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Impact on the Environment
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One of the key messages from the
Stern Review on the economics of climate
change was -
"An overwhelming body of scientific evidence
now clearly indicates that climate change is a serious and urgent
issue. The Earth’s climate is rapidly changing, mainly as a
result of increases in greenhouse gases caused by human
activities."
Coal is a globally abundant and a
relatively cheap fuel and will continue to play a significant role
in power generation and steel production. But coal use
contributes significantly to CO2 emissions. In the future
technologies that enable carbon dioxide management will become
increasingly important.
A MIT
study discusses the interrelated technical,
economic, environmental and political challenges facing increased
coal-based power generation while managing carbon dioxide emissions
from this sector. Key findings in this study:
- Coal is
a low-cost, per BTU, mainstay of both the developed and developing
world, and its use is projected to increase. Because of coal's high
carbon content, increasing use will exacerbate the problem of
climate change unless coal plants are deployed with very high
efficiency and large scale Carbon Capture and Sequestration (CCS)
is implemented.
- CCS is
the critical enabling technology because it allows significant
reduction in CO2 emissions while allowing coal to
meet future energy needs.
- A
significant charge on carbon emissions is needed in the relatively
near term to increase the economic attractiveness of new
technologies that avoid carbon emissions and specifically to lead
to large-scale CCS in the coming decades. We need large-scale
demonstration projects of the technical, economic and environmental
performance of an integrated CCS system. We should proceed with
carbon sequestration projects as soon as possible. Several
integrated large- scale demonstrations with appropriate
measurement, monitoring and verification are needed in the United
States over the next decade with government support. This is
important for establishing public confidence for the very
large-scale sequestration program anticipated in the future. The
regulatory regime for large- scale commercial sequestration should
be developed with a greater sense of urgency, with the Executive
Office of the President leading an interagency process.
- The
U.S. government should provide assistance only to coal projects
with CO2
capture in order to demonstrate technical, economic and
environmental performance.
- Today,
IGCC appears to be the economic choice for new coal plants with
CCS. However, this could change with further RD&D, so it is not
appropriate to pick a single technology winner at this time,
especially in light of the variability in coal type, access to
sequestration sites, and other factors. The government should
provide assistance to several "first of a kind" coal utilization
demonstration plants, but only with carbon capture.
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Congress should remove any expectation that construction of new
coal plants without CO2 capture will be "grandfathered"
and granted emission allowances in the event of future regulation.
This is a perverse incentive to build coal plants without
CO2
capture today.
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Emissions will be stabilized only through global adherence to
CO2
emission constraints. China and India are unlikely to adopt carbon
constraints unless the U.S. does so and leads the way in the
development of CCS technology.
- Key
changes must be made to the current Department of Energy RD&D
program to successfully promote CCS technologies. The program must
provide for demonstration of CCS at scale; a wider range of
technologies should be explored; and modeling and simulation of the
comparative performance of integrated technology systems should be
greatly enhanced.
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