Carbon capture project means big corporate profits and pork dollars in Southwest Virginia
by Lewis Loflin
Why does big business like utilities love global warming and carbon taxes? To quote Senator Jim Webb: As we figure out government's role in moving the nation's privately owned energy infrastructure in a more sustainable direction, guarantees make more sense than direct subsidies, especially given the economics of electricity generation. Because of our regulatory structures, utility companies are generally deep-pocketed and profitable - their payback for providing an essential service. Virginia, for example, guarantees Dominion a profit margin many businesses would sigh for... Ref here. They operate on a cost plus basis and the higher mandated government costs the more profits they make.Dominion Virginia Power and Virginia Tech are seeking federal stimulus money to cover half the cost of a $580 million project that would remove carbon dioxide from power plant emissions at the Virginia City Hybrid Energy Center in Russell County, Virginia. This is also the site of a $1.8 billion coal-fired generating plant outside environmentalist have been trying to stop. The emissions would then be stored underground. This uses different technology than a similar plant in New Haven, West Virginia.
They are trying to be one of twelve projects getting part of $1.4 billion from the U.S. Department of Energy. According to Dominion Power the project would use chemicals called amines to capture carbon dioxide from 70 megawatts of power generation claiming this would removing 545,000 tons of carbon dioxide a year. The technology could increase power cost by 30 percent if implemented and construction would begin in 2013. The liquid carbon dioxide would be pumped into local rock formations.
To quote the New York Times (September 22, 2009) on the New Haven plant,
The experiment, which the company says could begin in the next few days, is riveting the world's coal-fired electricity sector, which is under growing pressure to develop technology to capture and store carbon dioxide...The United States still depends on coal-fired plants, many of them built decades ago, to meet half of its electricity needs. Some industry experts argue that retrofitting them could prove far more feasible than building brand new, cleaner ones.While the electric industry is drooling over higher operating costs (thus in a cost plus system more profits) and Federal pork dollars, the Virginia Sierra Club is still unhappy; "Even if we can prove that carbon capture and sequestration works...it's just not acceptable if you leave the mountains destroyed to get at the coal...In the end, you need to factor in all the costs and determine whether there are investments in renewable energy and particularly in efficiency that are cheaper." Ref. BHC October 31, 2009
Yet the economic viability of the Mountaineer plant's new technology, known as carbon capture and sequestration, remains uncertain. The technology is certain to devour a substantial amount of the plant's energy output - optimists say 15 percent, and skeptics, 30 percent. Some energy experts argue that it could prove even more expensive than solar or nuclear power...
The National Sierra Club position on nuclear power is to quote, "Development of adequate national and global policies to curb energy over-use and unnecessary economic growth...The Sierra Club continues to oppose construction of any new commercial nuclear fission power plants. Further, the Sierra Club supports the systematic reduction of society's dependence on nuclear fission as a source of electric power and recommends a phased closure and decommissioning of operating commercial nuclear fission electric power reactors." This leaves no practical solution for energy needs and in fact they demand government enforced destitution for millions of people. Who the hell are they to determine one's energy use?
- How climate change has altered history:
- Whale Fossils Unlock the History of the North
- Part 1: Climate Change and the Fall of the Late Roman Empire
- Part 2:Climate Change and the End of the Vikings in Greenland
- Part 3: Climate Change and the Lost Colony of Roanoke Island
- The Cooling World Hysteria of 1976
Hacked E-Mail Is New Fodder for Climate Dispute: Hundreds of private e-mail messages and documents hacked from a computer server at a British university are causing a stir among global warming skeptics, who say they show that climate scientists conspired to overstate the case for a human influence on climate change.
The e-mail messages, attributed to prominent American and British climate researchers, include discussions of scientific data and whether it should be released, exchanges about how best to combat the arguments of skeptics, and casual comments - in some cases derisive — about specific people known for their skeptical views...a scientist writes of using a statistical "trick" in a chart illustrating a recent sharp warming trend...
In several e-mail exchanges, Kevin Trenberth, a climatologist at the National Center for Atmospheric Research, and other scientists discuss gaps in understanding of recent variations in temperature. Skeptic Web sites pointed out one line in particular: "The fact is that we can't account for the lack of warming at the moment and it is a travesty that we can't," Dr. Trenberth wrote...
But several scientists and others contacted by The New York Times confirmed that they were the authors or recipients of specific e-mail messages included in the file. The revelations are bound to inflame the public debate as hundreds of negotiators prepare to negotiate an international climate accord at meetings in Copenhagen next month, and at least one scientist speculated that the timing was not coincidental...
In a 1999 e-mail exchange about charts showing climate patterns over the last two millenniums, Phil Jones, a longtime climate researcher at the East Anglia Climate Research Unit, said he had used a "trick" employed by another scientist, Michael Mann, to "hide the decline" in temperatures. Dr. Mann, a professor at Pennsylvania State University, confirmed in an interview that the e-mail message was real. He said the choice of words by his colleague was poor but noted that scientists often used the word "trick" to refer to a good way to solve a problem, "and not something secret."
Excuse me, when one can't answer a question they simply hide it? Climate change is a natural process and will continue to be regardless of what humans do. Stick to the facts:
This page posted 20 December 2009
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