Cut CO2 = Burn more coal

[JohnB]

Sounds really odd, doesn't it?

 

I came across the link for this elsewhere and had a read, the guy makes sense. Not just for Australia, but for many other developed nations.

 

http://papundits.wordpress.com/2011/07/19/co2-emissions-reduction-a-radical-plan/

 

Down here we are looking at a rather nasty tax, plus programs with the idea of 5-10% reductions. The whole deal will cost a not small fortune.

 

Now a heck of a lot of the CO2 and other pollutants are from burning coal. Big power stations (old ones) burn 6.5 - 8 million tons per year, but new versions are far more efficient and burn around 5 million tons per year. While I'm sceptical about how much warming might come from CO2, I just can't see a downside with this idea.

 

If people are worried about CO2, it will reduce emissions by more than most of the cap and trade or other options I've seen. There is the reduction in general pollutants and the savings. Coal is trading AU$120/tonne, for a power station to save (using the minimum figures) 1.5 million tonnes per year is a saving of AU$180 million per year in operating costs.

 

It's also a lot cheaper to build a new coal fired station than the equivalent in Solar or Wind. How many wind turbines to generate 1000MW? And you still need a back up station if the wind fails.

 

I can't find an obvious problem with his figures and think that this sort of idea is something that both warmer and sceptic could and should support.

[swansont]

I don't get the title. You aren't cutting CO2 by burning more coal. You're burning less coal by using the energy more efficiently.

[CaptainPanic]

Sounds really odd, doesn't it?

It does. There is one thing in particular that I would like to read some information (proof) about, namely this:

 

It's also a lot cheaper to build a new coal fired station than the equivalent in Solar or Wind. How many wind turbines to generate 1000MW? And you still need a back up station if the wind fails.

I am not sure this is true... and I am not sure your reasoning is sound. I'll explain:

 

Investment costs

The reason coal is so cheap, is that we're using very old power stations which (because of their age) have zero depreciation. All they have is regular maintenance, which admittedly is higher than for new power stations. Still, it is cheaper to keep an old station running than to build a new one.

 

Although I cannot quickly find a source for this: I think that the payback time (the period over which depreciation is counted) is significantly longer for a coal power station than for a wind turbine.

 

Operating costs

If you just compare the investment costs of the coal power station to the wind turbine, I can guarantee that the coal power station is cheaper. But wind power does not need 25 kg of coal for every GJ it produces. So, that is not really a fair comparison, is it?

 

Total price

Wind power has a clear price:

Most of the commercial-scale turbines installed today are 2 MW in size and cost roughly $3.5 Million installed. (source)

The operating costs are quite small: only maintenance.

For coal power, this is not so easy. First, we must take into account the investments. Then the price of coal. Then the subsidies on coal (yes, coal is subsidized, in Australia as well as in Europe!!).

 

In fact, I think we should compensate both wind and coal to their real price... including new investments, operating costs, and no subsidies for both. It's a calculation which you will not often see. Quoted prices for coal always include the subsidy, while wind power is often quoted without.

 

Other investments (backup and storage)

In Australia, you already have electricity storage, so let's ignore that part.

Europe also has a similar storage capacity btw, in the Alps and in Scandinavia. It's in the order of Gigawatts and the European grid is completely connected.

Btw, coal also requires a backup, because a coal power station needs about 1 hour to change its power output. Just like with old steam locomotives, there is a lag between the input of more/less coal and the output of more/less electricity. Fluctuations are absorbed by other power stations.

[Greg Boyles]

The ETS is based on the false assumption that you can reduce CO2 emmissions and provide enough energy through renewable energy sources while continuing to pursue economic and population growth.

 

 

 

The only sure way to reduce CO2 emissions, and environmental degradation in general, is to reduce the number of people that are doing the cosuming to a scientifically varified sustainable limit and then pursuing a policy of zero net population and economic growth.

[iNow]

The ETS is based on the false assumption that you can reduce CO2 emmissions and provide enough energy through renewable energy sources while continuing to pursue economic and population growth.

This is demonstrably false. The only true constraints are political and financial. I'm not saying that the politics or economics are easy, only that the assumption that it's possible to reduce CO2 emissions and provide enough energy through renewables is most certainly a valid one. Ergo, your assertion that the assumption is false is itself invalid.

 

 

 

The only sure way to reduce CO2 emissions, and environmental degradation in general, is to reduce the number of people that are doing the cosuming to a scientifically varified sustainable limit and then pursuing a policy of zero net population and economic growth.

This, too, is demonstrably false. I appreciate that this is your opinion, and an opinion to which you seem to cling strongly, however, it does not extend beyond the domain of personal belief. There are multiple "sure ways" to cut CO2 emissions, and the vast majority of which have no bearing on either growth or reductions in economy or population. Ergo, this too is an assertion from you which is plainly invalid.

[Greg Boyles]

This is demonstrably false. The only true constraints are political and financial. I'm not saying that the politics or economics are easy, only that the assumption that it's possible to reduce CO2 emissions and provide enough energy through renewables is most certainly a valid one. Ergo, your assertion that the assumption is false is itself invalid.

 

 

 

 

This, too, is demonstrably false. I appreciate that this is your opinion, and an opinion to which you seem to cling strongly, however, it does not extend beyond the domain of personal belief. There are multiple "sure ways" to cut CO2 emissions, and the vast majority of which have no bearing on either growth or reductions in economy or population. Ergo, this too is an assertion from you which is plainly invalid.

 

There is a fundamental truth in all biological systems, including our economies.

 

Monotonic growth of anything at any level is ultimately unsustainable.

 

Threrefore the assumption that the ETS can reduce CO2 emissions indefinitely while continuing population and economic growth is also fundamentally false.

 

The above is not opinion but irrefutable fact. Only economists who are divorced from biology, and science in general, believe otherwise.

 

The only biological system that defies this is cancer. But a cancerous tumour eventually kills the host and its growth ceases and it is erased from existence.

[Cap'n Refsmmat]

Is continuing population growth part of the goal, or merely continuing economic growth? The latter can happen without the former.

[swansont]

I submit that population growth has nothing at all to do with whether or not you can reduce CO2 with coal vs wind power. It's a red herring. The main variables are C02 produced, cost and power produced.

[iNow]

There is a fundamental truth in all biological systems, including our economies.

 

Monotonic growth of anything at any level is ultimately unsustainable.

Thanks for putting forth unfounded assertions (including ones which are trivially false, such as economics somehow being a subset of biology), but neither has anything whatsoever to do with the point I made.

 

 

 

Threrefore the assumption that the ETS can reduce CO2 emissions indefinitely while continuing population and economic growth is also fundamentally false.

 

The above is not opinion but irrefutable fact.

I truly hate to correct you again, but what you've just put forth here really is just an opinion. It's your opinion, and that's fine, but opinion [math]\ne[/math] fact, regardless of how many times you assert the contrary.

 

I also note that you've introduced a new qualifier to the discussion, and that nobody here is really talking about "indefinite reductions of CO2 emissions." Where did "indefinite" come from?

Edited August 3, 2011 by iNow

[CharonY]

May I also ask what the absolute truth of biological system is supposed to be?

[JohnB]

First up.

 

Swansont, perhaps a better title would have been "Cut CO2 emissions = Burn Coal". What I thought interesting about the engineers idea was that it looked at an area which is normally missed. Most discussions revolve around "What will we build in the future" or "what do we replace coal with to reduce emissions". This is the first example I've seen of replacing coal with far more efficient coal. No CCS, or any possible, maybe, future tech just replace the old stations with new ones. Looking from the POV that a government wants to spend money to "do something", this option gives a very good bang for the buck, but hasn't been really discussed.

 

CaptainPanic, I'll deal with the "subsidies" first. First and foremost, the Wiki page is wrong. I've got no idea what fantasyland the page editors are in, but the references generally don't back the claims.

Geoscience Australia (GA) provided a $107 million subsidy for energy in 2005–06. The 2006–07 budget involved 66 projects of which 11 are allocated to petroleum research and others related to mineral and mining industry. On a much smaller scale, the subsidy allocated to saving climate change was 'storage of GHG' with a subsidy of $0.6 million.

 

The referenced source is here. By scrolling down to page 26 we find that both "Grants" and "Subsidies" expenditure is zero. On page 35 they do show that they administer a $20,000 grant for another department.

 

The Department of Industry, Tourism and Resources (DITR), similarly to GA, provided a A$30 million energy technology fund in 1994–95. This increased to a government-funded $1,314 million subsidy which divides into 52 branches. 95% of Australia's electricity originates from fossil fuels, which make the power industry quite profitable. The DITR supports fossil fuel research with 95% of its total budget, leaving less than 5% for renewable energy technology.

 

The referenced source is here. The referenced page 12 actually deals with expected growth in the Aluminium sector towards 2029-2030. While the report does indeed say that Australia gets 95% of its power from fossil fuels (Page 2) it is about energy usage and generation projections towards 2029-2030 and makes no mention of subsidies.

 

As to the other 3 references for the "Subsidies", one is from a lobby group to a Senate Committee, one is from an activist and the last is from Greenpeace. The reach they have to go to in an attempt to find subsidies should indicate how little there are. They include things like selling power more cheaply to the aluminium industry, I guess they never heard of "bulk purchase discounts" and the road network. If the road network is a "subsidy" for the oil and coal industries, then it must also be a "subsidy" for the catering, food production, book, baby diaper and fishing industries as well.

 

In contrast, in the 2011-2012 Federal budget the expected incomes are Company and petroleum resouce rent tax $76.6 billion and Petroleum Excise $17.1 billion. That the Feds. Queensland this year will recieve $3.4 billion in royalties (Page 94), on top of which the coal etc, is transported on trains owned by the government (so we get a fee for that) and go to ports controlled by government "Port Authorities" and we get fees for that.

 

And if we are going to count tax rebates on R&D expenses as "subsidies" (which Greenpeace et al do) then just about everybody gets a subsidy.

 

So with that out of the way, let's look at the costs.

 

Investment costsThe reason coal is so cheap, is that we're using very old power stations which (because of their age) have zero depreciation. All they have is regular maintenance, which admittedly is higher than for new power stations. Still, it is cheaper to keep an old station running than to build a new one.

 

Although I cannot quickly find a source for this: I think that the payback time (the period over which depreciation is counted) is significantly longer for a coal power station than for a wind turbine.

 

I would agree with you on these points. The major difference being that a coal power station will also last far longer than a wind farm does. While the wind industry claims a life expectancy of 20-25 years, very few have made it that far and most die well before then. Life expectancy for a turbine is very much a "We think the new tech will last that long" with very little track record as evidence conversely it is easy to show a coal station lasts for 40 years.

 

Operating costs

If you just compare the investment costs of the coal power station to the wind turbine, I can guarantee that the coal power station is cheaper. But wind power does not need 25 kg of coal for every GJ it produces. So, that is not really a fair comparison, is it?

 

Certainly true. But it would appear that wind gearboxes will have to be changed rather more frequently in wind farms. Even with the large subsidies etc for wind, the maintainence costs were so high that there are now 6 abandoned wind farms in Hawaii alone, along with some thousands of abandoned turbines in Tehachapi Pass, California. I expect that the European experience is very different, however I would think that maintainence per kilowatt hour works out to be higher than a coal plant. (I wouldn't mind seeing some figures on this, my assumption is based on the fact that anything more than a minor service will be a pretty big operation given the turbines are so high. It's not like you can just work on it, it has to be craned down to ground level first.)

 

Total price

Wind power has a clear price:

 

Yes it does. I'll accept your quote of 2MW for $3.5 million as a working base. The expansion at Mt. Piper is for 2000MW at a cost of $2.5 - 5 billion so to match that with wind would require 1,000 turbines and cost $3.5 billion. However that is based on "Nameplate Power" and not actual "Capacity Power". Wind in general seems to run at about 25% of Nameplate power, quite a bit less in some areas. So to equal the guaranteed 24/7 output of a 2000MW coal station is going to require 4,000 2 MW wind turbines, bringing the build costs up to $14 billion. So just comparing the build cost to the worst case for the Mt. Piper expansion, coal is $9 billion cheaper. Since the coal plant will use 5 million tonnes of coal per year at $100/tonne, the difference in build price alone will pay for 18 years worth of coal supplies.

 

I can agree that since wind is "free" there are no fuel costs, but I can't agree about maintainence costs. These are well known for coal and not so well known for wind. There is also the difference in the engineering. Coal, gas and hydro are all "ground level" operations where you can (to a degree) overengineer. You don't really want to be stripping the suckers down all that often so an extra 10 tonnes of weight in the bearings doesn't matter. They are built big and solid and except for the generator shaft itself total weight is not a consideration, this is not true for wind turbines, as they must be lifted to a height total weight is important. From an engineering standpoint they are far more "delicate". Put simply a delicate mechanism operating under variable weather conditions at 3,000 RPM will fail more often than a solid mechanism operating under reasonably constant conditions at 3,000 RPM. Also, as I noted above, in a ground based power station if there is a major problem you just turn it off and once cool get into it with tools. With wind you first need to organise a crane, a crew and a truck to take the thing away and then wait for a day when it is safe to hoist the thing down, a far more complex operation. Anything above a "grease and oil change" is a costly and complex job with wind, not so with ground based systems.

 

I've often thought wind would be a lot better if we could find a good way to get the blade torque down to ground level. That way the generator and gearbox are on the ground and far easier to service and could be more robustly engineered. It's the weight of the armature of the generator that is dependent on the wind torque, not the weight of the total unit so on the ground you can beef up the unit around the same armature. This is why I tend to prefer this sort of wind power design over the standard ones.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Y7Qs2gFlt-o&feature=related

 

It's not ready yet, but I think it's the way to go.

 

Backups and storage. Yes we do have some, at hydro dams. Hydro only supplies 17% of our power on the national grid. Start replacing the coal stations with wind and backups become a real problem. If wind supplied say, 25% of our power, what do we do when the wind doesn't blow? Without a massive increase in the number of hydro dams, we can't use them as they simply don't supply enough power ATM. Baseload power is required 24/7.

 

To a degree this is beside the point. The question is if you want to reduce pollution and get a good bang for your buck, what is a sensible and economical plan? Do you spend your money on "If, Maybe, When" ideas that might reduce CO2 emissions 20 years from now, or spend it on proven technology that will reduce emissions almost immediately? If you're really serious, which road do you take? If your car has a problem, do you fix it now or wait until you can buy a new car?

 

None of the above is to say that we shouldn't research and invest in other sources of energy. I simply think that upgrading to use the best and most efficient power sources should be done at the same time. To me it makes sense to always try to have the most efficient power generation possible, if it gets the AGW crowd onside, so much the better. I would add (speaking Australo-politically) that I haven't believed for years that power generation was about the environment, if it was the "nuclear option" would at least be allowed to be discussed. It is not. I see a possible future where we are driven back to horse and buggy while the rest of the world trundles along quite happily powered by their fusion reactors.

[iNow]

To a degree this is beside the point. The question is if you want to reduce pollution and get a good bang for your buck, what is a sensible and economical plan?

 

<...>

 

None of the above is to say that we shouldn't research and invest in other sources of energy. I simply think that upgrading to use the best and most efficient power sources should be done at the same time. To me it makes sense to always try to have the most efficient power generation possible, if it gets the AGW crowd onside, so much the better.

If we decide up front that coal must be part of our energy production equation, then it makes good sense to use the cleaner plants when burning it. You are quite right there, and I whole-heartedly agree. However, coal itself is still a very dirty and dangerous fuel (both in terms of extraction and energy conversion, both of which come with fairly sizable monetary and non-monetary costs).

 

Where my mind goes with this is toward the need for significant investments to get ourselves closer to that point where more than 90% of our energy is produced cleanly... and the need to get ourselves to that point more quickly. I think that if we're making large capital investments now... up front... it would be best to use that money with a longer term view... to aggregate that capital on the method of energy production which pollutes the least, and then to focus additional investments toward scaling up that clean energy production method as quickly as possible. If that's our approach, and we agree that the desired end state is to maximize clean energy production and make it as cheap as possible as soon as possible, then coal really has no place in the discussion here, even though the plant you reference makes it slightly cleaner and has some short term benefit for some local isolated communities.

 

I concede that this argument is less effective on people who deny the challenges we're facing with CO2 right now as being worthy of our rapid action.

[Greg Boyles]

Is continuing population growth part of the goal, or merely continuing economic growth? The latter can happen without the former.

But neither can be sustained indefinitely.

 

Sooner or later we will have to figure out how to run our economies efficiently with profit growth or population growth, i.e. we will have establish a steady state society.

 

Thanks for putting forth unfounded assertions (including ones which are trivially false, such as economics somehow being a subset of biology), but neither has anything whatsoever to do with the point I made.

 

 

Clearly you are an economist or a student of economics because you have just demonstrated that you are yourself divorced from ecological reality on which all depends, including our economy.

 

Where do you think your food comes from iNow? It is produced by and dependant upon ecological processes. Food is a major part of our economy and therefore our economy is dependant upon and is a subset of the global ecosystem!

 

Where do fossil fuels come from iNow. From ecological followed by geological processes over hundreds of millions of years. Fossil fuels are a major component of our economy and therefore our economy is dependant upon and is a subset of global ecosystem.

 

Where do biofuels (vegetable oil and ethanol) come from iNow?

 

Where does wood come from iNow?

 

Where does paper come from iNow?

 

If we clear fell the last of the old growth forests on Earth and there sufficient plantations are not expected to be established within 100 years or so then our economy will take a massive hit.

 

Or what if climate change (drought, flooding and super storms) signficantly reduces our global food production?

 

Should I bother continuing?

 

I truly hate to correct you again, but what you've just put forth here really is just an opinion. It's your opinion, and that's fine, but opinion [math]\ne[/math] fact, regardless of how many times you assert the contrary.

 

I also note that you've introduced a new qualifier to the discussion, and that nobody here is really talking about "indefinite reductions of CO2 emissions." Where did "indefinite" come from?

 

My previous statement is fact, not opinion.

Edited August 4, 2011 by Greg Boyles

[swansont]

First up.

 

Swansont, perhaps a better title would have been "Cut CO2 emissions = Burn Coal". What I thought interesting about the engineers idea was that it looked at an area which is normally missed. Most discussions revolve around "What will we build in the future" or "what do we replace coal with to reduce emissions". This is the first example I've seen of replacing coal with far more efficient coal. No CCS, or any possible, maybe, future tech just replace the old stations with new ones. Looking from the POV that a government wants to spend money to "do something", this option gives a very good bang for the buck, but hasn't been really discussed.

That would be true of replacement of existing plants was what was happening, but it isn't. The newer plants are being built to expand power generation capacity, because worldwide electricity demand is growing.

 

The real question is what is the cost to replace a plant vs the carbon tax? That's going to depend on how the tax is structured — if it's just a straight proportional tax then a new plant will be taxed less, but of the tax has thresholds, it may be that a new plant is not taxed much if at all. (i.e. you are taxing CO2 that is in excess of some amount per MWh produced) You've said that the tax will be costly, but how does that compare to the cost of replacing the old coal plants?

 

But neither can be sustained indefinitely.

 

Sooner or later we will have to figure out how to run our economies efficiently with profit growth or population growth, i.e. we will have establish a steady state society.

 

 

 

Clearly you are an economist or a student of economics because you have just demonstrated that you are yourself divorced from ecological reality on which all depends, including our economy.

 

Where do you think your food comes from iNow? It is produced by and dependant upon ecological processes. Food is a major part of our economy and therefore our economy is dependant upon and is a subset of the global ecosystem!

 

Where do fossil fuels come from iNow. From ecological followed by geological processes over hundreds of millions of years. Fossil fuels are a major component of our economy and therefore our economy is dependant upon and is a subset of global ecosystem.

 

Where do biofuels (vegetable oil and ethanol) come from iNow?

 

Where does wood come from iNow?

 

Where does paper come from iNow?

 

If we clear fell the last of the old growth forests on Earth and there sufficient plantations are not expected to be established within 100 years or so then our economy will take a massive hit.

 

Or what if climate change (drought, flooding and super storms) signficantly reduces our global food production?

 

I submit, again, that this has nothing to do with the topic under discussion.

 

Should I bother continuing?

No, you shouldn't. But not for reasons having to do with being right or wrong.

[Greg Boyles]

That would be true of replacement of existing plants was what was happening, but it isn't. The newer plants are being built to expand power generation capacity, because worldwide electricity demand is growing.

 

The real question is what is the cost to replace a plant vs the carbon tax? That's going to depend on how the tax is structured if it's just a straight proportional tax then a new plant will be taxed less, but of the tax has thresholds, it may be that a new plant is not taxed much if at all. (i.e. you are taxing CO2 that is in excess of some amount per MWh produced) You've said that the tax will be costly, but how does that compare to the cost of replacing the old coal plants?

 

 

 

I submit, again, that this has nothing to do with the topic under discussion.

 

 

No, you shouldn't. But not for reasons having to do with being right or wrong.

 

The post that triggered me to respond with this was about the ETS being effective or not. And it wont be in my opinion because its underlying premise is false.

Edited August 4, 2011 by Greg Boyles

[swansont]

The post that triggered me to respond with this was about the ETS being effective or not. And it wont be in my opinion because its underlying premise is false.

At no point did the OP raise the question about the effectiveness or validity of the ETS. Arguing a new topic is easy: start a new thread.

[zapatos]

If we decide up front that coal must be part of our energy production equation, then it makes good sense to use the cleaner plants when burning it. You are quite right there, and I whole-heartedly agree. However, coal itself is still a very dirty and dangerous fuel (both in terms of extraction and energy conversion, both of which come with fairly sizable monetary and non-monetary costs).

 

Where my mind goes with this is toward the need for significant investments to get ourselves closer to that point where more than 90% of our energy is produced cleanly... and the need to get ourselves to that point more quickly. I think that if we're making large capital investments now... up front... it would be best to use that money with a longer term view... to aggregate that capital on the method of energy production which pollutes the least, and then to focus additional investments toward scaling up that clean energy production method as quickly as possible. If that's our approach, and we agree that the desired end state is to maximize clean energy production and make it as cheap as possible as soon as possible, then coal really has no place in the discussion here, even though the plant you reference makes it slightly cleaner and has some short term benefit for some local isolated communities.

 

I concede that this argument is less effective on people who deny the challenges we're facing with CO2 right now as being worthy of our rapid action.

It seems to me that we are getting ahead of ourselves. It is not a question of whether to put more resources into cleaner energy using coal or to put those resources into developing minimally polluting energy production. It is instead, in my opinion, a question of the best method to reduce the impact of energy generated pollutants on the enviornment. Until we look at total projected pollutants using various methods and time frames we are not really in a position to argue which method is preferred.

 

In the end, I agree we need clean energy production. But coal use is so large that using some resources to effect a small reduction in pollutants for a relatively long period of time until clean energy solutions are in place, may be better for the environment than using all resources to minimize the amount of time needed to put clean energy solutions in place.

 

As is often the case the best solution may be a combination of the two. The trick is to find the mix which allows for the most efficient use of resources to minimize the impact to the environment.

[mooeypoo]

!

Moderator Note

Greg Boyles, please remain on topic in this discussion. If you want to discuss your own topic, start a new thread.
I further advise you read our rules. People pointed out your use of some logical fallacies; you should address these remarks rather than dismiss them. The repeated use of logical fallacies to make your point is also against the rules.

[JohnB]

That would be true of replacement of existing plants was what was happening, but it isn't. The newer plants are being built to expand power generation capacity, because worldwide electricity demand is growing.

 

The real question is what is the cost to replace a plant vs the carbon tax? That's going to depend on how the tax is structured — if it's just a straight proportional tax then a new plant will be taxed less, but of the tax has thresholds, it may be that a new plant is not taxed much if at all. (i.e. you are taxing CO2 that is in excess of some amount per MWh produced) You've said that the tax will be costly, but how does that compare to the cost of replacing the old coal plants?

 

Swansont, last part first. It's estimated that the tax will end up dragging some $58 billion out of our economy to buy overseas carbon credits.

 

To answer the first part and iNows;

Where my mind goes with this is toward the need for significant investments to get ourselves closer to that point where more than 90% of our energy is produced cleanly... and the need to get ourselves to that point more quickly. I think that if we're making large capital investments now... up front... it would be best to use that money with a longer term view... to aggregate that capital on the method of energy production which pollutes the least, and then to focus additional investments toward scaling up that clean energy production method as quickly as possible.

 

I'm thinking of this from the mid-term POV. Wind etc, simply aren't enough to provide baseload in the short to mid term. The Mt Piper etc, are indeed expansions, my point here is that once the expansion is online decommission and replace the two old generators as well, so the plany has 4 new ones rather than 2 old and two new. Quite often the argument seems to divide into two camps, the "Keep coal" and the "Get rid of coal" groups. This is a middle ground option.

 

Let's assume that we know that in 50 years the various renewables will be mature enough for baseload power usage. So do we;

A. Keep using the old coal for 50 years and then change to the renewables. or

B. Change to new coal tech for the next 50 years and then change to renewables.

 

Over the next 50 years until the change is complete, which option is going to reduce the consumption of resources and general pollution? What is the best option right now? Look at it another way, at the moment coal is the cheapest and dirtiest option while wind is the cleanest and most expensive option. Rather than going for one or the other, isn't it more sensible and economically sound to go for the cheapest, cleanest option?

 

Think of it this way on a graph with emission/pollution on one axis and cost on the other. So as we move across and cost goes up, pollutants go down. Rather than arguing about which end of the graph it is better to be at, why not aim for the area in the middle where the lines cross? Giving you the cheapest power with the lowest emissions, maximising both benefits.

 

The other very definite point is that we simply can't predict what power sources will be available in 50 years time. It might be wind, it might be solar, it might be that the Rossi device pans out, it might come from a breakthrough in physics that we can't predict and be something incredible. We just don't know.

 

This is almost a philosophical thing. What the article and I are arguing for is this guiding principle. That a society should be using the cheapest, cleanest power available while at the the same time researching cheaper, cleaner alternatives.

 

even though the plant you reference makes it slightly cleaner and has some short term benefit for some local isolated communities.

 

I think you have a misconception here. The Australian grid is quite interconnected as a National grid, the benefits are for decades and would involved the entire country. I'm thinking from an economical POV.

 

Say you have $50 billion to spend. Using the figures in the post above, you could spend $42 billion on 12,000 wind towers (which doesn't count the cost of aquiring the land or the rather extensive wiring needed to hook that many towers into the grid) and shut down 3 power stations, saving 18 million tonnes of coal each year once the project is finished. The remaining $8 billion you spend on R&D. How long would such a project take? 15 years? 20? For 15 years you will be installing and hooking into the grid 15 towers every week. Note that you won't be able to take a coal station offline until the project is at least 1/3 complete.

 

OR

 

You spend $40 billion to upgrade 8 power stations. This could be done in under 5 years and saves 2 million tonnes per station, or 16 million tonnes per year from the fifth year. The wind towers will have rusted themselves to a stop before they match the coal (and CO2) savings of the coal stations and you get to spend $10 billion on R&D.

 

The really silly thing down here is the nuclear option is off the table. Our "Greens" are so bloody silly they are even against the small one we have for producing isotopes for medical research and treatment. There are times I daydream about Bob Brown getting some horrible disease that requires radiation therapy, just to watch him squirm. (If that sounds personal, it is. I have a fundamental objection to politicians who promote policies that would have resulted in my suffering a drawn out, painful death.)

[swansont]

Swansont, last part first. It's estimated that the tax will end up dragging some $58 billion out of our economy to buy overseas carbon credits.

 

The devil's in the details. How the tax is structured tells you what strategy to employ. $58 billion over how many years and for how much energy? What triggers the need to buy the credits? What's the carbon tax burden of an old plant vs the cost of manufacturing a new one?

 

I'm thinking of this from the mid-term POV. Wind etc, simply aren't enough to provide baseload in the short to mid term. The Mt Piper etc, are indeed expansions, my point here is that once the expansion is online decommission and replace the two old generators as well, so the plany has 4 new ones rather than 2 old and two new. Quite often the argument seems to divide into two camps, the "Keep coal" and the "Get rid of coal" groups. This is a middle ground option.

 

And without the details, it's hard to say how to exploit that middle ground. As the article states, you can't simply close down a plant, because the producer has a contractual obligation to provide the electricity. That makes sense, because you don't want to leave people without electricity, which would be a disaster. It implies that replacing the plant is impossible, but that depends on the details of the contract — is it with that specific plant, or with the company that owns it? Can you retrofit a plant instead of building a new one? If a new plant is built, will it be below the threshold for the carbon tax? Can the company use credits it generates from the cleaner plants to offset the older, less efficient one?

[EdEarl]

San Antonio, Texas recently decommissioned a coal power plant and installed 500MW Solar. The company is a public corporation; thus, dependent on making good economic decisions. Their public statement said, it was an economic decision to convert to solar power.

[swansont]

In the two years since the thread was started, solar prices have gone down, making solar an even better solution, and there's no sign the trends has stopped.

[EdEarl]

In the two years since the thread was started, solar prices have gone down, making solar an even better solution, and there's no sign the trends has stopped.

True, and Elon Musk's Solar City makes it practical for many individual home owners.

[jero25]

CO2 is very harmful , we should reused its level .