| The Precarious Future of Coal |
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| Written by Tim Longhurst | |
| Saturday, 21 April 2007 | |
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Scientists at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) are calling on the U.S. government to spend half a billion dollars on projects to capture carbon dioxide from coal. In a new report on the resource's future, energy experts say much more needs to be done to develop technology for decreasing the impact of burning coal on global warming.
Coal plants worldwide burn 5.4 billion tons of coal a year, accounting for a third of the planet's carbon-dioxide emissions. Because coal is cheap and abundant, new plants are being built at a frenetic pace across the globe. It's widely seen as necessary to meet fast-growing demand for energy, and Australia is at the forefront of the boom, unearthing about half of the world’s coking coal and a fifth of steaming coal. Growing concerns about global warming are making it increasingly likely that governments worldwide will impose a price on carbon-dioxide emissions to curb the release of the greenhouse gas. The MIT report says reducing the impact of continued coal use on global warming will require a massive effort to collect carbon-dioxide from power plants and bury it underground. The volume of compressed carbon dioxide that will need to be captured and transported is similar in scale to the amount of oil consumed in the U.S. John Deutch, a professor chemistry at MIT, says the process is "not simply a matter of bolting on a box to capture carbon dioxide." Even though there are a few carbon-sequestration projects in the works around the world, none have been put together with the careful monitoring required to assure the public and energy investors that long-term, extremely high-volume carbon-dioxide storage is possible. The report, therefore, recommends that governments not support the new gasification plants. Instead, researchers say governments should focus on large-scale demonstration programs that would capture carbon dioxide from coal plants, transport it, and store it in a large scale. The demonstrations would enable the comparison of different technologies, and increase policymaker and public confidence. The MIT-envisioned projects will take years. In the meantime, the researchers suggest that governments take action by establishing a carbon-control policy that will include closing a potential loophole that may encourage utilities to build coal plants now, in the hope that they can avoid future regulations. However, governments may benefit long-term by ditching coal production altogether. The act of ripping the resource out of the ground has proven environmentally unsustainable not just for releasing dangerous greenhouse gases into the atmosphere, but by interfering with groundwater and water table levels, and rendering land unfit for common usage. “Clean coal” is a myth. Coal mining can be made redundant by cheaper and greener energy resources. Experts say Australia has the right conditions to make geothermal technology, using underground energy to produce electricity. The cost of geo-thermal-produced electricity would be similar to the cost of electricity produced by coal-fired power stations. Solar power is also becoming an increasingly viable alternative for a country that boasts sunshine more than 300 days a year in certain areas. To read the MIT eport in full: http://web.mit.edu/coal/ The MIT report says reducing the impact of continued coal use on global warming will require a massive effort to collect carbon-dioxide from power plants and bury it underground. The volume of compressed carbon dioxide that will need to be captured and transported is similar in scale to the amount of oil consumed in the U.S. John Deutch, a professor chemistry at MIT, says the process is "not simply a matter of bolting on a box to capture carbon dioxide." Even though there are a few carbon-sequestration projects in the works around the world, none have been put together with the careful monitoring required to assure the public and energy investors that long-term, extremely high-volume carbon-dioxide storage is possible. The report, therefore, recommends that governments not support the new gasification plants. Instead, researchers say governments should focus on large-scale demonstration programs that would capture carbon dioxide from coal plants, transport it, and store it in a large scale. The demonstrations would enable the comparison of different technologies, and increase policymaker and public confidence. The MIT-envisioned projects will take years. In the meantime, the researchers suggest that governments take action by establishing a carbon-control policy that will include closing a potential loophole that may encourage utilities to build coal plants now, in the hope that they can avoid future regulations. However, governments may benefit long-term by ditching coal production altogether. The act of ripping the resource out of the ground has proven environmentally unsustainable not just for releasing dangerous greenhouse gases into the atmosphere, but by interfering with groundwater and water table levels, and rendering land unfit for common usage. “Clean coal” is a myth. Coal mining can be made redundant by cheaper and greener energy resources. Experts say Australia has the right conditions to make geothermal technology, using underground energy to produce electricity. The cost of geo-thermal-produced electricity would be similar to the cost of electricity produced by coal-fired power stations. Solar power is also becoming an increasingly viable alternative for a country that boasts sunshine more than 300 days a year in certain areas. To read the MIT eport in full: http://web.mit.edu/coal/ |
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