Preview Newsletter
ACC PM 1/2/2017
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(ACC Mentioned) Michigan Law: Communities Not Allowed to Put Ban on Plastic Bags
Jan 2, 2017 | Digital Journal
By Karen Graham
Yes, you read the headline right - Michigan has enacted a law that bans local governing bodies from banning, regulating or taxing the use of plastic bags or other plastic containers. And yes, it is a slap in the face to environmental concerns. -
Researchers Find Plastics Substitute Affects Maternal Instincts in Mice
Jan 1, 2017 | The Recorder
In the first study of its kind, UMass researchers have found hints that a popular plastic compound found in food containers may have biological effects. -
The Greenwashing of Carpet Waste Management
Jan 2, 2017 | Triple Pundit Blog
By Anum Yoon
If you care about the environment and sustainability, it’s time to include the greenwashing of carpet waste management as one of your concerns. -
Weak Federal Powers Could Limit Trump’s Climate-Policy Rollback
Jan 2, 2017 | The New York Times
By Justin Gillis
With Donald J. Trump about to take control of the White House, it would seem a dark time for the renewable energy industry. After all, Mr. Trump has mocked the science of global warming as a Chinese hoax, threatened to kill a global deal on climate change and promised to restore the coal industry to its former glory. -
(ACC Mentioned) EPA Issues Long-Delayed Chemical Plant Safety Rule
Jan 2, 2017 | Chemical & Engineering News
By Jeff Johnson
The Environmental Protection Agency has updated a 25-year-old regulation intended to reduce chemical plant accidents and protect communities, workers, and emergency responders. -
Can Carbon Capture Technology Prosper Under Trump?
Jan 2, 2017 | The New York Times
By John Schwartz
Can one of the most promising — and troubled — technologies for fighting global warming survive during the administration of Donald J. Trump? -
U.S. Carbon Dioxide Emissions Fall to Lowest Since 1991
Jan 2, 2017 | Forbes
By James Taylor
Energy-related carbon dioxide emissions have fallen to their lowest level since 1991, thanks to natural gas and hydro power gaining a greater share of the U.S. electricity mix.
Industry and Association News
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Environment News
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(ACC Mentioned) Michigan Law: Communities Not Allowed to Put Ban on Plastic Bags
Jan 2, 2017 | Digital Journal
By Karen Graham
Yes, you read the headline right - Michigan has enacted a law that bans local governing bodies from banning, regulating or taxing the use of plastic bags or other plastic containers. And yes, it is a slap in the face to environmental concerns.
In the absence of Governor Rick Snyder who was spending the holidays out of state, Lt. Gov. Brian Calley signed the bill into law on Wednesday last week, reports the Consumerist.
Senate Bill 0853 (2016) was introduced in March by Senator Jim Stamas. The legislation passed both the Republican-held House and Senate along party lines.
The law, which goes into effect 90 days after it was signed primarily effects Washtenaw County, home to Ann Arbor, Ypsilanti, and the University of Michigan. The county planned to start enforcing a $0.10 charge on paper and plastic grocery bags in 2017.
Michigan has now joined with Wisconsin, Idaho, Florida, and Arizona in encouraging the use of disposable plastic bags, even though California and cities like Portland, Seattle, Austin, and Chicago have banned them. And in September, France became the first country to ban plastic silverware, plates, and cups.
It should be noted that the legislation specifically states that the law does not affect curbside recycling programs, designated residential or commercial recycling locations or commercial recycling programs. In other words, the state wants its residents to use plastic bags and containers, and they hope people will have enough sense to dispose of them properly.
The law was hailed as a victory by the Michigan Restaurant Association which believes the use of local bans creates an unnecessary financial and logistics burden on restaurant chains and other retailers."
With many of our members owning and operating locations across the state, preventing a patchwork approach of additional regulations is imperative to avoid added complexities as it related to day-to-day business operations," Robert O'Meara, the association's vice president of Government Affairs was quoted as saying by EcoWatch.
Inhabitat questions the motives behind the legislation, saying that "money" is the one-word answer. And in October 2015, environmental advocate Laura Turner Seydel warned that outside forces are behind the bans on plastic bag bans."
Outside interests are funding these efforts to dissuade and dismantle local level legislation. Primary among them is the Progressive Bag Affiliates, funded by the largest plastic bag manufacturers in the country and the American Chemistry Council," Seydel wrote.
http://www.digitaljournal.com/news/environment/michigan-law-communities-not-allowed-to-put-ban-on-plastic-bags/article/482821#ixzz4UdHqiX9G -
Researchers Find Plastics Substitute Affects Maternal Instincts in Mice
Jan 1, 2017 | The Recorder
In the first study of its kind, UMass researchers have found hints that a popular plastic compound found in food containers may have biological effects.
This could have implications for human health.
Environmental health scientist Laura Vandenberg and neuroscientist Mary Catanese examined the effects of the compound bisphenol S (BPS) on maternal behavior and related brain regions in mice. They found subtle but striking behavior changes in nesting mothers exposed during pregnancy and lactation and in their daughters exposed in utero.
BPS, found in baby bottles, personal care products and other places, is a replacement chemical for BPA and was introduced when concern was raised about possible health effects of that plastic compound. Though studies have found human BPS exposure is likely low, it is widespread and has increased over the past 10 years, the authors note. As with BPA, there is evidence that BPS is an endocrine disruptor.
Vandenberg and Catanese, a recent graduate of UMass Amherst’s neuroscience and behavior graduate program, report, “BPS affects maternal behavior as well as maternally relevant neural correlates.” Their results suggest that maternal care of pups, including mothers’ ability to adjust to the needs of their young during early development, was impaired after BPS exposure “with differing effects based on dose, postpartum period and generational timing of exposure.”
They note effects including “a surprising increased incidence of infanticide” in one treated group and poor maternal care, for example. Details appear in the current issue of Endocrinology.
Further, the researchers examined effects of BPS exposure in a brain region sensitive to estrogen or estrogen-mimicking chemicals that is also believed to be important in maternal behavior in mice.
The authors found a surprising increased incidence of infanticide among mouse mothers exposed to the lower dose in utero. Vandenberg and Catanese report that “although these same effects were not seen at the higher dose, more than 10 percent of females exposed to 2 microgram BPS/kg/day either killed their pups or provided such poor instrumental maternal care that one or more pups needed to be euthanized. While not statistically significant, the neglect and poor maternal care we observed were striking.”
In addition to the link to infanticide, they also found BPS-induced effects on important aspects of maternal care in both exposed mothers and their daughters. They report that females exposed to the higher dose of BPS during pregnancy and lactation spent significantly more time on the nest than controls at one observation point, an unexpected finding given that mouse mothers usually spend less time on the nest as pups grow and develop. The researchers suggest that the mother’s BPS exposure “may indicate a lack of adjustment” to the changing needs of her pups.
BPS-exposed mothers also showed significantly shorter latency to retrieve their first pup and significantly shorter latency to retrieve their entire litter on one of the three observation days, which may not represent improved care but instead “may indicate hyperactivity, compulsivity-like behavior, heightened stress response to scattered pups, or a displaced form of retrieval.”
Overall, Vandenberg and Catanese write that “uncovering effects of environmental chemicals that might influence proper maternal care have broad social and public health implications” because from an evolutionary perspective, maternal behavior is related to survival of offspring.
http://www.recorder.com/umass-research-finds-plastics-affect-mouse-moms-7027687
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The Greenwashing of Carpet Waste Management
Jan 2, 2017 | Triple Pundit Blog
By Anum Yoon
If you care about the environment and sustainability, it’s time to include the greenwashing of carpet waste management as one of your concerns.
Greenwashing, of course, refers to a product, service or legislation that purports to have environmental benefits, but actually doesn’t. The general public is perhaps most familiar with the term as it applies to food. The color green and the slogan “good for the earth” may appear on food packaging. But that’s no guarantee the food in it is raised or shipped sustainably, or is even healthy for you. The companies that do this kind of packaging are engaging in greenwashing.
Greenwashing in the carpet waste industry is much less well known. It’s a huge environmental problem, however. Greenwashing occurs at the level of both industry statements and legislation, because laws designed to recycle and reuse carpet waste do not in fact promote environmentally sustainable practices. Read on for more information about carpet waste management and what should be done to combat greenwashing.
The scope of the problem
The amount of carpet manufactured in the U.S. is significant. The American carpet industry makes 45 percent of the carpet used worldwide, more than any other single country.
The U.S. carpet industry produced 11.7 billion square feet of carpet and rugs in 2014. That figure is expected to be 14.6 billion in 2019, an increase of 4.5 percent every year.
When new carpets are placed into U.S. homes, old carpets are torn up and discarded. It is often not, however, discarded in an environmentally sustainable way.
In fact, 89 percent of discarded carpet ends up in U.S. landfills. Carpets alone constitute more than 3.5 percent of all materials placed in U.S. landfills every year. It equates to 4 billion pounds of material.
Carpets placed in landfills pose significant environmental hazards. If the carpet is made from synthetic materials, it degrades in landfills slowly and takes up space. Degrading carpets can also contribute to methane emissions.
The environmental effects don’t end with land and air. Carpets in landfills can leach dangerous chemicals which can eventually end up in the water supply. The chemicals, used for stain resistance in carpets, include formaldehyde and perfluorooctanoic acid (PFOA). Some chemicals, like perchlorate, are used for treatments against static.
Six percent of discarded carpet is burned. Last year, 206 million pounds of carpet were burned in municipal incinerators and cement kilns.
Like landfilling, incinerating carpet has deleterious environmental effects. Burning waste carpet causes more greenhouses gases than coal. And many carpets contain polyvinyl chloride (PVC). If carpets made with PVC are incinerated, dioxin will result. Dioxin has been proven to cause cancer. Mercury and lead can also be released from incinerated carpet.
How carpet waste is greenwashed
Currently, just 5 percent of carpet waste is recycled.
Six years ago, California signed into law the country’s first carpet waste management legislation, AB 2398. The law was intended to make carpet manufacturers responsible for managing their waste. It was also planned to make the method of waste management recycling, rather than landfill or incineration.
However, the carpet industry fought AB 2398 from its inception. First, they shifted the method of payment from industry-sponsored to consumer-sponsored. When the bill was finally passed, consumers were charged the fees that underwrite a collection and waste management system that is run by carpet producers. The fee to consumers will be 25 cents per square yard beginning in 2017.
Because most of the financial burden was put on consumers, the bill represents a significant lost opportunity to incentivize carpet manufacturers to ensure recyclable products. This could be done via designing carpet to use more recyclable materials, or designing so that more recyclable materials would remain at lifecycle end, or simply promoting greater reuse.
Instead, what happened was greenwashing. A bill was passed purporting to better the management of carpet waste, but better management did not really occur.
Recycling of carpet waste has not improved since the bill was passed. In addition, the amount of carpet waste sent to incinerators has more than doubled.
California hoped to recycle 16 percent of its carpet waste by 2016. But the state never came close. For both 2014 and 2015, in fact, the recycling rate for carpet waste in the state dropped from 12 percent to 10 percent.
What should be done?
Since good management of carpet waste is important to both the earth’s resources and human health, the organization GAIA proposes several measures to make sure that the waste management promotes sustainability, not just gives the impression that something is being done.
It proposes stronger legislation in California to promote carpet waste sustainability, including amending the legislation so that manufacturers pay for eliminating carpet waste and recycling.
It also believes that manufacturers should be banned from incinerating their products as a method of waste disposal, and that landfill disposal should be limited.
Finally, GAIA proposes that carpet waste should have adequate and easy collection. If homeowners, property management companies, and manufacturers all join forces to fix this problem, greenwashing carpet waste can be stopped.
Greenwashing of all types diverts attention from how to best ensure sustainability and good stewardship of the earth. More knowledge of carpet waste greenwashing should result in improved recycling methods and better legislation.
http://www.triplepundit.com/2017/01/greenwashing-carpet-waste-management/
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Weak Federal Powers Could Limit Trump’s Climate-Policy Rollback
Jan 2, 2017 | The New York Times
By Justin Gillis
With Donald J. Trump about to take control of the White House, it would seem a dark time for the renewable energy industry. After all, Mr. Trump has mocked the science of global warming as a Chinese hoax, threatened to kill a global deal on climate change and promised to restore the coal industry to its former glory.
So consider what happened in the middle of December, after investors had had a month to absorb the implications of Mr. Trump’s victory. The federal government opened bidding on a tract of the ocean floor off New York State as a potential site for a huge wind farm.
Up, up and away soared the offers — interest from the bidders was so fevered that the auction went through 33 rounds and spilled over to a second day. In the end, the winning bidder offered the federal Treasury $42 million, more than twice what the government got in August for oilleases — oil leases — in the Gulf of Mexico.
Who won the bid? None other than Statoil, the Norwegian oil company, which is in the midst of a major campaign to turn itself into a big player in renewable energy.
We do not know for sure that the New York wind farm will get built, but we do know this: The energy transition is real, and Mr. Trump is not going to stop it.
On a global scale, more than half the investment in new electricity generation is going into renewable energy. That is more than $300 billion a year, a sign of how powerful the momentum has become.
Wind power is booming in the United States, with the industry adding manufacturing jobs in the reddest states. When Mr. Trump’s appointees examine the facts, they will learn that wind-farm technician is projectedto be the fastest-growing occupation in America over the next decade.
The election of Mr. Trump left climate activists and environmental groups in despair. They had pinned their hopes on a Hillary Clinton victory and a continuation of President Obama’s strong push to tackle global warming.
Now, of course, everything is in flux. In the worst case, with a sufficiently pliant Congress, Mr. Trump could roll back a decade of progress on climate change. Barring some miraculous conversion on Mr. Trump’s part, his election cannot be interpreted as anything but bad news for the climate agenda.
Yet despair might be an overreaction.
For starters, when Mr. Trump gets to the White House, he will find that the federal government actually has relatively little control over American energy policy, and particularly over electricity generation. The coal industry has been ravaged in part by cheap natural gas, which is abundant because of technological changes in the way it is produced, and there is no lever in the Oval Office that Mr. Trump can pull to reverse that.
The intrinsically weak federal role was a source of frustration for Mr. Obama and his aides, but now it will work to the benefit of environmental advocates. They have already persuaded more than half the states to adopt mandates on renewable energy. Efforts to roll those back have largely failed, with the latest development coming only last week, when Gov. John Kasich of Ohio, a Republican, vetoed a rollback bill.
The federal government does offer important subsidies for renewable energy, and they will surely become a target in the new Congress. But those subsidies are already scheduled to fall drastically over five years, in a deal cut a year ago that gave the oil industry some favors and that passed Congress with many Republican votes.
If Mr. Trump pushes for an early end to the subsidies, he will find that renewable energy has friends in the Republican Party. Topping that list is Charles E. Grassley, the senior senator from Iowa. That state — all-important in presidential politics, let us remember — will soon be getting 40 percent of its electricity from wind power.
“Senator Grassley has been and continues to be an extraordinary leader and champion for the wind industry,” said Tom Kiernan, the head of the American Wind Energy Association, a trade group.
When I spoke with him last week, Mr. Kiernan did not sound like a man gnashing his teeth about the impending Trump era. By his group’s calculations, $80 billion of wind industry investment is in the pipeline for the United States over the next few years. “We are creating jobs throughout America, good-paying jobs, and we think President-elect Trump will want that to continue,” he said.
If Mr. Trump really wanted to roll back the clock, he could try to get Congress to override all the state mandates, a gross violation of the supposed conservative commitment to federalism. But it would be a titanic fight, some Republican senators would defect on principle, and Mr. Trump would almost certainly lose.
So if the damage Mr. Trump can do domestically is limited by circumstance, what about the international effort against global warming?
That is the prospect that has David G. Victor most worried. Dr. Victor, a professor at the University of California at San Diego, is one of the closest observers of global climate politics. While the nations of the world agreed a year ago to a landmark deal to tackle global warming, that consensus is fragile, he pointed out.
The Paris Agreement is really an outline; more promise than reality. Mr. Trump has vowed to withdraw. Right now, other countries are saying they will go forward even if he does so, but it is not hard to imagine the thing unraveling.
As part of the negotiations, the Obama administration promised billions of dollars from American taxpayers to help poor countries adjust to the devastation of global warming. “That’s a big part of the glue that held the Paris deal together,” Dr. Victor pointed out. Mr. Trump is considered likely to abandon that pledge.
Perhaps the biggest threat to the climate agenda posed by the incoming administration is not anything that Mr. Trump might do, but rather what he will not do.
While the energy transition is real, it is still in its earliest stages. Iowa may soon get 40 percent of its power from wind, but for the United States as a whole, the figure is closer to 5 percent. The transition is simply not happening fast enough. The pledges countries made in Paris, even if kept, are not ambitious enough.
To meet the climate goals embodied in the Paris Agreement, the world needed an American president who would have pushed hard to accelerate the energy transition. You can debate whether Mrs. Clinton would have been that president, but it is certainly clear that Mr. Trump will not be.
So as Washington goes into reverse gear on climate policy, seas will keep rising and heat waves will get worse. Later this month, global monitoring agencies are expected to report that 2016 was the hottest year in the historical record, beating out 2015, which beat out 2014.
If nothing else, the next four years may be a fascinating test of just how far politics can become divorced from physical reality.
http://www.nytimes.com/2017/01/02/science/donald-trump-global-warming.html
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(ACC Mentioned) EPA Issues Long-Delayed Chemical Plant Safety Rule
Jan 2, 2017 | Chemical & Engineering News
By Jeff Johnson
The Environmental Protection Agency has updated a 25-year-old regulation intended to reduce chemical plant accidents and protect communities, workers, and emergency responders.
The revision to EPA’s Risk Management Program (RMP) is part of a sweeping regulatory overhaul of federal industrial safety regulations ordered by President Barack Obama in 2013. Obama directed agencies to make changes in the wake of the deaths of 15 people, mostly emergency responders, in explosion of ammonium nitrate fertilizer at a fertilizer warehouse in West, Texas.
RMP provisions cover some 12,500 facilities that, according to EPA, reported 1,500 accidents over a recent 10-year period. These incidents involved nearly 60 deaths, 17,000 injuries, the evacuation of 500,000 people, and property damage of more than $2 billion.
Among changes, the new regulation calls for independent, third-party audits of companies after an accident or near-accident and consideration of inherently safer manufacturing approaches. However, the rule specifies that implementation of safer approaches may only occur when “practical.”
Much of the accident data would be kept from public view, but some would be generally available.
Scott Jensen, a spokesperson for the American Chemistry Council, an industry trade group, says, “We have some initial concerns regarding the rule’s auditing regime and safer [manufacturing] alternatives analysis requirements.”
The Coalition to Prevent Chemical Disasters, an organization of 120 community and environmental organizations and labor unions, is disappointed the regulation does not require inherent safety technologies.
The rule faces an uncertain future. President-elect Donald J. Trump’s pick to head EPA, former Oklahoma Attorney General E. Scott Pruitt, has opposed the RMP overhaul.
This regulation is the only one to emerge from the Obama-ordered review. It does not cover ammonium nitrate, the chemical that exploded in West, Texas.
http://cen.acs.org/articles/95/i1/EPA-issues-long-delayed-chemical.html
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Can Carbon Capture Technology Prosper Under Trump?
Jan 2, 2017 | The New York Times
By John Schwartz
Can one of the most promising — and troubled — technologies for fighting global warming survive during the administration of Donald J. Trump?
The technology, carbon capture, involves pulling carbon dioxide out of smokestacks and industrial processes before the climate-altering gas can make its way into the atmosphere. Mr. Trump’s denial of the overwhelming scientific evidence supporting climate change, a view shared by many of his cabinet nominees, might appear to doom any such environmental initiatives.
But the new Petra Nova plant about to start running here, about 30 miles southwest of Houston, is a bright spot for the technology’s supporters. It is being completed essentially on time and within its budget, unlike many previous such projects. When it fires up, the plant, which is attached to one of the power company NRG’s hulking coal-burning units, will draw 90 percent of the CO2 from the emissions produced by 240 megawatts of generated power. That is a fraction of the roughly 3,700 megawatts produced at this gargantuan plant, the largest in the Lone Star State. Still, it is enough to capture 1.6 million tons of carbon dioxide each year — equivalent to the greenhouse gas produced by driving 3.5 million miles, or the CO2 from generating electricity for 214,338 homes.
From a tower hundreds of feet above the Petra Nova operation, the carbon capture system looks like a fever dream of an Erector set fanatic, with mazes of pipes and gleaming tanks set off from the main plant’s skyscraping smokestacks and busy coal conveyors. Petra Nova uses the most common technology for carbon capture. The exhaust stream, pushed down a snaking conduit to the Petra Nova equipment, is exposed to a solution of chemicals known as amines, which bond with the carbon dioxide. That solution is pumped to a regenerator, or stripper, which heats the amine and releases the CO2.
The gas is drawn off and compressed for further use, and the amine solution is then cycled back through the system to absorb more CO2.
Petra Nova, a billion-dollar joint venture of NRG and JX Nippon Oil and Gas Exploration, will not just grab the CO2, it will use it, pushing compressed CO2 through a new pipeline 81 miles to an oil field. The gas will be injected into wells, a technique known as enhanced oil recovery, that should increase production to 15,000 barrels a day from about 300 barrels a day. And since NRG owns a quarter of the oil recovery project, what comes out of the ground will help pay for the carbon capture operation.
The plant, which has received $190 million from the federal government, can be economically viable if the price of oil is about $50 a barrel, said David Knox, an NRG spokesman. The company expects to declare the plant operational in January, Mr. Knox said. Aware of problems with carbon capture projects around the country and of the risks of hubris, he said: “We’re not going to declare victory before it’s time.”
If the price of oil stabilizes or rises, and if tax breaks for developing the technology continue and markets for carbon storage develop, he said, utilities might ask, “why would I not want to put a carbon capture system on my plant?”
But developing large-scale carbon capture has been neither straightforward nor easy. So far, problems have bedeviled major projects, often costing far more than projected and taking longer to complete. The federal government has canceled projects like Future Gen, which was granted more than $1 billion by the Obama administration.
Carbon capture systems are not just expensive to build; they tend to be power-hungry, and make the plant less efficient over all — a problem known as “parasitic load.” The Petra Nova carbon capture process gets its energy from a separate power plant constructed for the purpose, which NRG says makes the system more efficient than it would otherwise be, and frees up all of the capacity of the main power plant to sell all of the electricity it produces. The company estimates that the next plant it builds could cost 20 percent less, thanks to lessons learned this time around.
If Petra Nova succeeds, it means a boost for carbon capture. Despite carbon capture’s problems, its supporters, including the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change and the International Energy Agency, call the technology, known as carbon capture sequestration, crucial for meeting emissions standards that can prevent the worst effects of climate change.
“If you don’t have C.C.S., the chance of success goes down, and the cost of success goes up,” said Julio Friedmann, an expert at the Lawrence Livermore Laboratories in California and a former Energy Department official. “If you do have C.C.S., the chance of success goes up and the cost of success goes down.”
Carbon capture is proving itself, said David Mohler, the deputy assistant secretary for clean coal and carbon management at the federal Energy Department.
Developing technologies often involves delay and cost overruns initially, he said. “You cannot engineer all the bugs out from inside a cubicle — you really have to do this stuff in the real world,” he said.
Driving down costs, he noted, is what engineers and businesses do through research, development and production. He cited the plummeting cost of initially expensive technologies like solar power. “We do figure things out as we go,” he said.
What the Trump administration will do with carbon capture is, at this point, anyone’s guess. “The technology only makes sense in a world where you are seeking to avoid putting CO2 into the atmosphere,” said Mark Brownstein, a vice president for the climate and energy program at the Environmental Defense Fund.
But some supporters of the technology see reasons for hope.
“I actually think it’s a moment of optimism,” said Senator Heidi Heitkamp of North Dakota, who met with Mr. Trump last month as a potential agriculture secretary. Ms. Heitkamp co-sponsored legislationwith another Democrat, Senator Sheldon Whitehouse of Rhode Island, to expand and extend tax breaks for carbon capture projects. “What I saw with the president-elect was a laserlike focus on jobs,” she said. “I think he was intrigued” about the economic opportunity that carbon capture could provide to keep coal power generation in the national mix, she added.
One of the pillars of Mr. Trump’s campaign was his intention to revive the fortunes of the coal industry through support of so-called clean coal. And while the exact meaning of the much-used phrase is open to interpretation, it generally includes not just technologies that remove soot and smog-causing pollutants, but also carbon dioxide.
Ms. Heitkamp said that businesses, too, were likely to continue development of carbon capture technology, since they planned their plant investments on a curve of decades and are loath to change course because of a single election. “The decision they are making is not, what does the political outlook look like today? What’s it look like over the life of this plant?”
Although she concedes that a full-scale revival of coal’s fortunes is unlikely, carbon capture could be a way to extend the life of current facilities while keeping the nation’s energy mix diverse.
Jeff Erikson, general manager at the Global C.C.S. Institute, which promotes the technology, said he did not expect to see a great number of new coal plants on the way. “I wouldn’t say carbon capture is going to rescue the coal industry,” he said, but pointed out that there is great potential for applying carbon capture to diverse natural gas plants and to industrial applications. Captured carbon can be used not just for oil production but a widening range of industrial processes, or can even be pumped into the ground.
One of the most innovative approaches to carbon capture is being tried 50 miles east of the Petra Nova plant, in La Porte, Tex., where a consortium of companies is trying an entirely new approach to low-carbon power generation.
In a $140 million, 50 megawatt demonstration project, the company, Net Power, will use superheated carbon dioxide in much the same way that conventional power plants use steam to drive turbines. This system, invented by a British engineer, Rodney Allam, eliminates the inefficiency inherent in heating water into steam and cooling it again. The power plant produces a stream of very pure, pressurized carbon dioxide that is ready for pipelines without much of the additional processing that conventional carbon capture systems require.
The creators say that their technology will produce electric power at a price comparable to combined-cycle power plants, the efficient gas-burning plants that burn gas to power one turbine and then use the excess heat from that process to generate additional power with a steam turbine. That means, in effect, that “the cost of being green is zero,” said Bill Brown, the chief executive of Net Power.
“The potential to capture CO2 at no additional cost would be a game changer,” said Fatima Maria Ahmad, a fellow at the Center for Climate and Energy Solutions, a think tank.
Net Power combines the resources of Exelon Generation, a power company, the engineering and construction firm CB&I, and 8 Rivers Capital, which developed the technology used in the project. The centerpiece of the project is a special turbine built by Toshiba and designed for the punishingly high pressure used in the process. And while any system that so closely resembles a rocket engine has the potential for what engineers delicately refer to as a RUD — “rapid unplanned disassembly” — those working directly on the project say they have designed safety features that give them confidence.
Even if the United States government shows little interest in reducing the nation’s carbon footprint under Mr. Trump and a Republican Congress, consortium officials say they expect to find ready customers from companies in the United States and around the globe, where the threat of climate change is fully acknowledged. “We see this very much playing into all parts of the world,” said Daniel McCarthy, executive vice president for CB&I’s technology operating group.
Environmentalists remain divided on the issue of carbon capture, said John Coequyt, global climate policy director for Sierra Club. “This is the issue where the biggest range of positions exists within the environmental community,” he said. Groups like the Clean Air Task Force favor it strongly. Other factions call clean coal a fig leaf to keep coal, with all of its environmental baggage, in the energy mix. And many suggest the billions of dollars spent on trying to capture carbon would be better directed to the technologies that don’t pollute the atmosphere in the first place.
Dr. Friedmann, the former energy official, predicted that the technology would prove its usefulness. “It’s convenient to just say ‘Keep it in the ground,’ ” he said, referring to an antifossil-fuel slogan. “What I prefer to say is ‘Keep it from the air.’”
http://www.nytimes.com/2017/01/02/science/donald-trump-carbon-capture-clean-coal.html
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U.S. Carbon Dioxide Emissions Fall to Lowest Since 1991
Jan 2, 2017 | Forbes
By James Taylor
Energy-related carbon dioxide emissions have fallen to their lowest level since 1991, thanks to natural gas and hydro power gaining a greater share of the U.S. electricity mix. According to the U.S. Energy Information Administration (EIA), emissions through the first six months of 2016 were the lowest in 25 years. Importantly, electricity prices declined by 2 percent compared to 2015 prices.
The EIA reports a 20-percent decline in coal-powered electricity generation during the first half of 2016 compared to 2015. Natural gas power, by contrast, rose 8 percent and hydropower rose 11 percent. Nuclear power rose by 1 percent.
Wind and solar power production rose during the first half of 2016 compared to 2015, but their increase was dwarfed by the increases in natural gas and hydropower production.
U.S. carbon dioxide emissions have steadily declined since 2008, when the fracking revolution dramatically and lowered natural gas prices. Low-priced natural gas can often outcompete coal on an economic front, while also cutting carbon dioxide emissions in half.
Before the fracking revolution, coal power stood alone in its ability to provide on-demand affordable energy. In 2008, coal powered approximately half of U.S. electricity. Natural gas has now overtaken coal, powering 33 percent of U.S. electricity in 2016, compared to 32 percent for coal. At the same time, electricity prices in inflation-adjusted dollars are lower now than they were in 2008.
The decline in natural gas prices solved a problem consumers faced when government began taking action to reduce carbon dioxide emissions. Many policymakers saw replacing coal power plants as the most effective means of reducing carbon dioxide emissions. Replacing coal power plants at the end of their shelf life with more expensive forms of power would reduce emissions but increase energy costs. Prematurely closing coal power plants before the end of their shelf life and prematurely building new power plants would add even more to consumer energy costs. This is especially the case when replacing coal power with wind and solar power because wind and solar power costs are so high.
Natural gas power plants, however, are relatively inexpensive to build, even in relation to coal power plants. The high electricity prices for wind and solar power are tied to the high manufacturing costs of wind and solar power equipment relative to the small amount of power they produce. For natural gas power, however, the commodity price of natural gas itself is a greater factor than up-front construction costs. With the cost of natural gas power now challenging and often dropping lower than coal, the premature closure of existing coal power plants has not driven a spike in electricity prices like would have been the case a decade ago. This would be a far different story if the fracking revolution had not occurred or if coal power plants were being replaced primarily by wind and solar power.
The lesson from all this is we have been presented with an unforeseen opportunity to simultaneously reduce electricity prices and reduce carbon dioxide emissions (as well as conventional air pollution). Coal power plants at the end of their shelf life can be replaced by lower-cost, lower-emitting natural gas power plants. At just a minimal cost, many existing coal power plants can be closed before the end of their shelf life and replaced with inexpensive natural gas power plants. As has been the case since 2008, electricity prices will fall and carbon dioxide emissions will decline. This is a win for everybody, regardless of one’s views of the asserted global warming crisis and regardless of one’s views on the primacy of economic living standards or environmental protection.
http://www.forbes.com/sites/jamestaylor/2017/01/02/u-s-carbon-dioxide-emissions-fall-to-lowest-since-1991/#10c70e9f6da8
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