Michele Kearney's Nuclear Wire: Carbon capture and storage

Showing posts with label Carbon capture and storage. Show all posts

Wednesday, December 1, 2010

The Energy Race: China Has Sputnik, We've Got No Apollo - Reaction to Secretary Chu's recent speech

China and the U.S. may not be destined for happy carbon-beating agreements at this year’s UN climate change meeting, which is going down now in Cancun, Mexico. But the country’s lone efforts to clean up its act are turning the U.S.’s old environmental scapegoat into its Sputnik.
That is, it’s lighting a fire under our economically-depressed and environmentally-unsound butts, or it should be. Thomas Friedman has made the Sputnik analogy before and in a recent speech at the National Press Club, U.S. Energy Secretary Steven Chu picked it up.
To up the ante, and prepare for a future when carbon emissions are not just bad but taxed, the U.S. needs more and better energy technology research, he said. “The 2010 federal budget is $3.6 trillion, of which 0.14 percent went for research and development related to energy,” he said. Our energy R&D spending peaked in 1979.
He went on, says the Times

In 1998, he said, the American share of worldwide high-tech exports was nearly 25 percent and China’s was less than 10 percent; by 2008, he said, China’s share was 20 percent and the American share was less than 15 percent…. In 2009, for the first time, a majority of United States patents were issued to foreigners, he said, and two Chinese universities, Tsinghua and Peking, are “the two largest suppliers of students who receive Ph.D.’s in the United States.”

Here’s the speech: Go to link and vido

Secretary Chu laid out the numerous technology fronts on which the United States must innovate or lose. Among them: high voltage transmission, which is more efficient and can carry much more power over longer distances, high speed rail, an area in which China currently rules, advanced coal tech, like low-emission and efficient Integrated Gasification Combined Cycle (IGCC) plants as well as that controversial “clean coal” Carbon Capture and Storage (CCS), nuclear power, alternative energy vehicles (China wants to produce 5 million new energy vehicles and 15 million fuel-efficient conventional vehicles by 2020), renewable energy (they just became the world’s most attractive country for it for the first time), and supercomputing, in which China’s Dawning Nebulae recently became boss.
In other words, we need to build an Apollo – except instead of going to the Moon we need to make a better Earth.
Sure, you can use that tag line, Mr. President. I know you’re not going to, but you can.
http://motherboard.tv/2010/12/1/the-energy-race-china-has-sputnik-we-ve-got-no-apollo

Monday, November 29, 2010

The arithmetic adds up to nuclear

Yesterday, The Australian newspaper published an Op Ed piece by Nicholson, Biegler & Brook, entitled Emission reductions are not blowin’ in the wind, which discusses our recent paper in Energy. The print (dead tree) version of the article even had the graph shown here included! However, the editor had to cut down our original version to <1,000 words due to space constraints. As such, I thought BNC readers might be interested in reading the original 1,211 word submitted version, which I reproduce below.
In the next post, I’ll look at some other media reactions to our paper and press release.
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The Arithmetic adds up to Nuclear
By Martin Nicholson, Tom Biegler and Barry Brook
The ‘carbon price’ debate rages. The Australian Government, seems genuinely committed to putting a price on carbon. It seems likely, that one of the first industries to be impacted will be electricity generation. This sector is the largest single contributor to anthropogenic greenhouse gas emissions – mainly carbon dioxide. So, the big questions are: what does the carbon price need to be, where will our future electricity come from, and how much will it cost?

Levelised cost of electricity (LCOE) for baseload electricity generating technologies. Error bars represent 90% confidence intervals for the mean (bar height).

Most of our current electricity generators will be impacted. Less than seven per cent of our electricity comes from carbon-free sources. Reducing the emissions from the generators that burn fossil fuels (the source of the carbon dioxide) means that electricity will be more expensive than in the past – whatever technology is used.
So how will the electric power makers react to a carbon price? If the price is too low they will do nothing; pay the carbon price and just pass the cost onto the consumer, with negligible effect on emissions. On the other hand, if they can replace or improve the technology for less than it costs to pay for the carbon, they will change the technology.
This brings us to the next couple of questions. What is the carbon price that will cause a widespread change to technology and actually reduce emissions? And what technology will the power makers select? These are both questions that are much more difficult to answer, and will depend on whether they take a short-term view to say 2030 or a longer-term perspective to 2050 and beyond.
To help answer these questions, we have conducted a meta-review of 25 authoritative peer-reviewed studies of electricity generating technologies. This review was recently published in the international peer-reviewed scientific journal Energy^†. We looked at cost and life-cycle emission studies to arrive at the most likely costs and emissions of these technologies. In Australia, over 75 per cent of our electricity is generated by what are called ‘baseload’ generators that operate almost continuously. Our paper focuses on this majority part of the energy demand.
It turns out that technology options for replacing fossil fuels, based on proven performance and reliable cost projections, are much more limited than is popularly perceived. We identified only five proven low-emission technologies that met a set of objective fit-for-service criteria to supply baseload power. These technologies were: pulverised fuel (PF) with carbon capture and storage (CCS); integrated (coal) gasification combined cycle (IGCC) with CCS; combined cycle gas turbine (CCGT) with CCS; nuclear; and solar thermal with heat storage and gas turbines. IGCC is relatively new technology not yet in operation in Australia. CCS is still only in pilot stage anywhere in the world.
Some may wonder why wind, solar photovoltaic and engineered geothermal systems (EGS), also known as hot rocks, did not qualify to be fit-for-service for baseload. Wind and solar PV need either extensive gas backup or large-scale energy storage for baseload operation. The associated extra costs will depend on plant location and are difficult to assess accurately. One technical study we covered assessed wind with storage against IGCC with CCS. The wind/storage solution could only compete at a carbon price above $350 per tonne of carbon dioxide, well above anything being contemplated. EGS is a possible future baseload technology, but it is still too early to estimate performance and costs with the degree of reliability we required.

: Impact of carbon pricing on levelised cost of electricity (LCOE) for fit-for-service low emission baseload technologies.

Most of Australia’s electricity comes from PF coal and this will be the primary target for emissions reduction. The illustration below (taken from the report) shows how the median costs per megawatt-hour (MWh) of electricity vary with the emissions (carbon) price. The technologies included are the five fit-for-service replacement technologies plus, for comparison, new PF coal plants without CCS. With no carbon price (as now), new PF coal is the cheapest technology, but as the carbon price increases so does the cost of electricity from such plants. LCOE in the illustration means the levelised cost of electricity. The LCOE is a good indicator of the average wholesale price the power station owner would need to break even.

The points where the cost line for PF coal crosses the others represents the minimum carbon price needed to make the technology switch worthwhile. Leaving aside nuclear for the moment (it is currently banned in Australia), the cheapest solution is CCGT (natural gas) with CCS, which needs a carbon price of just over $30. To justify building either of the coal technologies (PF or IGCC) with CCS would require a carbon price over $40. Remember these costs are for new plants. Retrofitting existing coal plants with CCS might have different costs.

The problem is, CCS may only make sense if you take a short-term view of emission reductions. Whereas CCS can deliver the probable reduction targets up till 2030, current CCS technology will not deliver the tougher emission targets recommended for 2050. Coal plants often have a 40 year life, so new coal plants with CCS built over the next few decades may still be operating by 2050 and holding us back from meeting those targets, unless they can be modified later.
So what about renewable energy options?
The only renewable technology that met our fit-for-service criteria was solar thermal with heat storage and gas backup for cloudy days. As you can see from the illustration, using solar thermal power to replace coal would require a carbon price over $150. The solar industry is ever hopeful that future costs will fall, but current costs are about twice other low-carbon alternatives so they have a long way to go. Future cost reductions for any technology are inherently uncertain and should not be relied on.
The stand-out technology, from a cost perspective, is nuclear power. From the eight nuclear cost studies we reviewed (all published in the last decade, and adjusted to 2009 dollars), the median cost of electricity from current technology nuclear plants was just above new coal plants with no carbon price. Having the lowest carbon emissions of all the fit-for-service technologies, nuclear remains the cheapest solution at any carbon price. Importantly, it is the only fit-for-service baseload technology that can deliver the 2050 emission reduction targets.
The low cost for nuclear electricity may surprise some. Nuclear plants are renowned for being very expensive to build. But electricity costs are a function of construction costs, running costs (operations, maintenance and fuel) and the total energy generated over the plant’s lifetime. Nuclear fuel costs are relatively low compared to coal or gas (very little fuel is used in a nuclear plant) and these plants typically have a long life and high availability. These factors lead to a low electricity cost over the nuclear plant’s lifetime.
The results of this survey represent the scientific/engineering/economic consensus of the world-wide, authoritative, peer-reviewed energy literature. Given the importance of reducing electricity generator emission, and the economic imperative to keep electricity costs at a minimum, it seems essential that the Australian government rethink its nuclear power strategy – as much of the rest of the world has already done. All the arithmetic adds up to nuclear.

http://bravenewclimate.com/2010/11/30/the-arithmetic-adds-up-to-nuclear/#more-3476

Saturday, November 27, 2010

*Nicholson M, Biegler T & Brook BW. (2010) How carbon pricing changes the relative competitiveness of low-carbon baseload generating technologies

. Energy, doi:10.1016/j.energy.2010.10.039
BACKGROUND INFORMATION
A new paper by three Australian researchers, published in the international peer-reviewed journal Energy, looks at 16 electricity generating technologies as candidates for meeting future greenhouse emission reduction targets.
The technologies are assessed in terms of their potential to produce reliable, continuous, baseload power. The assessment covers performance, cost and carbon emissions.
Cost, and the impact of carbon pricing on that cost, is analysed on the basis of 15 comprehensive cost studies published over the past decade. Similarly the carbon intensity estimates are based on 14 published studies of life cycle greenhouse emissions from electricity generation. The comprehensive range of authoritative studies analysed (including research from the International Energy Agency, Energy Information Administration, Massachusetts Institute of Technology and the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change) means that the results that emerge are reliable, comparable and representative.
For a technology to be considered fit-for-service as a baseload generator it needs to be scalable, have a reliable fuel supply, a low or moderate emissions intensity, and high availability without the need for a large external energy storage facility.
It turns out that technology options for replacing fossil fuels, based on established performance and objective cost projections, are much more limited than is popularly perceived. The review identifies only five proven low-emission technologies that could meet this set of fit-for-service criteria for the supply of baseload power. The technologies are: pulverised fuel coal combustion (PF coal) coupled with carbon capture and storage (CCS); integrated gasification combined cycle coal (IGCC) with CCS; combined cycle gas turbine (CCGT) with CCS; nuclear; and solar thermal with heat storage and gas turbines.
Of these five, the only renewable technology is solar thermal with heat storage and gas backup. However, this is the most expensive of the technologies examined and replacing coal with solar thermal power would require a carbon price of over $150 per tonne of emissions.
The paper summarises the joint cost and emissions results in the diagram below. This shows how the assessed cost per megawatt-hour of electricity varies with the technology used and the price set for carbon dioxide emissions. These prices, known as levelised costs of electricity, are the accepted way of expressing the average cost of generating electrical energy over the lifetime of a plant. They are regarded as a good indicator of the average wholesale price the power station owner would need to break even, in financial terms, and can be standardised across different technologies (and so are comparable).
In the diagram, the five fit-for-service technologies are compared with costs for conventional coal-fired generators using pulverised fuel (PF). The point where each line hits the vertical axis on the left is the cost when there is no carbon price, as happens now. It shows that a modern coal power station produces the cheapest power.
As the emission price (e.g., carbon tax) rises, so does the electricity cost. Coal-based power rises fastest because it has the greatest emissions. The points where the line for PF coal crosses the other lines represent the carbon prices where each technology becomes more economic than traditional coal-fired power.
Nuclear stands out as the cheapest solution to provide low-emission baseload electricity over almost the whole carbon price range shown. The next cheapest is CCGT (natural gas) with CCS, which needs a carbon price of just over $30. To justify building either of the two coal technologies (PF or IGCC) with CCS requires a carbon price over $40.
According to international experience, if nuclear energy were adopted in Australia its initial cost (termed ‘first-of-a-kind’) would be about $30 per MWh higher than in the diagram, but would come down to that level as more plants were built.

Monday, November 15, 2010

Leaking Underground CO2 Storage Could Contaminate Drinking Water

This is not good news for coal

"The fear of drinking water contamination from CO2 leaks is one of several sticking points about CCS and has contributed to local opposition to it," says Jackson, who directs Duke's Center on Global Change.

http://www.terradaily.com/reports/Leaking_Underground_CO2_Storage_Could_Contaminate_Drinking_Water_999.html Durham NC (SPX) Nov 15, 2010 Leaks from carbon dioxide injected deep underground to help fight climate change could bubble up into drinking water aquifers near the surface, driving up levels of contaminants in the water tenfold or more in some places, according to a study by Duke University scientists. Based on a year-long analysis of core samples from four drinking water aquifers, "We found the potential for contamination is real, but there are ways to avoid or reduce the risk," says Robert B. Jackson, Nicholas Professor of Global Environmental Change and professor of biology at Duke.
"Geologic criteria that we identified in the study can help identify locations around the country that should be monitored or avoided," he says. "By no means would all sites be susceptible to problems of water quality."
Storing carbon dioxide deep below Earth's surface, a process known as geosequestration, is part of a suite of new carbon capture and storage (CCS) technologies being developed by governments and industries worldwide to reduce the amount of greenhouse gas emissions entering Earth's atmosphere.
The still-evolving technologies are designed to capture and compress CO2, emissions at their source - typically power plants and other industrial facilities - and transport the CO2 to locations where it can be injected far below the Earth's surface for long-term storage.
The U.S. Department of Energy, working with industry and academia, has begun the planning for at least seven regional CCS projects.
"The fear of drinking water contamination from CO2 leaks is one of several sticking points about CCS and has contributed to local opposition to it," says Jackson, who directs Duke's Center on Global Change.
"We examined the idea that if CO2 leaked out slowly from deep formations, where might it negatively impact freshwater aquifers near the surface, and why."
Jackson and his postdoctoral fellow Mark G. Little collected core samples from four freshwater aquifers around the nation that overlie potential CCS sites and incubated the samples in their lab at Duke for a year, with CO2 bubbling through them.
After a year's exposure to the CO2, analysis of the samples showed that "there are a number of potential sites where CO2 leaks drive contaminants up tenfold or more, in some cases to levels above the maximum contaminant loads set by the EPA for potable water," Jackson says.
Three key factors - solid-phase metal mobility, carbonate buffering capacity and electron exchanges in the overlying freshwater aquifer - were found to influence the risk of drinking water contamination from underground carbon leaks.
The study also identified four markers that scientists can use to test for early warnings of potential carbon dioxide leaks.
"Along with changes in carbonate concentration and acidity of the water, concentrations of manganese, iron and calcium could all be used as geochemical markers of a leak, as their concentration increase within two weeks of exposure to CO2," Jackson says.
The study was funded by the Department of Energy's National Energy Technology Laboratory and Duke's Center on Global Change.
The study appears in the online edition of the journal Environmental Science and Technology.

Thursday, September 2, 2010

Can CO2 Be Stored Safely Underground