Coal is a combustible sedimentary rock that has become the world’s most used energy source. Because it is so abundant and therefore cheap, much research has been done to see what other kinds of uses it can have other than direct burning for electricity production. The liquefaction of coal is one concept that is being given new life due to higher petroleum prices. Currently it is cost-prohibitive and environmentally unfriendly. But according to a new study from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT), as early as 2015 and without a solid climate policy, coal-to-liquid (CTL) fuel may be economically viable in the US and China.

CTL fuels have been in existence since the 1920s, and were used extensively by Germany in the 1940s. At the time, it produced about 90 percent of their national fuel needs. Then Middle Eastern oil became dirt cheap and CTL technology was largely abandoned. The only country that still uses it in a significant way is South Africa where it covers about 30 percent of their fuel needs.

The production of liquefied coal has a large carbon footprint, much larger than that of petroleum fuel production. One method of production is carbonization where the coal is coked at temperatures up to 1,380 F to produce coal tars rich in hydrocarbons. The coal tar is then further refined into fuels. The process produces a large amount of carbon dioxide emissions. If done without carbon capture and storage technologies, the life-cycle carbon footprint is about double that of crude oil.

The new MIT study examined different future scenarios with variables such as potential climate policies, the availability of biofuels, and other economic and regulatory factors. They found that in 2015, CTL technology will be economically viable in coal-rich countries like the US and China. In other regions, it could be viable by 2020 or 2025. In this scenario, carbon capture technology would not be used because it would raise the costs too much. In this scenario, liquefied coal would account for a third of the world’s liquid fuel supply by 2050.

The study notes that the viability of CTL will by vary greatly on whether or not certain regions adopt prohibitive climate policies. If lower-carbon fuels are available, CTL would not be considered as an option. Liquefied coal may only be available in developing nations with lax environmental rules, and where low-carbon alternatives are not available.

One of the study’s authors, John Reilly, stated, “Various climate proposals have very different impacts on the allowances of regional CO2 emissions, which in turn have quite distinct implications on the prospects for CTL conversion. If climate policies are enforced, world demand for petroleum products would decrease, the price of crude oil would fall, and coal-to-liquid fuels would be much less competitive.”

Article by David A Gabel, appearing courtesy Environmental News Network.

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One way fossil fuel industries are trying to stay relevant in a world moving toward better, cleaner ways of producing energy is to argue that carbon emissions which contribute to climate change can be captured and stored underground. This “carbon capture and sequestration,” is supposedly a technological fix that will allow energy companies to keep burning fossil fuels indefinitely, only with the addition carbon capture equipment that conveniently eliminates their contribution to climate change. The coal industry in particular has gone to great lengths to publicize the idea that carbon capture and sequestration (CCS) can work; witness the deluge of “clean coal” ads aired on TV and the Internet over the past few years.

There are many problems with the concept of CCS. Perhaps most frequently cited is the concern that injecting a significant portion of US or global carbon emissions underground may not even be technologically feasible—at least not in the foreseeable future. Then there’s the immense cost of CCS: even if the technology works, it would probably be cheaper to invest in truly clean, renewable power sources. However on top of all that is perhaps the greatest worry of all. Even if injecting carbon dioxide underground proved feasible on a large scale, and even if we somehow figured out how to pay for it, the whole idea might not actually prevent climate change. There’s no guarantee carbon dioxide injected underground will stay put—and in fact a recent incident suggests it will eventually bubble back to the Earth’s surface.

CCS isn’t ready to be employed on a scale large enough to make a real dent in climate change, but a few pilot projects are already experimenting with storing carbon underground. In the Canadian province of Saskatchewan, the energy company Cenovus has been injecting carbon dioxide into oil wells with the aim of extracting oil while sequestering carbon at the same time. Now carbon dioxide is leaking out of the soil on land formerly used for farming by a Saskatchewan couple. Jane and Cameron Kerr, owners of the property, hired energy consultant Paul Lafleur to determine where the gas was coming from. According to Lafleur, the source is the Cenovus oilfield located about two kilometers away.

In certain areas on the Kerr’s property carbon dioxide is leaking up in concentrations high enough to kill animals like rabbits and goats, most likely by asphyxiation. It has also been causing strange and colorful algal blooms in bodies of water. The safety hazard forced the Kerrs to leave their property, but Cenovus has dismissed their concerns. Cenovus unsurprisingly argues the carbon could have come from elsewhere—despite the common sense conclusion that the huge carbon injection project a couple kilometers away might have something to do with the problem.

This is just a preview of the kind of thing we can expect to see as more companies experiment with carbon capture and sequestration. Instead of conveniently disappearing underground, sequestered carbon dioxide is going to make its way to the Earth’s surface sooner or later, as it has done on the Kerr’s property. Meanwhile affected communities will become in embroiled in drawn out and frustrating struggles to “prove” that a given eruption of carbon dioxide can be linked to a certain CCS project. Most importantly of all global warming will continue unabated, as carbon dioxide fails to stay put and seeps out to contribute to climate change.

The Cenovus incident in Saskatchewan simply drives home what clean energy advocates have been arguing for years: the only viable way to prevent climate change is to shift our economy decisively away from fossil fuels. Rather than wasting billions on expensive CCS projects that don’t work, governments and private investors should combat climate change with clean, renewable energy.

Article by Nick Engelfried, appearing courtesy Justmeans.

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Putting the word green and carbon together may sound like an oxymoron to most people. But researchers at Rice University in Houston, Texas, working at the new Green Carbon Center, think that instead of being a “villain in the global warming debate”, carbon could be a “boon if the world can learn to use it well”.

And how can that be achieved? “The key is to turn carbon dioxide into a useful material so it’s no longer waste,” says James Tour, a chemistry professor at Rice. “We want the center to partner with energy companies – including oil, natural gas and coal – to make carbon a profitable resource.”

The center is part of Rice’s Richard E. Smalley Institute for Nanoscale Science and Technology, and will “draw upon the combined knowledge of the university’s nanotechnology experts, for whom the development of clean and plentiful energy is a priority.”

In a paper published by Nature Materials, Tour and colleagues Vicki Colvin and Carter Kittrell state that since fossil fuels will play a major role in the economy for many decades to come, despite the expansion of renewable energy, the center will try to develop the technological expertise to back up what it calls “green carbon” to make a transition to a clean tech future.

One of the processes suggested by the authors is carbon dioxide separated from hydrogen through steam methane reformation, which then could be repurposed immediately as a basic feedstock for chemicals or sequestered temporarily in tapped-out oil wells. They claim that compressed and liquefied carbon could even replace water to enhance oil and gas recovery.

The researchers believe humanity would benefit tremendously if it could develop an efficient catalytic process to convert carbon dioxide back to methanol, formaldehyde or other small molecules. They foresee a market for carbon in dry cleaning to replace harmful chlorocarbons and as a refrigerant to replace materials that are 1,000 times as potent as greenhouse gases.

“The whole idea,” Tour added, “is to lower the carbon dioxide footprint and to show you don’t have to get rid of anybody’s energy source.”

Article by Antonio Pasolini, a Brazilian writer and video art curator based in London, UK. He holds a BA in journalism and an MA in film and television.

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In a couple of past posts I’ve criticized plans made by the South African government and World Bank to build some of the planet’s largest coal plants in South Africa—thereby dramatically increasing the country’s contribution to climate change. But give credit where credit is due: last week South Africa announced plans to also build the world’s largest solar energy park, which by 2020 will produce five gigawatts of electricity. This is an encouraging sign South Africa sees the need to reduce dependence on coal. If successful, the giant solar park may serve as a model for countries around the world to replicate.

Over 90% of South Africa’s electricity generation now comes from burning coal, and the nation is far and away the largest contributor to climate change in Africa. Yet like most developing countries, South Africa understandably wants to be able to generate more electricity to power homes and industry and increase the reliability of its grid. By 2020, South Africa’s energy department recommends increasing energy generation by forty gigawatts to accomplish these goals. Prospects for the climate will be grim if all or most of this electricity comes from coal. For South Africa to improve its grid while minimizing climate change, the country will need to invest substantially in renewable resources.

Fortunately South Africa has large renewable resources. The province of Northern Cape, where the newly-unveiled solar park will be located, is one of the sunniest places on the planet and has a climate ideally suited to generate solar power. Because the province has a relatively small population, there is plenty of room for a solar farm of mammoth proportions. Nine thousand hectares have been set aside so far, with the likelihood that more land will be added over time. The project could be producing one gigawatt of electricity as soon as 2012, and five times that amount by 2020.

Of course this is still just a fraction of the amount by which South Africa plans to expand electricity generation. One really good renewable energy project doesn’t make up for building some of the world’s largest coal plants—particularly when these fossil fuel plants have not been convincingly shown to benefit low-income ratepayers. But the sooner this quickly growing economy starts investing in large renewable energy projects, the more likely it is South Africa can change the terms of its long relationship with coal. The new solar park’s project manager, Jonathan de Vries, predicts that if this project is successful it will spur the government to invest in more solar farms.

De Vries is also quoted citing climate change and the need to reduce carbon emissions as one reason South Africa should shift from coal to solar power. This is one more sign residents of the country are increasingly aware of the role South Africa plays in combating climate change. It’s too soon to tell yet if the new solar farm marks a real sea change in the South African government’s acceptance of its climate obligations. But this week’s news that one of the world’s most coal-dependent economies will build the biggest solar power project on the planet is certainly an encouraging sign.

Article by Nick Engelfried, appearing courtesy Justmeans.

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The Indian government is considering opening up densely forested areas of the country to increase supply of coal for its new thermal power plants.

The Indian government is in the process of establishing several Ultra Mega Power Projects (UMPP) which would be among the largest power generation units in the country. These power plants would operate at efficiencies significantly higher than the conventional themral power plants. While the average efficiency of thermal power plants is around 30 percent, the UMPPs would have energy conversion rates of up to 40 to 45 percent.

While these power plants will be more efficient in the sense that they would generate more power per unit of coal used but they will still use massive amount of coal which would produce significant amount of carbon emissions. The UMPPs would also help India achieve its target to reduce carbon intensity by 20 to 25 percent by 2020.

India continues to rely heavily on coal-fired power plants for power generation. Coal contributes to over 50 percent of about 160 GW of installed power capacity in India. The reason for this is simple: India is the third largest coal producing nation in the world with proven reserves of 105 billion tonnes.

Infrastructure development and rural electrification are high on the Indian government’s agenda. The ultimate goal of eliminating poverty can be achieved only through inclusive growth which needs to expand to the rural areas of India. Thousands of villages and millions of people are not connected to the grid, any attempt to provide them with electricity would mean investment of billions of dollars.

Since coal is cheap and locally available it continues to the obvious energy option. However, there are several environmental and socio-economic issues related to coal mining, specifically, in forested areas. One would have to keep in mind the rights of the tribals who live in the surrounding areas. Additionally, there would be significant environmental impact, firstly, from the clearing of forests and, secondly, from the mining activities themselves.

Already some infrastructure and energy projects have been rejected due to environmental concerns. The Environment and Forest minister Jairam Ramesh has been in the media limelight for canceling several high profile infrastructure projects including a bauxite mining project proposed by aluminum giant Vendanta.

There are growing concerns about the apparent marginalization of the local tribes and people of these resources-rich areas. A growing belief among many intellectuals and even politicians is that the problem of Naxalism is being fueled because the local population is not getting the benefits of the resource exploitation.

India’s responsibility to reduce carbon emissions would only increase in the future and as it aims to provide basic amenities to its growing population, the Indian government is finding itself in a dilemma to balance environment protection, social welfare and economic development.

Article by Mridul Chadha, appearing courtesy ecopolitology.

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Each year energy-related carbon dioxide emissions account for more than 80 percent of greenhouse gas emissions in the United States. According to the Energy Information Association, that adds up to over 5,814 million metric tons (MMT) of carbon in 2008 alone. The Obama administration recognizes that this is not sustainable and that’s why we’ve actively sought to not only drive innovation in the renewable energy sector but also curb the emissions produced by fossil fuels such as coal, petroleum and natural gas through the development of carbon capture and storage (CCS) technologies.

In February 2010, President Obama went so far as to issue a challenge to the federal government: come up with a plan to achieve widespread, cost-effective deployment of carbon capture and storage within 10 years, with a goal of bringing five to 10 commercial demonstration projects online by 2016. This was accompanied by the creation of an Interagency Task Force on Carbon Capture and Storage, co-chaired by the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) and the Department of Energy (DOE), which yesterday delivered a series of recommendations to the President.

Their findings, which reflect input from 14 federal agencies and departments as well as hundreds of stakeholders and CCS experts, state that CCS is viable, concluding that there are no insurmountable technical, legal, institutional, or other barriers to the deployment of CCS technology. The report also concludes that CCS can play an important role in domestic greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions reductions while preserving the option of using coal and other abundant domestic fossil energy resources.

They also noted that widespread cost-effective deployment of CCS will occur only if the technology is commercially available at economically competitive prices and we have supportive national policy frameworks, such as a cap on carbon. Already, the United States has made the largest government investment in carbon capture and storage of any nation in history and these investments are being matched by private capital. The Department of Energy is currently pursuing multiple demonstration projects using close to $4 billion in federal funds, matched by more than $7 billion in private investments, which will begin to pave the way for widespread deployment of advanced CCS technologies within a decade.

In fact just this week, Secretary Chu announced the selection of 15 projects to develop technologies aimed at safely and economically storing carbon dioxide in geologic formations. Funded with $21.3 million over three years, the 15 projects will complement existing DOE initiatives to help develop the technology and infrastructure to implement large-scale CO2 storage in different geologic formations across the Nation.

This announcement, in tandem with the Task Force’s set of recommendations, marks an important milestone in our efforts to mitigate the growing atmospheric CO2 emissions from human sources. These actions bring us one step closer to achieving a cleaner, greener economy.

The full report and the presidential memorandum establishing the task force can be found on DOE’s site for the Interagency Task Force on Carbon Capture and Storage.

Article by Victor Der, Principal Deputy Assistant Secretary for Fossil Energy

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William F. Stewart is the author of Climate of Uncertainty: A Balanced Look at Global Warming and Renewable Energy, from Ocean Publishing. He is co-chair of the climate change and energy practice at Cozen O’Connor.

CleanTechies had four questions about his new book.

CleanTechies:  You promise a balanced look in your title, and you give the global warming nay-sayers a chapter.  Why do you feel it’s important to take this approach?

William F. Stewart:  I know it is a cliché, but skepticism really is the lifeblood of science. Historically, it is through the intense questioning of conventional wisdom that advancement has been possible. Although there are certainly a lot of cynics and charlatans masquerading as skeptics, good faith skepticism itself must be embraced if we are to achieve new discoveries.The reality is, climate science is still in its adolescence–just decades old. If you mentioned “global dimming” a decade ago, you would have elicited blank stares. But now, aerosol related dimming is a widely accepted climatic forcing mechanism.

Similarly, solar variance and the urban heat island affect, as contributors to global warming, are no longer the fringe theories that they once were. Finally, while climate models and computer programs are doing some incredible things, we have not yet figured out a way to account for all intricate and integrated climactic forces and feedbacks.

None of this is meant to suggest that we do not know enough to be very, very concerned about anthropogenic climate change, but I think it does more harm than good to belittle skepticism out of hand or to sugarcoat the uncertainties.

CleanTechies: What are the three keys to unlocking the mysteries of climate change?

Stewart:  First, bias and propaganda can be found on all sides of the global warming debate. It is generally recognized that proposed climate change solutions would result in large-scale economic changes, but these solutions also contain divisive ideological components involving the role of government and internationalization. The book provides several examples of how these “hot button issues” lead to subtle and not-so-subtle bias.

Second, much about our climate remains a mystery. Although the basic mechanisms of global warming are well understood, many of the critical details, for example the impact of climate feedbacks, remain shrouded in mystery.

Third, global warming is not just a scientific challenge, but rather presents highly contentious political, economic, and social problems. Because nations of the world will be affected differently, bear different historic responsibility, and assign different priority to climate change, any international agreement will require an “apples to oranges” compromise that will present formidable political barriers.

CleanTechies: Give us a glimpse of your visions for the sustainable future.

Stewart: While it’s obviously a plus to upbeat, I am going to be realistic here. Sustainability can only follow an international commitment, and an international commitment will only follow a more broad-based acknowledgement of the peril. Let’s face it, volcanoes, the ice-albedo effect, carbon sinks, el Niño, the Kyoto Protocol, population growth, melting permafrost, peak oil, and the Hockey Stick Graph are a lot to swallow–not to mention integrate.

The IPCC, NOAA, and the National Academy of Sciences have sounded the clarion call, but real solutions will require a grassroots call for action.

The truth is, the question of whether substantial action will occur before some semi-apocalyptic combination of resource depletion and warming remains squarely in doubt. The good news is that, while no single renewable energy will likely serve as a silver bullet, promising new technologies continue to emerge.

CleanTechies: What are the short-term solutions to climate change?

Stewart: There is a section near the end of the book titled “Picking the Low Hanging Fruit.” Chief among the immediate, no-brainer, opportunities are energy efficiency, combining climate change and energy security strategies, encouraging a robust debate on nuclear energy, implementation of smart grid technology, and development of infra-structure and incentives for wind, solar, hydro, geothermal, and other renewables.

By comparison, hydrogen, carbon sequestration, biofuels, tidal, and wave energy offer long term potential, but are not short-term solutions.

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Tom Friedman spent most of 2009 beating the China-is-winning-the-green-race-drum, and he has started 2010 with the same focus.

In Sunday’s New York Times, the news side of the house joined their editorial page colleague, writing in a front page story that Chinese “efforts to dominate renewable energy technologies raise the prospect that the West may someday trade its dependence on oil from the Mideast for a reliance on solar panels, wind turbines and other gear manufactured in China.”

To his credit, Friedman’s push has been all about policy. He wants the United States to go all-in in a space-race-like push to match Chinese innovation in energy technology (“E.T.,” as he has glossed it). But, what has eluded his attention – and is absent again in Sunday’s news piece – is the recognition that in order to match Chinese innovation, the policy changes that would be required in the U.S. electricity markets would necessarily have to go far beyond decoupling, one of Friedman’s personal causes.

China may be a leader, but it cannot be a model for the United States (nor can Europe, where a long-standing “welfare state” mentality and shrinking population and electric demand confound comparisons with the United States).

The Sunday New York Times only alluded to several reasons that China has an edge, now and for the foreseeable future. Below are three of the most important, all having to do with social, economic and policy considerations that go far beyond “E.T.” and the analyses of Friedman and his Times colleague Keith Bradsher:

1. Currency, Subsidies and Capital – “Green premiums” are a common feature of renewable energy policies worldwide. The money ratepayers cough up goes to utilities to offset the increased cost of buying renewable power. In turn, more renewable power is sold, and the subsidies pass directly through to the independent power producers who own renewable facilities. And, because they have to harvest the wind or sun, the trickle continues on to the manufacturers and fabricators of blades and panels.

According to Bradsher, China’s premiums are from .4 percent on the residential side to .8 percent commercial. U.S. lawmakers and business interests balk at increasing the cost of electricity to subsidize green power – whether it is done through a cap-and-trade program, national renewable portfolio standard, or otherwise. But, Chinese industry is running on such high margins when compared with Western competitors that the Chinese can afford a steep premium and still remain – and excel – in global competition.

The United States does not have the benefit of a political climate that can tolerate premiums at the level that could actually drive market-based growth in renewable energy, help drive innovation up, push the relative cost of manufacturing down, and complete the cycle by encouraging private investment.

2. Capacity Comes First – Friedman and others may be right that China is doing an exceptional job putting forth a very green face to the world — and, indeed, they are delivering. As Bradsher reports, “China intends for wind, solar and biomass energy to represent 8 percent of its electricity generation capacity by 2020….[t]hat compares with less than 4 percent now in China and the United States.” Bradsher continues, noting correctly, “China’s biggest advantage may be its domestic demand for electricity, rising 15 percent a year.”

In other words, while U.S. lawmakers – and even those in the green movement – continue to jostle over where money should be directed (subsidies for green power purchase, green tech research and development, energy efficiency) and debate whether we can stem the anticipated tide of growth in demand for environmental benefit, the Chinese have one directive: more capacity, now! And, a lot of it, from anywhere. They are not shy (nor ambivalent) about capacity growth. After all, it means economic growth.

In fact, in spite of the green push that Friedman heralds, Bradsher does note that most of the capacity growth to meet increasing demand will come from coal.

In the context of green tech competitiveness, the United States cannot be comforted by one of Bradsher’s final numbers on Chinese capacity: “To meet demand in the coming decade…China will need to add nearly nine times as much electricity generation capacity as the United States will.”

With so fevered a push for capacity growth, the Chinese government will take it any way they can get it, and if it means creating a new global industry, all the better. Remember, investor certainty is much less an issue in the Chinese context already, where the government makes the rules and the investments. U.S. companies have no certain market for their products – be it energy equipment or green power – and have no incentive to “bet the house” on E.T.

3. Starting from Scratch Has its Advantages – The most remarkable part of the climate bill fight in the United States in 2009 was watching how battle lines were drawn over how proposed changes would impact vested interests and sunk costs. But, notwithstanding these political and business concerns are the technological and logistical questions that surround proposed expansion of the green grid. For example, there is already a transmission glut in the US, and building new high-voltage lines has proven to be challenging. But, any new large-scale renewable collection points would have to be integrated with the existing grid, and it is unclear – with opposition to the erection of turbines themselves still a hurdle – that building out an extensive new transmission work would be politically feasible.

Vested interests also have self-interest at stake. Indeed, U.S. utilities have a fiduciary duty to shareholders under American law, and current proposals do not accommodate those concerns to allow for buy-in.

Bradsher at least touches on this problem, noting that “in the United States, power companies frequently face a choice between buying renewable energy equipment or continuing to operate fossil-fuel-fired power plants that have already been built and paid for. In China, power companies have to buy lots of new equipment anyway, and alternative energy, particularly wind and nuclear, is increasingly priced competitively.”

This is the element of the equation that Friedman has consistently ignored in calling for the “space race” in green energy. Without immense accommodation being made to utilities and other interests who will have to decommission and divest themselves of existing equipment and infrastructure, Friedman’s challenge is a pipe dream. Electricity is still a regulated business, and it is possible to conceive of ways to change the regulatory climate so that utilities, their customers and their shareholders could absorb and recover the costs of a transition like this. But, it will be a political bloodbath.

The Chinese can take the required steps unilaterally. As Friedman notes in his Sunday column, China operates in a “Confucian-Communist-Capitalist‘ hybrid under the umbrella of a one-party state, with a lot of government guidance, strictly controlled capital markets and an authoritarian decision-making process that is capable of making tough choices and long-term investments, without having to heed daily public polls.” Political problems, solved.

But, that notwithsanding, building out a renewable network from scratch – right alongside capacity growth – is a lot easier than trying to replace a dynamic existing system that is historically balkanized by state commissions, franchise territories and regional transmission organizations, while balancng the competing interests of reliability, capacity, efficiency and affordability.

Beat China? Or, First Among Equals – In his State of the Union address, President Obama exchanged some of his global credibility for an unexpected refrain of American exceptionalism. Specifically, in the energy context, he noted that China, Germany and India are ”making serious investments in clean energy because they want those jobs…I do not accept second place for the United States of America. ”

What the president did not acknowledge is that – perhaps for the first time since World War II – the United States is engaged (however passively) in a contest where its social, economic and political infrastructure puts the country at a distinct disadvantage.

It’s easy to chalk up the Chinese advantages to the obvious. Friedman is right, they are making a proactive “E.T.” policy push; and, yes, low-cost Chinese labor makes it nearly impossible for U.S.-made photovoltaic panels and turbine blades to compete on the open global market (hence the beginnings of tariff discussions and rules preventing federal spending on imported equipment).

But, favorable political and economic conditions are critical to the success of those initiatives. The United States cannot become an authoritarian, communist regime. Labor costs will not come into parity with China anytime in any living person’s lifetime.

Without significant re-regulation of our electricity markets, there is no formula for gaining ground anytime soon. We can dabble around the edges – and, yes, $11 billion in stimulus is just dabbling in this context – but, China’s E.T. edge only figures to expand in the near-term.

When we find a way to give utilities skin in the efficiency and green game, we will have taken a large first step toward leveling the playing field. Until then, as long as the entities that everyone in the country buys their power from are not incentivized to really get on board, we cannot expect the United States to bring E.T. home. And, going up against green energy’s Goliath, we need all the help we can get.

photos: Pacific Northwest National Laboratory, Slimmer Jimmer

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Carbon dioxide air emissions is one of the big issues in global warming debate. However, before you start controlling by putting the carbon in the ground, you first have to put lawyers in a room to argue. After a year that saw billions of dollars spent around a variety of carbon capture and storage pilot projects, the focus in 2010 will shift from press conferences and engineering discussion to court cases and conference tables.

Everyone has an opinion on what is the right thing to do in global warming. Far from just an engineering decision the task of making technology an effective weapon in the fight against climate change will take a lot more than working out funding details and letting the engineers work.

This is an issue not just in the USA but world wide. The recent Copenhagen meeting has shown us that everyone is resisting making any necessary reduction in carbon dioxide air emissions. All prefer someone else to be cut first.

In Canada there are the carbon dioxide producing provinces in the west such as Alberta and the consumers in the east such as Ontario and Quebec.

“At the same the governments of Canada and Alberta are providing significant subsidies for carbon capture and storage, we haven’t even announced an outline for a national approach to reducing greenhouse gases,” says Simon Dyer of the Pembina Institute, an environmental think tank.

In October, Prime Minister Stephen Harper visited a coal-fired power plant west of Edmonton to unveil $779 million in federal and provincial money for a project that could, in about five years, be injecting about one million tons of CO2 deep underground every year.  The previous week, Natural Resources Minister Lisa Raitt was in Edmonton to announce an $865 million federal-provincial subsidy for a $1.35-billion carbon capture and storage project at the Shell’s Scotford oil sands upgrade.  The companies involved in the projects combined will have to put up about $1 billion of their own money for things to go ahead.  The soonest any of these projects is expected to begin actually storing carbon is Saskatchewan’s relatively small refinery project in 2013. None of the Alberta projects start shooting gas underground until two years later. And that’s if they pass corporate muster, winning approval from the various company boards involved in the work as well as any local resistance from injecting the carbon dioxide into the ground in the first place.

“We don’t have regulations in place to reduce pollution, we’re not investing in renewable energy and energy efficiency,” he says. “It seems like governments are focusing on subsidizing end-of-pipe pollution control at the expense of all the other opportunities out there.”

Environmentalists in Canada point out that other countries, including the United States, are spending far more on renewables and conservation. Without the kind of public support now focused almost entirely on carbon capture and storage, they warn Canada will miss out on the energy opportunities of a post-carbon economy.

Yet renewable sources or conservation are not options that will automatically solve all problems by themselves. Renewable energy sources have their problems too. Many object to the giant wind mills for example as unsightly or dangerous to birds. Hydroelectric dams may cause cause other environmental stress or lose valuable ecosystems to a new lake.

As can be seen there are a number of options available to reduce and control air emissions. The problem in Canada as well as the US and elsewhere is that every option has its supporters often at the detriment of other options. What is needed is a balanced approach that both reduces and controls carbon dioxide air emissions.

Most agree that carbon capture and storage can play a role especially for large industrial emitters that send most of their CO2 out as a single source such as a smokestack. Coal-fired power plants in Alberta and Saskatchewan are natural places for such technology, especially since the geology of two provinces seems to offer plenty of underground formations to stash the gas. Not every site in the world offers such advantages.  These advantages should not be lost as other options are pursued.

The lawyers will be discussing the pros and cons for a long time.

Article by Andy Soos, appearing courtesy of ENN

[photo credit: Vattenfall]

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When the founder of the Whole Earth Catalog embraces nuclear power, genetically engineered crops, and geoengineering schemes to cool the planet, you know things have changed in the environmental movement. In an interview with Yale Environment 360, Stewart Brand explains how the passage of four decades — and the advent of global warming — have shifted his thinking about what it means to be green.

Stewart Brand helped shape the environmental consciousness of the 1960s and ‘70s with his Whole Earth Catalog, which became a bible of the counterculture and the back-to-the-land movement. An eclectic compendium of information and “tools” for innovative, environmentally friendly living, the Whole Earth Catalog reflected Brand’s ecological and technological interests, foreshadowing the rise of the San Francisco Bay Area’s computer and green cultures.

In the 1970s, Brand — a Stanford-trained biologist — started CoEvolutionary Quarterly to continue his exploration of environmental issues and the rise of new technologies like the personal computer and genetic engineering. In between writing books on computing and space colonies, Brand served as an advisor to California Gov. Jerry Brown. In the early 1980s, Brand co-founded The WELL — the Whole Earth ‘Lectronic Link — an early electronic community in the pre-Internet days with Larry Brilliant, the epidemiologist who later become the first director of Google’s philanthropic arm.

In recent years, Brand, 71, has begun to rethink his earlier opposition to nuclear power and has embraced genetic engineering, geoengineering of the earth’s climate system, and other issues that were anathema to the traditional environmental movement. This evolution of his thinking has led to his new book, Whole Earth Discipline: An Ecopragmatist Manifesto.

In it, Brand calls for the rapid deployment of a new generation of nuclear power plants to combat global warming, arguing that technological advances have made nuclear energy safer and any potential danger from nuclear waste pales compared to the damage inflicted by burning coal.

“The air pollution from coal burning is estimated to cause 30,000 deaths a year from lung disease in the United States, and 350,000 a year in China,” writes Brand. “A 1-gigawatt coal plant burns three million tons of fuel a year and produces seven million tons of CO2, all of which immediately goes into everyone’s atmosphere, where no one can control it, and no one knows what it’s really up to.”

Likewise, he says, environmentalists are misguided in their long-standing opposition to the genetic engineering of crops to increase yields and reduce pesticide use. In a move sure to rankle the local-food movement, Brand says organic farmers should also embrace GE crops.

Brand argues that humans have been reshaping the natural environment for millennia and thus should start exploring planet-wide technological fixes to the pending catastrophe of climate change, everything from injecting sulfates into the atmosphere to constructing a gigantic space shield to block solar radiation. And if the Whole Earth Catalog catered to the anti-urbanists of the 1960s, Brand now finds ecological salvation in the world’s mega-cities and their sprawling slums as “concentrators of efficiency and innovation.”

Brand lives on a converted tugboat in Sausalito, Calif., with his wife Ryan Phelan, founder of DNA Direct, a genetic testing service. Environmental journalist Todd Woody met Brand in his book-lined office — located nearby in a beached fishing boat on the Sausalito waterfront — and conducted the following interview for Yale Environment 360.

Yale Environment 360: Who did you write this book for?

Stewart Brand: For two versions of environmentalists — the ones who already know their environmentalism and the ones who are finding out their environmentalism because of climate change.

An assertion I make in the first chapter is that in light of climate change everybody’s an environmentalist. And in light of climate change people who already know they’re environmentalists are facing a changed situation. And I’m trying to help adjust the course in light of the situation and the technologies that are emerging.

e360: Is the environmental movement ideologically stuck in the 1970s?

Brand: It’s moved on in some areas. The environmental movement used to hate cities and is now halfway toward loving cities. The Sierra Club has been very active in supporting compactness in cities. Environmentalists don’t call themselves ecologists any more, and that’s good.

e360: Why is that good?

Brand: It’s good because most weren’t, and most people who said they were part of the ecology movement wouldn’t know one trophic level from another, or what a trophic level is, or what a food web is, or why a niche is a niche, or much less why horizontal transgenic gene transfer is normal rather than unnatural. So not being called ecologists is fine.

e360: Do you see a generational dividing line on nuclear power?

Brand: I’m somewhat speculating that there is a generation gap there. I think it’s probably much stronger with genetic engineering. There is no iGEM [the undergraduate International Genetically Engineered Machine synthetic biology competition] for grownups as far as I know. I take that as pretty much a good sign because geneticists and microbiologists are going to just own so much of this century.

e360: For anyone who’s younger than 35, nuclear power has not been an issue because there have been no new nuclear power plants built in this country for decades.

Brand: Well, that’s my surmise. What one would want to look at is some young anti-nuclear person, do they say Chernobyl? Do they say Three Mile Island? I don’t think they say Hiroshima or Nagasaki because that’s so far in the past. Even for me.

e360: One of the main arguments against nuclear is economic — it’s not viable in the marketplace. How much should the market play in pushing these technologies, versus the government?

Brand: It’s a strange kind of desperate argument. Probably that question applies most in the developing world where coal really is king, is the cheapest. If the market rules, coal wins almost everywhere. I’ve been saying, and I say in the book, that we have to get used to the idea that there’s a very serious role for the government here, basically to make coal expensive, and let the rest fight it out.

It’s not an issue in France and that’s why they have 80 percent nuclear. A bit of arithmetic I haven’t seen done yet is, if the U.S. were 80 percent nuclear, how many gigatons of carbon dioxide would not be in the atmosphere? We could have done that.

We didn’t for reasons very different than France. France was shattered by [the] 1973 [Arab oil embargo] and didn’t have their own coal, didn’t have their own oil. To get some energy independence, not because of anything environmental, they just went dead at it. They respect engineers in France way more than we do here and made the right thing happen and now have a huge export industry with selling energy to everybody in Europe, including all the green countries.

e360: NPR recently interviewed an Obama administration official on whether nuclear power should be an option to fight global warming. That official tried very hard to avoid even saying the word nuclear.

Brand: It’s a hot-button issue. Whether I raise it or not in talks, that’s what people want to talk about. What’s interesting to me, I’m going to go on book tour in England in January. England has just committed to ten new reactors. They’re tired of buying two gigawatts of nuclear power from France, among other things.

Frankly, my book is getting more uptake in England — even though it hasn’t come out there yet — than here. So I’m not sure if it’s my name or the subject or if they’re okay with nuclear, or what’s going on.

e360:: You were an advisor to Jerry Brown when he was governor and anti-nuclear sentiment was at its peak. If Jerry Brown becomes governor again do you see changes in policy?

Brand: We’ve talked about it. He hasn’t said, “Tell me more.” Back in the ‘70s when he first got into office, I said space is actually pretty interesting. Fifty percent of space technology comes from California. He was interested. We hired [astronaut] Rusty Schweiker, he did Space Day, he went to the first shuttle launch and landing. So he became Governor Moonbeam.

I haven’t heard him go that far on nuclear. I think it is still a third rail for all these guys. And I suppose part of what I’m trying to do is to take the charge off the rail.

e360: You don’t talk much about renewable energy in your book.

Brand: I think its very well covered so I don’t have much to add there other than nod, nod, nod, so let’s now talk about something I think I have some fresher information on.

But I think the main point I’m making with this book — and that’s why there’s two chapters about squatter cities and what’s going on in the cities and urbanization and so on — is that five out of six people don’t live in the developed world that has all this excess energy use.

They’re living much closer to the bone, and the greenest people in the world probably are the squatters in the slums of the world — a billion people. How lucky we are that they’re there, they’re getting out of poverty, they’re green as hell but they would really like electricity 24/7 and fresh water and sanitation and some other things that are going to involve more energy use. That’s either coal or nuclear as far as I can tell.

Whether we go to nuclear or not is not as important as whether they do. Or something else that is clean, scalable, and constant.

e360: What about solar?

Brand: My hope, frankly, was space solar because it’s 24/7. [California entrepreneur] Elon Musk flattened my ear on this subject. He said, “Look I do SpaceX so I know a lot about space, I do SolarCity so I know a lot about solar. I’m trying to kill anybody’s sense that there’s some realistic way to do ‘space solar.’”

He said even if you could get your solar collectors into orbit for free it still wouldn’t work. The costs and difficulties of beaming down electricity as microwaves with antennas on the ground don’t work out. For the time being, I’m persuaded by Elon on the matter.

e360: Nuclear power plants consume an incredible amount of water. Is that a concern?

Brand: Yep, water is an issue everywhere and every how. The tech I’d like to see is something more direct. That’s all hand wringing at this point. I don’t know anyone who has figured out how to turn heat into electricity without water.

e360: What has been the reaction to your proposals on genetic engineering and food?

Brand: Well, I’m a little surprised that Michael Pollan hasn’t come over because he has busted the industrialization of organic food.

The local growing of basically artisanal food is absolutely fantastic in a country where the basic nutrition problem is obesity. That’s not the major nutrition problem in much or most of the world. What they need is volume, which is the very thing the Green Revolution spoke to and answered. The second Green Revolution is the next set of good technology in agriculture. Not only green in the sense the first one was — higher yield, lower cost, cheaper food, better distribution and all that — but also green ecologically, environmentally green in terms of climate.

Kind of working backward to what the world wants and needs, and what the climate wants and needs, and ecology wants and needs, then genetic engineering looks like a very important tool.

e360: A theme running through the book is that the rest of the world has a different perspective on nuclear power and genetic engineering.

Brand: We tend to be north-centric, developed-centric. China is going full bore on nuclear. I’ve heard numbers as high as they want to build 400 reactors. And no doubt there will be problems. But there’s problems with dams, there’s problems with all these things. I think that’s the engineering essence I’m trying to have Greens become comfortable with.

When you’re trying to design solutions, you really, really have to get used to the idea of tradeoffs, risk balancing, short-term versus long-term. All this stuff that engineers are comfortable with.

I don’t want the romantic stuff to go away. I don’t want people to stop loving nature or loving some experience they’ve had with nature. They can if they want. Just add this other stuff. And so the line about the romantic loves the tree, but not its genome, and the scientist loves both.

e360: One of your more controversial chapters is on geoengineering, which strikes a lot of people, including scientists, as crazy and dangerous.

Brand: That must be next year’s controversy. I expected some pushback on that one. And I haven’t encountered it at all. Not in person, not in print. But it clearly wants and needs to be there. I think there’s all kinds of things to say.

Actually, the strongest pushback and non-embrace was in Al Gore’s new book. It’s a sentence in which he says we’ve done enough experimentation with the planet, that geoengineering is experimentation with the planet we do not need to do. He goes on about biochar [transforming organic waste into a charcoal-like fertilizer], as he should, but doesn’t think or treat that as geoengineering. I do. I think that kind of effort is a form of grass rootsy, and therefore good, geoengineering.

e360: Do you have concerns that support for geoengineering will be used by others as an excuse to carry on with business as usual?

Brand: Well, I don’t want to eliminate business-as-usual as an okay goal. I want to set aside a potential business as usual that ain’t bad. Suppose we had energy that had that quality of way more than we could use or need, and it was clean.

There is another set of people in the environmental movement who are what I’m calling calamatists, who feel that industrial civilization has committed crimes, sins against nature, and retribution is coming and we must repent, reform, and redeem ourselves in light of these terrible crimes and this terrible sin.

The way you can tell if someone is of that mode is to raise this: Suppose we had clean, squanderable energy available, what do you think of that? The ones that have that frame of mind would say that is the worst thing that could happen.

Again, I think that is not a perspective that makes a lot of sense in the developing world. You can go to African peoples and say what do you think of clean, squanderable energy, they would say, “Yes please. How soon?”

e360: Hasn’t cheap energy in this country lead to our sprawling development and other environmental problems?

Brand: Maybe, maybe. But one of the things the new urbanists changed are that suburbs as they came to be designed are boring stupid places to live. It’s not a question of whether you save energy by walking to the market, you sort of save your mind by walking to the market, by being able to bicycle the kids to school. The idea of parents, smart busy adults, having to be chauffeurs for their children has nothing to do with environmental issues at all — it’s just a weird way to live.

I just want that one on the table. Suppose we do get clean, squanderable energy. Is that okay or not okay? One scenario is that it is okay. [Local-food advocate] Alice Waters’ approach to food — artisanal growing of food — is a better approach to growing food. But you need a certain amount of prosperity and density and all these other fun things for that to happen. That is also a product of highly industrialized civilization.

Alice Waters needs a city and in the absence of a city you don’t get Alice Waters or Michael Pollan. The city is a market. It’s a sophisticated market.

e360: Thirty or 40 years ago if you picked up a book advocating these ideas, what would you have thought?

Brand: So 30 to 40 years ago I think I would have said to all the genetic engineering stuff — hot dog! I did say at that time “yes” to solar in space because I was pushing space colonies. The only practical reason that we could think of was that a business model for space colonies was beaming down solar.

Nuclear I would have said, “Bad idea,” and I did. Not actively and overtly. I just went in a somewhat knee-jerk mode and my own mode of long-term thinking at the time that it was too big a penalty to exact from future generations, because of the nuclear waste issue.

I think a lot of this stuff is shifting, and this book is a next-30-years to next-100-years book. Most of the issues we’re dealing with — [like] climate — will be sorted out one way or the other in this century. It’s going to be a thrilling century because so much is in play and so many balls are in the air.

Author Todd Woody is a veteran environmental and technology journalist based in California who writes for “The New York Times,” the “Los Angeles Times,” “Grist” and other publications. He previously was a senior editor at “Fortune” magazine, the assistant managing editor of Business 2.0 magazine and the business editor of the “San Jose Mercury News.”

Article appearing courtesy of Yale Environment 360

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