April 23, 2009
The Dilemma Over Coal Generated Power
60 Minutes: Coal Power Plants Supply Power To Millions, But Cutting Carbon Dioxide Could Take A Long Time
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Play CBS Video Video Powered By Coal Coal is America's most abundant and cheapest fossil fuel but, as Scott Pelley reports, burning it happens to be the biggest contributor to global warming.
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Video Clean Coal: Dream or Reality? Power company CEO Jim Rogers says America has to make clean coal work.
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Video Is China The Real Problem? Joe Romm ran alternative fuel projects during the Clinton administration. He talks about the growing problem of pollution in China and India.
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(CBS)
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Interactive Energy Ed. A look at our sources of energy and how we use them to live and work.
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In-Depth Q&A: Alternative Energy Questions and answers about the effect of the economic crisis on alternative energy.
A few days ago, the Obama administration declared, for the first time, that CO2 is a threat to human health and it plans to impose limits. But making coal safe will come at an astronomical cost.
After the economy, this could be the biggest debate in Washington. One of the most influential people in this is Jim Rogers. Coal has made Rogers and his company rich and that's why we were surprised to hear what this high flying power baron has to say about what coal does to the environment.
Rogers wanted 60 Minutes to see America's enormous dependency on coal, so he flew correspondent Scott Pelley out to see one of his 20 coal burning power plants.
"I remember the first time I took a helicopter and looked down on a power plant like this. I was 41 years old and I said, 'Oh my goodness, I'm responsible for that!'" Rogers told Pelley.
Rogers is the CEO of Duke Energy, the nation's third largest electric utility. His stacks pump 100 million tons of carbon dioxide every year, which makes what comes out of Rogers' mouth so surprising.
"Controlling carbon emissions in the near future is inevitable in your view. This is going to happen," Pelley remarked.
"It’s inevitable in my judgment," Rogers agreed.
"You're one of the biggest polluters in the world when it comes to carbon emissions," Pelley pointed out.
"We're one of the largest emitters. And it tells you how daunting the challenge is that we have in front of us," Rogers replied.
"You know, there are a lot of people many of them in your industry may who you probably know who say that global warming is not a big problem," Pelley said.
"It's my judgment it is a problem," Rogers said. "We need to go to work on it now. And it's critical that we start to act in this country."
Like a reformed tobacco executive, Rogers says we can't survive the emissions his industry creates. He showed 60 Minutes what he means at a North Carolina power station that can light up one and a half million homes.
Rogers told Pelley that particular plant burns roughly 19,000 tons of coal. "That's two train loads. And each train has about 100 cars," he explained.
The fact is, America runs on coal and here's one of the reasons why: the Powder River Basin that stretches across Wyoming and Montana may be the largest coal reserve on Earth. We've got 200 years worth of reserves - cheap, and right under our feet. No wonder coal generates half of our electricity.
But here's the brutal part: coal is twice as dirty as natural gas and puts more carbon dioxide in the air than all of our cars and trucks. In short, we're caught between a rock and a hot place.
"I notice all of this coming out of the stacks. What is that?" Pelley asked.
"That's good news," Rogers said. "When you see a plume comin' out of a stack of a power plant, that's vapor. And it basically says that the emissions have been cleaned."
Produced by David Gelber and Joel Bach
© MMIX, CBS Interactive Inc. All Rights Reserved.
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See all 149 CommentsSummery
This concept for a completely carbon-less power plant is very doable. All the technology is there. What we need is someone who can coordinate these brilliant minds, companies, and concepts into a power house of ideas for the better good of this country. I really wouldn't mind being that person. Getting these groups together to develop these power plants. Just think of where we can go.
These ideas should be put into public domain, and distributed world wide to help stop global warming. Maybe published in world science magazines. It's time to stop putting our own interest ahead of the interest of the entire country or world. If we keep going the way we are, it will be total destruction for this country and the world. I don't want to see that happen.
I would like President Barack Obama & V.P. Joe Biden, Dr. Steven Chue Secretary of DOE, and Dr. Jim Hanson of NASA and others to review my paper an give me their opinion on this matter.
Thanks for listening.
Charles
Other Cost Savings
Other cost saving not yet realized would probably be in the field Health Care of our nation and the world. Just breathing would be good. Not to mention the slowing down or stopping global warming. Stopping of the destruction of our oceans. This unseen damage can not be measured, however, we are starting to see some of the effects it is having on animal life dependent on the oceans. Polar bears, penguins, seals, aquatic birds, fish, etc. Don't we understand, this is our greatest food source. Eating would be good too.
Charles
Operating Cost Savings
1.Lower maintenance cost, due to lack of carbon build-up.
2.No expensive carbon filters required by the EPA, or turning carbon into liquid and pumping it underground with NO Idea of what kind of damage it might be doing under ground. ( Ref: Scott Pelley's Report. )
3.No heating cost for the building. Heat with electricity or steam produce by the plant itself.
4.Smaller footprint required for the building and land.
5.No land required for storage of coal or trains.
6.No train loads of coal, or tracks.
7.I could going on and on.
This is a win, win situation.
Charles
Well Scott Pelley what do you think of the idea?
Charles
The problem is that you'll be shutting down the coal, oil, and gas companies if this happens. Thiese guys have deep pockets full of money to stop this movement. The question I ask to youis: Do you to continue paying high prices for oil, or do you want to change to water and continue breathing. If we continue burning oil we are killing ourselves. We have a chance to change things, stop global warming amoung other thing.
Charles
Thanks to TVA ( Tenneessee Valley Authority they have provided some hard numbers.
" for the year of 2008, they purchased 2.11 billion dallars in coal." Now just think of burning water. The water is already there. It can be converted so very easy. After it burns it turns back into water, and can be reburned. Not only could they save 2.11 billion dollars, they could stop global warming. A WIN, WIN! But no one is listening!
Charles
According to the News Paper accounts the Power Company in Holland, Michigan has $250,000,000 Dollars which they planned on to build this coal plant. The D.O.E. has matching funds for any project dealing with alternative energy. I believe this fits the bill if the power company will build an alternative type plant. I don't have any hard numbers yet, but just think about it, the fuel saving alone will more than pay for this project. According to Scott Pelley's report on CBS 60 Minutes, one coal plant will burn two train loads of coal (each train is a mile long) every day. Multiply by 365 days, that equals 730 train loads of coal a year. In Scott Pelley's report, China is opening a coal fired plant at the rate of one a week. Assuming they use the same amounts of trains per plant, that would be 730 trains times 52 weeks, equals 37960 total trains a year. Then multiply times the tons, then times the amount of carbon in each ton of coal, and so on. You do the math, and wounder why you are having trouble breathing.
Charles
Charles
S. Burton MA
Rogers insinuated that coal is affordable and clean. It is neither. The health care costs and lost job hours associated with diseases related to particulates from coal are nearly 200 billion dollars per year. New coal plants can only be built if taxpayers and ratepayers are held as collateral. Dozens of coal plant cancellations since 2007 is evidence of that. As alluded to in the story, Rogers plan is to make sure that he doesn't have to pay for carbon capture and sequestration R&D, either. He, himself, estimated last year that CCS would add 70% to the capital costs of a new plant and stated that he wanted all of his coal plants (existing and planned) grandfathered under any carbon regulation.
Guess who he wants to pay for his business plan?
Dan Kammen said it all when he posed this question: "Whether we can build enough of them to preserve the coal industry as we know it today I think is a question." The idea here and Rogers idea is to keep coal going to maintain the mining industry and allow Rogers to continue to support the most expensive options to meet electric demand. Coal and nuclear plants is where he makes most of his money and that's what he is going to push for.
Rogers said, "We can't abandon coal." He must have been referring to Duke Energy because there is no study I'm aware of that suggests that coal is a must 40 years from now. However, there is plenty of evidence that both coal and nuclear power can be phased out economically within 40 years with increased end-use energy efficiency investments, renewable power, and storage technology. After all, in the 1890s I'm sure people thought that the horse and buggy would be a primary mode of transportation well into the future. But, as we know, they were replaced by the car in a relatively short amount of time.
One thing we seem to ignore is that ANY gases generated from liquids or solids expands the lower atmospher and thins the inert ghas layer, thus changes the lensing effect. This likely has a great effect on GW as well. Consider that and that helium is not as plentiful as we would like. (This is some of my own research area conjoined with the same as it applies to the constituents of stars and other celestial bodies...)
Dr. Charbonneau
What a joke! I've had several quit on me. However they do last a lifetime if you consider that they will lay around your house forever because you can't get a permit to properly get rid of them. Something that was conveniently overlooked by the brilliant PR & GW folks that made a bundle $$$$$$. Don't believe me ehhhh call DER and explain.
Since Coal is our most abundant energy source and the technology has progressed to make it affordable & safe. The Wind Mills, Solar Cell Manufacturers, Hydrothermal, Etc are getting all the bucks to promote their expensive solutions. Just how is the average Joe the Plumber going to be able to afford these. When you consider all the destruction of wildlife habitat & endangering the spotted owl & other species it is just not the way to go.
If these clowns are so convinced that there is a CO2 problem and they are serious about saving this trillion year old planet. I'll be more than happy to be a witness if they want to hold there breath for as long as it takes to make an improvement. So Sad this nonsense being perpetuated in the Media by Al Gore & His Band of thieves. Money talks $$$$$$$, it don't sing and dance and it don't walk.
The answer is simple. We ALL need to change our life style a little so we can cut about 25% of our overall power consumption. Thing is it's easy to do. I read that 40% of all the power used in the US is for lighting. OK, so what happens if everybody throws away their 60 watt incendescent bulbs and replaces them with 12 watt fluorescent bulbs? Or better yet 3 watt LED bulbs.? That alone would account for at least an 60% of the 40%. When the LED bulbs are more commercially available the energy consumption takes another exponential leap down. The LED bulbs would last a life time as well.
In summary: everybody goes to LED's and Mr. Big Duke Energy will be CLOSING his coal fired powerplants long before 2020.
Smells like victory to me.
PS: be advised I'm going to send Andy Rooney some LED light bulbs so he can be the first person in our regular folks revolution.
Cheers
American Coal Council
www.americancoalcouncil.org
Posted by AmCoal at 12:45 PM : Apr 28, 2009
With all due respects, would you honestly explain with CCS, what guaruntee you can give, that carbon stored under ground or elsewhere, in the enormous quantity that will be necessary, will stay where it is put.
No matter what spin you wish to put on it, this Earth of ours is an everchanging and fractious place.
There is absolutely no way anybody can be certain that those gases will remain in place and never escape, thereby creating a catrosthophic situation for the world.
It is my opinion CCS is a desperation move to con the community in a last ditch attempt to avoid the demise of a heavily polluting industry by vested interests, who have little or no consideration for the general population, and are only interested in increasing their wealth at the expense of our children and future generations.
No coal
No nuclear
No dams
No LNG
No coastal tidal generators.
And there is no way wind & solar will do the job.
I guess we'll be back to kerosene lamps & wood stoves. Ehhh...scratch that....those won't be allowed either. Time to move south.
Since we cannot determine the reason for these facts being left out of the CBS report, but also realize that they are essential pieces of the total energy debate, we feel it is important to provide some balance to the discussion.
First, we are concerned that the CBS piece has ignored coal's ability to act as an economic stimulus for our lagging economy. As a recent National Mining Association report (http://nma.org/publications/economics/default.asp) on this issue clearly demonstrated, coal is a key component in our country's economic well-being.
- Mining in the U.S. generated 1.5 million direct jobs in 2007
- The total value of the U.S. mining industry from business activity, alone, was over $240 billion
- Each mining job created an additional 2.9 indirect jobs
- The average annual wage in the mining industry was $59,000 (total direct payroll for the U.S. mining industry was $22.1 billion and $64.6 throughout the whole economy)
- Total payroll and personal income taxes throughout the economy equaled $21.6 billion
- All other taxes, royalties, and other inputs to abandoned mine lands and black lung funds totaled approximately $7 billion
Second, the CBS piece has ignored the fact that coal is the only fuel that can currently meet the enormous scale of demand that our society is placing on utility generators, without breaking the bank while doing so. We discussed this issue at length in a recent Coalblog post that answered the question of whether wind can replace coal. (See http://www.clean-coal.info/drupal/answering_claim_wind_can_replace_coal)
Thirdly, the CBS piece did not address the rapid and substantial environmental improvement that the coal industry has demonstrated over the past few decades. As an American Coalition for Clean Coal Electricity blog post notes, coal-based electricity has become "77 percent cleaner on the basis of regulated emissions per unit of energy produced" over the past 35 years. On that same theme, the British Wind Energy Agency was recently forced by the UK Advertising Standards Authority to drastically scale back their claims on the amount of carbon that could be reduced by replacing coal with new wind installations. It appears that they were basing their calculations on coal plant emission rates that had been out of date since the early 1990?s. They now claim that new wind installations could reduce emissions by 430 g/kWh, instead of 860 g/kWh - HALF as much.
Fourthly, the CBS piece said nothing about the fact that, if we are actually serious about meeting the intended carbon reduction targets -- at the same time as we continue to supply society with abundant, affordable energy -- coal with CCS is THE low-cost, low-carbon solution. A recent Carnegie Mellon research paper demonstrated that coal with CCS is 15 to 50% less expensive than nuclear, wind or natural gas with CCS.
In fact, even David Hawkins, director of the Natural Resource Defense Council's (NRDC) Climate Center in Washington, DC has recently admitted that,
... the technology to generate electricity from coal and capture the carbon-dioxide emissions "is both needed and feasible"
The reality is that coal is one of our most abundant, affordable/secure energy generation resources. Additionally, as we continue to apply cleaner technologies, such as CCS, to new and existing coal-fueled power plants, it will become even more clean and efficient to use. We encourage the public to consider the facts and to recognize that there is more to the discussion than was portrayed in this 60 Minutes report.
American Coal Council
www.americancoalcouncil.org
Electricity is the future of energy.
We don't need to be burning anything.
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