ELECTRICITY
PRODUCTION

The fact is, too much of the worlds' energy needs are met by coal. And you know what? Coal sucks the big one. Digging it up is dirty, burning it is dirty, and using it is disgusting. Get it?

The problem is, coal isn't going anywhere. The United States is one of the biggest coal-consumers on the planet—half of their electricity production comes from burning coal—and they've got enough black gold in their reserves to last another 200 years, even at the current rates of consumption.¹

Here in Canada, you better believe our energy giants aren't going to throw in the shovel any time soon.

To add insult to injury, there are currently more than 1,000 coal plants on drawing boards around the world.² Coal-powered plants are popping up all over China. As electricity generation struggles to grow alongside a vast population, the impact of China's greenhouse gas emissions will have a staggering effect on the planet.

So what's to be done about coal? Well, you should know about two 'options' that are being bandied about in the industry right now. The first idea is to scrub the coal and make it all shiny and clean. The other is to bury the CO₂ that's released when coal is burned. Both ideas seem slightly ridiculous. But check them out, anyhow.

          ^{Source: The Globe and Mail; March 19, 2007.}

THE LOWDOWN ON CLEAN COAL

There is no such thing as clean coal! That's the lowdown. Coal is the dirtiest of all fossil fuels. Burning coal emits horrible pollutants such as sulfur dioxide, nitrogen oxide and particulates. What that means to you is acid rain, ozone destroyers and health threats in humans.¹ Oh, and that whole climate change thing. But still, coal is widely used all over the world. Poor Earth. The majority of us never consider it, but most of the coal we dig up is over one million years old! And here we are, digging up and defacing our landscapes of this sedimentary rock that will probably take another million years if it’s ever to be recreated.²  But a pretty landscape is hardly the point. What should be scaring the pants off people is that all this carbon has been in hiding for all this time, and now that we're burning it super fast, it's released into the air quicker than you can say "Ew, gross."

"Clean coal" is what they’re calling coal that is chemically scrubbed of minerals and impurities, taking along with it 97% of the sulfur dioxide and some nitrogen oxide.³ Sounds great! But this chemical procedure depends on the use of hazardous toxins, which don't even scrub away the carbon (which is the whole problem). It makes you wonder what the point is…


Someone who hasn’t thought that far is our dear friend Mr. Bush. The Bush administration spends an approximate $500 million on coal research every year.⁴ Imagine if that $400 million was used to provide homeowners with rebates for choosing green energy sources? Or to develop better technologies? In addition to that whack of cash, The Energy Policy Act of 2005 (in the U.S.) included $5 billion in subsidies to Big Coal, including $2 billion for the Clean Coal Power Initiative.⁵ Yikes.

Clean coal won’t be our solution. Coal is big business, so it’s hard to convince those companies to switch. Making energy from coal is an old technology, which is cheap in comparison to what it will take to get renewables up and running. It’s always difficult to make change happen when the results seem out of reach. But delaying the switch from coal is only going to make the change harder and make climate change worse before we make it better. American energy is made up of 50% coal.⁶ The United States has the world’s largest coal reserves,⁷ which means that it provides a lot of employment, and a lot of money. What’s crazy is that almost 60% of mined coal is transported for use,⁸ and shipping coal can often cost more than it does to mine it! The only way this is justified is that by using local coal, dependence on imported oil for energy is lessened.

Oh, and just in case you're not convinced? It appears that clean coal technology is still twenty years away.⁹ Let's see... with some basic math, you can assume we'll be FLICKED, what with the urgency to act on global warming and all.

WHAT'S THE DILLY WITH CARBON CAPTURE & STORAGE?

So we need another idea. Coal-fired power plants and oil refineries release masses of CO₂ in their emissions streams. Time's a tickin'. One interesting solution could be carbon sequestration, a.k.a carbon capture and storage, a.k.a. geological sequestration. Lots of names, whatever—it's all about separating the CO₂ from the emissions stream, either before or after the fuel is burned, and pumping it into underground reservoirs or caverns wayyy below the earth's surface.

One of the reasons industry is talking about carbon sequestration is that pumping CO₂ into the ground actually stimulates crude oil to bubble up to the surface. CO₂ can therefore be pumped into oil reservoirs and coal seams that have been depleted from traditional drilling to get at the dregs. These dregs are no small fry: Geological sequestration has increased energy giant EnCana’s output from a Saskatchewan reservoir from 10,000 barrels a day to 30,000 barrels a day.¹
 
Sequestration is no doubt a promising solution for oil and natural gas. But does that make it an environmentally friendly alternative?

THE PROS AND CONS of TAKING CO2 UNDERGROUND

CON:  The technology is still largely experimental.  If CO₂ does escape, it could leak into a local groundwater supply or freshwater aquifers. It could erode the rocks storing it and turn the surrounding land acidic. Even if it is kept in saltwater aquifers, it could spike the acidity, dissolve the surrounding minerals, and flow back into the atmosphere.²

CON: You could argue that burying our carbon while continuing to burn fossil fuels simply prolongs our dependency on fossil fuels. In other words, it prevents the pursuit of other, more environmentally sustainable solutions.³
 
CON: Carbon capture makes sense at really big power stations that are located within 500 kilometres of where the CO₂ is going to be dumped. Otherwise, transportation prices begin to skyrocket.⁴ It’s also a little bit sketchy to transport vast quantities of CO₂ over great distances.
 
CON: Which brings us to the high cost associated with carbon capture: The UN says at present it would cost anywhere from $25 to $60 per tonne to implement carbon capture on a conventional coal-burning plant. Carbon capture would be a huge cost for utilities, so government would need to kick in with some serious financial incentives.⁵  This is money that might better be spent on encouraging energy conservation and the use of renewable technologies.
 
CON: Same goes for industry. In the absence of strong emissions regulations, what oil or gas honcho is going to ditch their carbon out of the goodness of their own heart, especially if it costs a ton to do so? No surprise that there isn’t a single company pursuing carbon sequestration on the merits of ditching CO₂ alone. Only if there is oil recovery involved in some way, shape or form will they show interest, because the recovered fuel covers the cost of dumping the CO₂.⁶
 
So that’s quite a few CONS. Who’s and what’s to say that carbon capture is a good idea? And who’s doing it?
 
Weyburn, Saskatchewan is the site of EnCana’s major carbon sequestration project. They’ve been using carbon sequestration to get at the dregs of oil reservoirs since the 1950’s, and they swear that 75% of the carbon dioxide has stayed underground.
 
In addition to Weyburn, Norway has a carbon capture project, as does BP in Algeria and Scotland. These projects are each estimated to remove the equivalent of 5 million cars’ worth of CO₂ over a 20-year period.⁷  EnCana’s project pumps 1.5 million tonnes of CO₂ underground each year.⁸ It’s worth noting that carbon capture provides an opportunity for energy-giant Alberta to be part of the solution.
 
Instead of subsidizing this risky technology, governments should put a price on emitting carbon and let the market sort things out for us.  If industry thinks the best way to avoid paying the price is to store carbon, as long as they can prove beyond a doubt that the technology works, then that’s fine.  If industry thinks shifting to renewables makes (or saves) them more money, then that’s what they’ll do.
 
For more info on this testy issue, you should check out the Pembina Institute.

<sup>1 Source: "Two industry leaders bet on coal but split on approach", New York Times, May 28, 2007, Simon Romero
2 Source: Ibid.

CLEAN COAL SOURCES:

1 Source: http://www.electricitychoices.org/coal.html
2 Source: Flannery,Tim. The Weather Makers. Harper Collns, 2006, 71.
3 Source: http://www.uic.com.au/nip83.htm
4 Source: http://www.ens-newswire.com/ens/feb2006/2006-02-06-06.asp
5 Source: Gooddell, Jeff. Big Coal: The Dirty Secret Behind America's Energy Future, Houghton Mifflin, 2006, 215.
6 Source: http://ajmayerinternational.com/AESS-Newsletter-Feb13.htm
7 Source: http://www.eia.doe.gov/emeu/pgem/ch6.html
8 Source: http://www.teachcoal.org/aboutcoal/articles/faqs.html
9 Source: Gooddell, Jeff. Big Coal: The Dirty Secret Behind America's Energy Future, Houghton Mifflin, 2006, 213.

  CARBON CAPTURE SOURCES:

1 Source: McCarthy, Shawn. "Piping the problem underground." Globe and Mail, February 10, 2007.
2 Source: ibid.
3 Source: Monbiot, George. Heat: Ho to Stop the Planet from Burning. Toronto: Doubleday, 2006. 87.
4 Source: www.cbc.cca/new/background/kyoto/capturing-carbon.htm
5 Source: Ibid.
6 Source: McCarthy, Shawn. "Piping the problem underground." Globe and Mail, February 10, 2007.
7 Source: www.cbc.cca/new/background/kyoto/capturing-carbon.htm
8 Ibid.</sup>