Climate Neros fiddle while Rome burns
Jan 28, 2008 04:30 AM
Tyler Hamilton
Energy Reporter
Governments and industry love to talk about the things they plan to do, perhaps to detract attention away from what they haven't done or aren't doing.
How many radio or television debates have shown an environmentalist pointing out the devastating effects of oil sands and power production in Alberta, only to have industry officials tout concepts like "clean coal" or "carbon capture and sequestration" – as if the solution is here and the problem is being overcome as they speak?
The average listener is likely to walk away thinking that action is being taken and that there's no need for concern. Problem is, we keep waiting and waiting and nothing really happens.
Professor David Keith, a chemical engineer and director of the University of Calgary's energy and environmental systems group, warned at an oil sands conference last week that there's tremendous uncertainty around the viability of these large projects. This reality, he pointed out, is overshadowed by all the hype.
"We're not actually doing very much," he said. "We're in a world where there's an enormous amount of talk but very little actual action."
As Keith pointed out, there's been no shortage of press releases. According to Emerging Energy Research of Cambridge, Mass., more than 20 major carbon-capture power generation projects were announced around the world last year – most of them proposed in Canada, the United States and Australia.
Not one, said Keith, is certain to move forward.
Last September, for example, one of the biggest "planned" projects in Canada was abruptly cancelled. The project, which would have involved construction of a 300-megawatt pulverized coal plant in Saskatchewan, was originally estimated to cost $1.5 billion. That figure expanded to $3.8 billion within no time, and that's excluding the carbon sequestration part of the equation.
What was the industry's excuse for cancelling it? The government, they said, wasn't throwing enough money at it. That's right, the same federal government that keeps talking about this technology as the solution to our woes did not want to commit financial resources.
Then in December, a group of Canada's 15 largest industrial companies representing 60 per cent of Alberta's electricity generation and 95 per cent of oil sands production, released a report calling for a carbon capture, storage and pipeline system that would require federal funding and policy support.
The group, calling itself "ICO2N," said such a system would allow industry to keep burning coal and extracting more out of the ground in a "sustainable" way. Their proposal and the opportunities they highlighted made for good headlines, but we're likely a couple of decades away from getting there – a little late in the battle to keep our climate in check.
Consistent with all these announcements or plans is talk of it being a "made-in-Canada" or "made-in-Alberta" technology that will turn our country into an "energy superpower."
Alberta Premier Ed Stelmach has been drinking the Kool-Aid. When his government released its climate plan last week, it said the province would aim to reduce its carbon dioxide emissions to 14 per cent below 2005 levels by 2050 and that 70 per cent of those emission cuts would come from carbon capture and storage. There's a lot of hope built into those numbers.
Keith, during his conference talk, said it's one thing to capture carbon and another to store it. On the latter, he said there are just three large-scale projects underway worldwide and only in areas of the world where a carbon tax exists.
Oil companies and utilities are reluctant to move forward for several reasons. For one, there's been a lack of clear policy direction in North America. Second, natural gas has stayed cheaper than expected so there's been no urgency to lean on coal. Another major reason, cited by Keith, is that project costs are skyrocketing.
There's a shortage of labour. Skilled workers and engineers are being lost to retirement faster than new workers are entering the market. The demand for resources, such as steel, continues to rise as countries such as China and other industries, such as nuclear, rush to lock up contracts.
"Nobody, to my knowledge, really knows whether this enormous run-up in capital costs is a bubble or not," said Keith.
I'm guessing it's here to stay. Sure, scientists may be confident the technology to capture carbon works and can become less expensive, and that the approach to storing it underground is safe and there are plenty of spots to do it. That's the technical stuff – the logistics are another story.
The U.S. Electric Power Research Institute (EPRI), in its latest journal, said a single carbon capture and sequestration project of "utility scale" – involving preliminary study, design, construction, seismic analysis and monitoring – would take several years to complete.
The largest carbon capture system in testing is about 2 megawatts – versus about 500 megawatts for a small coal plant. That has to be scaled up 250 times to prove it's ready for prime time. Meanwhile, the largest underground storage project is injecting only 1 million tonnes of CO{-2} per year, compared to 6 million required for an average-size coal plant.
Let's put this into perspective: in the U.S. alone there are nearly 1,500 coal-electricity generators in operation that are capable of providing all the power needs of Ontario 13 times over. More than 100 new plants are on the drawing board.
And China? What's happening there is just plain scary. In 2006 alone, the Chinese added 100,000 megawatts of coal power to its grid – nearly four times all the power generation in Ontario. The rate of construction is expected to accelerate, not slow down.
"The resources associated with even a single (carbon capture and sequestration) project are extensive," according a feature in the recent EPRI journal. "Multiplying such resource requirements by the thousands of sites worldwide that may deploy (the) technology for CO{-2} emissions reduction provides a stark reflection of the dual challenge and opportunity associated with climate change."
That's an understatement.
The irony here is that our government and industry officials continue to talk up the greatness of carbon capture and sequestration "potential" yet refuse to implement a carbon tax or some equivalent that, from a market perspective, is the only sure way of getting the ball rolling beyond mere discussion and promises.
But even if we imposed a carbon tax today, this supposed silver bullet still won't hit its target anytime soon. So the big question is, what are we going to do in the meantime?
