Tag Archives: energy
Capturing Carbon on the Cheap
Environmental Leader – 31/05/13 Some of the processes being looked at as cheaper ways of capturing carbon dioxide emissions include a government-led large-scale implementation at a power plant, a installation at a natural gas production facility and rolling out the technology to other industrial facilities, according to an article in the MIT Technology Review. Despite the US’ growth in renewable energy use, electricity generation from coal is expected to grow twice as much as generation from electricity by 2020. But without carbon capture technology many coal plants would fail to meet strict regulations and face closure. However, no one currently knows how much large-scale carbon capture will cost and finding out will cost billions of dollars, MIT Technology Review reports. One method being investigated as a workaround to find cheaper ways to capture carbon is for government to demonstrate its effectiveness on a large scale. The FutureGen project was originally planned as a new kind of hydrogen and electricity producing power plant. It was canned by the Bush administration due to high costs, but it was reinstated in a form that costs half as much after the Recovery Act. The project is now focused on retrofitting an existing power plant, but, given design and permit challenges, it may still not be ready to take advantage of Recovery Act funding , the article says. A natural gas production facility in Norway has been using carbon capture technology for years and emulating it could provide another way forward, the article says. Utilizing such technology at a natural gas production facility can be more efficient as such facilities produce a far more concentrated stream of CO2 than power plants. Capturing carbon at industrial facilities may be the only way to deal with emissions from such sources as ethanol and steel plants, the article says. Two projects that capture carbon from fermentation at an ethanol plant and another that captures it from a hydrogen plant production plant are now online. This kind of industrial site carbon capture could account for about half of captured CO2 by 2050, the article says. There is also a market for selling captured CO2 to oil recovery projects, such as a Department of Energy demonstration project in Texas that went online earlier this month. This adds an income stream to the process of CO2 capture and, once used by the oil recoverers, the gas is trapped underground in a capped well. Also this month, Aker Solutions won a contract to perform the world’s first tests for capturing carbon dioxide emissions from a cement production plant. Aker Solutions says it will perform long-term testing on the actual flue gas to select the best chemical solvent for high-content CO2 flue gas at a Norcem plant in Brevik, Norway. In other carbon capture news, scientists from the Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory have discovered and demonstrated a new technique to remove and store atmospheric CO2 while generating carbon-negative hydrogen and producing alkalinity, which can be used to offset ocean acidification. The hydrogen can be used as a carbon-negative “super green” fuel or chemical feedstock, the researchers said. Continue reading
Biomass Plants Do ‘Not Threaten’ Food Production
29 May 2013 By Tereza Pultarova Experts believe demands of biomass production don’t compete with those of food production The possible conflicts over land-use with food production needs should not prevent the Government from further exploring the possibilities of biomass power generation, says a new policy statement from the Institution of Mechanical Engineers (IMechE). Biomass-fired power stations, using energy stored in plants, present a convenient way of removing around 10 per cent of global carbon dioxide (CO2) each year. “Our analysis shows that at the scale of current global ambitions, the cultivation of biomass for use in electricity generation need not necessarily threaten the availability of land for food production, other energy sourcing and the preservation of ecosystems,” said Dr Tim Fox, Head of Energy and Environment at the IMechE. Compared to other power sources, biomass electricity generates low level of carbon emissions. In combination with Carbon Capture and Storage technologies (CCS) it offers a so-called ‘negative-emissions’ ratio, making it a promising part of the energy mix, convenient for climate change mitigation. Surprisingly, though, the current demand for this type of technology for power generation is very low. “Given that the exclusion of biomass from the energy mix would significantly increase the cost of reducing the CO2 emissions of the UK energy system, Government should help ensure that land-use tensions are fully understood and correctly managed,” Fox said. Even though the demand for biomass power generation is expected to grow, it is believed that the land needed to grow crops for these purposes will be nowhere near the size of areas required to meet the needs of food production in the future. The new policy statement advises the Government to take a complex approach to land-use management to eliminate any possible conflicts. In the statement issued today, the IMechE further encourages the UK representatives to take an international lead in encouraging integrated approach to future food security on global scale and to support research into CCS technology to achieve negative emissions. Continue reading
America’s New Energy Export Is…Trees?
By ERICA PETERSON Enlarge image Credit Σ64 / Wikimedia Commons When we talk about exporting energy sources to other countries, the conversation tends to center on fossil fuels. Here in Kentucky, it’s all about coal, and even as the nation cuts back on coal burning, many mines are hoping that burgeoning economies in Asia will help fill in the economic gaps. But the BBC Newshour had an interesting story this morning about another fuel that America is exporting: wood. Trees that are grown in the Southeast are being sent to Europe to fuel biomass boilers, and there’s a debate about whether that process actually helps the European Union further its stated goals of reducing carbon dioxide emissions. The EU has a renewable energy standard, mandating that 20 percent of energy has to come from renewable sources. And biomass–and wood-burning–technically fits that definition. As the BBC reports , some of the trees being turned into wood pellets and exported to the United Kingdom come from tree plantations. These farms mainly raise trees for timber, but the twisted trees that don’t make good boards can be ground up and turned into pellets. But BBC Correspondent Roger Harrabin reports that if the market grows enough, it could attract wood from other places. I drove with environmentalists at dawn to a gorgeous swamp forest in North Carolina. The birdsong was entrancing, and a scarce prothonatory warbler – known as the swamp canary – danced before our TV lens. The wood fuel industry has not advertised that it also takes trees from natural forests like this to boil kettles in Britain – but that’s what happens. Most of the swamp forests in south-east US are in the hands of small private landowners and they face few restrictions on what they do with their assets. And environmentalists argue that the ultimate irony is that a renewable energy standard that was meant to help slow and reduce the effects of climate change could end up contributing to the problem. The British government will shortly announce its rules for the sustainability of “biomass” burning for power. It will set a standard for emissions created from the cutting, drying and shipping and timber but it will make a working assumption that burning the wood has nil CO2 emissions as new trees will suck up the CO2 emitted by wood burning. Critics say this is simplistic as it fails to recognise that it will take maybe 50 years for new trees to absorb the CO2, whilst politicians agree that emissions need to be cut immediately to prevent carbon over-heating the planet. It also fails to account for the fact that in the US the forest stock has been increasing and this process offsets the growth in carbon emissions from homes and industry. Burning American trees in the UK reduces America’s “carbon sink”. Foresters argue that this doesn’t matter much as long as the total biomass sent for export is no greater than the wood used in a single large pulp mill. But these numbers will grow fast. Plus, whenever anything is exported via ocean liner, there are carbon emissions associated with transportation. While Louisville is lacking the trees it needs (and this fact landed the city the #2 spot on Grist’s list of the top 10 American cities most “screwed by climate change”), Kentucky has a lot of forest land. Some groups like the Kentucky Sustainable Energy Alliance say biomass could be one way to help move the state away from coal (but it’s important to note that the term “biomass” could mean anything from mature trees to switchgrass ). Meanwhile, the Mountain Association for Community Economic Development has a program that incentivizes forest owners to maintain their forests by paying them for all of the carbon dioxide their trees sequester. Continue reading
