US Makes $2.4 Billion Bet On Clean Coal In Stimulus Package

WASHINGTON — Energy Secretary Steven Chu says he will provide $2.4 billion from the economic recovery package to speed up development of technology to reduce greenhouse gas emissions from power plants and factories that burn coal.

Chu told a meeting of the National Coal Council on Friday that it's essential that ways are found to capture carbon dioxide from coal-burning power plants and industrial sources. Carbon dioxide from burning fossil fuels is the leading greenhouse gas blamed for global warming.

Chu said coal will remain an essential energy source. He said even if coal plants in the United States were shut down, as some environmentalists want, China and India will not turn their back on coal.

Comments

[loki]

this comes from the coal companies cleaver use of Obama speaking that clean coal might be able to become a reality. They put it together in such a way to make it look as if it was a sure thing. Now Obama will have to use tax payer money to try to make it happen, or they will hammer him with their trick editing.

[research]

rooftop solar and BhioChar

In total, the upper limit of the bio-energy potential could be over 1000 EJ per year. This is considerably more than the current global energy use of 400 EJ.
http://www.uce-uu.nl/index.php?action=1&menuId=1&type=project&id=3&

Note this article assumes growing crops for food, That's NOT what I'm Talking about, but it has the world wide potential energy numbers. Since the crops for human use will not be optimized for energy, we will take the low values of crop energy and BioChar yields.

http://terrapreta.bioenergylists.org/company list of BioChar companies.
http://www.agri-therm.com/solution.html portable bio fuel oil BioChar units.
http://www.advbiorefineryinc.ca/news/ meat rending waste BioChar. .

see my profile for more.

[mioffe]

OneVoiceInACrowd: “But as you can see, we are decreasing our forests, slowing the ocean absorption of CO2, and increasing our own emissions.
I do not believe the burning of wood to produce our energy is in our best interests either.”

As you can read in Tim Flannery book “The Weather Makers,” 2006:
1. “ Forests contain much more carbon than does grass, and they also absorb more sunlight (having different albedo) and produce more water vapor, which affects cloud formation”.
2. “Mature forests don’t take in much CO2 they are in balance, releasing CO2 as old vegetation rots, then absorbing it as new grows. For these reasons the world largest forests-the coniferous forests of Siberia and Canada, and the tropical rainforests are not good carbon sinks, but new vigorously forests are.”
If old trees will anyway rots it is nothing wrong to cut old trees and use wood energy especially if we can sequestered all GHG from that power plants as nutrition to grow forests.
It takes one ton of coal to generate an average of 2500 kWh of electricity.
It takes less than 1.6 ton of wood to generate the same amount of energy.
In huge power plants we are loosing 80% of heat energy in vain.
In small power plants we can use as electricity, as heat.
Only if we need forests we will grow them. Interests of our economy, our health, and health of planet must to be combined.

[research]

Agreed. Add

With BioChar, we can use the wood, then get oil and energy from it, while sequestering carbon in the soil as an enhancements.

See my profile for more details and links.

[mazzetta]

burning fossil and forests makes no sense for the planet and our health, energy from combustion should be considered medioeval

[realpolitic]

If you remove all the old trees and plant new ones, then the forest is not a forest anymore but a garden.

[plantguy]

Oh yeah did you notice the plant does have a american flag, thats more than you can say for some other companies in america.

[plantguy]

Clean coal will help keep people employed so they can support their families and send their children to college! Some people would rather close the plants and really don't see the impact that it has on the families that are dependent on coal, and don't say they can be retrained for green technology when the average plant worker is 50+. Coal keeps jobs goin!

[peteRed]

sadly the grandchildren of these 50+ workers will all suffer the consequences of their grandfathers' jobs.

but the show must go on!

[plantguy]

Thats your opinion! I think we need to control the worlds population which creates more auto, planes and electric ( but its easier to blame coal) usage.

[research]

WE should phase out Coal only as we replace it with eff solar and BioChar.

Clean Coal should be paid by the coal companies, it will increase coal cost APPROPRIATELY and give solar and BioChar the fair chance they deserve.

[research]

If coal is so cheap, the coal companies must be racking it in, why won't they pay for their own cleanup?

Rooftop solar and waste BIoChar fuel can supply all our energy needs cleanly, cheaper than coal, forever.

3 cents per KWH Best Solar.

See profile for details.

[plantguy]

Solar is fine for the average home but not for suppling the manufacturing & production sector but that will soon to be all overseas! Americans will be going all green but no green in your pockets, people need to think what made this country!!!!

[research]

Rooftop solar is actually much better for manufacturing and production because of the large flat roofs. These commercial roofs are the ones that are being covered with solar panels first. NanoSolar and the other big solar installer almost exclusively do large commercial roofs and are able to get installed costs down to 2$ per peak watt, which translates into 3 cents per KWH.

[mioffe]

Democrats think like Al Gore. Al Gore is not scientist. He is good writer and made good point from everything, what his friends-scientists explain to him. All of them have right on their opinion. I am, as reader has right to disagree with them.
Al Gore has huge popularity in the world maybe because of election 2,000. He author of Earth in the balance, 1992, An inconvenient truth, 2,006, co-author of movie. He has support in mass media in the world and more dangerous in my opinion, supports from Government of USA.
I think that he is wrong and implementation of his ideas will bring huge damage for world economy, His good intention could bring huge damage to nature.
Al Gore explains global warming by increasing amount of carbon dioxide, which trapped infrared radiation, and heat the air. This heat evaporated additional amount of water vapors which also greenhouse gas and trapped infrared radiation, which additionally heat the air.
Republicans opposing Al Gore, calculate how much carbon dioxide produce by mankind activity and Nature. They found that our activities are only small percentage against Nature activities.
What if it is not only carbon dioxide?
In this case as Republican, as Democrat-all Senators, our Government going in wrong direction. We need to stop unscientific politic.

[OneVoiceInACrowd]

"They found that our activities are only small percentage against Nature activities.'

Not so my friend. Comparatively in Geologic times yes, but in current times no. We are approaching the point that our emissions of CO2 will match those that Nature has put in the atmosphere, and nature has been doing this for a very long time, while ours just started a couple hundred years ago, barely a wink in geologic time.

We are by far the largest CO2 emitter on this planet and the reason the concentrations are going up.
http://www.eia.doe.gov/bookshelf/brochures/greenhouse/Chapter1.htm
We simply do not remove what we put up there.

[mioffe]

Dear OneVoiceInACroud, from your link: "What Effect Do Greenhouse Gases Have on Climate Change?
In computer-based models, rising concentrations of greenhouse gases produce an increase in the average surface temperature of the Earth over time. Rising temperatures may, in turn, produce changes in precipitation patterns, storm severity, and sea level commonly referred to as “climate change.”
Most computer modeling looks at water vapor as static element in air, when they trapped infrared radiation and heats the air.
Water vapor is the most important greenhouse gas, more important, than carbon dioxide. Molecular weight of water vapor is 18, nitrogen-28, oxigen-32, carbon dioxide-44. That means that water vapor is lighter than almost all others gases in the air.

It takes 339 kcal of energy to evaporate 1 kg of water. It takes only one kcal to heat one kg of water on 1º C.
It take 80 kcal of energy to melt one kg of ice, when its temperature will be 0º C.

In atmosphere we have water vapor, small droplet of fog, clouds and droplets of rain. If water vapor as GHG will trap infrared radiation that energy will evaporate droplets of fog etc., and cool the air lifting up lighter water vapor close to clouds and beyond, where heat can escape to space.
If you will look in dynamic water vapor actually cool the air.
Attitude to water vapor as static component misleads many scientists, Al Gore and our Government.
This is huge problem!

[mioffe]

I think that properties of water vapor actually cool the atmosphere-on the land level, it takes 339 kcal to evaporates 1 kg of water. When water vapors will condense back to water the same amount of energy will be released. It will happen on clouds level, where energy will escape to space more easy than on ground level. In atmosphere we always have some amount of water droplets. If GHG, including water vapor will trapped infrared radiation, their energy will help evaporate these water droplets which additionally will cool the air. Water vapor from this process will go up, to next condensati­on-evapora­tion process.
We could increase amount of water vapor in atmosphere by growing forests. Trees not only will use sun energy for evaporation and cooling air, but also will provide us with the cheapest in the world source of energy-wood, stored in the trees for hundred years. We could use that energy in small power plants as for electricity (less than 20% of fuel energy) as for heat. Annual harvesting of trees in USA forest today enough for energy needs in year 2010. If we will pay attention to grow trees the same as to grow forest we not only will reduce carbon dioxide, be energy independent, but also fight global warming with help only Canada and Mexico.

[OneVoiceInACrowd]

The distributed model I am running on my spare laptop from Berkeley does take into account evaporation and precipitation and cloud and fog cover. It is not nearly as complex as the models run on the super computers, some of which I have also seen (well the hardware anyways).

I agree that the process of evaporation removes energy and that of condensation releases energy to the surrounding particles (cue refrigeration cycle), and the energy for both processes is equal and cancel each other out. But only when counting the energy required for the phase shifts. Increased amounts of water vapor increase the amount of heat-energy reflected, not absorbed, and thus are not used in the phase shift energy calculations.

Planting trees is also a winner because it increases the lung capacity of the planet, and if we did so in large enough quantities we would actually be able to lower the atmospheres CO2 levels as we would also be able to increase the size of the carbon sink they would represent. Enabling the oceans to absorb more would also have this effect.

But as you can see, we are decreasing our forests, slowing the ocean absorbtion of CO2, and increasing our own emissions.

I do not believe the burning of wood to produce our energy is in our best interests either.

[ChiProgressive]

Forget about carbon emissions, just think about all the mercury, arsenic and toxic fly ash.

Who's going to allow this stuff to be buried in their back yard? wait, never mind.

[American50]

http://isil.org/resources/introduction.swf

[bunnyv]

Oh, you know, those people that no one seems to care about and who ultimately won't have a choice....the poor.

[American50]

whaaa whaa waahhhh

[Thermodynamics]

This sounds like payola to big energy. $2.4B = $2400 million

Instead, I would love to see the government provide just $20 million to standardize solar hot water heaters. They're already proven to work, they just need to be standardized.

And about carbon capture, why can't someone provide a proof of concept.? - Probably because it is hogwash.-- This is the ethanol boondaggle again. The energetics just don't make sense.

I mean, you get a fixed amount of energy from burning a pound of coal. Then to have clean carbon, you have to use some of that energy to compress the CO2 and pump it down an old oil well. My bet is that you waste more energy than you get from burning the coal. We could test this in a lab on a few pounds of coal for a lot less than $2.4B.

[HappyRabbit]

Seems to me that if we can regulate tail pipe emissions, we can regulate coal stack and other related pollution. Pass the damn regulations and tell the plant operators to comply or close. They are the ones profiting and also claiming dispensation as "public" utilities. Talk about playing both sides agains the middle.

[linaya]

This is stupid. Chu once said coal was his "worst nightmare". Who got to him? These new Obama admin. people are hypocrites and frauds or they have been offered a lot of money to support coal. Steven Chu knows very well that carbon capture for coal is a waste of money and we should be putting billions into wind and solar.

I guess the coal lobby wins again. How powerfull ARE they? Do they kill people? Seriously, they must be doing something really threatening for Steven Chu to go from "coal is my worst nightmare" to "yeah let's use more coal".

Weird and really disappointing. What a waste of money.

[AngieMom57]

Yep.

[bunnyv]

Or perhaps a reality check in realizing they can't just close down plants? Or they are the biggest flip-floppers and hypocrites, like, ever. I don't even know anymore. It's very frustrating!

[Ozarks]

Well that's better than encouraging nuclear power. It would cost $30 billion to build one nuke plant over 10 years then over the following 27 years ( whole life depreciation rate) it would collect another $30 billion from taxpayers just to decommission one nuke plant. Plus having all that nuke waste with a 100,000 year lethal radioactive half life being stored for 40 years in purported "temporary storage pools".

[linaya]

No, it's not better than encouraging nuclear power. we NEED nuclear power. Progressives better realize this or we'll be burning coal for the next 200 years.

[carolr51]

How can we justify nuclear power when it has the potential to destroy the world? That is stupid.

[American50]

yup liberals putting thousand more out of a job in our usa

[StephBr]

What's a yup liberal?

[freethemarkets212]

If we let the FREE MARKET flow,and cut all government regulation­s,Capitali­sm will find the best alternative energy,at the best price for consumers,100 times faster.

[JoeAlvord]

How's it worked so far?

[NWBrunette]

This is not a "bet". This is just another government handout in a long line of government handouts to the massively polluting coal industry. Now they're just running around slathering the word "clean" all over themselves and as usual a few people get fooled. Same old, same old.

[Bloggerrogr]

"clean" coal technology is a fraud. Plain and simple.

[StephBr]

I agree.