Well, a 10% loss of power is better than 29%, but still an awful lot. It would mean an 11% increase in the cost of electricity, even if purchase and installation of the capture equipment were free. In practice, it's probably more like a 30% increase in the COE.

Alstom and American Electric can bring the technology to "commercial scale", but whether they sell any systems remains to be seen. It depends entirely on policies that have yet to be adopted.

Full marks for AEP. Their CEO is trying to make his company succeed by doing the right thing. They have also been pursuing CGCC technology despite its higher cost. I believe he is trying to be in a superior competitive position when carbon is taxed or sequestration becomes mandatory. (He would also be in a better position to make use of Greenfuel algae culture). IIRC this is in contrast with Peabody electric which has decided that money is better spent fighting legislation and continuing with business as dirty usual.

My guess is the 10% power penalty does not include compressing and pumping the CO2. What if the nearest saline aquifer or oil reservoir is hundreds of kilometres away? I presume the 10% does include the energy penalty for chilling the ammonia. Which poses the question how much ammonia is vented to the atmosphere and how much does this cost to replace? Ammonia scrubbers needed perhaps.

Remember on a worldwide scale we want to to capture perhaps 10 billion tonnes of CO2 annually within 20 years. I guess saline aquifers must be in every backyard. Let's hope this lives up to the claims.

Neil:

Does it? I was unaware of that. I thought they simply fed the flue gasses directly into the bioreactor after a some scrubbing to remove any particulates.

Splitting CO2 into its elements is an energetically very costly way of getting it out of the atmosphere. There are minerals that, if pulverized and dispersed, will pull it down without breaking it; because they do this spontaneously, in geological time they would have eventually done so anyway, but by pulverizing them we speed up the process to match our speedup of CO2 release.

Here, I seem to recall, I worked out the pulverization energy as a fraction of the energy yielded by the fuel that makes the CO2. It's less than a fifth.

It is very easy to estimate the cost of AGW based IPCC estimates for the next century. Zero. I did not even need my slide rule Blair.

Maybe we could use the money to educate children about environmental science rather than scub a MINOR gas in the atmosphere.

Since my electricity comes from AEP, I have invented a natural ghg gas scrubbing system that makes fertilizer at the same time. I will call it the Shade-tree-lawn-compost-to-garden system. I will calculate for Blair (again without using a slide rule), the capital cost and energy input. Ready Blair?

Zero, zip, nads, zilch!!!

EROI - infinite

For those environmental stewards who are too busy to understand the environment, ghg is natural. Man's contribution is a small, single digit %. By studying the environment, man can learn about the carbon and nitrogen cycle and provide a natural solution.

Im new here. I plan on participating because these discussions are especially insightful and relevant to my occupation as an energy policy analyst. So here's my $0.02:

pete best, on 20 Feb 2007 @ 4:39 am asked the following:

Who knows about Gas as it is used for heating. I am unsure as how we can produce enough by another means to offset it.

I deal with such issues extensively. At the present, natural gas utilities typically deliver more energy to consumers than electric utilities. This is changing however, mainly because of mergers with electric utilities. Within such combination utilities, I am not aware of any instance where the gas utility dominates. Displacing natural gas with another gas (like hydrogen) face several technical and economic obstacles. What is more likely is that, over time, the direct use of natural gas will be displaced by centrally generated electricity.

A well designed passive solar home needs no other heating source. Well, maybe a well-designed wood-burning stove would be nice. Zoning rules that require proper southern orientation would be a start but developers would probably resist and money trumps "for the people".

SecularAnimist, on 20 Feb 2007 @ 3:23 pm commented (62):

A number of the corporations mentioned above are also participants in the US Climate Action Partnership, which in January called for urgent action -- including mandatory national limits on carbon emissions -- in the USA.

Have you read the US Climate Action Partnership “study”? Let me point out one of their positions that should be challenged. It’s on page 9 and states:

NEW COAL-BASED ENERGY FACILITIES & OTHER STATIONARY SOURCES
Policies are needed to speed transition to low- and zero-emission stationary sources and strongly discourage further construction of stationary sources that cannot easily capture CO2 emissions for geologic sequestration

This is a plan for an all-electric monoculture based upon a promise of capturing and sequestering CO2. Meanwhile, back on the farm, cogeneration, a technology that Edison himself started with, is deemed too dirty. If you want to generate your own power it will have to be with wind, solar and maybe a fuel cell or two. Properly designed & operated, cogeneration is 80 to 90 % efficient and emits about 40 % of the CO2 of a typical power plant. Plus, it’s relatively affordable, IF your local electric utility does not stop you with a overwhelming array of “interconnection” requirements, etc.

I’m not willing to “bet the farm” on such promises as sequestering; not even the outhouse. Anyone remember “too cheap to meter” nuclear energy? This could be worse because if you give them an inch they will (at least try to) take a mile. Ultimately, electric utilities could monopolize flame. “Hey kid, wanna buy a book of matches for $5? I got a quart of gasoline I can let go cheap. Only $20!”

Now for my personal favorites for controlling CO2 emissions:
1. Bring back Fizzies and tax belching
2. Benign aliens from outer space will save us from ourselves.

Maxpower, no, that is not my argument. What I said was the cost of AGW is zero. This is because the climate changes slowly (no matter what the cause) and we will adapt.

Furthermore, the link that Maxpower provided did not discuss climate change but the carbon cycle. The nitrogen cycle and other GHGs is discussed in the next chapter. Anyhow, by studying natural sources and sinks of ghg; we can come up with cost effective solutions.

Kit: If there are large reserves of NG in the US then they must be more expensive to recover. Insiders I've talked to have indicated that easy gas in N.A. has already peaked (note that this is not world production) and that we'll be importing our gas with the large fleet of NG ships currently being built. It's only because we've had a couple of warm winters that we've had enough NG to get through the winter without a bit of a pinch. Pipelines from the North are in the works but are still many years awasy.

When I look at NG reserves, we always seem to be about 10 years from running out. I believe this was the case in the early 1970s as well. This might mean that they are discovering enough to meet the growth.

The red flag I see is Canada using NG to process oil sands and not exporting as much to the U.S. I would much rather make SNG from biomass than import NG in tankers.

The plants taking in the CO2 is a good way to go. I you want to reverse things, make hydrogen from biomass for power plants and sequester the CO2.

Either way, the drop off for NG at end of life is more like a cliff. Oil fields show you signs ahead of time, NG fields do not.

Also, using techniques to extend production at oil wells do not work for NG wells. You can not use water nor CO2 to force out more with NG.

The GreenFuel approach that some of you have referred to is most likely a scam:

http://algae-thermodynamics.blogspot.com/