Cleaning Coal - With A New Tax?

September 6, 2008 | By TonyfromOz |

I know that I’ve mentioned this often, but it is always worth repeating, so that anybody reading for the first time can see the correlation.
Coal is burned to boil water. The resultant steam drives a turbine. That turbine then drives a generator, and that produces the electricity we all use.

A lot of people are surprised when you mention some of the facts about just how much coal is actually burned in the process. The nature of coal fired power plants is that to actually produce the large amounts of electricity that we use, then they have to be large, and by large, I mean in the vicinity of produced a nameplate capacity in the region of 2000 Megawatts. (MW) Smaller non coal plants run up and operate for short periods of time to top up the total power needed during peak times. However, the large coal fired plants run up to speed and stay at that speed producing the huge amounts of power that are needed constantly. They run up after they are commissioned and stay at that speed virtually for their whole life span, sometimes 50 years and more.
Coal needs to be continuously supplied to the furnace to keep the plant running.
It’s sometimes a hard thing to understand, but those large plants burn on average 10,000 tons a day.
That is the hard thing to imagine. On midsummer days, that amount can actually double.
I will mention one plant as an example, and I haven’t picked this one to point an accusing finger, because it is just an example.
The Bruce Mansfield plant in Beaver County in Pennsylvania burns 6.1 Million tons of coal each year.
Just under 50% of the total power used in the US is produced from coal fired power plants.
In the whole US, the amount of coal burned to produce that power is 1.6 Billion tons.

Now the next difficult thing to wrap your head around is this.

The burning of one ton of coal produces on average 2.4 tons of Carbon Dioxide, (CO2) the dreaded greenhouse gas we are told is causing Global Warming Climate Change.
Brown coal, (anthracite) produces more CO2 than high quality black coal, (Bituminous and sub bituminous), but the average would be closer to that level of a conservative 2.4 tons of CO2 per ton of coal.

So, for the US, the burning of that amount of coal produces just on 2.6 Billion tons of CO2, the largest sector for these emissions, and this amounts to just on one third of all CO2 emissions in the US.

Here in Australia, we are currently going through a debate to put a price on that CO2. A respected economist has just brought down a green paper that the Government is analysing it with a view to introducing that cost as early as 2010.

The economist, Professor Ross Garnaut, has indicated that the cost should start at $20.00 per ton and gradually increase from there.
Now, Australia has a considerably lower population than the US, hence we produce considerably less amounts of electricity. However, of that total, 78% is produced from coal fired means. To achieve this, we currently burn around 120 million tons of coal per year, thus producing nearly 300 million tons of CO2.
So, at the base price mooted by Garnaut, then all those power producers will have to contribute an amount of $6 Billion.
Here in Australia, the plants themselves are owned by the State Governments.
So, they will now have to pay this amount to the Federal Government, who have said that they will have to find a way to ‘look after’ these power plants at the front end.
So the State Governments will have to pay the tax, and then the Federal Government will distribute the money back to the States.
Professor Garnaut has admitted that electricity prices to the end consumer will increase by around 40%, and that would be a conservative increase.
He also says that introducing mandatory levels to cut the emission of CO2 will be of little value here in Australia unless the rest of the World comes along too.
For perspective, Australia contributes around 1.3% of the total Worldwide emissions of CO2. These measures and any other drastic measures taken at what would amount to enormous cost to Australia would see this percentage drop to around 1.1%, amounting to no virtual change. The argument developing here is that if the rest of the World does not fall in line with Australia on this matter, then whatever we do will be fruitless. The argument that Australia actually doing something like this provides leadership is spurious. China, the US, and India are currently the biggest emitters of CO2 on the Planet. Both China and India have categorically stated that nothing will stop them from industrialising their Countries and bringing electrical power to the people of those Countries, where currently only one household in six to ten has any power at all.
In the US, talk of a carbon tax is in the background, but has not yet come to the forefront of thinking at any level, be it at Governmental level, media level, or the people’s thinking.
So really, anything we do here in Australia will be futile at best and will mean virtually nothing, and all at enormous cost.

Now, having painted this picture of a new tax on CO2, the thing that puzzles me is this.

How does the logic work by introducing a new tax on CO2 emissions.
The amount of electricity produced might decrease, but that reduction will be so minor, it will be virtually inconsequential.
Currently, 65% of the total produced electricity goes to the non residential sector, such as industry, commerce, Government enterprises, and small business. This includes every high rise building you care to look at on the skyline of any city. All the air in those buildings is supplied from air conditioning units, not to heat or cool those buildings, but to provide breathing air for all the people in them. It’s not like you can open a window of your office up there on the fortieth floor to breathe the fresh air from outside. No, those windows are shut. You can’t just wind back the air to those buildings.

Industry will still use the same amount of electricity it always has, and the same goes for every part of the non residential sector.
As for that residential sector which only uses 35% of the power produced, in the heat of summer, will people not just stop using their air conditioners for cooling. In Midwinter, will people go without cooling? Will you all turn off your water heaters which consume almost a quarter of your household power needs? Will you not use the oven, the hotplates, the jugs, internal lighting, your TV’s, stereos, electric blankets?
No, household power usage will hardly change at all, and any change will be minor, and running at only 35% of the overall, will have even less effect.

Will it force those power providers to go out and construct new power plants?
No.
The cost for a new non coal fired plant runs into the billions if you’re talking same for same.
Not even Government owned authorities could afford this, and really what we are talking about is wholesale plant replacement.
It cannot be currently done with solar plants, and to a slightly lesser extent with wind plants, both of which only produce around 1% of the total power used in the US, and in today’s technological environment, can only run at 30% efficiency at best.
Nuclear plants can achieve the required replacement, but again you’re talking billions, and a long lead time.
Hydro is out of the question because environmentalists would rather see the rivers run free, floods and all.
Natural Gas plants use jet turbines, and these are currently a lot smaller than the larger plant turbines and only designed to run for short periods to top up that Baseload power.
Other sources are still in the formative stages, and are also enormously expensive.

Incidentally, nuclear power plants are totally out of the question here in Australia with the current incumbent left leaning Labor Government. It seems that the mining of what amounts to the largest deposits of uranium on the Planet is okay, but to actually use that uranium to enrich for power production, and then to build the plants is totally out of the question. You have to just shake your head, because that’s all you can do.

So, the introduction of a new tax has virtually no advantages at all.

So, tell me then. How is this going to solve the problem ………. any of the problems?

Incidentally think about this for a minute. If the same system were to be introduced into the US, even at the low cost of $20.00 per ton of CO2, the amount of money generated from this just from the coal fired power plant sector alone (which only contributes to 33% of emissions) would amount to $52 Billion, just from electrical power. Multiply that by 3 accounting now for all emissions, and it goes up to nearly $160 Billion. That $20 per ton has been set artificially low, because currently, in Europe, where they have the genesis of something similar, the cost of CO2 is $45 per ton, so now you’re looking at $360 Billion.

Now that amount of money might seem attractive to the left leaning side of politics, because you can bet Republicans would not even consider something like this.

No, this is most definitely not about the environment. Like I have always said, ‘It’s just about the money.’

Sphere: Related Content

Tagged with Australian ABC News, Carbon Emissions, Coal fired power plants, Greenhouse Gas, Kyoto, Professor Ross Garnaut |

Filed Under: Global Warming, News of the Day

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