As previously, a comment I read early in a long post that raises a query in my few remaining grey cells leads me to respond before I forget. ;-)
"We have heard of Carbon Capture and Storage (CCS). It is a working technology frequently employed across the oil and gas industries, often to reduce the concentration of CO2 in produced gas to a level at which the gas can be sold as fuel."
I read that 3 times before I wondered if you meant 'produced gas' to refer to the products of combustion rather than the (natural) gas that is produced *as the fuel*?
The puzzle is compounded by the latter part of the sentence " ... often to reduce the concentration of CO2 in produced gas to a level at which the gas can be sold as fuel."
That phrase infers removing CO2 from natural gas prior to combustion. However NG generally contains very little CO2. Certainly all (natural) gas distributed in Britain by National Grid must comply with its Gas Quality Standards, and constituent CO2 could adversely affect its Wobbe Number.
Also, it would be economically pointless to even consider scrubbing a minute % (if any) of CO2 from natural gas pre-combustion. Even worse - why bother? Let the CO2 flow through the combustion process and capture the (natural plus created) CO2 post combustion. ;-)
Perhaps ambiguity would be eliminated with ".... often to reduce the concentration of CO2 in products of combustion to a level at which the fuel meets emissions standards."?
"As CCS is working technology, all we have to do is scale it all up until we are using all the oil and gas wells we won’t need any more to store all the CO2 we are capturing from our new enormous CO2 industry. Right?"
In 2014, The Guardian enthused:
"Canada switches on world's first carbon capture power plant
Boundary Dam held up as first commercial-scale CCS plant and proof that coal-burning is compatible with cutting emissions"
Your "GB 2½ Years 2020 - 1H 2022 Renewables' shortfall chart" should be mandatory reading (and understanding) by all politicians and renewables' advocates.
Hi, I started to reply in LinkedIn but I think it is probably better to continue here.
Thanks for the link. I've read the article and it raises a lot of questions but the most important one is what is the "plan' you referred to in your reply on LinkedIn?
Is it the Sixth Carbon Budget from the CCC referred to in the McKinsey report?
I looked at the CCC site and there were three or possibly four multi-megabyte documents to download. I can almost guess from the cover graphics and the titles that they will be a hard and possibly unsatisfactory read. Maybe you can point me to a summary suitable for engineers. Maybe you have done one yourself.
To quote my dictionary: "The concept of net zero was originally closely related to the older one of ‘carbon neutrality’, a general idea that the carbon dioxide releases associated with an activity could be offset or undone by undertaking (or paying others to undertake on your behalf) carbon-absorbing activities. Some still use this definition, but other seek to take net zero further, taking non-carbon greenhouse gases into consideration. Some go further still, rejecting science-based approaches entirely.
On the other hand, one of my panel of reviewers suggested net zero was no more than ‘a
marketing-related calculation arrived at by performing a very naive mass balance over a small,
arbitrarily defined part of a much larger system’, or to put it another way, greenwash.
However far people go, net zero remains controversial amongst some environmentalists as it is
perceived as not going far enough, whilst some trade unions have sought to harness the idea to
their own political agendas by including for example a requirement for a ‘just transition’, favoring
their members in the interim.
Perhaps a more reasonable and less self-interested criticism of net zero is it can be rather like net
present value, kicking the can of reining in carbon emissions into the future, whilst we continue
business as usual in the present.
Whatever your view of these issues, it is clear that net zero can mean a range of things, most
notably in respect of what should add up to zero, the period over which the calculation is done,
and whether or not to include the various unrelated issues which stakeholders may seek to
smuggle in alongside the actual reduction in greenhouse gas emissions. In this way it is rather
Chris, very interesting. How did you get the Gridwatch downloads? I have the 2020 but they have not published 2021.
Hi Chris.
As previously, a comment I read early in a long post that raises a query in my few remaining grey cells leads me to respond before I forget. ;-)
"We have heard of Carbon Capture and Storage (CCS). It is a working technology frequently employed across the oil and gas industries, often to reduce the concentration of CO2 in produced gas to a level at which the gas can be sold as fuel."
I read that 3 times before I wondered if you meant 'produced gas' to refer to the products of combustion rather than the (natural) gas that is produced *as the fuel*?
The puzzle is compounded by the latter part of the sentence " ... often to reduce the concentration of CO2 in produced gas to a level at which the gas can be sold as fuel."
That phrase infers removing CO2 from natural gas prior to combustion. However NG generally contains very little CO2. Certainly all (natural) gas distributed in Britain by National Grid must comply with its Gas Quality Standards, and constituent CO2 could adversely affect its Wobbe Number.
https://www.nationalgrid.com/gas-transmission/data-and-operations/quality
Also, it would be economically pointless to even consider scrubbing a minute % (if any) of CO2 from natural gas pre-combustion. Even worse - why bother? Let the CO2 flow through the combustion process and capture the (natural plus created) CO2 post combustion. ;-)
Perhaps ambiguity would be eliminated with ".... often to reduce the concentration of CO2 in products of combustion to a level at which the fuel meets emissions standards."?
"As CCS is working technology, all we have to do is scale it all up until we are using all the oil and gas wells we won’t need any more to store all the CO2 we are capturing from our new enormous CO2 industry. Right?"
In 2014, The Guardian enthused:
"Canada switches on world's first carbon capture power plant
Boundary Dam held up as first commercial-scale CCS plant and proof that coal-burning is compatible with cutting emissions"
PROOF!
https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2014/oct/01/canada-switches-on-worlds-first-carbon-capture-power-plant
Strangely, its author Suzanne Goldenberg was either ignorant (of the facts) or suppressed minor details. Such as:
No mention that to retro-fit CCS onto existing plant involved de-rating that plant by approx 20%.
No mention CCS incurs a significant parasitic electricity load, almost 25% of the power plant’s output.
6 months earlier, even the BBC pointed out reality (to those who persevered to near the end of its article):
"It is estimated that adding CCS to a power plant could increase the cost of electricity by between 50-100%."
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/science-environment-27063796
For those now pondering the progress of the Boundary Dam project:
https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/saskatchewan/saskpower-carbon-capture-1.3896487
https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/saskatchewan/carbon-capture-critics-1.4388026
https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/saskatoon/saskpower-abandons-carbon-capture-at-boundary-dam-4-and-5-1.4739107
Your "GB 2½ Years 2020 - 1H 2022 Renewables' shortfall chart" should be mandatory reading (and understanding) by all politicians and renewables' advocates.
Well done for conceiving and creating it.
"Ah, but couldn’t we use surplus nuclear power in the electrolysers to keep them running continuously? Oh the stupid, it burns!"
If we could burn the stupid, there'd be no energy crisis:
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-hereford-worcester-23104502
Hi, I started to reply in LinkedIn but I think it is probably better to continue here.
Thanks for the link. I've read the article and it raises a lot of questions but the most important one is what is the "plan' you referred to in your reply on LinkedIn?
Is it the Sixth Carbon Budget from the CCC referred to in the McKinsey report?
I looked at the CCC site and there were three or possibly four multi-megabyte documents to download. I can almost guess from the cover graphics and the titles that they will be a hard and possibly unsatisfactory read. Maybe you can point me to a summary suitable for engineers. Maybe you have done one yourself.
To quote my dictionary: "The concept of net zero was originally closely related to the older one of ‘carbon neutrality’, a general idea that the carbon dioxide releases associated with an activity could be offset or undone by undertaking (or paying others to undertake on your behalf) carbon-absorbing activities. Some still use this definition, but other seek to take net zero further, taking non-carbon greenhouse gases into consideration. Some go further still, rejecting science-based approaches entirely.
On the other hand, one of my panel of reviewers suggested net zero was no more than ‘a
marketing-related calculation arrived at by performing a very naive mass balance over a small,
arbitrarily defined part of a much larger system’, or to put it another way, greenwash.
However far people go, net zero remains controversial amongst some environmentalists as it is
perceived as not going far enough, whilst some trade unions have sought to harness the idea to
their own political agendas by including for example a requirement for a ‘just transition’, favoring
their members in the interim.
Perhaps a more reasonable and less self-interested criticism of net zero is it can be rather like net
present value, kicking the can of reining in carbon emissions into the future, whilst we continue
business as usual in the present.
Whatever your view of these issues, it is clear that net zero can mean a range of things, most
notably in respect of what should add up to zero, the period over which the calculation is done,
and whether or not to include the various unrelated issues which stakeholders may seek to
smuggle in alongside the actual reduction in greenhouse gas emissions. In this way it is rather
like sustainability."