Clean Coal Facts and Fiction on CNBC

[kgrandia]

CNBC's Mark Haines asks: "How Realistic is Clean Coal," and Haines does a great job off the top by pointing out that his guest, Steve Miller of the American Coalition for Clean Coal Electricity (ACCCE), is funded by the coal industry.

This type of disclosure is important, as it provides viewers with some valuable context when hearing what Mr. Miller has to say. As Miller states on the show, his organization ACCCE is funded by:

"The coal producers, railroads and other transporters, generators... we got them all, manufacturers as well."

That's the fact, and now for the fiction.

Things get rather strange quickly when Haines asks Miller: "How far away are we from mass use of clean coal" to which Miller replies:

"The clean coal technologies for carbon capture and sequestration are probably 10 to 15 years away for widespread commercial use." (my emphasis)

Really? A 10 to 15 year outlook for CCS on a widespread commercial use?

Where are those numbers coming from? The earliest possibility for deployment of CCS on a large commercial scale is not expected before 2030and the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) does not expect CCS to be commercially viable until at least 2050.

Nor does Oil-giant Shell who "doesn't foresee CCS being in widespread use until 2050."

In fact, the head of one of the largest coal-to-electricity companies in the world, Jim Rogers, CEO of Duke Energy, recently stated that:

“CCS as a magical technology that solves the carbon problem for coal plants is oversold…I think there is a lot to learn, and it is going to take us a lot longer for us to figure it out than a lot of us think”.

[JohnWxy]

1. An article in Dec 2006 issue of Discover magazine about TECO's IGCC plant says it works quite well

The TECO (Tampa electric company) plant could capture virtually all the CO2, but it doesn't because there is no law requiring it to (i.e. no carbon tax)!

http://discovermagazine.com/2006/dec/clean-coal-technology

On a steamy, torpid summer morning in Florida, the Polk power plant is performing a small feat of modern alchemy. Every hour it converts 100 tons of the dirtiest fuel on the planet—coal—into 250 million watts of power for about 56,000 homes and businesses around Tampa. The alchemy part? Vernon Shorter, a tall, bluff consultant for the Tampa Electric Company (TECO), points to a looming smokestack. "Look at the top of that stack," he shouts over the cacophony of generators and coal-grinding machines. "That is the main emissions source. You can't see anything. You don't even see a heat plume."

He's right. No smoke mars the lazy blue Florida sky. The Polk plant captures all its fly ash, 98 percent of its sulfur—which causes acid rain—and nearly all its nitrogen oxides, the main component of the brown haze that hangs over many cities. Built to demonstrate the feasibility of a new way to wring economical power from coal without belching assorted toxins into the air, the $600 million plant has been running steadily since 1996. "It makes the lowest-cost electricity on TECO's grid," Shorter says. "It also has very, very low emissions. Particulate matter is almost undetectable."

What is both distressing and remarkable about the Polk plant is that it could do much more. "There's no requirement for mercury capture, but 95 percent of it could be captured very easily," Shorter adds. More important, the plant could also capture nearly all of coal's most elusive and potentially disastrous emissions: carbon dioxide, the main gas that drives global warming.

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The technology behind the Polk plant is called an integrated gasification combined cycle—a mouthful usually shortened to IGCC. Unlike conventional coal-fired generators, IGCC plants don't actually burn the coal itself; they convert it into gas and burn the gas. This highly efficient process makes it possible to selectively pull out the resulting emissions, including carbon dioxide, which could then be collected and buried rather than released into the air.