05
May 2008 - International — As the seventh
annual Carbon Capture & Sequestration
conference gets underway in Pittsburgh,
Pennsylvania, Greenpeace has launched 'False
Hope' - a report critically examining the
status and promise of carbon capture and
storage (CCS) technology. The conclusion
is that, despite what the coal and power
industries claim, CCS will not prevent more
than a whiff of global warming pollution
from reaching the atmosphere in the next
few decades.
CCS aims to capture
carbon dioxide (CO2) emissions from power
station smokestacks and dump it underground.
Although it's being described as a "silver
bullet" solution in combating the climate
crisis, CCS has yet to be used on any large-scale
coal-fired power plant anywhere in the world.
And, as 'False Hope' reveals, there are
huge unknowns regarding feasibility, cost,
environmental implications and liability
which have not been thought through.
The increase in greenhouse
gas emissions needs to be halted in the
next decade and emissions then need to be
cut significantly. CCS will not be ready
in time. Ironically, the suggestion that
the technology may be made to work some
time in the future is being used to justify
building new coal-fired power plants without
any form of carbon 'capture'.
What makes most sense
is not building coal-fired power plants
in the first place. Carbon is already 'stored'
safely underground: we call it coal. Let's
leave it there. Adapting an old phrase,
"when you find yourself in a (climate)
hole, the first thing is to stop digging".
It is a perverse situation
where policymakers who claim to recognise
the urgency of cutting greenhouse gas emissions
are considering bankrolling the development
of an unproven technology over funding proven
pollution-free renewable energy sources
and energy efficiency improvements.
CCS is unproven, risky
and expensive and investing in it threatens
to undermine the range of clean energy solutions
which are available right now.
CCS not ready in time
Climate experts say the worst impacts of
climate change can be averted by levelling
off global warming pollution by 2015 and
turning down the burner after that. But
the earliest that CCS will be ready is 2030.
The Nobel Peace Prize-winning Intergovernmental
Panel on Climate Change is even less optimistic.
The IPCC doesn't see CCS being commercially
viable until even later - around 2050.
CCS wastes energy and
resources
Capturing and storing carbon dioxide would
be a major energy consumer, gobbling up
anything from 10 to 40% of a power plant's
electricity output. So more coal needs to
be mined, transported, and burned for a
power station to generate the same amount
of energy as it would without CCS.
Demands for cooling
water also increase dramatically. Power
stations with capture technology could require
90% more freshwater than those without.
CCS is expected to erase gains in power
plant energy efficiency made over the past
50 years, and increase resource consumption
by one-third.
Storing carbon underground
is risky
It is uncertain whether there is sufficient
suitable space underground to bury enough
carbon to have any meaningful climate impact.
Humanity has no experience
of safely storing anything forever. But
locking up carbon dioxide underground in
perpetuity is exactly what would need to
be accomplished with CCS. A leakage rate
of just 1% could potentially undermine any
climate benefit. Tests have thrown up unexpected
results, such CO2 disintegrating storage
materials.
CCS is expensive and
undermines real solutions to climate change
CCS could well mean electricity price rises
of between 21 and 91%. Clean energy sources,
such as wind power, provide electricity
much more cheaply than coal-fired plants
fitted with CCS will ever be able to. The
funding to get CCS off the ground - including
substantial sums of taxpayer's money - comes
at the expense of real solutions. In countries
it has been pursued, CCS has taken up an
increasing share of energy research and
development budgets whereas funding for
renewable technologies and energy efficiency
has stagnated or declined.
In the US, for example,
the Department of Energy has asked for the
CCS programme budget to be raised to US
$623.6 million. At the same time, it is
scaling back renewable energy research to
US $146.2 million. Worse still, legislation
introduced on Capitol Hill would allocate
a whopping US $424 billion to a dedicated
fund for CCS. Australia, meanwhile, has
three research centres devoted to fossil
fuels, including one committed to CCS, but
none for renewable energy technology.
CCS and liability: risky
business
Large-scale CCS applications pose significant
and new liability risks, including negative
impacts on human health, damage to ecosystems,
groundwater contamination such as the pollution
of drinking water and increased greenhouse
gas emissions from leakage.
Again, energy interests
want a free ride by being relieved of liability
in return for investing in CCS. Some demand
they be relieved of ownership of CO2 at
the power plant gates, or that they remain
liable for CO2 dumped underground for a
mere ten years.
The costs of any mishaps would have to be
covered from the public purse.
The extent of support
offered to the recently collapsed FutureGen
project in the US gives some inkling of
the real costs of CCS. FutureGen was the
Bush Administration's flagship CCS project.
It not only received unprecedented public
funds (to the tune of US $1.3 bn) but was
protected from financial and legal liability
in the event of an unanticipated release
of carbon, indemnified from lawsuits and
even had its insurance premiums paid.
The alternative to CCS:
renewables and energy efficiency
Renewable energy and energy saving have
proven track records in meeting energy needs
safely, cleanly, predictably and cost-effectively.
The world has sufficient technically accessible
renewable energy to meet global energy needs
six times over.
Compare that to the
risky and expensive option of CCS which
is still on the drawing board.
Full details of how
clean energy and energy efficiency can cut
almost halve global CO2 emissions by 2050
are contained in Greenpeace's Energy [R]evolution
blueprint.
