Kenneth… It amuses me after the many and long discussions we have had about your imbicile idea that - despite it is not mentioned in the text - the Paris Agreement requires nations to apply negative emission technology you reveal that you do not understand what ”negative emission technology” actually is. A negative emission technology removes CO2 from the atmosphere so the concentration in the atmosphere decreases. This is essentially an unproven technology in any of the forms that have been envisioned so one cannot budget it’s use and for that reason it is not part of the Paris Agreement.
In CarbonFix CO2 is collected from geothermal gases produced by the Hellisheioi Power Plant. The CO2 comes from the production and not from the atmosphere. The technology will potentially make the power plant a nearly zero emission operation, but so far it is just an experiment in relative small scale compared to the CO2 emission from the plant.
CarbFix is a CO2 removal demonstration project on Iceland.
CarbFix demonstrates removal of CO2 released from geothermal energy extraction (main power source in Iceland) with a cost of 30$/ton CO2. This cost is higher than the cost for fossil fuel replacement in current commercial wind and solar powerprojects, but lower than predicted costs for coal power plant flue gas high-tech CO2 removal and injection into oilfield formations.
The technology dissolves CO2 and inject the pressurized solution into basalt rocks there it is bound as carbonates. In the formation water existing in the rocks the CO2 react with dissolved divalent ions to form carbonate minerals:
Ca2+ + CO2 + H2O = CaCO3 + 2H+
Mg2+ + CO2 + H2O = MgCO3 + 2H+
The Ca and Mg ions are replenished together with neutralization of H+ through reactions with the basaltic rock:
Mg2SiO4 + 4H+ → 2Mg2+ + 2H2O + SiO2 (Forsterite )
CaAl2SiO8 + 2H+ + H2O → Ca2+ + Al2Si2O5(OH)4 (Ca-plagioclase)
https://www.or.is/english/carbfix-project/about-carbfix-0
Kenneth… It amuses me after the many and long discussions we have had about your imbicile idea that - despite it is not mentioned in the text - the Paris Agreement requires nations to apply negative emission technology you reveal that you do not understand what ”negative emission technology” actually is. A negative emission technology removes CO2 from the atmosphere so the concentration in the atmosphere decreases. This is essentially an unproven technology in any of the forms that have been envisioned so one cannot budget it’s use and for that reason it is not part of the Paris Agreement.
In CarbonFix CO2 is collected from geothermal gases produced by the Hellisheioi Power Plant. The CO2 comes from the production and not from the atmosphere. The technology will potentially make the power plant a nearly zero emission operation, but so far it is just an experiment in relative small scale compared to the CO2 emission from the plant.
You can expect me to keep on pointing out that you an old fool until you find the claim written in any document related to the actual Paris agreement 😈
No nation is forced to apply negative emission technology by the Paris agreement and the prove is that such is not mentioned in the agreement.
Kenneth ask: "How much weight is added to the carbon compared to burying the CO2 by "conventional" negative emission technologies?"
As was just shown “conventional negative emission technologies” doesn’t exist and the weight is a pointless question. Some minerals are transformed to other minerals and anyone with a bit of chemistry knowledge can see from the reactions that the weight increase is just the CO2 uptake and then water is taken up if Ca-carbonate is formed.
Ca2+ + CO2 + H2O = CaCO3 + 2H+
CaAl2SiO8 + 2H+ + H2O → Ca2+ + Al2Si2O5(OH)4
Mg2+ + CO2 + H2O = MgCO3 + 2H+
Mg2SiO4 + 4H+ → 2Mg2+ + 2H2O + SiO2
I am expecting answers not abuses and name calling please @ Andersen and Towe. If you have disagreements please settle it outside my wall. Thanks
Cyril,
I think you are being unfair to Prof. Anderson. He has answered your question, and is now being pestered by Dr Towe with questions that are irrelevant, but fit with the Towe climate denier program: climate change is not a threat, and if it is we cannot do anything about it. If that is what you want to hear, then support Dr Towe, but my policy is to ignore him : -(
Thank you McDonald, however I think you misunderstood me. I'm not supporting any of them. I just advised them not to be abusive. I agreed, but with reservations, with Andersen's perspective.
Thank you McDonald, however I think you misunderstood me. I'm not supporting any of them. I just advised them not to be abusive. I agreed, but with reservations, with Andersen's perspective.
Kenneth's credo in the previous post makes is obvious why he is repeatedly labeled a climate denier by so many more than just Alastair.
The Paris Accord is an agreement in which each nation of the world - except one - pledges to reduce its greenhouse gas emissions gradually - but ultimately drastically - over decades. All nations agreed on the goal to limit the global warming to 2.0 °C. The agreement doesn't mention removal of CO2 from the atmosphere so no nations are obliged to implement this.
Obviously in disagreement with Kenneth's claims the many peer-review published results from the Carbofix project clearly shows the method works better than expected. There are large basalt rocks around Hellisheioi Power Plant that can absorb the CO2 from many years production.
I am somewhat surprised that in portions of this discussion, reference is made to the high costs of replacing the current energy structure with solar, or the costs of mitigation CO2 pollution as a reason to exclude solar -- YET no one brings up the fact that was is being left out of all those discussion are the widespread and tremendous costs of, for example, coal fired power plant pollution. If you want to talk about the costs of doing something in a cost-benefit sense, then you have to entertain the negative costs (that is, the costs that are currently experienced by doing nothing). You can’t just talk about one half of the costs. So, below, are some examples of what coal fired pollution costs in the US alone.
Replacing coal fired power plants (CFPPs), for example, would generate huge cost savings for society and for individuals, and for industries such as the insurance industry, which pays for health care. Replacing CFPP would reduce these kinds of costs: (1) a reduction in disease and health care costs for treating CFPP linked diseases; (2) # 1 would also generate a reduction in insurance costs; (3) costs for environmental remediation to address CFPP pollution, not only in the air, and in waterways and estuaries, but in relation to CFPP coal ash waste ponds (which is a huge public and environmental health problem, particularly in the US); (4) reduction in premature deaths (CFPP pollution kills, for example, more people in the US each year than are killed by homicides).
(1) The costs of CFPPs (and, by the way, CFPP are also very large and take up significant space in the environment) -- include: emission of non-CO2 air pollutants, which includes Sulphur dioxide, nitrogen oxides, particle matter (PM 10 and PM 2.5), and trace metals which include mercury, lead and cadmium.
(2) The costs also include ecological damage created by the hundreds of CFPP coal ash/slurry sites in the US. CFPP adds about 140 million tons of coal ash to waste ponds each year).
(3) In the US, those sludge ponds are not required to be lined, and cause various forms of environmental damage through seepage.
(4) Coal ash ponds, which are poorly regulated, not only leak, they can create catastrophic coal ash spills. Those spills ruin the environment and can never be cleaned up. Examples of major US coal ash spills:
(A) the Kingston, Tennessee coal ash spill in 2008, released an estimated 5.4 million cubic yards of fly ash, and the minimal remediation of the spill will cost more than $1 billion;
(B) Martin County, Kentucky, October 2000 spill of 300 million gallons of liquid coal ash (30 times the size of the Exxon Valdez oil spill, which is still causing ecological damage nearly 30 years later), which also killed all living organisms in the affected waterways (how do you measure the financial cost of that outcome?), cost more $50 million in initial environmental remediation);
(C ) 2014 Eden, NC spill at a closed CFPP ash pond, spilled 27 million gallons of coal ash. An extensive study was performed on the cost of the Eden spill in terms of lost value (Lemley, 2015, V 197 in the journal, Environmental Pollution). While the author notes it is impossible to put a true financial costs on the human health and environmental effects of the spill, and to accurately estimate remediation costs, he notes the following associated costs: 6-month limited ecological cost, $113 million; acute toxicity damage costs, $ 15.7 million; chronic toxicity damage, indeterminable; wildlife/fish loss/poisoning costs, $ 15.8 million; recreation loss from fishing, $ 31.5 million; increase in health care costs, $ 75.6 million; real estate holdings, personal property loss, indeterminable; esthetic value (environmental enjoyment) loss, first 6 months, $ 75 million – now, add that up = $ 326 million.
(D) As of 2014, there were 208 KNOWN coal ash spills in the US – and certainly, they are not all as large as those noted above – but that comes to billions of dollars in health care costs, environmental loss costs, and remediation costs. Solar plants don’t generate waste spills, so that should be considered when discussing the costs of different forms of energy.
(5) In the US, CFPP emit 42% of all mercury emissions; 41.2 tons of Pb; 3.1 million tons of SO2; 1.5 million tons of NOx; 197,286 tons of PM 10; 22,124 tons of VOCs; 77,108 pds of arsenic. How much does that cost in terms of health care and ecological damage?
And, by the way, despite my long answer I left out the costs of mining coal on the environment -- how much natural are in the US, for instance, has been destroyed by mountain top removal mining? And what price tag can be placed on that? And, if we want to talk about the space required by a coal fired power plant, factor in the 1.4 million or more acres destroyed by MTR to feed coal fired power plants. And then there are the places destroyed by surface and deep pit strip mining as well. What's the cost?
Thanks Lynch for drawing our attention to the reality of the cost intensity of the whole issue under discussion.
Amagh Nduka (2015) in his article entitled The World Energy Challenge and Global Warming available online at http://www.scirp.org/journal/epe made the following conclusions :
Fusion has long been recognized as the solution of the world’s energy problem because of its potential as abundant source of clean, safe, environmentally friendly, and economically competitive energy resource. Its realization, despite infusion of huge amounts of resources for several decades, has eluded humanity. Many of the world’s great laboratories have experimented on all types of fusion including “bubble” and “cold” fusion; added to these are international efforts like JET and ITER; all of these have yielded null result. The only conclusion to be drawn from about eighty years of null results is that the Bethe fusion theory is wrong. Given our new theory, realization of fusion energy should not be too far in the future. What is required now is the appropriate technology with which to extract energy from fusion-that is a process that enables humanity to harvest the photons (energy) escaping from ultra-high energy particle accelerators. Such a process converts these accelerators to fusion reactors. There should, however, be a total ban on all such machines which are not operating as fusion reactors to stem global warming. Earthquake, hurricane, tornado, typhoon, cylone, etc. are well known and well documented natural disasters. What causes them and the reason for their unprecedented violence in recent times are, however, unknown. Environmental scientists have come up with explanations which are certainly unsatisfactory. For example, geologists claim that earthquakes are caused by ‘plate movement’, but the force responsible for this movement has not been identified. We hypothesize that the force responsible for these natural disasters has nuclear origin. We recall that under ordinary conditions the boson particle is an island of stability. Ultra-high energy particles from the sun could initiate non-linear (chaotic) processes, e.g. fragmentation of boson particles, in the earth’s environment. If the fragmentation occurs underground, the result is an earthquake, resulting from the huge amount of energy released underground. Secondary reactions associated with the primary reaction products give rise to aftershocks. On the other hand if the fragmentation occurs in open space, e.g. over ocean, sea, etc., it produces winds with incredible velocity, resulting from the enormous energy acquired by the molecules of the air. Further, the ultrahigh energy particles could originate from the earth-based ultra-high energy particle accelerator laboratories. Thus, today the earth is under the influence of such energetic particles from two different sources, namely, natural and manmade sources. This explains why the natural disasters have become rampant and ferocious, entailing cataclysmic destructions. A second aspect of the electroweak theory is the theory of weak interaction. Up to the mid 1930s theoretical physics followed a well defined path: identify the dynamical variables and associated forces of the dynamical system; thereafter write down and solve the differential equations characterizing the system (examples, Newton’s, Maxwell’s, Einstein’s, Schrodinger’s, and Dirac’s theories). At that time Hideki Yukawa, a Japanese physicist, introduced a strange approach. According to him, in relativistic quantum theories interactions are mediated by force particles. For example, the carrier of the electromagnetic interaction is the photon. R. P. Feynman exploited this idea in his rather successful quantum theory of electromagnetism (QED). It was appealing therefore to hypothesize that the weak interaction is mediated by the intermediate bosons W and Z0. According to this scenario a neutron decays into a proton by emitting a W particle; the W itself is unstable and decays into an electron and a neutrino-the W thus mediates the weak force. As a second example, a neutrino scatters off a proton by emitting a Z0 particle. The neutrino and proton do not interact directly, but rather through the exchange of a Z0. The Z0 is also an intermediate boson since it carries the weak force. We note, however, that nature does not admit these interactions or similar ones, hence the hypothesis is not appropriate for the theory of weak interactions.
Kenneth asks about "the costs of what we are now required to do"..."drastically" and urgently capture and store hundreds of billions of tons of atmospheric CO2". The answer is that it costs nothing. We are not required to capture and store any CO2. Only reduce emissions.
Andersen,
Are you sure capturing and storing CO2 is not required? How then are you going to achieve the emission reduction through the Carbfix project
I am very sure. The claim by Kenneth is about atmospheric CO2 and the agreement made which his country is the only one on the planet that has not agreed to. The Paris Accord is only about emission reductions and it doesn't bind us to or prevent us from applying atmospheric CO2 removal.
The Carbfix project sequester CO2 that is a byproduct from the geothermal energy extraction. CO2 doesn't come from the atmosphere and it is already separated. If the process is implemented it will make the geothermal plant emission free.
Cyril
For your knowledge, just count the recommendations of Henrik and Kenneth you will probably find that Dr. Henrik is the right scientific man as suggested by Alastair. Regards
As someone who studies environmental regulations, let me assure you that the phrase "negative emission may be needed" is not a legally or otherwise binding requirement. Essentially, its a suggestion of what you might consider. Its non- enforceable. It would be potentially possible for it to become enforceable, but that would actually require a legal claim and a lawsuit centered on the meaning of those two words.
You are still missing the point about costs. Even if we ignore CO2 reduction, replacing old fashioned coal power energy has tremendous human and ecological health benefits that will save billions of dollars and improve environmental health overall. AND, even if you don't care about the Co2 effect, there would be a Co2 reduction, which I did not include when discussing the costs above.
Moreover, I showed real costs -- adverse costs or negative costs against accrued capital earned through real expenditures on health care and environmental remediation.
Certainly, I did not give costs for carbon sequestration, because my point was that I was purposefully ignoring those costs because, as I noted, the point was to discuss other costs of non-mitigating the use of coal fired power plants. If you want to see an analysis of costs of producing electricity from different sources, see the Lazar Bank report, https://www.lazard.com/perspective/levelized-cost-of-energy-2017/
These are just financial operating costs. Lazar notes: " The increasing economic advantage of renewables in the US has global implications, because in the US, conventional energy technologies are relatively cheaper to operate than in other developed economies. Given the higher costs of conventional energy sources in these other countries, the economics of alternative energy sources become even more attractive. "
I guess if you want to overlook these extremely detrimental health and ecological outcomes, and don't care if people die from diseases caused by using coal, and don't care if the ecosystem gets cleaned up and becomes more stable as a result, and don't care if mountaintops are removed, or about the poverty this causes for people living in the regions where those things occur -- then we really need to turn our attention to a moral argument about these outcomes, and weigh the social costs on other grounds. In other words, it seems very clear that mitigating coal use, even if you don't care about CO2 reduction, has many, many benefits to a great number of people in society -- and for the ecosystem (and of course, all the nonhuman beings that live in ecosystems), .
Geographic areas with high environmental pollution levels are also areas
with high cancer rates. Cancer studies done by epidemiologists at Departments of Health across the USA over the past 30 years have not focused on chemical emissions. Pretending "it is not there" will most likely not be sufficient to improve the situation.
Solar powered generation stations aren't really bigger than large coal fired power plants, especially when you factor in that the coal get mined in various environmentally destructive ways that takes up tremendous amounts of ecological space. And yes, I would rather see a big field of solar panel, which are really quite amazing, than a big, smoke belching power plant....like the one near where I live....see image below. Its in the top 10% of most polluting power plants in the US.
http://www.suncoastwaterkeeper.com/teco_big_bend_power_plant
"NASA has omitted or forgotten? that 34 millions years ago CO2 was double what is is today. And apparently some here have also?" I am sure that the excellent scientist at NASA as well as all the researchers here on RG accept the notion of linear time. In linear time 34 million years ago did not occur between now and 400.067 years ago. The significance of the CO2 in the last 400.000 years is that live on this planet has adapted to the narrow range of low CO2 concentrations. Thus e.g. many sea living invertebrates and even fish 's growth are inhibited by the 1000 ppm CO2 similar organisms might have thrived with long ago.
The leftover from coal burning contains chemicals that are harmful to humans. In the UK, a study associated low school performance of children living in proximity to coal burning power plants where Mercury was st high levels in their blood. A cohort of children was followed in this epidemiological study over ten years.
The CarbFix team had demonstrated that over 95% of CO2 captured and injected at Hellisheidi geothermal Power Plant in Iceland was mineralized within two years. This contrasts the previous common view that mineralisation in CCS projects takes hundreds to thousands of years. Industrial scale capture and injection have been ongoing at the power plant since 2012.
Kenneth:
You are really missing a great deal. Power plants sometimes close -- BUT the companies that own them never do -- that's a lot of hype. No one leaves a big chunk of money sitting on the table by failing to provide electricity to some community. Power companies are monopolies. Now, there are US laws against monopolies, but we don't enforce them against power companies, which is one reason they can do whatever they want. MONOPOLIES don't close precisely because they are monopolies, AND because they are monopolies they can raise your power rates to always ensure large profits AND and that they can make big FAT donations to political parties to protect them. If you doubt any of that, instead of making up some random response, feel free to look current, relevant data.
MONOPOLY power companies make up a lot of crap about decentralizied power sources like solar, wind, etc., that I, could (and have) put on my roof -- because every person that buys an alternative way to generate power challenges the ability of the power company to maintain monopoly control of the power grid.
So, we don't really need to plow under anything to make solar -- we can just build it on top of all the already existing structures. In other words, your space claim with regard to solar is, absolutely, 100% false. And, if we need extra space, we can just use the space being occupied by coal fired power plants, since those have already been built and destroyed nature. AND since some of those are already being abandoned by power companies because of the dangers they pose (both to human health through the very high level of dangerous pollution tbey emit, as I noted earlier, AND because, UNLIKE YOU, some power companies employ climate scientists who understand that producing CO2 changes the climate).
An iceland nation without space would put windmills on the Sea. Seabased windmills nearly always have wind.
The pictures show the Lynetten and Middelgrund windmill parks in the harbour and Sea next to Copenhagen harbour. The windmills in Copenhagen harbour are on the pier that was for the (now converted to biomass) coal power plant. I am co-owner of both parks.
Denmark is not covered in windmills. One of our main exports are agricultural products. Still we have enough windturbines that this Christmas has been "green" meaning that the nations electricity has been generated without using fossil fuel.
Obviously, the great examples only real value lies with that it disproves that such a thing is impossible, which has been the main argument of the denialist naysayers. The next thing to do is just to move on installing much more solar and wind production capacity worldwide.
The issue of land use is non-existing outside denialist propaganda:
SUN: As mentioned by Dr. Lynch (Michael J. Lynch) a single house can hold the solar cells needed to power it on its own roof. We see most new residential and offices housed build here have them integrated in the design. Many flat-roof factories retrofit their building with solar cells because it provides cheap electricity during the day then the machines consume most. Large scale production can use concentrated solar power in desert areas and floating photovoltaics on water reservoirs (pictures).
WIND: Land based windmills take very little space. The windmills on the coal power plant pier I am co-owner of has a footprint of less than 20 m2 each. An average land based wind mill produce electricity for 1500 households. Then mills are put into agriculture fields they take less than 1% of the land and the space between the mills can be us for agriculture just the same (http://www.ewea.org/wind-energy-basics/faq/). Obviously sea based windmills doesn’t take space from anybody and European parks are too far offshore to be seen from land.
Professor Amin (Raid Amin), The ones that benefit from removing regulation are the previously regulated industries that has bought the politicians that are doing this. That which in one country is labeled "lobbyism" is a criminal offence in other countries.
Kenneth, if you have not understood it by not there is no realistic chance you will considering your age. In case you just didn't read the answer here is a repetition:
The issue of land use is non-existing outside denialist propaganda:
SUN: As mentioned by Dr. Lynch a single house can hold the solar cells needed to power it on its own roof. We see most new residential and offices housed build here have them integrated in the design. Many flat-roof factories retrofit their building with solar cells because it provides cheap electricity during the day then the machines consume most. Large scale production can use concentrated solar power in desert areas and floating photovoltaics on water reservoirs (pictures).
WIND: Land based windmills take very little space. The windmills on the coal power plant pier I am co-owner of has a footprint of less than 20 m2 each. An average land based wind mill produce electricity for 1500 households. Then mills are put into agriculture fields they take less than 1% of the land and the space between the mills can be us for agriculture just the same (http://www.ewea.org/wind-energy-basics/faq/). Obviously sea based windmills doesn’t take space from anybody and European parks are too far offshore to be seen from land.
I think there will always be lots of free places on earth as very well visualized by the following map.
Kenneth ... your map is showing the density in 1994, "the very little room " statement in your comment is only true if we think that the pepole outside the circle will put their true panels on the exclusive surface occupied by the map on the screen. Frankly I see that your map is just confirming the idea of the map in my privious answer.
As I have already argued, there is plenty of available space on existing buildings. Why the insistence that the space be "new" land developed for this purpose when we know that there is technology that can use existing rooftop space, that the price of solar has declined substantially and, depending on location and other factors, is as the US Energy Information Administration now estimates, less expensive than adding coal electrical generation (for example).
CO2 can be sequestered in soil, and soil amendment, which would enhance soil/food productivity, is one way to address multiple issues and not take up any additional space. Eg., see:
Lal, Rattan, Wakene Negassa, and Klaus Lorenz. "Carbon sequestration in soil." Current Opinion in Environmental Sustainability 15 (2015): 79-86.
As I noted earlier, WHY includes pollution. As I noted, coal fired power plants created extensive pollution, public health problems, environmental health concerns, etc., all of which cost, as I illustrated millions upon millions of dollars. So, again, even if you don't care about climate change, you should care about PUBLIC AND ENVIRONMENTAL HEALTH and alternative energy contributes to that mission. BUT, you seem quite content to ignore all those costs and the benefits of solar, to continue the argument that this is not worthwhile because you can't see the benefits because you continue to only understand the argument in relation to climate change. Again, as I indicated and illustrated with data, the issue can be framed without considering climate change, and the costs and benefits judged without referring to climate change at all. But, you refuse to accept that public and environmental health are good reasons for undertaking alternative energy programs, and substituting non-polluting methods of generating electricity for costly, damaging coal fired power....what has been argued above is that alternative energy has numerous public/environmental health benefits....but you insist on being a single-minded and rejecting these positive outcomes by continuing to frame the argument around climate change, even when it has been illustrated that that is not the only way to approach the issue.
Finaly how can anybody say there will not be enough place on earth? Only 2% of the population of Australia are living on the yellow parts of the map..
Very good map Dr. Karaki.
Kenneth, A third repetition. I think it is because you suffer from dementia that you are unable to remember why we do this - or even handle texts with more than 5 lines:
The footprint of land based windmills needed to cower the electricity consumed by an EU citizen is less than 1 m2. A single turbine supplies 1500 families. Accept it as fact or check the reference (http://www.ewea.org/wind-energy-basics/faq/).
· ···· · · ···· ·· ···· ·· ···· · 1.2 % of Sahara · ···· ·· ···· ·· ···· ·· ···· ·
"Now, if we cover an area of the Earth 335 kilometers by 335 kilometers with solar panels, even with moderate efficiencies achievable easily today, it will provide more than 17,4 TW power. This area is 43,000 square miles. The Great Saharan Desert in Africa is 3.6 million square miles and is prime for solar power (more than twelve hours per day). That means 1.2% of the Sahara desert is sufficient to cover all of the energy needs of the world in solar energy. There is no way coal, oil, wind, geothermal or nuclear can compete with this. The cost of the project will be about five trillion dollars, one time cost at today's prices without any economy of scale savings. That is less than the bail out cost of banks by Obama in the last recession. Easier to imagine the cost is 1/4 of US national debt, and equal to 10% of world one year GDP". https://www.forbes.com/sites/quora/2016/09/22/we-could-power-the-entire-world-by-harnessing-solar-energy-from-1-of-the-sahara/#763a6739d440
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