Coal Power revisited

It's easy to dismiss coal fired power production, and to wave a verbal wand to remove it entirely from the planet - but it's not going to happen soon. And "soon" is what we need, so all solutions, including interim and transitional ones, must be on the table.

While we are refining and exploring new ways to power the world, there also needs to be fast and effective solutions for the existing coal fired power industry. Australia has coal - we use it, export it, and profit from it. So it is heartening to see that we also are exploring ways to reduce emissions, and leading this field is the work done by the CO2CRC team in Melbourne who recently reported a breakthrough in CO2 capture.

In late November, I also attended a talk on Capturing Carbon Emissions by USYD Postdoctoral Research Fellow, Dr Deanna D'Alessandro, who is pioneering a method to "sponge" carbon emissions, and this, and other initiatives need to be fast tracked.

Another Australian company, MBD Energy are also working on Carbon Capture, using algae for production of algae oil and algae meal.

We may reach a point one day, when the techniques being developed by researchers in the non-trendy areas are essential to removing the excess greenhouse gases STILL being emitted. I am not a fan of putting all eggs in one basket, so we need to encourage our talented people into a variety of areas - wind, solar, geothermal, marine, cogeneration, energy storage, and also into bioengineering and solutions for managing what we continue to do, and have done with coal.

At the same time, I would advocate for a level playing field, where subsidies on sunset industries are replaced by research grants to help them transition, and provide the continuity of supply that is essential for our societies.

A Six-Pack of Coal

This week, Science Alert includes a commentary by Kjell Aleklett called Economy and Climate on the path down from the Peak of Oil and Gas. In that article, Kjell, who is Professor in Physics, Uppsala Hydrocarbon Depletion Study Group, at Uppsala University, Sweden, writes.....

"Many are convinced that the future use of coal will determine the outcome for the world’s climate. If we study the world’s coal reserves we find that 80 per cent exists in only six nations; the USA, Russia, China, India, Australia and South Africa. The greatest proportion of the coal that is consumed globally is in these six nations. It is incorrect to assert that carbon dioxide emissions from coal are an international problem.
They are fundamentally a national problem. The international problem is that the rest of the world is affected by the emissions from these six nations."

Thought-provoking words for us Aussies surfing and sitting on our beaches, watching ships queue up to export tons of the stuff!

pic ex Flickr Happychopper's Photostream with comment "Newcastle - check the massive ships in the distance carrying coal... there were hundreds of them out there! "

Taking on Coal in the USA

In the US, there is a ground swell against building more coal fired coal power plants, and this is leading to some interesting advertising campaigns. Essentially, these campaigns are making it much more difficult for the coal industry, and makes long term investment in new coal fired power plants a high risk venture. Mark Kresowik, Corporate Accountability Representative for the Sierra Club, comments: “Coal plants are simply a poor investment, no matter where in the country you are building them. We need to be investing wisely, especially in these economic times, and that means looking at energy efficiency and renewable energy projects that can create jobs and help fight global warming, without the drawbacks of coal.”

If you want to see why we need to re-power with truly clean energy sources, see Al Gore's latest TED TALK. The seven minute video also includes some rather strange coal company promotion attempting to convince us that coal is not only clean, it's cute?

Solar Energy Cheaper than Coal Fired Power

While the Government in Australia is focusing on so called "clean coal", yet another company in the USA is focusing the sun to generate power at much less cost than coal. Check out this link to a short video here.

End of the Coal Era

Around the coffee shops and dinner tables of Australia, using coal to generate power is becoming a talking point, second only to the recession. So Australia's plans to double the export capacity of our major coal exporting port is a hot topic. Spending is one way to stimulate the economy, but is this the type of infrastructure spending we need? According to today's SMH newspaper, Professor Peter Newman, a member of Infrastucture Australia says that these new coal loading facilities "should be stopped". He added that "coal will be a declining export for Australia".

He is not alone in this view. In his latest work "Quarry Vision, Coal, Climate Change and the end of the Resources Boom" , environmental strategist Guy Pearse comments on the volume of coal laden trains headed for our ports - "we understand that for every large bite taken from the earth to fill those trains, a very harmful belch occurs somewhere else in the world".

Around the world, development of new coal fired power plants are being blocked or delayed in lengthy court processes. Let's rethink - let's spend our limited infrastructure spending on new ways to generate energy, such as renewable power, bio-energy and energy efficiency. And let's find new ways to export sunshine!

Think, Plan and Go Commercial

If anyone wonders whether Australia makes a global impact on emissions then they should consider the following, which I obtained from the International Energy Agency’s web site . While these figures reflect the 2006 situation, it is sufficient to show that we as a nation are a major contributor to the emissions generated from coal.

Global Electricity Production from coal/peat (2006) in Twh
China ................. 2,301
United States ...... 2,128
India .................... 508
Germany .............. 302
Japan .................. 299
South Africa.......... 236
Australia ............ 199
Russia ................. 179
Korea .................. 153
United Kingdom ..... 152
Rest of the world. 1,298


We are definitely up there, at number 7 in terms of using coal, which is the oldest of the fossil fuels, and the one which is the most urgent to replace with low emission alternatives.

Last Saturday, I joined the "Walk Against Warming" in Sydney - but maybe we should have a "Think, Plan and Go Commercial against Warming". So I call upon our new energy entrepreneurs, to come up with your ideas to replace coal fired power generation at all levels, and hopefully more useful (if not more artistic!) than this effort which I found on my wanderings.