On May 23, EPA put out its long-expected proposed Rule designed to eliminate, or nearly so, all so-called “greenhouse gas” emissions from the electricity-generation sector of the economy. The proposal came with the very long title: “New Source Performance Standards for GHG Emissions from New and Reconstructed EGUs; Emission Guidelines for GHG Emissions from Existing EGUs; and Repeal of the Affordable Clean Energy Rule.” The full document is 672 pages long.
Various not-very-far-off deadlines are set, ranging from as early as 2030 for some changes to coal plants, to at the latest 2038 for the last changes to natural gas plants. But how exactly is this emissions elimination thing to be accomplished? Today a substantial majority of U.S. electricity (about 60%) comes from one or the other of those fuels; and it is inherent in the burning of hydrocarbons that you get CO2 as a product. In all those 672 pages, EPA has only two ideas for how to eliminate the carbon emissions from combustion power plants: carbon capture and storage (CCS), and “green” hydrogen. Either you must implement one of those two ideas to meet EPA’s standards by the deadline, or you must close your power plant. But here’s the problem: both of those ideas are, frankly, absurd.
The deadline for commenting on the proposed Rule was August 8, although comments have continued to pile in after that date. Many hundreds of them have been received. If you have nothing else to do for the next month or two, you can review the comments at this link.
I have by no means made the effort to read all the comments, but I have gone looking for some of the more significant ones. Two that I can highly recommend are this one by a group of 21 red state AGs led by West Virginia, and this one by an overlapping group of 18 red state AGs led by Ohio. Both of those comments do an excellent job of dismantling the concept that either CCS or “green” hydrogen could ever work as a significant part of our electricity generation system. Of the two, the West Virginia comment is the much longer (54 pages) and goes into far more technical detail. But the Ohio comment, at 21 pages, has its share of good zingers as well.
The Ohio and West Virginia comments label the idea of CCS at the high rate demanded by EPA (90%) as either “infeasible” or not “viable,” and include recitations of the history of failed attempts to implement this frankly useless technology. From the Ohio comment (page 4):
A study of 263 carbon-capture-and-sequestration projects undertaken between 1995 and 2018 found that the majority failed and 78% of the largest projects were cancelled or put on hold. After the study was published in May 2021, the only other coal plant with a carbon-capture-and-sequestration attachment in the world, Petra Nova, shuttered after facing 367 outages in its three years of operation.
With the closure of Petra Nova, there remains in the entire world exactly one operating commercial CCS facility at a coal power station, the SaskPower Boundary Dam Unit 3 in Saskatchewan, Canada. That one is supposed to achieve the 90% capture rate that EPA demands, but with constant operating issues it has fallen way, way short:
[T]his [SaskPower] facility is the world’s only operating commercial carbon capture facility at a coal-fired power plant. And it has never achieved its maximum capacity. It also battled significant technical issues throughout 2021—to the point that the plant idled the equipment for weeks at a time. As a result, the plant achieved less than 37% carbon capture that year despite having an official target of 90% . . . .
The West Virginia comment provides lots more technical detail on the failures of CCS. Why can’t a CCS system just easily suck up all the CO2 out of a power plant’s emissions stream? Because the effort to suck up the emissions takes energy from the output of the plant, and the higher the percentage of carbon emissions you seek to capture, the more of the energy output of the plant you consume. (I have previously described CCS efforts as a “war against the second law of thermodynamics.”). In the limiting case, you can use up all the power output of the plant on the CCS system and still not capture 100% of the CO2. From the West Virginia comment, page 24-25:
Take efficiency to start. CCS units run on power, too. An owner can get that power from the plant itself. But this approach makes the plant less efficient by increasing its “parasitic load”—and CCS more than triples combustion turbines’ normal parasitic load. . . . This is the cause the Wyoming study analyzed that showed installing CCS technology would devastate plants’ heat rates and lower net plant efficiency by 36%.
And that percentage relates to a system that captures well less than 100% of the plant’s carbon emissions. And these are only the start of the technical issues to be faced. For example, once you have captured all this CO2, where do you put it? Do you build an entire new national network of pipelines (at a cost of hundreds of billions of dollars) to transport it to some underground caverns somewhere? And then, are there environmental issues with the chemicals used to snag the CO2 out of the power plant’s emissions stream? From the West Virginia comment, page 27:
The Proposed Rule would force utilities to adopt and communities to accept all aspects of CCS technology without fully understanding the ramifications. For example, the environmental and health effects of CANSOLV—the leading amine-based and EPA-recommended CCS solvent, 88 Fed. Reg. at 33,291—appear unknown; leading CANSOLV studies over the past decade don’t discuss its impact.
And then, if you have to increase the power output of the plant by 50% or so to power the CCS facility, doesn’t that then increase the emissions of nitrous oxides and particulates by a comparable amount? From the West Virginia comment, page 27:
Nearly a decade ago, the European Union’s European Environmental Agency released a study finding that CCS would increase “direct emissions of NOx and PM” by nearly a half and a third, respectively, because of additional fuel burned, and increase “direct NH3 emissions” “significantly” because of “the assumed degradation of the amine-based solvent.”
It goes on and on from there. And then there’s the idea of “co-firing” the power plants with “green” hydrogen, produced by using wind or solar power or something else magical to electrolyze water. EPA’s proposed Rule would impose such a requirement on existing natural gas plants to take them up to 96% hydrogen by 2038. A few insights from the West Virginia comment, page 35:
Most combustion turbines on the market today cannot handle anything more than a 5-10% blend [of hydrogen]; 20% is generally accepted as the absolute technological ceiling. . . . Even in the best scenarios, a hydrogen volume fraction of 20% is usually the most technology currently can do.
And how about the problem (and cost) of producing the amounts of hydrogen that would be required. From the West Virginia comment, page 37:
America currently produces just .5% of the clean hydrogen we need under the Proposed Rule. The industry would have to close a 99.5% supply gap in just 15 years. EPA has offered no evidence showing that this gap will close.
There is much, much more on issues like transporting and handling the hydrogen, cost of production, and so forth.
The conclusion is obvious and impossible to escape: These proposed methods to allow combustion power plants to continue to exist are not real and can never work. EPA intends to force the closure of all such electricity generation facilities. Will we have an electricity system that can still function at that point? They neither know nor care. After all, we have a planet to save here.
Somehow, in the weighing of the costs and benefits here, the bureaucrats appear to have completely lost track of the enormous benefits that reliable access to electricity has brought to the people. They will destroy that without giving the subject a second thought.
Peasant scum do not deserve heat or light. Or transport. And they are being uppity to think they do. So implies the WEF.
Francis, to your knowledge are proof of technological, physical and/or economic impossibility defenses against implementation of the EPA’s rules?
Not Francis, but see my comment just posted below. You have good intuition.
Somehow, in the weighing of the costs and benefits here, the bureaucrats appear to have completely lost
track of the enormous benefits that reliable access to electricity has brought to the peopletheir minds.‘Bubble’ thought (living, dialoging and thinking only within the (often) govt ‘approved’/commonly accepted narrative. Today we know this to include suppression of alternative viewpoints on so-called ‘social media’) has that effect on those ‘in the bubble’. Also, noted by the phrase believing one’s own propaganda, and lesser so as ‘eating one’s own dog food’ aka “dogfooding“.
The Marxists have been subtle so far but now they’re ratcheting up the absurdities. They put people in key positions and let them sit waiting for the proper time to unleash their war on fossil fuels. China alone has over double the fossil fuel use as the USA and they thumbed their noses at any reduction. And at the rate India is going they’ll pass the USA in the near future. They too put their economy and lifestyle ahead of the hoax.
Francis,
Thanks.
I’d like to repeat your last two paragraphs: –
“The conclusion is obvious and impossible to escape: These proposed methods to allow combustion power plants to continue to exist are not real and can never work. EPA intends to force the closure of all such electricity generation facilities. Will we have an electricity system that can still function at that point? They neither know nor care. After all, we have a planet to save here.
“Somehow, in the weighing of the costs and benefits here, the bureaucrats appear to have completely lost track of the enormous benefits that reliable access to electricity has brought to the people. They will destroy that without giving the subject a second thought.”
And by destroying access to reliable electricity – without a second thought – those behind the bureaucrats will destroy our civilisation.
And I don’t think that that will be ‘by accident’.
Auto
More likely stupidity than malice. End result the same though.
The Climate Change Scam has been going on for far too long for it to be simple stupidity.
To misquote:
Stupidity is doing the same over and over again, and expecting different results.
The EPA knows exactly what their aims are
I’ve always felt that is the more accurate quote. It’s not insanity, it’s stupidity.
With the EPA, over-run as it is by far-left activists,…
… we can be certain it is driven by deep-seated malice…
… with a heavy dose of stupidity built in.
I can contribute significant facts to this post, since researched them deeply for essay ‘Clean Coal’ in ebook Blowing Smoke.
The EPA derives its proposed regulatory authority from CAA§111, found at 42USC7411, ‘Standards of performance’. The law says the EPA can only regulate to limits where there are “reasonable means to achieve them’, based on ‘adequately demonstrated technology’.
To attempt to achieve this for CCS, the EPA subsidized several US ‘CCS’ efforts. They all failed—amusing details in the essay.
The Canadian SaskPow effort at Boundary Dam was only unit 4, the captured CO2 to be sold for tertiary oil recovery in a nearby heavy oil field. Unit 4 never achieved more than 60% uptime after years of engineering tweaks, at a parasitic power loss of ~35% instead of the planned 20%. The oil field cancelled the supply contract for lack of performance, and SaskPow’s green plan to put the technology on Unit 3 was scrubbed.
All proposed EU CCS projects have been scrubbed. None exist.
So EPA proposing this now simply shows how out of touch with reality and lawless the Biden administration is.
Note this new proposal is orthogonal to new DoE Grenholm proposals to waste $1.2 billion on two direct chemical CO2 air scrubbing projects. Last time this sort of thing was funded it was only $25 million for the ‘Sky Mines’ trial under Obama. That did not work either, for amusing reasons described in ebook The Arts of Truth—Draino ain’t cheap, and the net atmospheric CO2 reduction was actually zero unless all the electricity to make Draino came from nucs/renewables.
I am not at all worried, as these lawless EPA proposals clearly will not withstand court challenge by the already commenting red state AGs.
Ah, but what if we were operating under a Climate Emergency, Rud? Maybe a temporary 15 days to flatten the curve 50-year renewable emergency 1000-year Reich kind of thing?
When all the lights and heating go out, so will the EPA’s authority.
“So EPA proposing this now simply shows how out of touch with reality and lawless the Biden administration is.”
Another excellent rebuttal, Rud.
I think the Biden administration is more lawless, than out of touch with reality. They know what their objective is, whether it makes any sense to us or not, it makes sense to them, because it is another avenue for political control for them. That is their objective: Political control.
Trump’s Supreme Court appointments become more and more important as time goes along. They just may save us from radical Democrat tyranny.
“I am not at all worried, as these lawless EPA proposals clearly will not withstand court challenge“
I am. I come from the auto industry, where in many instances the “impossible” was mandated by the government, and then nearly miraculously achieved. Consider tailpipe emissions. The standard is only met by 3-way catalysts which use significant platinum quantities, near perfect stochiometric air-fuel ratio of every ignition spark, instantaneous measurement of exhaust oxygen content, low-cost computers to measure and control all of this, and more. None of this technology was known when the mandates were started. The point is, though, that mandates were achieved only because of high volume sales of automobiles that provided the capitol to achieve them. The sales volume is not there in power plant mandates.
Another example is the innocuous yellow indicator that tells you if your passenger seat is occupied or not. Your car measures the weight placed on the passenger seat. It can differentiate between the weight of a grocery bag, an occupied baby ‘bucket, a child, or an adult, and then program air bags to inflate at roper position and rates if you are in a collision. It must make this measurement at -40 degree cold, 180 F sun load, and decades of unuse.
Is this technology worth the cost? Maybe to some but ask the family with thousands of dollars cost to replace their stolen catalytic converter so the thief could get 20 bucks for the platinum in it. Or more so, ask the families of those killed by exploding air bags that detonated instead of burning at a slower rate in an otherwise survivable accident.
Unintended consequences usually prevail when mandating the impossible.
Upvote. I think this is presently an underrated post.
Quite. This is worse, though. They really are mandating miracles (repeal of the laws of Thermodynamics). I’ll excuse you the hyperbole of labeling tailpipe emissions achievements so because you said “nearly”.:-)
If I ran a public utility I would shut it down immediately and let people see for themselves what life with no electricity is like. If I ran a major oil company I’d stop selling gasoline and diesel immediately so people could understand what it’s like to not have ICE transportation.
I would turn these back on after the message was received but the one thing I would do and would never rescind was I wouldn’t allow my products to be sold to any politician or swamp creature pushing for these nutty ideas.
Sadly, at least for the public utilities, they can’t do that. It violates their agreement that gives them a monopoly in their state. But I wish they could do it too.
On the other hand, it seems just that will happen soon enough. 6 years is not far away in terms of utility capital building projects.
The political landscape may look entirely different in January, 2025.
New Cork City banned the building of any more gas supply pipe line into the city (or at least some parts thereof?). The gas utility that had been trying to get permits build more supply line(s) soon after announced that their supply lines were at maximum capacity. Therefore they were unable to accept any more connections from new construction or conversions.
The city immediately sued the gas utility. What I read is that the city very quickly won the suit and the gas utility had to start bring in gas (LPG probably) and injecting it into the system at various sites in order to accommodate more customers. A very good outcome to trying to fight city hall, no?
A good outcome? No. The politicians just forced regular gas ratepayers to subsidize gas deliveries the politically powerful.
really?
Yes, really: The wealthy developers of (upscale?) housing are getting the City’s politicians to force regular gas ratepayers to subsidize the expensive delivery of LPG to make up for the City’s Leftist opposition to economical pipelines.
Thanks, Rud. I’ll reread your essay ‘Clean Coal’ in my copy of Blowing Smoke. Your comment has also tipped me over into buying your The Arts of Truth.
The lawless EPA isn’t the only lawless part of The Big Guy 10% Joe “Biden Brand” Brandon’s administration. They continuously enact Executive Branch measures that are illegal and/or unconstitutional on their faces. In the time it takes to reverse such actions the damage has been done and the political benefits received. Evidence the FBI and intelligence agencies’ suppression of the Crackhunter laptop bombshells, among many others.
Whoops.edited long comment disappeared. Try again. Can contribute much since researched deeply for essay Clean Coal in ebook Blowing Smoke.
EPA derives its regulatory authority fromCAA§111, found at 42USC7411, ‘standards of performance’. The law says regulations ‘must have reasonable means to achieve based on ‘adequately demonstrated technology’.
In the past two decades, US subsidized several CCS schemes to the tune of billions. They all failed.
SaskPow experiment on Boundary Dam unit 4 also failed albeit slowly. After years of tweaking, uptime was never more than 69% a a parasitic load loss of 35% rather than the planned 20%.
All proposed EU CCS projects have been scrubbed.
So NO CCS ‘adequately demonstrated technology’ exists anywhere on earth.
This new EPA proposal just demonstrates how out of touch with reality and lawless the Biden administration is. Won’t stand against red state AG court challenges based on their comments.
Well, there is always “green” hydrogen. There are not yet so many failed projects. Probably not any successful projects either.
There was a report on a project, in Texas I think, that was the fruit of an engineer’s 40 years or so of obsession to capture power plant CO2 for oil extraction, to be operated at a net profit. What I read is that what was finally worked out, and had a grant for a trial power plant project, was not supposed to reduce useable power out from the power plant by any amount.
I presume that didn’t work out either, although it was different from this general discussion in that the extracted CO2 was not intended to be hidden away under ground for a long time (other than losses while encouraging more oil and gas from a well).
“was not supposed to reduce useable power out from the power plant by any amount.”
That would be properly called a perpetual motion machine. Sad that you can find may putative examples on the interwebs.
And you would call a particle filter in a water system that doesn’t use up any of the water a perpetual motion machine?
Powered from an external source or self-powered.
Hi Andy;
A “particle filter” would necessarily encompass a pressure drop across it, and hence energy input to pump it.
Consumption of water is not really the question.
“There’s no free lunch” applies STRICTLY to thermodynamics.
I sincerely hope you’ve learned something from my answer.
The point is that the “perpetual motion” comment was made by someone either ignorant of or forgetting about what “perpetual motion” means.
Current methods of removing CO2 from output combustion gases uses quite a large amount of energy, as well as, at least in some processes, a considerable amount of special chemicals. Getting the CO2 disassociated from those chemicals requires still more energy. A large part of the power plant output is used up in the process, the power available for other uses is thus considerably reduced.
If some way could be found to remove the CO2 from the combustion gases, post electrical generation, without using any of the electrical power the plant produced, as the report seemed to say, perhaps because it was simply using the waste heat in the ehxaust gases to power the CO2 removal process, nothing faintly suggestive of “perpetual motion” is involved. Does using the waste gases, or the waste heat in the steam that must be condensed before using the H2O as coolant again, to heat city building in the winter mean someone has found the secret of “perpetual motion” overcoming basic thermodynamics? That is a not uncommon process.
Andy goes on the “waste of time” list.
EPA needs to be shut down, they are out of control. We need to record the name and address of all EPA employees pushing this crap so that when the wheels come off we know who to look for and hold them accountable.
It would seem inescapable that “resistance” and “rebellion” would be a foregone conclusion if this absurdity continues which seems to be the current course, unless of course there is a fundamental change in 2024 which I deed hope for. Given everything that is happening and the fragility of our economy that is being suggested by the economic pundits any additional insults is going to tip our society into uncharted territory. Inflation and recession is one thing, but to add this ridiculous climate change alarmism or to declare a climate emergency to the mix just adds insult to injury.
Be careful George, we can’t track down Hunter’s, I mean whose cocaine goes into the White House but you can bet they know where you’re posting these insurrectionist thought crimes!
It looks like China is tipping into recession, and the U.S. is probably headed that way, too.
Putin’s ruble is being devalued, and Russia’s economy is in bad shape, and Putin’s hold on power is getting shakier. Just thought I would throw that in there for all the Putin fans.
Things are not going so well for Mr. Putin. Things would be going a lot worse for Putin if Biden would get off his ass and supply the Urkanians with the weapons they need.
Stupid Republicans, opposing supplying Ukraine, should answer the question: At what point are you going to resist Putin’s aggression? Where are you going to draw the line? If not Ukraine, then where, smart guys?
Republicans and Democrats have just spent TRILLIONS of dollars over the last few years, and here the Republicans are worrying about $21 billion to Ukraine. Biden spent $36 billion on Blue State unions. Not a peep out of these Republicans over that. Run, run, run, run away. Make more stupid arguments.
Faux pacifist Republicans make me sick. They aren’t doing this out of passion, but because they think it is politically useful to them. They have their finger in the air ever since Tucker Carlson went on a rampage against helping Ukraine.
Never mind that they are seriously harming U.S. national security by opposing helping Ukraine. And a majotity of Americans support Ukraine, despite the latest CNN poll. Here’s the poll questions to ask: Do you support Ukraine remaining free? Do you support defending Ukrainian innocent men, women, and children from murderous aggressors? I’m betting about 90 percent of Americans would support those ideas.
The U.S. will be in good shape economically if it gets rid of the insane radical Democrats and their insane ideas about the Earth’s climate, and power politics. I mean, look at it, the U.S. economy is still in fairly decent shape despite all the big hits it has taken from the Biden administration. It just goes to show that the American economy is a strong economy given half a chance. Biden won’t give it any chance. But the tide may be turning.
Stupid Republicans don’t help matters.
Well that’s a very black and white world view.
It looks like all five of the Putin supporters down voted me. A badge of honor. 🙂
Now, Laura Ingraham, of Fox News, is picking up the baton from Tucker and advocating to throw innocent Ukrainians to the Putin Wolves.
She sounds like Biden sounded during the Vietnam war, and during the Iraq war, and during the Afghanistan war.
I guess like Biden throwing millions of Vietnamese and Iraqies, and 25 million Afghans to the wolves, Laura won’t have a problem throwning millions of innocent Ukrainians to the wolves.
Right Laura?
Stupid Republicans. Can’t see farther than their own nose. Don’t have a clue what’s in the national interest. I don’t want Laura Ingraham directing U.S. foreign and defense policy.
The Andrew Griffith exchange article was yet another canary in the coal mine. Along with this. The crazy in these people is really seeping out now. We can only hope that others slightly left of classical liberal in the past at one time will wake up like Matt Taibi and Michael Schellenberger did before the damage gets out of control .
They wanna come for us kicking our doors down for charges of ecocide if you don’t comply they are taking names and making lists. what pieces of crap we are up against.
Never forget. This is how it starts. Remember they got away with it with COVID lock downs/ mandates. I will never forget the images of some of the police in Australia doing the brutish mass tackle take down of some innocent civilian getting out of his car for what? lock down violation. The jack boot dictator is in sinew of these alarmist groups and government types. That is how close we are now to a society(s) gone mad.
Yes, the radicals are temporarily in control. We need to make sure it is only temporary. Otherwise, we are sunk.
No one rules if no one obeys. My copy of the Constitution doesn’t authorize the government to tell anyone what they can use for energy. In fact, my copy is silent on the whole idea of unelected, unaccountable, malevolent, anti-civilization douchebag agencies even existing, which means they’re unconstitutional and therefore do not have to be obeyed or even acknowledged. It’s way past time for people to start saying “No” to civilizational suicide, and the energy and transportation companies could make a real difference if they stopped playing ball.
Far worst than that. Congress can’t delegate its ability to make law. DOE, FDA, EPA and many others pass rules and regulation which are not described in the constitution therefor are not enforceable by the government. To be enforceable, they would need to be written as laws and introduced to congress for a vote. Congress needs to take back their authority however they would rather gather votes with their time instead of spending their time in chambers doing what they were elected to do. Our current government was envisioned by Woodrow Wilson but didn’t really take off until FDR. When the Supreme court attempted to block it, FDR threatened to pack the court. In the end, FDR was able to put enough fear in the court to get his way and after 4 terms, he had replaced enough judge that they would rubber stamp anything he wanted.
The left is so upset because after many years, they have lost the court and we are near seeing a court test as to how legal rules and regulations are.
“No one rules if no one obeys. My copy of the Constitution doesn’t authorize the government to tell anyone what they can use for energy.”
State’s have rights!
Some States may not agree with throwing their power generation facilities in the garbage.
Rights not specifically delegated to the federal government in the U.S. Constitution, reside in the States and in the People.
Unfortunately there are ways around that. Power lines cross state boundaries so the commerce clause becomes involved. When that doesn’t work, the government taxes the state and the price of returning the money to the state is for the state to obey the federal rules and regulations. I will agree with what you say but the power hungry can find ways around the constitution. Possibly the Supreme court would rule against the federal government but finding the correct test case is difficult.
Texas can always leave the Union. And I think if it got to that point, Oklahoma would be going with them.
We have a long way to go to tyranny. But we have been put on that path by the radical Democrats and their efforts to undermine the U.S. Constitution.
It’s time for freedom-loving people to fight back.
No one rules if no one obeys.
While true, so far it’s moot. A large majority obey. I don’t see that changing any time soon.
EPA (as does many 3-letter agencies) operates on the premise of “settled” science its own agency creates/develops.
By law, EPA is supposed to work with OMB to determine the economic benefits of proposed regulations.
Much like health care, the benefits are typically fabrications of tortured projections and ideal circumstances.
Fortunately (for EPA), in this case, climate change is a bountiful source of imagined costs…thus lifting even this regulatory insanity to status of inspired bureaucratic savior.
All this does lead one to wonder the ‘end game’ beyond the ‘saving earth’ mirage.
My cynical nature continually points to the massive DC funnel of tax dollars into the ‘friends and families’ of the agencies and (s)elected representatives. And because, the military industrial complex can’t have all the fun…
“My cynical nature continually points to the massive DC funnel of tax dollars into the ‘friends and families’ of the agencies and (s)elected representatives.”
I think that is one of the main drivers of all this human-caused climate change insanity. Lots of people are making lots of money on this scam.
Each time the green wackos come out with something new, I keep wondering just how stupid can they be? They seem to take it as a challenge, & keep coming out with something even more stupid than the time before. Their stupidity seems to know no bounds. Probably the worst thing is that they don’t even seem to realize just how stupid they really are. I just hope reality hits them in the face before they finish destroying the Western World!
I recommend that the first power plant to close should be the one that supplies power to Washington DC.
Excellent suggestion!
I would love to see States’ Governors put power plants under State control, and guard them with State Police. It’s time to really start using the 10th Amendment.
It may come to that if the radical Democrats push us far enough.
There is one ray of hope on the technical front – the Allam cycle.
The 5 MW pilot plant worked successfully so a 300 MW project is now under way at Odessa, West Texas. https://netpower.com/first-utility-scale-project/
The cycle uses CO2 as the working fluid and produces a “waste” stream of industrial-grade CO2, ready for sale. Apparently the US CO2 market is worth $16 bn per year.
One problem, of course, is getting the stuff to where it can be used – or sequestered.
Another is that this is not retrofitable.
Still, if proven, it will offer an option for “zero carbon” gas-fired power plants.
The “dream team” would be an Allam-cycle plant supplying CO2 for enhanced oil recovery to produce “blue oil” where the amount of CO2 injected is greater than that released from producing, refining, transporting and ultimately burning the oil – making it carbon-negative.
CO2 does not need to be sequestered. We need more of it, not less.
The attitude of Alarmists is that we shall never learn how to walk on water if we don’t sink the boat. And, if people don’t learn, it will solve the problem of over population. Kill two birds with one stone. And, if the voters don’t like it, we will declare a climate emergency and assume dictatorial powers. Democracy is just a nuisance; might as well get rid of it too.
I don’t find these people amusing any more.
re: ” EPA has only two ideas for how to eliminate the carbon [dioxide] emissions from combustion power plants: … and “green” hydrogen.”
WHERE on earth does one find Hydrogen mines?????
/sarc
As serious shortfalls in electric power become more acute, regional grid operators will be penalized if they refuse to share their power generation resources with other power consumers attached to the grid:
Northwest Power Planning Council, Western Resource Adequacy Program Update
A white paper linked on that Northwest Power Planning Council web page goes into great policy wonk detail as to how this will work for the Western Power Pool:
Western Power Pool: Western Resource Adequacy Program (WRAP)
White Paper on WRAP Interoperability with Markets: Focus on Transfer Scenarios
June 16, 2023
The first paragraph of the Executive Summary reads:
“As the Western Power Pool (WPP) moves into the implementation phase for the Western Resource Adequacy Program (WRAP), two alternative Western markets are emerging – the California Independent System Operator’s (CAISO) Extended Day-Ahead Market (EDAM) and the Southwest Power Pool’s (SPP) Markets+. WPP has determined that WRAP’s ability to operate in parallel with these markets and interact with them is critical for WRAP to run successfully and deliver on its value proposition to participants. The WPP commits to continue to work closely with its own participants, stakeholders, and regional market operators to address interoperability between WRAP and emerging markets. Western grid integration and emerging markets is a very dynamic and quickly evolving policy space, which will require all stakeholders involved in WRAP or markets to remain nimble and flexible, including openness to consideration of design revisions to markets or to WRAP to ensure the WRAP value proposition.”
The remainder of the white paper is equally dense in its policy wonkism.
What it all means in plain English is this: ‘We know we will be running short of power generation resources. Either share your electricity with any power consumer on the grid which needs it, or else pay a stiff penalty for not doing so.’
It’s clear that in their profound ignorance, Democrats give no more respect to the laws of thermodynamics than those passed by Congress.
They are stupid enough to believe they can ignore them with no ramifications.
I’m NOT saying Republicans are smart.
Great example of why regulations that would result in substantial cost to American citizens are required by our Constitution to originate and be passed by Congress.
That is what the Supreme Court has recently been saying to The Big Guy 10% Joe “Biden Brand” Brandon’s Deep State agencies; congress must clearly act on big ticket items. This is why Leftists/Marxists and crony capitalists of all stripes are attacking the Supreme Court. Low Information Voters are slavishly following their masters’ directions.
[You know, I’m beginning to worry that if there is much more on the revelations about The Big Guy 10% Joe “Biden Brand” Brandon’s corruption and I will run out of space to identify him.]
Joe said he would shut it all down, and son of a bitch, that is exactly what he is doing.
Can we do ‘codes and ciphers’ on this website? Here’s the answer to this problem. Answer to be revealed at some future date, hence the encoded cipher for the time being. Just wanna put this ‘marker’ down in time and don’t want to distract the present discussion into another direction.
ZQZUC HHMJM AYARZ VTIQE J
Model: Enigma M3; Reflector: UKW-B; Rotors: I, II, III; Ring: A, A, A; Position: Ah, that’s the Secret; Plugboard: none; Ref: https://cryptii.com/pipes/enigma-machine and https://www.101computing.net/enigma-machine-emulator/
Position: “EAT”. Set the Position key to EAT.
Rud Istvan said this earlier:
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” …. So NO CCS ‘adequately demonstrated technology’ exists anywhere on earth.
This new EPA proposal just demonstrates how out of touch with reality and lawless the Biden administration is. Won’t stand against red state AG court challenges based on their comments. “
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The new EPA rule is not an updated version of the Clean Power Plan; i.e., it is not CPP 2.0.
The EPA’s new rule uses a different and likely more effective tactical approach in forcing the closure of America’s coal-fired and gas-fired power plants.
The rule is designed to avoid the major questions doctrine as it was applied in West Virginia versus EPA, while at the same time forcing the opposing red states to engage in a protracted legal battle to overturn it — a battle in which victory for the red states is far from certain.
In the meantime, while a years-long legal battle is in progress, the public utility commissions and the power utilities must assume the EPA’s new rule will eventually be upheld in the courts and choose their plans and policies accordingly.
Repeating a comment from May, 2023, here is my analysis as to how the Biden Administration will go about using the new EPA rule to force the shutdown of all of America’s coal-fired and gas-fired power plants:
https://wattsupwiththat.com/2023/05/27/at-checc-were-down-but-not-out/#comment-3727011
Two months later, my analysis is still on target and covers these topics:
— The EPA’s Strategic Approach
— The EPA’s Basic Tactical Plan
— The Proposed Rule as a Strong Arm Intimidation Tactic
— The EPA Rule as Regulatory Ammunition for Anti-carbon Activists
The upshot of my analysis from May 2023 is that within a decade, most of us here in America must learn to get by with roughly one-third less electricity than we consume today, and that buying electricity will consume a much larger fraction of our incomes than it does today.
And for no measurable reduction in the rate of increase in global mean temperature.
Beta, I believe you overestimate the consumer/ratepayer/voter’s (not to mention industry) tolerance for electric power rationing to two thirds of what we now consume nor the extreme rate hikes and associated cost increases of all other necessities. People are very sensitive to price and availability signals, but not in a way that warms the hearts of Leftists and the green energy profiteers.
Here in the US Northwest, there isn’t one person in a hundred who understands the seriousness of this developing problem and its root causes. Ignorance is bliss.
In places like California and New York State, the voting public has bought into the RE Kool Aid and cannot be easily shaken from their opinions. These states will be placing the greatest stresses on the power grid as the Net Zero transition goes forward.
The fundamental problem is that by the time the voting public understands what happened and why, the damage will already have been done. Years of work will then be needed to restore a legacy power grid which had been so frivolously discarded.
OT but this article got me wondering:
I have seen about 3 solar farms in my area that were built where woods previously existed. So acres of trees and other plants wiped out in order to build them.
Has anyone calculated the total impact on CO2 given this?
How much coal power CO2 does a solar farm “offset” per acre (and per MWH) vs. how much CO2 does the woods absorb? Is it really a net gain, and if so, how much? Is it really worth it?
(I’m assuming only for sake of argument that CO2 is a problem so let’s avoid that rabbit hole for purposes of this question)
EPA is going to run into a brick wall on requiring reduced CO2 emissions. The Clean Air Act does not list it as one of the six “criteria pollutants” that the Act authorized the EPA to monitor and set air quality standards for. They have no regulatory authority over carbon dioxide emissions. This will go all the way to the Supreme Court when (not “if”) challenged and it will be rejected, as it should.
Tyrants never stop trying to force their will on others, even after they’ve been rebuffed numerous times. The only solution is to take away their power. The Administrative Procedure Act of 1946 is what opened up this Pandora’s Box of government abuses. We finally, after 80 years, have a Supreme Court that could reverse this anti-constitutional madness.
So Cloward-Piven has long been the left’s fever dream plan for government to take control, but I keep wondering, how is it supposed to work if the government is viewed as the reason for the failures?