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Worse Than Gasoline
Scientific American
Liquid coal would produce roughly twice the global warming emissions of gasoline
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Lawmakers of both parties are proposing amendments to the so-called energy independence bill that would massively subsidize the coal industry to produce liquid coal as a replacement for foreign oil. (The admirable original bill is designed to increase fuel efficiency in cars and light trucks, encourage production of biofuels, and provide funds to develop technology that will capture carbon dioxide emissions from power plants.)
Senator Jeff Bingaman, Democrat of New Mexico, opposed big subsidies for coal-based fuels until mid-June, when he moved to offer up to $10 billion in loans for coal-to-liquid plants. At the same time, Senator Barack Obama, from coal-rich Illinois, abruptly shifted his support for subsidizing coal-derived fuel production to concentrate on another bill he had been sponsoring that would cut greenhouse gas emissions and reduce carbon content in transport fuel.
The shifting positions of Bingaman and Obama underscore the tension between efforts to reduce dependence on foreign oil and to slow global warming. Liquid coal-produced when coal is converted into transportation fuel-would at best do little to rein in climate change and would at worst be twice as bad as gasoline in producing the greenhouse gases that blanket the earth and lead to warming.
(August 2007 issue)
Row over plan to build coal power plant
Juliette Jowit, The Observer
A decision is expected within weeks about whether Britain is to build the first coal-fired power station for more than 20 years – potentially unleashing a new generation of coal power.
Planning officials are considering an application from Eon to build a new coal-fired station in Kent, which could supply 1.5 million homes. The decision is being watched by power companies considering at least three more coal-fired projects, and government officials forecast up to eight could be built by 2020.
The move will be welcomed by groups worried about replacing Britain’s ageing power supply as demand continues to grow, and about over-reliance on imported gas or wind energy.
However, environmental groups claim a new generation of coal-fired power stations will make Britain miss tough targets to reduce CO2 emissions, and set a bad example to the rest of the world, particularly China, which is building two coal-powered generators a week.
(15 July 2007)
Hubbert’s Peak, The Coal Question, and Climate Change
Dave Rutledge, California Institute of Technology
Currently there is a vigorous debate about fossil-fuel production, and whether it will be sufficient in the future. At the same time, there is an intense effort to predict the contribution to future climate change that will result from consuming this fuel. There has been surprisingly little effort to connect these two.
Do we have a fossil-fuel supply problem? Do we have a climate-change problem? Do we have both? Which comes first? We will see that trends for future fossil-fuel production are less than any of the 40 UN scenarios considered in climate-change assessments.
The implication is that producer limitations could provide useful constraints in climate modeling. We will also see that the time constants for fossil-fuel exhaustion are about an order of magnitude smaller than the time constant for temperature change. This means that to lessen the effects of climate change associated with future fossil-fuel use, reducing ultimate production is more important than slowing it down.
(July 2007)
The original has links to slides, a spreadsheet, and a video of Dr. Rutledge’s talk. He is Chair, Division of Engineering and Applied Science at the California Institute of Technology.
