Say what you will, FutureGen is a good start. Sure for the time being it's expensive, but who would have guessed that zero emissions coal could be real. This is a positive step forward in that more plants will come online with this technology. Successfull implimetation of these designs on a large scale WILL make a difference. I costs alot to get going, but now its starting to look like a clear future.

This is a brave design!

June 2006 Fact Sheet (NRDC)

"Coal gasification with carbon capture and disposal (CCD) technologies -- which corral carbon dioxide from coal-fired power plants and pump it into natural geologic structures deep in the Earth -- are an important part of mitigating the damage done by burning coal."

http://www.nrdc.org/globalWarming/coal/contents.asp

That is one expensive coal plant.

Frankly some form of sequestering will probably be needed but I'm not too sure about the viability of this solution. It isn't a retrofit for what's out there but a ground up solution. It doesn't address the large number of coal plants already in place or what to do with them during their 40 year lifespan. I doubt any utility will end a power plant before its time is up without major intervention.

Would like to know what the differences from a IGCC does to the cost. A conventional plant with a scrubber is only 34% efficient. IGCC is supposed to jack that up to 42% but the costs obviously go up especially with sequestering.

How variable are these coal plants? Are they load following or peaking or are they base units (most likely). Given the LCOE of coal is $53.10 MWhr and wind is only $55.80, are the costs justified? Can we displace more coal with cleaner tech? Given the availibility of coal and the limitations of the systems in place, we will need some coal tech, unfortunately, and this is a solution of sorts.

I've got to love the fact though they call it non-profit. Right. It just touches the very cynical part of me that these guys pour their money into old tech to keep it going.

Stan,

Are these the same "adults" that racked up $3 trillion in debt during the Republican Congress and Administration and got us into a war in Iraq based on lies?

I usually disagree with Stan. But this is a good move.

Coal is here. Screaming about it won't stop the use. I detest it - we used it at home when I was a boy.

Learning how to best reduce the damage coal does is worth a few billion. It would be very nice if we knew what will work well, what it will cost, and what will not work. But we don't. And these operations are the only way to find out.

Disagreement with the "adults" about Iraq and such doesn't mean every decision at DOE must be wrong. But Stan did take a shot at the "believers" first.

IGCC technology has been in the test stage for over 20 years.

Pressurized Fluid bed systems get efficiencies similar to IGCC in the 40-45% thermal efficiency range already. A 360 and 250 MWe units are in place in Japan. The 250 MWe unit has been in operation since 2000. The 360 MWe unit (2001) uses supercritical steam at Karita and is supposedly the higher thermal efficiency plant (42.5%).

http://www.iea-coal.org.uk/content/default.asp?PageId=988

Stan is himself a true believer. Too bad it's in the worst of things - himself and his biased opinions. There is no fool like a sure fool.

Much of any additional costs for IGCC and CCS can be recovered with EOR (of course that defeats the purpose of the CCS as far as carbon goes)

Sorry to add to the noise, but continuing to fund these demonstration projects while doing nothing to actually require CS is just a way to delay as long as possible what needs to be done. This suits the coal companies and the utilities and is a cheap way to bide their time while the people believe in the illusion that we will able to have truly clean coal.

We have seen this movie before and we have as evidence decades of delay in actually cleaning up coal plants. The coal companies are ruthless and will buy off or help destroy any politician who would actually suggest these we cut back on coal or prohibit any coal expansion that doesn't sequester these co2 emissions.

The utilities and coal companies should be enforced to price in their externalities, those environmental and health costs that are not captured by the market price. Under this scenario, they will either learn to limit their emissions or they will be replaced by alternative sources of energy.

And btw, coal sequestration does nothing to stop the horrific damage that is being done to the mountains, valley, streams, and people of place like West Virginia.
Coal is the killer and will always be such as long as these corporations rule our political landscape.

The other side of that is that the distance between CO2 production and sequestration would be much smaller on average than the distance from crude production/import, to refining, to the terminal.

We could replace all fossil fuel use with 60,000 sq mi of algae oil farms. That's less than 138 sq mi per congressional district if we would spread them around on a per capita basis.

@Aym

You quote the 40 year life of a coal plant. Thanks to having little relevant alternatives, the average age of coal plants in the US, almost exceeds that as most are super-annuated already.

The myriad nuclear plants that were canceled, but were originally slated to come on line in the 70s, 80s, and 90s were meant to replace and augment these ancient pollution spewing monstrosities.

I am proud of the work I did in helping stopping the worst of those; which were accidents waiting to happen. But instead of stopping the ill conceived ones, the demagogues joined in, and all were stopped, both the good ones and the bad.

Instead the old coal plants had to be kept alive and generating because the juveniles with their wind and solar dreams, but no actuals or practical alternatives, left no choice to the Utility managements.

@K,
Thank You.

IGCC is not my first preference for a prime power source. But of the coal alternatives, it seems from an engineer's perspective to be the best, intrinsically.

An Engineer would want to 1) Obtain the maximal thermal efficiency; 2) Clean up the pollution before you burn it; as that is is simpler to do, realistically. 3) Ssequestering a gas like CO2, is easier too, should you believe that it is necessary; as many of you do believe, currently.

@sjc,
I was criticizing the Republican true-believers that dreamed up FutureGen. Working in conjunction with the Democrat dopes, of course. Idiots are wherever you find them.

If you think that the Trade Towers are a myth that never existed, and a lie, I feel sorry for the reality that you think you inhabit. More people died that day than did at Pearl Harbor; and they were innocent US civilians and not military, including a few friends and acquaintances. WWII would cost about $65 trillion today and we spent it's equivalent beating Germany and Japan.

Unlike juvenile dreamers for power systems that don't scale; or absurdities like algal farms that ONLY consume a MERE 60,000 square miles, the Utilities by law are obligated to produce power as part of their charter to do business. If you must burn coal, IGCC or fluidized bed are the only true modern alternatives. Ultra supercritical steam is just too corrosive of steam plant components to be realistic, IMHO.

I base that on the experience of the US Navy. If the US Navy couldn't make it work, and obsoleted an entire fleet of vessels, with all their resources, who am I to argue with them. (The predecessors to the Perry class frigates, were scrapped after less than half of their planned years operations, some only a few years old because of unreliable supercritical steam plants.)

As for solar or algal farms that would need to consume significant portions of the USA, it pure dreamy fantasy. That's a requisite area of the size of most of Nevada, Arizona and most of New Mexico put together.

Such proposed installations would never get to first base on an application for an Environmental Impact Statement. Just imagine actually proposing that you are going to drown (via algal farms) or barbecue (via solar farms) all the life and species of the States of Nevada, Arizona and New Mexico put together, and drive to extinction, 10,000 or 100,000 or perhaps 1,000,000 or more species.

NO Problem. Your EIS approval is a mere formality. Riiigghhtt!

@Stan
You quote the 40 year life of a coal plant. Thanks to having little relevant alternatives, the average age of coal plants in the US, almost exceeds that as most are super-annuated already.

40 years is the lower end, 50 years is the upper end but in either case, what do you think has been built as baseload generation in the last decade or so? Although new plants haven't been hugely built, there is nothing stopping anyone from upgrading plants like they have done to the US nuclear fleet.

According to the DOE, 153 coal plants will be built by 2030 in the US representing 93 GW. China alone is expected to add over 560 coal plants by 2014 (in a 2006 article)

http://www.netl.doe.gov/publications/press/2006/06046-Coal-Fired_Power_Plants_Database.html

Frankly your belief in nuclear plants being built in the 70's defies the logic of the times. They were massively delayed and even when they weren't they had the worst capacity factors, exacerbating costs. Even today an EIA paper put the LCOE of nuclear at $59.30/MWh compared to wind power at $55.80. In the late 70's and 80's, energy demand increases sharply decreased, further halting plans for multi-billion dollar energy projects.

Scalable? You must be kidding. Wind and solar are a heck more scalable than conventional/nuclear. They are by nature modular. No one accident/damage done to one of the modules would knock out the whole thing. The modules are relatively cheap and easy to add to the system. Large base capacity units like these coal or nuclear units takes years to put up and are done so in large increments. Economic slowdowns like the late 70's and 80's would mean multi-billion dollar capital liability whose payments wouldn't be offset by demand crippled by the economic slowdown. It's one reason why many utilites jump on conservation. Capital investments are inherintly dangerous.

As for solar or algal farms that would need to consume significant portions of the USA, it pure dreamy fantasy. That's a requisite area of the size of most of Nevada, Arizona and most of New Mexico put together.

Ah yes, trying to use reductio ad absurdum. But your statement doesn't make sense in the first place. Nevada is over 110000 square miles. With present technology (not that I'm suggesting doing it), it would only take 10000 square miles of solar panels to equal the US usage of electricity. Only a tenth of Nevada, not your most of 3 states, but then you aren't interested in facts, just spouting.

Stan, what's juvenile is acting the way you do. Wordwide energy consumption in 2004 was 0.471 ZJ in 2004. In one year, the sun puts out tremendous amounts of energy, 3850 ZJ reach the earth's surface which gets turned into 6ZJ of wind power, 1.8 ZJ of biomass, and 285 ZJ gets absorbed into the oceans. All the oil, gas and coal that we use is stored from billions of years of this. It is far better that we exploit the renewable energy that we can economically exploit (which we can) than calling it juvenile and dismissing it.

@ Stan:

With respect to your comment on the Trade Towers, 2749 including many members of FDNY and NYPD were killed that day. Final total deaths a Pearl Harbor - 2390. I doubt anyone believes that event to be a myth. Some, however have different views of what happened and who was responsible. Some, that is, of us who were there.