The world economic crisis has brought energy prices down. What remains is the concern for long-term energy security with as little as possible environmental effects. What about climate change? Well – 2008 was the year man-made global warming was disproved according to the Daily Telegraph. Surely, 2008 was the coolest year of “global warming” in the new millenium, temperature-wise, scientifically and politically. It’s time to think about energy efficiency without global warming scare.

But not too quick: Let’s face it, the AGW theory claiming that very likely most of the recent warming (IPCC) – or all of it (Hansen) - is caused by human activities, is not falsifiable. It cannot be proven wrong after a single year of cooling. However, AGW skeptics are afloat again. The precautionary principle as stubbornly propagated by AGW alarmists (to do at least something about the danger of future climate impacts) will have a hard time to contineously win the majorities of parliamentary votes on either side of the Atlantic. Sorry, Mr. President and sorry Frau Merkel! It looks like trying to influence our climate significantly becomes far too costly for humanity to swallow. Or would people in the Western world be prepared to strain at the gnat of CO2-mitigation to possibly achieve as little as 1°C cooling in the Arctic basin and in already cold Siberia with little effect in other parts of the world? Would they be willing to swallow the elephant of exorbitant carbon taxes and energy prices as a result of the global carbon market and efforts such as carbon sequestration? Probably not. By the way, the above example of a temperature scenario is realistic and well within the IPCC range of a climate sensitivity of +2°C or more on a global scale (for a doubling of CO2) and any possible effects such mitigation efforts could have on the climate throughout this century.

“The impact of carbon sequestration on the production cost of electricity and hydrogen from coal and natural-gas technologies in Europe in the medium term” is the title of a paper by  Evangelos Tzimas and Stathis D. Peteves, 2004, as published in Science Direct:

Our economic assessment has shown that the introduction of carbon sequestration technologies in Europe in 2020, will result in an increase in the production cost of electricity by coal and natural gas technologies of 30–55% depending on the electricity-generation technology used; gas turbines will remain the most competitive option for generating electricity; and integrated gasification combined cycle technology will become competitive.

Without capturing carbon dioxide before or after combustion of coal and gas in particular, more money could be used for recycling methane, uranium and other toxic heavy metals, for acid mine drainage, the safe removal of slag heaps, the reduction of sulfur and mercury emissions, and the list goes on and on when it comes to coal. If we do not consider CO2 a pollutant, it is much easier to tackle the real pollutants which are indeed a danger for human health and the environment. These pollutants can sometimes be even more dangerous for human health in so-called renewable energy sources such as wood pellets (NO2, dust).

Discussion: Clean coal and gas (but please without sequestering CO2) could become the key clean – that’s right – clean energy source of the future, provided we concentrate on the real pollutants, not on CO2.

Sources:
wikipedia on clean coal technology
wikipedia on environmental effects of coal
Paper on coal mining and the environment
Coal combustion – nuclear resource or danger?
The News Observer – “Clean” coal would cost billions
Wikipedia about carbon capture and storage
carbon sequest, energy efficiency

This entry was posted on Sunday, January 4th, 2009 at 10:47 pm and is filed under Energy and Environment, English Categories. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.