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King Coal
Barack Obama has promised to push cap-and-trade legislation this year, and one way of getting it approved in the Senate is to push it through via the budget reconciliation process, where it would require only 50 votes to pass. Elana Schor reports that this has run into a roadblock:
In a letter delivered to the Senate Budget Committee yesterday, eight Democratic senators joined 25 Republicans to defend the GOP's right to set a 60-vote margin for passing emissions limits.
"We oppose using the budget process to expedite passage of climate legislation," the senators, including eight centrist Democrats, wrote in their missive.
....Late Update: The eight Democratic senators who signed on to the letter are Robert Byrd (WV), Blanche Lincoln (AR), Ben Nelson (NE), Evan Bayh (IN), Mark Pryor (AR), Bob Casey (PA), Carl Levin (MI), and Mary Landrieu (LA).
Take a look at those names: six are from the midwest and the south, joined by Casey and Byrd. In other words, coal country senators. Nearly all the electricity generated in these regions comes from coal, and a lot of that coal comes from West Virginia and Pennsylvania, the #2 and #4 coal-producing states in the country.
This is a dynamic to watch. The battle over cap-and-trade isn't just between liberals and conservatives, it's also between regions. You'll find coal-fired electric plants all around the country, but the midwest and the south rely on it much more heavily than the west and the northeast, which generate a lot of their electricity via hydro and natural gas. Cap-and-trade will raise the price of coal-fired electricity more than any other kind, which means the price increases will hit the south and midwest especially hard.
This letter, then, isn't just a sign that there are some Democratic senators who feel strongly about not bending Senate rules. It's a sign that Democrats from the south and midwest are probably going to have to bribed to support cap-and-trade. The big question is, how? Can they be bought off in fairly benign, traditional ways, or will their price effectively mean the gutting of the legislation? Stay tuned.
The obvious way to buy them
tagged as:- solution
The obvious way to buy them off is federal subsidization of CO2 sequestration, along with pointing out the jobs sequestration infrastructure and construction would give rise to.
Regardless of what you think of sequestration (and, let's be honest here, plenty of environments oppose it on theological, not scientific, grounds) this seems to me the most practical path forward. Which means, in turn, trying to ensure that the resulting legislation is an uncrappy as it can be. I'd say the points to try to insist on are
(a) prices are unchanged across the nation, and across carbon sources. What is provided is an EXPLICIT sequestration subsidy, not some screwing around with grandfathering in sources and so on.
(b) the subsidy is an explicit amount of money, NOT an open-ended check-book or a fraction of the coal cost or whatever. With an explicit amount of money, there is much more incentive to do the sequestration in ever more efficient ways.
(c) the subsidy is given explicitly as a transition mechanism, not something to last till the end of time. Make it a fixed amount of money, and make that ratchet down on a linear path over the next 30 years or so.
(d) there needs to be ways to ensure that sequestration projects are not leaking, and that the incentives are not skewed to reward short-term sloppiness at the cost of long-term problems. The financial people can obviously think up a bunch of schemes for this --- eg for each project there exists a fund that is basically a bond against disaster in the project. The fund is invested in treasuries or whatever, so it generates income, and persons can buy shares in the fund. As time goes by and it becomes clear that the site is not leaking, the fund will disgorge the capital.
The problem, however, as we have seen, is that financial theory is not enough --- if the people providing the information behind the project are lying, all the financial tricks in the world will not help. Which in turn means that, I think, we have to push for very aggressive public access to all aspects of sequestration projects. Geological data, sensor data, accident reports, it ALL has to be publicly available for every project. There are ways to detect leaks from satellites, from airplanes, and on the ground --- and the public has to be full partners in each. If, for whatever reason, Green Peace believes that some project in Wyoming is leaking at levels above what is mandated, it has to be allowed to fly its planes over the site, and have its people with sensors walk all over the site. Without this level of public scrutiny, I would not blame the public for believing that sequestration is just more plutocratic BS, a way to have certain persons paid a fortune today, but building up a problem that's going to surface in a hundred years in a serious way.
Cap & Trade Blue Dogs
I want cap & trade to help push the transition to a Greener energy sector and I agree this is NOT a budget plan.
I also agree with
It has to be a very good system or there will be too many loopholes for it to be fair, effective and ONLY a transition plan.
Sequestration
MaynardHandley, please don't insult environmentalists by saying they "oppose it on theological grounds."
You yourself outline some very pertinent problems with it, and I'm not taking it as given than they can be solved. And be scaled to handle the burning of the coal that is nicely sequestered in the earth already.
I'd bribe them with cheap access to power generated in the rest of the country, hence the need for a country+Canada wide electrical grid, and solar / wind / whatever power being sent their way.
CCS won't help
MaynardHandley wrote: "Regardless of what you think of sequestration (and, let's be honest here, plenty of environments oppose it on theological, not scientific, grounds) this seems to me the most practical path forward."
Please provide evidence that "environmentalists" oppose carbon capture and sequestration on "theological" grounds rather than "scientific" grounds. Alternatively, you might acknowledge that that was a gratuitous and baseless insult.
The problem with CCS is that effective CCS technology does not exist and is unlikely to exist in the time frame within which we need to drastically reduce CO2 emissions if we are to have any hope of avoiding the most catastrophic effects of anthropogenic global warming. According to mainstream climate scientists, that time frame is around five years to stop the growth of emissions and begin a rapid decline. Effective CCS is decades away.
Money spent on CCS research -- like money spent on building more nuclear power plants -- is money that would be FAR more effectively spent on rapid deployment of existing wind and solar energy technologies and on efficiency improvements.
We need results FAST. Renewables and efficiency can deliver those results. CCS and nuclear cannot.
What we need is an immediate, permanent ban on the construction of any new coal-fired power plants and any new coal mines, and a deadline in no more than 10 years by which time all existing coal-fired power plants must be permanently shut down and all coal mines closed.
Legislators who seek to perpetuate the burning of coal in order to perpetuate the profits of the coal industry at the cost of global famine, irreversible loss of fresh water supplies for billions of people, and the inundation of densely populated coastal areas (including many major US cities) by rising seas, are guilty of the most profound crime against humanity imaginable.
Great idea... just make sure you turn out the lights
You said: "What we need is an immediate, permanent ban on the construction of any new coal-fired power plants and any new coal mines, and a deadline in no more than 10 years by which time all existing coal-fired power plants must be permanently shut down and all coal mines closed."
Coal-fired plants currently produce 50% of the electricity in the US.
What is your plan to replace that capacity? If you tell me wind and solar, figure out just how much capacity would be needed given wind power is currently at 25% and solar 7%. This means you must put up 4x and 15x the wind and solar capacity to replace the base-load coal plants. Once you do that figure out the land mass those wind mills and solar units would need. You will soon figure out you 1. can't afford to build all that and 2. there is not enough land.
Check out www.eia.gov for government statistics that I used for the above.
Other wind problems.
Sir,
You are correct that wind and solar are far less reliable than traditional generation. Another difficulty with wind power is that wind currents are not evenly distributed across the county. Many states have insufficient wind available to support generation.
The post to which you are replying also demanded a ban on new coal mines. Many small mines in West Virginia, Pennsylvania, and Kentucky are planned to open and close again in a short amount of time. Mining companies must constantly develop new mines just to maintain the production capacity, without taking expansion into account. The transition to a low-carbon generation portfolio must be gradual, and would likely be accomplished by adding nuclear capacity. I agree with you that wind and solar are not workable alternatives.
we don't need them
59 minus 8 is 51. How about just telling them that if they want any influence at all on the final legislation, they need to stop cavorting with the Republicans on this issue?
That all 51 Democratic
That all 51 Democratic senators not signing this letter are solid votes for Cap and Trade is a very optimistic assumption. It could be true, but I certainly wouldn't bet on it at this time.
Carbon sequestration is easy
Carbon sequestration is easy compared to repairing the murderous damage done when they blow the tops off the mountains to get the coal in the first place.
Clean coal advocates should google "mountaintop removal" and then "tennessee sludge"
No pressure on Bayh from Hoosier Dems
Indiana is either 6th or 8th on the list of coal-producing states (depending on what chart you look at) - southern Indiana is coal country, just like Kentucky. In addition, Edwardsport, Indiana is home the biggest (?) coal plant currently under construction. Indiana Dems are split on the issue, with labor supporting the project (and coal in general) because of the promise of short-term jobs - environmental groups are fighting for even some promise of sequestration or other technology. As a result, there's little hope of Hoosier Dems pressuring Bayh on any environmental issues that would run counter to coal interests. At this point, the only concession that Bayh seems interested in is official recognition of his power as leader of the "centrist" Senate bloc.
This is how the political
This is how the political system is supposed to work. Cap and Trade won't fail because the mean wicked coal producing states won't let it happen. It will fail because the evidence for AGW is not sound enough to convince people that they should forgo the use of this abundant and cheap natural resource.
I would be for Cap and Trade if I was convinced that the science is sound behind AGW. But alas the case has not been well made. ( BTW - I have a Ph.D. in Physics, work in the software industry and know quite a bit about computer modeling and how easy it is to get it wrong ( i.e. boundary conditions are very hard to do correctly ).
Consensus in the scientific community is not convincing to me. I have worked on grant proposals. I was in the field of physics which kept promising cheap fusion power in about 20 years, with no results. Scientists are human beings and have the same flaws as the rest of us. They are very susceptible to signing on to a politically convenient idea if that is where the money is.
When the best they can do to scare us into accepting Cap and Trade is talking about doomsday scenarios that are 50 to 100 years off, I don't buy it. Think of someone in the 1930's predicting almost anything about the world we now have today.
When the leading doomsday prophets of GW jet off to Bali to host an air-conditioned conference on the need to cut done, they lose their credibility. When the nations that signed the Kyoto protocol have all missed their targets, they lose credibility. Kevin, when are you going to think this one through.
Criticism of Maynard.
I think Maynard is receiving unnecesary flak for his statement that some environmentals oppose CCS for theological reasons. If really depends upon the meaning of some. I would guess for some somewhere in the range of 1 to 20% that his statement is true. He probably should have hinted that he meant only a few when he said some.
That said, I think his plan could be a tough sell politically. These politicians are not likely to be unaware of the problems (scientific and engineering with CCS), and may balk at the proposed solution -or at least be concerned about what happens in a few years when CCS is (possibly) abandoned, and their states are still heavily dependent on coal. So maybe they can be persuaded by R&D earmarks, which are good jobs regardless of the chance of technological success, but maybe not.
Of course getting them to buy in on importing renewable power from elsewhere is problematic. I don't think it is realistic to project this source to be cheaper than coal -particularly if you are concerned about spending your own states money instate versus out of state.
Another possibility would be to get them to buy into an advanced fuel cycle nuclear project or two. These have the advantage that they have a much greater chance of success than CCS. Lithium Floride Thorium reactors sound like the best shot for a long term environmentally sound baseline power source. But, of course the size of the current efforts have been very small, only a few million per year. But perhaps letting them select from CCS, or advanced cycle nukes, or [insert your favorite here] would increase the odds of getting some sort of buyin.
John, read this.
climate course.pdf
This is a survey course for climate science. Anyone with roughly an undergrad physics degree or equivalent should be able to slog through it (I am part way through it myself). After you've digested it, you should be better able to judge the science. Listening to the noise machine probably gives one an incorrect impression.
Listening to the noise
Listening to the noise machine probably gives one an incorrect impression.
Wow. Is there an Understatement of the Year award? We have a contender!
Reconcilation
59-8=51>=50
Plus, IIRC, neither Snowe nor Specter signed the reconciliation letter (giving us potentially 53 votes). Unless more Dems jump ship, the reconciliation math looks fine.
And we have a trump card: the EPA can regulate carbon emissions from power plants. The big loser here is coal. Threaten to impose a harsher cutoff in carbon emissions if cap and trade fails to pass.
Responding to disinformation
Barry wrote: "... figure out the land mass those wind mills and solar units would need. You will soon figure out you 1. can't afford to build all that and 2. there is not enough land."
That's simply wrong.
Not enough land? You just made that up. It's bullshit. The commercially exploitable wind energy resources of only four midwestern states alone are sufficient to generate as much electricity as the entire country uses. The commercially exploitable offshore wind energy resources of the northeastern states alone are sufficient to generate as much electricity as the entire country uses. Same for the solar energy resources of the southwestern deserts. We only need to harvest a fraction of the available wind and solar energy to provide as much electricity as the entire country uses.
As for baseload power, multiple studies have shown that a diversified regional portfolio of renewables (wind, solar, geothermal, biomass) can provide 24x7 baseload power that is at least as reliable as coal and nuclear.
And "too expensive"? Wind and concentrating solar thermal electricity generation are already cost-competitive with new coal-fired power plants, even without CCS.
It's always like this with you -- you just plain make up these BS talking points about how wind and solar can't do the job. Then you're shown how wrong you are. Then you post the same bogus claims the next time around.
BigTom wrote: "Another possibility would be to get them to buy into an advanced fuel cycle nuclear project or two. These have the advantage that they have a much greater chance of success than CCS. Lithium Floride Thorium reactors sound like the best shot for a long term environmentally sound baseline power source."
You are talking science fiction here. Such power plants don't exist. No one has designed or built one yet. No one knows if they would be "safe" or "environmentally sound" in practice, since there is no track record of operating them. Even if workable designs existed, they would take many years, perhaps decades, to build, at enormous cost. Wind and solar are ready NOW. They can be deployed very rapidly NOW. They are cost competitive with coal and natural gas, and cheaper than building new nuclear, NOW.
John Hansen wrote: "I would be for Cap and Trade if I was convinced that the science is sound behind AGW. But alas the case has not been well made."
John, the conversation has moved on beyond your ExxonMobil-funded denialist rubbish. If you want to join an adult conversation with other rational, informed adults, about the merits of various proposals to deal with anthropogenic global warming, then you need to get beyond your childish game of "Let's Pretend".
Because if you want to go on pretending that hundreds of the world's leading climate scientists who have studied this question diligently for decades are all "liberals" engaged in a massive hoax, and that every major scientific organization in the world including the national science academies of every developed nation in the world who have all issued statements supporting the IPCC consensus on global warming are all "liberal" frauds, and that only Rush Limbaugh is telling the truth about climate change, then you are nothing but a slapstick clown who has nothing but fart noises to contribute to the discussion.
Show me the money
So...show me some of these references you have... "The commercially exploitable wind energy resources of only four midwestern states alone are sufficient to generate as much electricity as the entire country uses."
Realize that wind farms average 25% capacity factor... that means you must four times the number to get 100% of the megawatts. Solar operates at 7% capacity factor. Go to APS.com who is planning on installing a solar generating unit. Do the math... and then multiply all the costs, both installation and operating by 10. This includes the geographical area, as well.... and 10x is very conservative.
I gave you a reference... eia.gov. They provide current generating rates, costs of construction, etc. Included in that is the total power generated monthly/annually from coal, nuclear, and other sources.
Now you quit blowing smoke and provide some factual references instead of making accusations. Also...do your own homework instead of just believing everything you hear from those that stand to gain from these claims.
SecAnim - Rants without facts
tagged as:- result
SecAnim makes claims (see above) but refuses to back up his points with facts, so let me do it for him. It is so easy to repeat canned statements – checking them out and coming to your own conclusions takes a little effort.
First...he/she says: “Not enough land? You just made that up. It's (expletive deleted). The commercially exploitable wind energy resources of only four midwestern states alone are sufficient to generate as much electricity as the entire country uses.” What are the facts? Can just four states provide the nation's entire electrical demand? The following statistics can be verified at www.eia.doe.gov.
In 2007, the US consumed 3.66 billion megawatts of power. This would require 417,920 megawatts of installed generation operating at 100% power 24/7 for 365 days. How much land would it take to generate that much wind power on a 24/7 basis?
First, understand wind farm spacing is a function of the blade length and downwind towers being far enough away from other towers as not to suffer “wind shadows.” Ever watch America’s Cup sailing and see what happens when one boat blocks the wind of his competitor? As a result, current wind projects require anywhere from 20 to 50 acres per installed megawatt. Let’s assume 40 acres are required for each megawatt. 417,920 megawatt x 40 acres/megawatt = 16.272 million acres or 26,120 square miles. But then the average U.S. wind farm produces power only 23% of the time. So now you must install four times as many wind generators which would cover about 100,000 square miles.
Indeed, together ND, SD, NE, and KS cover about 306,000 square miles, including water area, cities, roads, houses, business, and Native American reservations. So maybe there are 100,000 square miles of available land between them. Now if we can just convince them to blanket their states with windmills that go whoosh whoosh, shredding birds and killing bats. There are two other problems: no transmission infrastructure to transport power to the rest of the country and what happens when there is a high pressure area over the Midwest, i.e., the wind stops?
Consider spreading nearly 1.7 million windmills (average windmill is 1 megawatt)out over the Lower 48, or approx. 3 million square miles. Subtract out mountains, lakes, state and national parks, reservations, forests, cities, and much of the country not well suited for wind generation…meaning average wind velocities less than 16.8 mph…it gets a little crowded...and all this for a power source that is unreliable and intermittent. Well, I will let you draw your own conclusions on the viability of wind to meet our nation’s needs or any significant portion thereof.
Solar is a little better. Photo Voltaic (PV) and Solar Thermal power density runs about five acres per megawatt. As noted above, the U.S. needs 417,920 megawatts, or a solar project covering 2 million acres. But wait…there’s more! These plants only produce when the sun shines. Duh. Their best capacity factors are 25%, but the national average is 13.9%. So now you must build seven times as much covering 14 million acres. Unfortunately, the best areas are in Nevada, California, and Arizona… see how they feel about gobbling up 14 million of their flat accessible ground acres for solar. Think there might be an endangered species or two on thsoe 14 million acres?
In summary, SecAnim says, “We only need to harvest a fraction of the available wind and solar energy to provide as much electricity as the entire country uses.”
What do you think?
Next, according to the US Government
http://www.eia.doe.gov/oiaf/aeo/assumption/pdf/electricity.pdf#page=3
IGCC with Carbon Sequestration costs $3500 per installed kilowatt. Advanced nuclear is at $3300 per installed kilowatt. Both will operate 24/7 regardless of wind speed or cloud cover.
Solar thermal costs $5000 and PV costs $6000 per installed kilowatt. However, since they are effective only 14% of the time, it’s really $35K to $42K per effective installed megawatt.
Land-based wind is about $2000/installed kilowatt and off-shore is about $4000/installed kilowatt. But remember, you need four times as much installed capacity since they operate at only 23% capacity factor. So in effect, wind costs $8000 to $16,000 per installed kilowatt.
Again, SecAnim says: “And "too expensive"? Wind and concentrating solar thermal electricity generation are already cost-competitive with new coal-fired power plants, even without CCS.”
What do you think?
Certainly there is a place for renewables, roof top hot water heaters, etc. But don't think for a moment these will provide our national grid with the reliable, 24/7 power in the quantities we need.
Timely report to support the above
tagged as:- result
As noted above, the amount of land required for solar electric generation is enormous and limited. The fight over that land is on. This will accelerate as more land is gobbled up with questionable investments in "green" generation.
http://www.foxnews.com/politics/2009/03/21/feinstein-dont-spoil-desert-solar-panels/
The article describes the battle between one California senator and environmentalists and 19 proposed solar projects. Here is part of the AP article.
"California's Mojave Desert may seem ideally suited for solar energy production, but concern over what several proposed projects might do to the aesthetics of the region and its tortoise population is setting up a potential clash between conservationists and companies seeking to develop renewable energy."