that will probably work OK at moderate scales atleast; ie the injection of CO2 into depleted gas/oil reservoirs. Variously volatile hyrocarbons have been trapped in some formations for tens of millions of years-sometimes hundreds of milloins. Why spend so much effort to prove the strongest link in the chain, when many very weak links exist? Could it be to get a feel-good positive result so that it can be said ' we are making progress!" I would have to say, though, that the scale of sequesteration required makes application highly improbable, although technicaly feasible.
Wait until the spotlight goes onto the other parts of the putative system.
I'm as dubious about CCS as anyone, but I figure enhanced oil recovery is probably feasible at some scale - but not enough to capture all our coal emissions.
People who have some imagination try and do something useful with the carbon, like these guys, which I'm more inclined to encourage :
http://www.ecogeek.org/content/view/1586/81/
But on the whole we're better off biting the bullet and shifting to clean energy sources - we'll have to do it one day, so why not now ?
Yes.
About the only time CCS will be more economic than clean energy sources is when it is combined with enhanced oil recovery, which partially defeats the purpose.
The clever Norwegians found a way to make Carbon Capture and Sequestration and Enhanced Oil Recovery a win/win/win. The Government reduced the tax rate on the additional oil production that was achieved through EOR as long as the CO2 was sequestered. So the oil companies had a monetary incentive to capture and inject CO2, and in turn they made a (smaller) profit producing oil which would not otherwise have been produced. The Government wins because they get oil tax revenue they would not otherwise have got, and the environment won as well (assuming more CO2 was sequestered than the amount generated with the burning of the extra oil, which I believe is the case?).
So the oil companies clamour for Government support for CCS, but any reasonably economic analysis suggests that it would only be applied in conjunction with EOR. So the oil companies see a future where they can earn income disposing of somebody else's CO2 and producing extra oil which they can sell. That's why oil companies are prominently talking up the potential of CCS, when they otherwise don't give a rats about the fortunes of coal companies.
Of course, the number of locations where CCS and EOR can work happily together is pretty limited when we're looking at the global CO2 scale, so we're back to choosing clean energy sources in almost all cases..
Some more GeoDynamics PR :
http://www.abc.net.au/news/stories/2008/05/05/2235069.htm
http://biopol.free.fr/?p=46
A Possible Snag in Burying CO2
By Richard A. Kerr
ScienceNOW (subscription needed)
28 June 2006
Scientists testing the deep geologic disposal of the greenhouse gas carbon dioxide are finding that it's staying where they put it, but it's chewing up minerals. The reactions have produced a nasty mix of metals and organic substances in a layer of sandstone 1550 meters down, researchers report this week in Geology. At the same time, the CO2 is dissolving a surprising amount of the mineral that helps keep the gas where it's put. Nothing is leaking out so far, but the phenomenon will need a closer look before such carbon sequestration can help ameliorate the greenhouse problem, say the researchers.
Drillers often inject CO2 into the ground to drive more oil out, but researchers conducting the U.S. Department of Energy-sponsored Frio Brine Pilot Experiment northeast of Houston, Texas, pumped 1600 tons of CO2 into the Frio Formation to see where the gas went and what it did. "We're the first looking in this huge detail so that we can see what's going on," says geochemist and lead study author Yousif Kharaka of the U.S. Geological Survey in Menlo Park, California. He and colleagues found that the CO2 dropped the pH of the formation's brine from a near-neutral 6.5 to 3.0, about as acid as vinegar. That change in turn dissolved "many, many minerals," says Kharaka, releasing metals such as iron and manganese.
[snip]
Perhaps more troubling, says Kharaka, is that the acid mix could attack carbonate in the cement seals plugging abandoned oil or gas wells, 2.5 million of which pepper the United States. The lesson is that "whatever we do [with CO2], there are environmental implications that we have to deal with," he says. Geologist Julio Friedmann of Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory is less concerned about corrosion eating away the seals on a sequestration site. "The crust of Earth is well configured to contain CO2," he says. He points to 80 U.S. oil fields injected with CO2 for up to 30 years. "We've seen no catastrophic failures." Nevertheless, the Frio results do "suggest an aspect of risk we hadn't considered before," says Friedmann. There is a "new potential risk should CO2 leak into shallow aquifers."
Frio Brine Project
Web abstract of results at 20 days.
Cross posted to Kiashus blog
Interesting stuff.
However, most CO2 injection efforts thus far have been directed to enhanced oil recovery and coal seam methane. So while the effects on brine formation are very important, they don't represent the bulk of what we're likely to see in future if the whole CCS thing takes off, which is simply to boost production of oil and gas.
As I read it, CCS is just a scam where the coal, oil and gas companies get the taxpayer to pay for them to get out more oil and gas - and then charge us for the oil and gas for good measure.
Notice under CCS bad stuff is supposed to want to stay down a hole but with geothermal good things supposedly want to come out. I say give them both all the help they want for 5 years then pull the plug.
I suspect that the good people of Innamincka may not have their 'free' electricity this time next year. For a small plant Geodynamics could go for low pressure steam fed by artesian bores rather than closed loop Kalina cycle. Give them another year or two then a couple more. After that nothing. Same goes for the CCS projects.
Also in SA I see Premier Rann is hedging his bets by setting up a 500 ha industrial estate at Point Bonython near Whyalla. It seems to cover all bases ... desal, solar baseload, LNG, metals, mining supply.
Boof - GeoDynamics isn't stuffing anything down the hole except for water - and they want that to come back up again.
If they are asking for taxpayers handouts (and I haven't seen any reports of this - I have seen them raise plenty of money from the capital markets though) then your other comment would make sense - but as it is what are you suggesting is withheld from them in a year or two ?
You seem to have an irrational dislike of geothermal power.
I agree HFR isn't proven yet - but it doesn't have any meaningful downside that I'm aware of if it can be made to work...
I'll reiterate some points that have been made before. Firstly HFR has less than half the temperature difference (say 200K) of other thermal plant hence lower Carnot efficiency. The rock cools so new holes and fracture zones have to be made within piping distance of the generator. So far the world has only a handful of working Kalina plants. Drilling a 4km deep hole in sandstone then granite must create an energy debt of hundreds of megawatt hours. Repeat every year or two. There is little control over lateral water flows which could be too big or too small, and I suggest plastic creep will be a factor. The mean non-volcanic convective heat gradient from the Earth's core is something like 0.2 w/m2 as opposed to 1000 w/m2 radiant for desert noon sun. The steam contains some radon from radioactive decay which is hazardous if inhaled. Away from the Artesian Basin top-up water will be at a premium.
Therefore I'm calling it a pipe dream both literally and metaphorically. OTOH I believe coupled wind and pumped hydro could make a true renewable baseload system, albeit limited.
As yet all of your objections are just as speculative as the hopes of the promoters - I haven't seen anything showing that a system of maybe 10 drill holes within a reasonable distance of one another can't be reused and form the basis of a continuously operating plant...
Does anybody know what impact the problems in Myanmar will have on us? Burma is one of our major oil suppliers. Some Aussie companies are working in that area.
It looks like they have 80,000 or more dead.
Fuck the oil.
Will all due respect to those who have died in this tragedy, have you got a reference for Australian oil import sources ?
I wasn't aware we took any crude from Myanmar...
Look at your own website, mate :) According to aeldric..., if they send us any fossil fuels, it's not worth mentioning.
For some reason he gives the numbers in megalitres. Lowest (11th) is the Phillipenes giving us 39Mlt = 245,000bbl. So it'd have to be lower than that, if not zero.
According to DFAT, two-way trade between Australia and Burma is about $40 million annually; basically we send them wheat and they send us fish. DFAT doesn't even bother listing trade with Burma in its monthly trade report, sticking to the >$1 billion countries.
I wouldn't care if they supplied half our oil, though. Tens of thousands have died, that's all that matters.
See - that post didn't have a number - no wonder I was ignorant :-)
But I should have remembered it - I'll blame the effect of scanning hundreds of articles every week - only the *really* weird stuff sticks now...