What really puzzles me is the industry's resistance to adopting gasification combined cycle technology on a much broader scale. The manufacture of synthesis gas from coal can lead to many other products which can be efficiently and economically produced together with electricity to greatly enhance the overall economics and favorable environmental impact of converting coal into useful products. Moreover, the capital cost and should be lower than the cost of ultra supercritical coal-based generation and scrubbers; and the operating efficiencies should be greater.
It seems the coal and electric power industry has tunnel vision and is resistant to looking beyond just electricity production when there are multiple opportunities to create "coal-plexes" which produce a variety of valuable and widely used chemical intermediates.
It would be interesting to scope out and evaluate a scheme which incorporates the production of electricity and chemical intermediates via gasification; applying current market prices for the products and determining the economic value and the positive environmental impact when compared to conventional manufacturing methods.
Arthur Nislick
Energy Consulting
I don't know about you, but all this extenuating stuff about burying carbon dioxide residue, or sequestering, is nothing more than propagating a false premise that the world is warming. What is proven though is the cost of sequestering doesn't work, and the added cost being fostered onto the fossil fuel generation plants is monumental. Globally we aren't warming, and special interest news journals are still forwarding disinformation remaining firmly adherent to this climate change bunk. What is clear though is progressive liberalism using the environmental laws against industrialization and our utility companies.
So what's next on the climate change team? They've used up their global warming claim when the track record for temperatures went south. And their new claim is carbon dioxide levels, but even those claims are fabricated by well-placed scientists. Many of these so-called scientists are being questioned now by news people asking very important questions. Last week the BBC, which was firmly in the "climate change supporting group" questioned the authenticity of the climate change information.
The questions of eliminating one energy source and replacing it with another energy source are really troubling. Biomass isn't the saving grace of the fossil-fueled generation group. Biomass is nothing more than ecologically young coal. It takes far more volume of it to do the same work that coal provides. And all you get in the end is a really good pat on the back for eliminating an affordable power source to replace it with a limited market who can charge astronomical prices for the right to burn it. Great job! Take affordability away, and replace it with uncertainty.
Biomass is a joke, and a misguided one to ram extended costs on an affordable fuel source. In turn the price of grid power will increase tremendously.
Our continental heavy industries are taking a beating and you want to pass along more conditions of existence on them that make our industries non-operable. Buying carbon credits from Third World despots so that you can operate your local industrial plants or utility companies. So who are you working for?
Jeff Hagar
I respectfully disagree with the point of your article. "Anthropogenic Global Warming" itself appears to be approaching a crossroads in the scientific community, and it's Al Gore who risks irrelevance. As worldwide temperatures continue to recede and more and more scientists are gaining the courage to question his quasi-religious fervor, Gore's self-righteous Ponzi scheme is beginning to come apart at the seams. Until he can explain the recent shrinkage of Martian polar ice caps (on a planet supposedly devoid of any coal-fired fossil plants, live volcanoes or massive SUV gridlock) and disassociate the Solar Cycle from its evidentiary record of being shadowed by climatic results, his theory risks consignment into Reagan's famous "dustbin of history".
Scientific pursuit is the Achilles' heel of Gore's global warming theocracy: True scientists continually question the "accepted" and refuse to be subjugated by the herd mentality. Otherwise we'd still be in the Dark Ages, subject to the Inquisitors' thumbscrews. This logical nonconformity is something Gore can neither comprehend nor control.
We are about to step off into a dark chasm, based on spurious anecdotal evidence put together by "progressives" with a transparent anti-Capitalist, income-redistributing agenda. Isn't it time for those who trumpet the inevitability of this environmental Armageddon to put their names on the line and pledge THEIR incomes and THEIR personal fortunes that this scheme is valid? After all, they're asking the rest of us to mortgage a significant portion of our own futures to their belief.
If, in ten years, all Gore's smoke and thunder proves to be a hoax and the Solar Cycle is recognized as the driving force for climatic change, shouldn't he and his ilk, at a minimum, be required to forfeit to the taxpayers and ratepayers the billions of dollars they've made off the backs of the rest of the Western world? And if it is shown that Gore has prevented Man from creating this planet-changing event, then he can keep his billions. We will have already paid him for it.
Norris Bettis
The future of coal seems to be assured due to its prominence as the premier base-load fuel and through forecasts by EIA. The U.S. needs base-load capacity. Base-load is primarily coal, followed by nuclear and, where available, hydro. Renewables are not base-load and can only be a small fraction of peaking capacity and to even fit that niche they will have to compete with gas-fired units. We have hyped renewable to a point with the technical capabilities and the realistic position in a sustainable energy matrix has been lost to that hype.
The U.S. needs a realistic energy policy and only the U.S. Chamber of Commerce appears to be willing to go on record as challenging the Gore notion that the world can be run on wind and solar power. Wind and solar are feel good generators with limited beneficial impact on generation needs. Policy needs to direct efforts and funding into accelerating the pace of nuclear development and cleaning up coal to make it more environmentally friendly over time. Reality, not rhetoric, needs to be the basis for a sound energy policy in the global world we live in.
Bob Percopo
Executive Vice President
Project Finance Advisory Services
Global Marine & Energy
Chartis
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