The Green Skeptic: Carbon Capture and Storage

Showing posts with label Carbon Capture and Storage. Show all posts

27 November 2009

The Trouble with Cap and Trade

On Tuesday, the State of California announced its plans for its own cap-and-trade program as part of Assembly Bill 32, which aims to cut Greenhouse Gas Emissions 15 percent by 2020.

The California Environmental Protection Agency's Air Resources Board released its scoping plan, which was praised by governor Schwarzenegger, environmentalists, and utilities.

But is all the praise deserved?

The California plan follows the same outline of other such plans: a cap limits the amount of GHG emitted by power plants, refineries, cement factories and the like, and requires a permit for every ton of CO2 released into the atmosphere.

The trouble with a California program -- or a Western States Program or a Regional Greenhouse Gas Initiative like we have in the Northeast -- is that it's a patchwork approach.

If you're a company with a national footprint, you have to react to all sorts of different regulations, that's why some companies want a national program.

Yet even a national cap-and-trade program is a flawed scheme for dealing with CO2 emissions. Despite the prevailing sentiment that cap-and-trade is market-based, most of the proposed programs will hand out a significant portion of the permits for free, which could have the unintended consequence of keeping the price of permits lower than desirable.

The EPA estimates that the average price per ton will be around $15 for possibly the next two decades. That's until 2030 folks.

Some analysts say that utilities need a carbon price of $50/ton before they'll commit the billions needed for new technologies, such as carbon capture and storage and alternative energy resources. When will we get to a $50 price for carbon? When it's too late.

At that rate, the price of carbon won't be enough to create incentives for investments in low-carbon energy infrastructure, energy efficiency, and transportation.

The potential for gaming the system is equally troubling. There is little agreement about monitoring and accounting of the permits and projects that qualify, which could provide an avenue for unscrupulous speculators to take advantage of the situation.

A cap-and-trade program potentially creates windfall profits for utilities, but it is unclear whether it will generate significant reductions in emissions or investments in clean technology.

And some analysts think it is doubtful that cap-and-trade will even put a dent in fossil fuel's price advantage. Others fear that much of the transactional value of the assets created by any cap-and-trade program will be in the hands of some of the same folks who gave us the subprime mortgage and credit default debacles.

Finally, if we are going to have a cap, and that seems to be the way it's going, I'd rather see a cap-and-invest structure where you auction of the permits to the highest bidder and use profits to create an R & D investment fund rather than giving the permits away for free.

It seems to me these flaws need to be addressed in any scheme that gets adopted before we head down the road of future regrets.

28 April 2009

Clean Coal: Like It or Not, We Need to Figure It Out

We burn coal. We can't ignore it. It's a plentiful resource and fuels the cheap electricity we use everyday. Like it or not, that's the way it is.

Don't get me wrong, I hate things like mountaintop removal and the dangers coal-miners have to face every day. But I'm a realist and I don't believe we're going to be able to transition fast enough to alternatives to completely eliminate coal from our energy diet.

My pal Gregor MacDonald had a stimulating post on Earth Day that generated some lively dialogue on the subject in which he argued that it's hard to win a fight against a cheap BTU. Gregor is smarter than I am on this subject, so you should definitely check out his blog: Gregor.us.

Readers of the green skeptic know that I think there is a need for some serious R&D into Carbon Capture and Storage (CCS) and that we need to figure out whether we can really make coal clean.

As I wrote in my comment on Gregor's post: I know this isn't a popular view, but coal is still so cheap and plentiful that it's hard to ignore. Of course, there are those who say it can't be done and others who say we'll hit peak coal before getting the technology right. If we do nothing, however, and others continue to ramp up coal production in its dirtiest form, where will we be?

On Sunday night, 60 Minutes featured a story on Clean Coal, including interviews with both Duke Energy's CEO Jim Rogers and NASA's climate scientist James Hansen:

Watch CBS Videos Online

Worth watching.

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05 December 2008

Poznan: De Boer Says Serious Discussions About More Talking Needed

UNFCCC member countries (green) and observers ...

Image via Wikipedia"All work and no play makes Jack a dull boy," is an old adage to be sure. But a new twist on it might be "All talk and no action makes for a dead planet."

I haven't been able to pay much attention to what's going on in Poznań, Poland, this week, the site of the 14th Conference of the Parties to the United Nations Climate Change Conference. But checking in today, I hear UNFCCC Executive Secretary Yvo de Boer briefing the press on the fifth day of the Conference saying that serious discussions were emerging to launch the intensified negotiations needed to reach the 2009 deadline in Copenhagen.

Sounds like progress? Smells like more talk. De-boering...

Which brings to mind a twist on another expression, "Fiddling while Rome burns."

Many delegates were highlighting the need to move to a low-carbon society, citing the emission reduction range of -25 to -40 by 2020 over 1990 levels for industrialized countries, and asking these countries to show ambition and leadership with regard to these targets.

There was agreement that financial mechanisms, including insurance, can play an important role within a strengthened response to climate change, and that financial mechanisms for risk management in developing countries needed to be scaled up.

Parties were also considering how to increase funds for adaptation through the carbon market, with discussions focusing on extending the current 2% levy on mitigation projects under the Clean Development Mechanism (CDM) to the other Kyoto mechanisms, Joint Implementation and Emissions Trading, Mr. de Boer said. He added that the inclusion of a limited number of Carbon Capture and Storage pilot projects under the CDM was also under discussion.

Here is a video of de Boer's statement:

The Green Skeptic