Comments on: Carbon capture: a last minute stab of desperation

By: Graeme Lewis

Graeme Lewis — Thu, 01 Jan 1970 10:00:00 +0000

We have to be positive about this, but it is so hard to see anything positive in this "me-tooism" stuff, and Mr Keane is right to be pessimistic. There has been so much work done on carbon sequestration over the last 20 years, but there is so little positive outcome thus far - especially economically feasible commercial progress. Our half a billion will add precious little to the progress made so far.

One becomes more cynical when commentators highlight this latest announcement as a sop to the unions and the coal companies.

These funds set up by Swan in the MAy budget were supposed to be anti-inflation reserves to establish infrastructure, but this so-called AGCCSI will simply burn the money in endless research that will do anything but stifle inflation. The same could perhaps be said for throwing money at geothermal solar and nuclear, but at least all of these are feasible/possible - just costly and slow.

Come on Tourist08 and Miss Penny - let' s have some meaningful progress -somewhere, somehow.

We're going absolutely nowhere with the River Murray problem, nowhere sensible with the emissions issue, and now this!! And of course Big Pete hates the idea of using coal to manufacture petroleum products - also, it seems, a feasible option to utilise some of our coal resources. He even sang about that way back then. Oh well....nothing wrong with singing.

By: JamesK

JamesK — Thu, 01 Jan 1970 10:00:00 +0000

Bernard Keane poses a somewhat surprising if disingenuous possibility in his opening sentence. Rudd is already renown in media circles for his penchant of making grand statements without following them up with coherent plan about how they will be achieved. Why is this any different?

By: Chris

Chris — Thu, 01 Jan 1970 10:00:00 +0000

'Clean-Coal Debut in Germany - A new coal plant is the first to capture and store carbon dioxide'

http://www.technologyreview.com/Biztech/21397/

Friday, September 19, 2008

I hope someone checks this out before Rudd commits $100mil of our tax money trying to re-invent it.

Perhaps someone should alerts him to its existence before he proposes his plan, during his current visit to the US, for Australia to invent this technology......./Chris

By: Jack

Jack — Thu, 01 Jan 1970 10:00:00 +0000

“Australian Global Carbon Capture and Storage Institute”

Isn’t that a fancypants word for graveyard…plenty of those around ?

By: soil carbon

soil carbon — Thu, 01 Jan 1970 10:00:00 +0000

There is only one proven way to capture carbon from the atmosphere - photosynthesis - and the best way to store this captured carbon is as Soil Carbon. Internationally recognised soil scientists (IPCC contributing and lead authors no less) have estimated that, by changing management on Australia’s 448 million hectares of seasonally dry grazing lands, we could remove over 900 MILLION tonnes of CO2 from the atmosphere each year for the next 20 plus years. To put this into perspective this is more than our current TOTAL emissions.
We CAN do something about the climate crisis - and boost eco-system resilience, promote rural industry self-reliance, and help heal Australia’s ailing river systems - look at http://www.soilcarbon.com.au to see how.

By: Evan

Evan — Thu, 01 Jan 1970 10:00:00 +0000

Firstly Mr Soil Carbon, whose input is enjoyed on every topic on Climate Change. I suspect that you are severely overestimating the potential benefits. The cost curve created here:
http://www.greenfleet.com.au/uploads/pdfs/McKinsey%20Report%20-%20greenhouse%20-%2015Feb08.pdf (page 14)
by leading enviro/energy scientists McKinsey suggest that the size of the resource is not that large and the cost per tonne around $50 per tonne. Reforestation and forest management both score much higher.

Now onto CCS. I’m as sceptical as virtually anyone, and probably a lot more qualified on this topic than most. In general though I think we’re pissing a lot of money up the wall chasing the CCS fairy. However, ther is this nagging feeling, just like fusion technology. There’s all this free energy lying in the ground, all you’ve got to do is dig it up and burn it. Imagine then, if we did crack the code? If there is (which i highly doubt) a cost effective, environmentally low risk solution to capturing the carbon from burning coal, wouldn’t it be great to use it?

But, the cynicism and pragmatism can’t be subdued for long. Yes we could take this massive gamble on coal research, forming focus groups and think tanks, or we could spend the same money building wind turbines and cover 20% of our emissions in 3 years. Is that better than a big gamble?

By: Carbon Capture Skeptic

Carbon Capture Skeptic — Thu, 01 Jan 1970 10:00:00 +0000

Capturing CO2 from flue gas is not new technology. It is a simple chemical process using tried and true chemical plant. Problem is it uses large amounts of energy. Retrofitting Co2 capture to existing thermal plants will reduce their output to about half. What this means is big carbon will be able to double the number of plants and you guessed it, mine and sell twice as much coal to keep them going. All at our expense. No wonder they love it.