[Greenbuilding] Carbon Capture

[Mary Bull - Greenwood Earth Alliance]

This is good news. Monbiot says that in the short-run, switching to natural
gas-burning plants, at approximately half the carbon footprint as coal
burning, and capturing carbon in coal-burning plants, is the quickest,
surest way of reducing the overall footprint by 90% in the power sector by
2030 (he divides the problem into multiple sectors--all of which must be
reduced by 90% by 2030). In the meantime, he urges development of massive
off-shore wind farms, where the wind never stops, and solar power plants in
the Sahara, where the sun shines for 16 hours straight, and using new DC
long-distance  technology to transport the energy.

Cheers!

Mary Bull, Co-director
Greenwood Earth Alliance, Save the Redwoods - Boycott the Gap Campaign
252 Frederick, San Francisco, CA 94117 http://www.gapsucks.org
Chalice Farm and Sustainable Living Center, 748 Montgomery Rd, Sebastopol CA
95472
415-731-7924 - 415-509-1188 chalicenew at earthlink.net


----- Original Message ----- 
From: "Lawrence Lile" <LLile at projsolco.com>
To: <GREENBUILDING at LISTSERV.REPP.ORG>
Sent: Tuesday, April 03, 2007 5:57 AM
Subject: [Greenbuilding] Carbon Capture


> I was just reading an article in Engineering News-Record on Carbon
> Capture in Power Plants.  (wish I had a link to share)
>
>
>
> It looks like they are building a 5MW pilot plant (5MW would be a lot of
> power in any other context!) in Wisconsin that can capture 90% of the
> CO2 in the flue gas, plus 97% of fly ash and 95% of sulphur dioxide.
> Alstrom Power Inc is installing the pilot project in Pleasant Prairie,
> Wis.  (Ironically probably a very good wind power site)
>
>
>
> American Electric Power is installing two carbon capture systems on two
> existing power plants, about 30MW worth, still chicken-feed in the power
> industry.
>
>
>
> MIT experts are saying that retrofitting a power plant isn't cheap, it
> isn't bolt-on technology, it is much better to build it in from the
> ground up.  There was no mention of the energy penalty for the carbon
> capture.  Most of the carbon is being injected into the ground, either
> being used by the oil industry to extract more oil from wells (more
> irony) or injected into saltwater aquifers underground, where presumably
> it makes a sort of salty coca-cola down there.  MIT estimates that
> carbon capture would add 50% to 80% to the cost of producing power from
> coal, not a cheap option.
>
>
>
> It's hard to believe that this is really going on, and power companies
> are getting on board, but they see the writing on the wall, and know
> that if they don't do something voluntarily about cleaning up coal
> emissions, they'll eventually be forced to do something.
>
>
>
> Wind power is a great idea, and we should use it as much as we can, but
> the wind doesn't blow all the time.  Somebody is going to want to turn
> on the lights on a still summer night, and that's why we are stuck with
> coal for quite a while.  I certainly hope they do develop a good
> technology for cleaning it up, and then we find a way to make it
> mandatory.
>
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>
> Lawrence Lile, P.E., LEED AP
>
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