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Why the future of energy is coal, carbon capture and hydrogen
The only energy system which can get us through the next 200 years is coal power stations with carbon capture, generating hydrogen power, with the hydrogen used to power vehicles, and generate electricity.
The future is not battery electric cars. These are a a fine niche market - but the bulk of drivers won't buy them, because they want a car which they can use to take their family out on weekend trips with - and you can't have that with present battery technology.
Meanwhile many of us are concerned about the social, environmental, political, safety and financial costs of gasoline - but this concern isn't enough to stop us buying gasoline cars. Unless we were forced to (eg the oil supply actually ran out or was banned). Even with an oil "peak" in 2020, this might never happen, with new sources of oil coming online, turing the peak into a plateau. We'll carry on burning up the earth and causing problems but driving our gasoline cars and most of us will never vote for a political party which wants something else.
Of course battery technology might improve - there could be another breakthrough battery technology like the lithium ion batteries which made cellphones possible - but there's no clear pathway to this today.
People will, however, switch to hydrogen cars if they were presented with a car which does everyting a gasoline car does (equivalent purchase cost, fuel cost, durability, fuelling time), but did not have the social, environmental, political, safety and financial costs of gasoline. This is all plausible with today's technology or technology with a clear pathway towards it.
And as far as the energy source to create hydrogen is concerned: renewables are a great idea but they are still very expensive and there seems to be limits on how fast they can be installed. The restrictions on the installation speed are complex and varied - including funding, environmental concerns, planning constraints, no-one wanting one next door, concerns about the view and the noise of wind, supply of spare parts - whatever they are, I haven't seen any great initiative which can lift them. So it seems unlikely a big chunk of our power (eg over 50 per cent) will come from renewables within the next 30 years.
Nuclear power is getting very expensive and unpopular these days - and there's big limitations on how much hydropower you can do.
Coming onto gas - there's more gas available than oil, but not much more - eg the US has an estimated 10 years of gas supply left. Other countries have a lot more gas. We could make hydrogen from gas but it seems daft making all this effort to adopt a new energy source just to be dependent on fossil fuels from other countries again.
The final option is coal - with proved reserves of at least 200 years, located in most of the countries which consume the most energy (including the US and China).
There is well established technology to gasify coal into hydrogen and carbon monoxide. The carbon monoxide is oxidised to carbon dioxide and stored underground; the hydrogen can be supplied directly to vehicle fuelling stations - or it can be combusted to make electricity (or, better, reacted in a fuel cell to make twice as much electricity than with combustion).
Many people say carbon capture technology is 'unavailable'. What they actually mean is that no-one has yet captured carbon dioxide from a full scale carbon capture power station and buried it. They have buried carbon capture on an industrial scale (Sleipner platform); they have captured carbon dioxide from a mixed gas waste stream (in several urea plants built by Mitsubishi). They haven't put them together yet. And the reason no-one has done it is because no-one has been willing to pay for it - until governments find a way to make people pay 20 per cent extra electricity costs to pay for it.
The cost of hydrogen generation from coal power stations, with carbon capture, has been estimated by the US National Academy of Engineering to be $1.03 per kg of hydrogen. Adding in a $0.42/kg distribution cost and a $0.54/kg dispensing costs (NAE figures) gives a total cost of $1.99/kg hydrogen at the pump. A kg of hydrogen will move a Honda FCX Clarity 68 miles.
Compare this to a gasoline pump cost of $1.60 per gallon (today's figures, including tax) - which will move a vehicle of equivalent size to the Honda FCX Clarity about 30 miles. Coal with carbon capture starts to look very attractive.
The final question - if coal + carbon capture cannot be built to generate electricity in today's political / financial climate, then what is stopping it? Well this is coal + carbon capture competing with coal on its own. (Although you will notice that it is very hard to build coal plants these days with no carbon capture in the US and North West Europe). If the choice is gasoline or coal+carbon capture, on the basis that the second option is cheaper and more environmentally friendly, which one do you think people will go for?
The future is not battery electric cars. These are a a fine niche market - but the bulk of drivers won't buy them, because they want a car which they can use to take their family out on weekend trips with - and you can't have that with present battery technology.
Meanwhile many of us are concerned about the social, environmental, political, safety and financial costs of gasoline - but this concern isn't enough to stop us buying gasoline cars. Unless we were forced to (eg the oil supply actually ran out or was banned). Even with an oil "peak" in 2020, this might never happen, with new sources of oil coming online, turing the peak into a plateau. We'll carry on burning up the earth and causing problems but driving our gasoline cars and most of us will never vote for a political party which wants something else.
Of course battery technology might improve - there could be another breakthrough battery technology like the lithium ion batteries which made cellphones possible - but there's no clear pathway to this today.
People will, however, switch to hydrogen cars if they were presented with a car which does everyting a gasoline car does (equivalent purchase cost, fuel cost, durability, fuelling time), but did not have the social, environmental, political, safety and financial costs of gasoline. This is all plausible with today's technology or technology with a clear pathway towards it.
And as far as the energy source to create hydrogen is concerned: renewables are a great idea but they are still very expensive and there seems to be limits on how fast they can be installed. The restrictions on the installation speed are complex and varied - including funding, environmental concerns, planning constraints, no-one wanting one next door, concerns about the view and the noise of wind, supply of spare parts - whatever they are, I haven't seen any great initiative which can lift them. So it seems unlikely a big chunk of our power (eg over 50 per cent) will come from renewables within the next 30 years.
Nuclear power is getting very expensive and unpopular these days - and there's big limitations on how much hydropower you can do.
Coming onto gas - there's more gas available than oil, but not much more - eg the US has an estimated 10 years of gas supply left. Other countries have a lot more gas. We could make hydrogen from gas but it seems daft making all this effort to adopt a new energy source just to be dependent on fossil fuels from other countries again.
The final option is coal - with proved reserves of at least 200 years, located in most of the countries which consume the most energy (including the US and China).
There is well established technology to gasify coal into hydrogen and carbon monoxide. The carbon monoxide is oxidised to carbon dioxide and stored underground; the hydrogen can be supplied directly to vehicle fuelling stations - or it can be combusted to make electricity (or, better, reacted in a fuel cell to make twice as much electricity than with combustion).
Many people say carbon capture technology is 'unavailable'. What they actually mean is that no-one has yet captured carbon dioxide from a full scale carbon capture power station and buried it. They have buried carbon capture on an industrial scale (Sleipner platform); they have captured carbon dioxide from a mixed gas waste stream (in several urea plants built by Mitsubishi). They haven't put them together yet. And the reason no-one has done it is because no-one has been willing to pay for it - until governments find a way to make people pay 20 per cent extra electricity costs to pay for it.
The cost of hydrogen generation from coal power stations, with carbon capture, has been estimated by the US National Academy of Engineering to be $1.03 per kg of hydrogen. Adding in a $0.42/kg distribution cost and a $0.54/kg dispensing costs (NAE figures) gives a total cost of $1.99/kg hydrogen at the pump. A kg of hydrogen will move a Honda FCX Clarity 68 miles.
Compare this to a gasoline pump cost of $1.60 per gallon (today's figures, including tax) - which will move a vehicle of equivalent size to the Honda FCX Clarity about 30 miles. Coal with carbon capture starts to look very attractive.
The final question - if coal + carbon capture cannot be built to generate electricity in today's political / financial climate, then what is stopping it? Well this is coal + carbon capture competing with coal on its own. (Although you will notice that it is very hard to build coal plants these days with no carbon capture in the US and North West Europe). If the choice is gasoline or coal+carbon capture, on the basis that the second option is cheaper and more environmentally friendly, which one do you think people will go for?
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© 2012 Created by karl jeffery.
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