https://www.theguardian.com/sustainable-business/2017/mar/03/clean-coal-ccs-and-csg-will-not-save-fossil-fuels-their-game-is-up
'Clean coal', CCS and CSG will not save fossil fuels – their game is up
As the Finkel review submission deadline arrives it’s time to accept the
inevitable and fix the shambles that is our energy policy
Ian Dunlop
Friday 3 March 2017 02.32 GMT
Last modified on Friday 3 March 2017 02.34 GMT
Every few years the fossil fuel industry pressures politicians to force
“clean coal”, carbon capture and storage (CCS) and more recently coal
seam gas (CSG) on an increasingly sceptical community to justify its
continued expansion.
This cycle started with the promotion of Adani’s massive Carmichael
coalmine in Queensland, for coal export to India. The South Australian
blackout followed last September when violent storms blew down
transmission towers, prompting instant federal government accusations
that excessive reliance on renewable energy was the cause, despite clear
advice to the contrary. This also prompted a review of the energy
system, led by Dr Alan Finkel, with final submissions due on Friday.
Then, when the long-overdue closure of the Hazelwood brown-coal power
station was announced in November, energy security became a political
battleground. In passing, Adani was to be offered a $1bn subsidy to
construct the Carmichael rail line, and then a further subsidy for a new
domestic coal-fired power plant at the mine was mooted to assist the
development of northern Australia.
The prime minister’s National Press Club speech in January emphasised
the need for “affordable, reliable and secure energy”, denounced the
states for their “unrealistic” renewable targets, encouraged energy
storage – and then took an evangelical swing back to coal, straight from
the fossil fuel industry hymn book. Priority would be given to “clean
coal, and carbon capture and storage (CCS and onshore gas (CSG)”,
implying that renewables were neither affordable or reliable.
He continued: “The next incarnation of our energy policy should be
technology-agnostic – it’s security and cost that matter, not how you
deliver it. Policy should be ‘all of the above technologies’ working
together to meet the trifecta of secure and affordable power while
meeting our substantial emission reduction commitments.”
So what could possibly be wrong with such a sweeping vision? Well,
pretty much everything.
Firstly, the speech skirted around the biggest risk facing Australia,
namely accelerating climate change. While Australia ratified the Paris
climate agreement, our emission reduction commitments are not
“substantial”. They are laughable, both in comparison with our peers
globally and to have any chance of making a fair contribution to the
Paris objectives of holding global temperatures “well below 2C above
pre-industrial conditions and to pursue efforts to limit the increase to
1.5C”.
Then, to have a realistic chance, say 90%, of meeting the Paris
objectives, the world should no longer emit any carbon to the
atmosphere. We still emit record amounts today and need some fossil
fuels to build the new low-carbon economy, so that is not going to
happen. But emissions must peak and decline rapidly. There is no space
for any new fossil fuel projects – coal, oil or gas.
“Clean coal” is neither new nor clean. These technologies can reduce
emissions by up to 40% relative to conventional practice but that does
not solve our problem when the global carbon budget has already been
exhausted. Furthermore, costs are increased by up to 30%, rendering coal
even less competitive with renewables.
Years of research have failed to establish the basis for CCS expansion
at scale. CCS works where emissions are stored in depleted oil and gas
reservoirs, which the oil industry has practised for decades. Storage in
other types of geological structures is far harder. The few commercial
operations in the world today are in the former category. The
substantial additional costs of CCS again reduce coal’s competitiveness,
particularly if you refuse to price carbon, as the government is doing.
CCS will be useful at the margin but it will not save fossil fuels from
their inevitable demise.
Additionally, energy prices rose largely because our flawed regulatory
framework allowed power companies to invest in unnecessary
infrastructure on which they were guaranteed a return. Gas prices rose
because the east coast was opened up to the higher-priced international
gas market with the construction of export facilities at Gladstone. The
unseemly rush into CSG resulted in substantial processing overcapacity,
with economic pressure increasing as CSG production was constrained by
community objection to the damage caused to arable land and water.
Furthermore, high methane leakage rates result in CSG having a greater
warming effect than using coal, thereby negating its supposed benefit.
Finally, there is nothing “agnostic” about choosing energy sources when
the fossil fuel industry continues to enjoy a massive subsidy, far
greater than renewables, through the lack of carbon pricing – a subsidy
the IMF estimates to be about 60% of coal’s market price. And this is
the nub of the problem. Our climate and energy policies are a
disconnected and dysfunctional shambles, brought about by years of
denial and inaction from federal governments of both persuasions who do
not accept that climate change is happening.
But that game is up. Climate change has moved from the twilight phase of
much talk and relatively limited impact. It is now turning nasty. Events
are moving faster than expected as irreversible climate tipping points
are crossed. The economic and social costs of inaction can no longer be
swept under the carpet, with regulators here and overseas demanding
action to head off a climate-induced financial crisis.
The only way we can avoid catastrophic climate impact now is to initiate
emergency action, akin to being on a war footing. That will be accepted
shortly as impacts bite and low-carbon technology undermines the fossil
fuel industry. In the meantime the damage created by political
ideologues must be minimised, so no Adani, no coal-fired power, no CSG.
Our antiquated electricity grids are undoubtedly in need of overhaul but
100% renewable energy grids are being constructed around the world in
only a few years, providing genuine energy security and making
traditional concepts of baseload power irrelevant. This is innovation at
its best.
As for affordability, energy prices will rise, given the extent and
speed of change. But they will rise less with renewables than with coal,
with greater prospects of cost reduction as technology improves.
We need a new narrative, built around our potential to prosper as a
low-carbon society. We have the world’s best renewable resources, the
science, technology and engineering expertise to seize what is the
biggest investment and job-creation opportunity this country has ever seen.
In addition, we need a taskforce which will pull together the resources
and expertise required to initiate emergency action, led by statesmen
and women from businesses with a concern to create a genuinely
sustainable Australia. It is their future which is being thrown away by
fossil fuel industry pressure forcing government to remain firmly
entrenched in the 20th century.
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Commentary
As I have been posting to this list and its predecessors for over a
decade now, what we know about CCS is that it is not cost effective, it
probably won't work over long time-scales, and that the fossil fuel
industry is not prepared to actually fund it themselves. CCS is a
long-time smokescreen for the fossil fuel industry funded by taxpayers.
Yesterday, I attended a session presented by the Ontario Ministry of
Environment and Climate Change on their Climate Change Action Plan
(CCAP). They have a long list a items they are working to reduce
greenhouse gas emissions; at least 40 items in the summary listing I
picked up. Conspicuous by its absence is CCS as a mitigation measure.
This is significant because the province of Ontario has some chops on
the GHG emissions reduction front. To my knowledge, Ontario is the only
major power generation jurisdiction which has gone from significant
coal-fired generation to zero (as of 2014). Further, as of the last
quarter of 2016, their generation from natural gas was less than 7% of
total generation, and natural gas makes up 30% of their generating
capacity infrastructure. This reflects a continuing downward trend for
natural gas generation, as more wind and solar generation continues to
come on line.
Darryl McMahon