Carbon Capture Can't Make Coal Clean

By Karl Burkart, AlterNet. Posted June 1, 2009.

We need to start looking at least one step ahead. It seems we've been all too content looking straight down as we march forward on the path to "sustainability" (while patting ourselves on the back no less). Meanwhile, we don't see the proverbial brick wall that is merely a few feet away.

So let me proclaim it: Carbon capture is perhaps the worst possible economic investment we could make right now (maybe only second to liquefying coal to replace gasoline, the folly of which cannot even be put into words).

Why would we invest billions of dollars making a limited, dirty fuel barely acceptable when, within a decade, we could entirely replace coal power with wind and solar -- an investment that would pay us dividends forever since no mining or drilling is required? Renewable fuels are free!

I don't want to berate WE Energies. In addition to funding the Pleasant Prairie carbon capture project, it has also heavily invested in wind energy. So it has its eye on the ball, and its project is truly the closest anyone has come to successfully capturing carbon dioxide at the source. You can read the report here (PDF).

But let's get some things straight about carbon-capture technology:

1. It is hella expensive! Based on the recent project done in partnership with Alstom, a European carbon-capture company, the cost of sequestering a ton of CO2 is somewhere in the ballpark of $70 per ton! A tree can do the same job for less than $10 a ton.
2. At best it can only sequester 90 percent of the carbon emitted. Previous attempts yielded far less successful results.
3. It takes a lot of energy to actually remove the carbon. In other words, you have to burn about 25 percent more coal just to remove the CO2 from the coal. Can anyone say "more mountains?"
4. Once it's removed, you have to do something with the tons of chilled ammonia containing the CO2. Right now there are not very many uses for CO2, unless you count soda carbonation. Burying it deep underground is an option but one that seems to make the storage of nuclear waste rather simple by comparison.
5. Optimistically, the technology won't be ready for prime time until 2015, that according to Alstom, the technology partner behind the Wisconsin capture project.

So basically, we would be sinking billions of dollars in capital, capital that could otherwise be used to ramp up smart grid or renewable-energy projects. And at best, it won't be ready for six years and would be operated at a huge expense to both taxpayers and the environment.

And then the hard part begins ... where will all the coal come from?

The logic only works if your path to sustainability entails walking up a hill backward ... on a blown-up mountain.

See more stories tagged with: coal, mtr, clean coal, appalachia

Karl Burkart is the technology blogger at Mother Nature Network and runs an environmental news video blog at Greendig.

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