(Page 2 of 2)
Both GreenGen and the Huadian project receive a small amount of financial support from China's Ministry of Science and Technology, which Sun says carries important prestige for the utilities involved: "These government grants recognize their technology leadership, and mean much more [than cash] to Chinese companies."
Ming of the Clean Air Task Force explains how the utilities involved rationalize the investment in more expensive IGCC technology even with slim government funding. He says that, while China's electricity sector is technically deregulated, the National Development and Reform Commission (NDRC) still has final say over the tariffs that new power plants will earn per megawatt-hour supplied. It can therefore adjust the tariffs to ensure a reasonable rate of return for projects that respond to local or national interests, enabling the utilities to experiment.
However, NDRC control also slow IGCC's progress if political will weakens. Ming acknowledges that NDRC may be less willing to approve projects that impose higher costs on consumers, in light of the current economic crisis.
James Childress, executive director of the Gasification Technologies Council, argues that projects like GreenGen are largely political. "They are doing it to put a better face on what is mostly just a 'Burn coal and don't worry about it' policy," he says. "In the current economic climate, I can't imagine there being a drive to do anything seriously on CO2."
As for IGCC's prospects in the United States, Duke Energy's 630-megawatt IGCC project at Edwardsport, IN, is the only one going forward nationwide. This is because it provides a means of using Indiana's high sulfur coal, which produces too much pollution to be used in conventional plants. All the other IGCC proposals are caught up in a moratorium on new coal power imposed by state environment and utility regulators wary of the climate change and the economic impact of carbon emissions.
Last year, for example, Tampa Electric postponed plans for a commercial IGCC unit in Florida adjacent to an already operating demonstration unit built with DOE support in the 1990s after the state announced a climate-change plan.
Right now, the coal and utility firms supporting the FutureGen project are looking to president-elect Obama to jumpstart their project and others; they reinforced their commitment to the project this week by purchasing a $6.5 million site for it in Illinois. Childress, however, expresses little hope for rapid action. "Wind, solar, biomass, and other renewables have a bigger seat at the table right now," he says.
Childress predicts that coal gasification will eventually flourish in the United States, but as "stealth coal" rather than as IGCC. He says that utilities will use gasification technology to generate synthetic natural gas to keep gas plants running. "I call it stealth coal because one way or another, we're going to need more gas," he says. "If you can't put coal into the front end of a plant making electricity, they're going to put it into the front end of a plant making natural gas."
Turning coal seams into underground gasification chambers could cut costs and pollution—if done right.
The project will capture CO2 by using it to "loosen" the oil in existing wells.
An Alberta project will transform coal deep beneath the ground into gas.
Within the range of site, fuel and generation objectives there are only small differences across technologies and both are commercial technically. Economic viability remains the major risk and roadblock for these or any other new power plant in the US and other developed countries. If anyone wants to see details, I recommend my report for EPA. I think EPA removed links from their sites, but you can still read the report at Nexant's site with the link below.
http://www.nexant.com/docs/Service/energy_technology/EPA_IGCC.pdf
I still don't see how any kind of "clean coal", or really anything else can hope to compete with nuclear energy.
GeoThermal Electric is the clean alternative to Nuclear, & Coal. Geothermal resources are available everywhere. Some place are cheaper to develop than others. Nuclear energy will always be controlled by big governments, whereas geothermal, concentrated solar, & other alternatives to coal & nuclear have a chance to be privately owned & managed by the people.
China Closes the Clean-Coal Gap
On the first look it seems to be an incredible effort but there are some issues which need to be addressed...but I think it's too early to say anything until it takes actual shape. No doubt, we need to be very careful when it comes to our environment. Being a writer-cum-researcher I am always interested to know more about such topics. Well done guys...keep it up. Rakesh Sharma An Article Writer, SEO Writer & eBook Writer based in India
Our power plants have no way to build new power plants. They can't use Clean Coal, natural gas or nuclear. So you want to use solar or wind - have you thought about the environmental impact of putting in a huge solar or wind farm? Millions of acres dessimated, new power lines run across the USA and massive air and water pollution manufacturing the solar cells and wind turbines. Yet if we want to drill for more natural gass on a 20 acre plot - NO WAY. How about a new Nuclear power plant? Nope - the enviromental wing nuts will file so many lawsuits that it would never get done. So what is the answer? Maybe we should all start using wood as our fuel. Maybe we should go back to the good old days. Now that is the answer!
The environmental wingnuts, as you put, have a point. No new nuclear power plants should be built until someone steps up and addresses how and where they are going to store the waste.
Making this task the responsibility of a generation which is yet to be born, is well, irresponsible. And not to get political, but this thread deserves it to expose the hypocrites: Republicans, the biggest proponents of individual responsibility, are the primary backers of nuclear energy in this country. Yet, they are willing to pass the buck, so that some of their vested interests, can make a buck.
For most products, the only criterion we need is cost. With energy we must worry about cost, CO2, nitric oxides, sulfur oxides, radioactive waste, habitat degradation, human deaths, injuries, and diseases, and animal deaths. We want all of these measures to be low.
No energy technology is lowest in all of them. We must consider tradeoffs.
Assessing a technology on only one of these criteria and then somehow concluding it should be eliminated is stupid.
Coal is inexpensive; if we were to eliminate it, electric power prices go up by a factor of three or so. Do you want to blow up existing plants that would otherwise operate another thirty or forty years? If not, how do you minimize the harms?
This article describes the only technology that radically reduces the cost of reducing the CO2 waste when producing power from coal.
Manufacturing in the United States is in trouble. That's bad news not just for the country's economy but for the future of innovation.
Our list of the 50 most innovative companies, including the following:
On Twitter
Become a Fan on Facebook
Subscribe to the Feed
phoenix
172 Comments
clean old dirty coal
Black lung, entire mountains literally destroyed in an effort to get at the stuff, acid rain and ecosystem destruction as a result of its waste by-products? Regardless of how any country's Energy Department wants to spin it, I'd say that the term 'clean coal' is probably one of the biggest oxymorons of our time. 80 percent of China's rivers no longer support aquatic life and it is home to 7 out of 10 of the most polluted cities in the world.
Reply