[jato0072]

April 24, 2023. The EPA plans to require gas-powered plants to capture carbon dioxide emissions.

The new rules could be made public this week.

"These standards could level the playing field between new gas plants and new renewable energy," a Sierra Club official told Reuters.
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The Environmental Protection Agency plans to adopt requirements for gas-fired power generators to capture the carbon dioxide emissions of their facilities, Reuters has reported, citing unnamed sources.

According to the sources, the new rules could be made public as soon as this week to cover both new and existing power generation facilities running on natural gas. Natural gas, Reuters notes, accounts for a quarter of total U.S. carbon emissions.
Once these rules come into effect, utilities will have to choose what to invest in: gas-fired plants with carbon capture and storage systems in place or renewables.

"These standards could level the playing field between new gas plants and new renewable energy," a Sierra Club official told Reuters, which noted that currently, most U.S. gas-fired plants do not pay for the carbon emissions they generate.

EPA Targets Gas-Fired Power Plants With Carbon Capture Requirements

Apparently the so called "Inflation Reduction Act" passed and signed into law now allows the EPA to regulate carbon dioxide emissions.

Couple that with the new and creepy sounding "Office of Environmental Justice". Does carbon sequestering technology even exist? How much energy will it remove from the Natural Gas --> Electrical generation process?

[kublikhan]

Yes, the technology exists. But it is very expensive and energy intensive. That is why most of the still functioning CCS projects in the US are not pure CCS but instead used the captured co2 for enhanced oil recovery. I don't think you could do that with the vast majority of large co2 emitters in the country. And for the projects that don't use the co2 for enhanced oil recovery, many of those end up shutting down prematurely or never even getting off the ground in the first place. I'm afraid this might be one of those typical knee-jerk reactions by government trying to make things better, only for the solution to be worse than the problem they are trying to solve. As for the energy consumption of CCS, it varies. But I think CCS taking around 1/3rd of the energy produced by the plant is a common value.

Of the 12 commercial C.C.S. projects in operation in 2021, more than 90 percent were engaged in enhanced oil recovery, using carbon dioxide emitted from natural gas processing facilities or from fertilizer, hydrogen or ethanol plants, according to an industry report. That is why we consider these ventures oil or natural gas projects, or both, masquerading as climate change solutions.

In an effort to capture and store carbon dioxide from fossil-fuel-burning power plants, the Department of Energy has allocated billions of dollars for failed C.C.S. demonstration projects. The bankruptcy of many of these hugely subsidized undertakings makes plain the failure of C.C.S. to reduce emissions economically.

The Kemper Power Project in Mississippi spent $7.5 billion on a coal C.C.S. plant before giving up on C.C.S. in 2017 and shifting to a gas-powered plant without C.C.S. The plant was partially demolished in October 2021, less than six weeks before President Biden signed the infrastructure bill with its billions of taxpayer money for C.C.S.: good money thrown after bad. The FutureGen project in Illinois started as a low-emission coal-fired power plant in 2003 with federal funds, but ultimately failed as a result of rising costs.

The Texas Clean Energy and Hydrogen Energy California C.C.S. projects were allocated over a half- billion dollars collectively, then dissolved. The list goes on, with at least 15 projects burning billions of dollars of public money without sequestering any meaningful amount of carbon dioxide. Petra Nova, apparently the only recent commercial-scale power project to inject carbon dioxide underground in the United States (for enhanced oil recovery), shut down in 2020 despite hundreds of millions of dollars in tax credits.

Every Dollar Spent on This Climate Technology Is a Waste

Technologies that capture CO2 are energy-intensive. “If you had a 1,000-MW coal plant, in order to capture all the CO2 off of that plant, you would need 300 MW of steam and power. So, it effectively becomes a 700-MW net output plant.”

Capturing Carbon and Seizing Innovation: Petra Nova Is POWER’s Plant of the Year

[The amount of coal required for the 1GW power plant without carbon capture technology during its lifetime is around 1.52 × 10^8 tons and with carbon capture it is around 2.10 × 10^8 tons.] Carbon capture technology necessitates 37.74% more coal, which creates additional GHG emissions.

Coal with Carbon Capture and Sequestration is not as Land Use Efficient as Solar Photovoltaic Technology for Climate Neutral Electricity Production

1. Carbon Capture Is an Expensive Failure
After billions of dollars in public and private investments over decades, there are no carbon capture success stories — only colossal failures. One of the largest was the Petra Nova coal plant in Texas, once the poster child for CO2 removal. But the plant consistently underperformed, before it finally closed for good last year.

Another high-profile example — the San Juan Generating Station in New Mexico, touted as the largest capture project in the world — may already be headed to a similar fate. Update: On December 20, 2022, the City of Farmington announced that they withdrew from the carbon capture/sequestration (CCS) project at San Juan Generating Station. This was followed the next day (December 21, 2022) by Enchant Energy (Enchant) issuing a press release abandoning the CCS project at SJGS. SJGS and San Juan Mine are now permanently closed and will be decommissioned/demolished/remediated in early 2023.

2. Carbon Capture Is Energy Intensive
Running a carbon capture system is incredibly energy-intensive. It essentially requires building a new power plant to run the system, creating another source of air and carbon pollution. That undermines the whole goal of capturing carbon in the first place.

3. Carbon Capture Actually Increases Emissions
Due to the large amount of energy required to power carbon capture, plus the life cycle of fossil fuels, carbon capture in this country has actually put more CO2 into the atmosphere than it has removed.

4. Storage Presents Significant Risks
There are also other significant risks related to the disposal and storage of carbon. For example, well failure during injection or a blowout could result in a release of large amounts of CO2. Storage locations can leak CO2, as they are often sited near fossil fuel reservoirs. There, oil and gas wellbores provide a pathway for CO2 to escape to the surface. Those storage leaks could contaminate groundwater and soil. Moreover, CO2 injections could cause earthquakes, which have already been measured at injection sites.

Top 5 Reasons Carbon Capture And Storage (CCS) Is Bogus

[careinke]

As far as I know, the only practical and cheap way to sequester CO2 is Biochar.

Peace

[theluckycountry]

Biochar is the only rational method to employ.

[jato0072]

Great info kublikhan. Thanks.

It seems any requirement to sequester meaningful amounts of CO2 would be a fantasy. Approximately 1/3 of the USA's grid is powered by Natural Gas and 1/3 by coal.

[AdamB]

As far as I know, the only practical and cheap way to sequester CO2 is Biochar.

Peace

And how many Gigatons of CO2 can be sequestered with biochar in, say, a year? I have in the past gotten about 8 tons of CO2 into the ground in about 30 minutes, but that would only be like 140k tons per year if I was doing it full time 24 hours aday. Old CO2 injection technology, but still.

The Illinois-Decator Project [url=https://www.netl.doe.gov/sites/default/files/2018-11/Illinois-Basin-Decatur-Project.pdf[/url]did maybe 1,000,000 metric tons in like 3 years[/url] so old school and decades old school probably won't cut it. So, how many tons a year from biochar, give or take?

[careinke]

As far as I know, the only practical and cheap way to sequester CO2 is Biochar.

Peace

And how many Gigatons of CO2 can be sequestered with biochar in, say, a year? I have in the past gotten about 8 tons of CO2 into the ground in about 30 minutes, but that would only be like 140k tons per year if I was doing it full time 24 hours aday. Old CO2 injection technology, but still.

The Illinois-Decator Project [url=https://www.netl.doe.gov/sites/default/files/2018-11/Illinois-Basin-Decatur-Project.pdf[/url]did maybe 1,000,000 metric tons in like 3 years[/url] so old school and decades old school probably won't cut it. So, how many tons a year from biochar, give or take?

Good questions,

Well lets walk through the math, but first how long does your method last? I'm not sure I fully understand it. Anyway, lets get back to your questions.

Unfortunately, my sources use different measurement standards sometimes in the same paragraph so some number crunching is involved. Feel free to correct my math.

Here are my two sources for my data:
https://www.statista.com/statistics/276629/global-co2-emissions/
This graph shows we produced 37.40 Billion metric tons of CO2 in 2022 ( a metric ton is 2204Lbs). So I'm not sure where your GIGA Ton claim comes from. This works out to 82,429,600,000,000 Lbs. of CO2.

https://www.arti.com/20-metric-tons-of-co2-sequestered-40-yards-8000-gallons-of-biochar-on-the-way/

This site claims: 1 gal of biochar sequesters 6lbs of CO2. With 7.48 gallons in a cubic foot, that works out to 44.88lbs of CO2 per cubic foot or 1,211.76lbs per cubic yard.

So, How many cubic yards of biochar would be needed to sequester the entire 2022 CO2 production?

82,429,600,000,000lbs (CO2 emitted in 2022)/1211.76lbs (pounds of CO2 sequestered in a cubic yard of Biochar) = 68,024,691,358 Cubic yards of Biochar needed to COMPLETLY remove all the CO2 man produced in 2022. With a world population of 8 Billion, each persons responsibility would be around 8.5 cubic yards of Biochar.

Of course we really don't need nearly that much to bring down the CO2 levels world wide. growing things absorb some of the CO2, so do oceans and other environmental forces. Over the last 82 years the rise in CO2 production has been about .39 Billion Metric tons per year or 859,560,000,000lbs of carbon which = 709,348,385 cubic yards of bio char or 0.08866 Cubic Yards per person = 2.40 Cubic Feet per person, which sequesters 106.56lbs of CO2 for a hundred generations or more. If we doubled the number to 5 Cubic Feet per person, we could get back to 1940 levels in half the time and probably start a mini ice age.

Personally, I'm planning to produce around 13.5 Cubic Yards of Biochar a year, which covers a 72.9 people at 5 Cubic Feet. So we need another 111,111,111 people doing what I am to cover the world. Actually, far less as their are a growing number of commercial enterprises making thousands of tons of biochar and selling it for as little as $150/CY when ordered in lots bigger than 14 CYs. This way rich people can buy carbon offsets for their carbon intensive lifestyles similar to Plants.

Just think for a mere $4K a year you can go on with your old carbon intensive lifestyle knowing you have paid your penance to the little woke proles.

In conclusion with: reduction in ICE vehicles, rising oil prices, rising BIO char production, increases in solar power, increases in wind power, elimination of oil based fertilizers, pesticides, and hampering new well construction, we have this global warming thing under control.

Peace

[AdamB]

Well lets walk through the math, but first how long does your method last? I'm not sure I fully understand it. Anyway, lets get back to your questions.

It lasts as long as the formation I pump it into doesn't release it updip 50 miles away at outcrop I suppose. So if the formation doesn't outcrop, we are talking millions of years?

Unfortunately, my sources use different measurement standards sometimes in the same paragraph so some number crunching is involved. Feel free to correct my math.
Here are my two sources for my data:
https://www.statista.com/statistics/276629/global-co2-emissions/
This graph shows we produced 37.40 Billion metric tons of CO2 in 2022 ( a metric ton is 2204Lbs). So I'm not sure where your GIGA Ton claim comes from. This works out to 82,429,600,000,000 Lbs. of CO2.

A gigaton is one billion metric tons. A gigawatt is 1 billion watts, a gigaton 1 billion metric tons. So in your numbers we produced 37. gigatons of biochar. Used when bandying about global climate sized numbers because no one wants to use all those zeros.

https://www.arti.com/20-metric-tons-of-co2-sequestered-40-yards-8000-gallons-of-biochar-on-the-way/

This site claims: 1 gal of biochar sequesters 6lbs of CO2. With 7.48 gallons in a cubic foot, that works out to 44.88lbs of CO2 per cubic foot or 1,211.76lbs per cubic yard.

So, How many cubic yards of biochar would be needed to sequester the entire 2022 CO2 production?

82,429,600,000,000lbs (CO2 emitted in 2022)/1211.76lbs (pounds of CO2 sequestered in a cubic yard of Biochar) = 68,024,691,358 Cubic yards of Biochar needed to COMPLETLY remove all the CO2 man produced in 2022. With a world population of 8 Billion, each persons responsibility would be around 8.5 cubic yards of Biochar.

The creation of biochar requires energy. Here is a study doing some cost estimates of creating biochar to sequester which seems to indicate this:

Finally, we estimate the cost of carbon sequestration for the five technology pathways
currently used in Massachusetts. While the technologies differ, final sequestration costs
are similar, ranging from $82 to $119 per ton of CO2, with a mean of $102/ton CO2 for
the four commercial-scale technologies

So, using your figures, and feel free to check my math as well, each person responsible for 8.5# of biochar sequestering 6# of CO2 would be each person sequestering 51# of CO2.

Here is a link to making biochar in ones backyard. The way all these individuals might. Note the procedure. Now, here is the way the world envisions that people will be living. Particularly how most folks in the world might be living. Compare how individuals make biochar, with how they live that isn't rural anywhere (where most of the people aren't). A picture for reference.
How might you think we can square that circle? In the procedures themselves they are warning about creating smoke and whatnot and irritating you neighbors and causing pollution, etc etc. Are you sure that biochar is a solution while creating air pollution to such an extent that even your neighbors in an area where burning is okay are irritated?

Of course we really don't need nearly that much to bring down the CO2 levels world wide. growing things absorb some of the CO2, so do oceans and other environmental forces. Over the last 82 years the rise in CO2 production has been about .39 Billion Metric tons per year or 859,560,000,000lbs of carbon which = 709,348,385 cubic yards of bio char or 0.08866 Cubic Yards per person = 2.40 Cubic Feet per person, which sequesters 106.56lbs of CO2 for a hundred generations or more. If we doubled the number to 5 Cubic Feet per person, we could get back to 1940 levels in half the time and probably start a mini ice age.

Sounds good. Beyond getting waste organic elements to folks in apartment buildings and the wood or coal or whatever to heat them up and hoping they can be doing this burning and heating things on the roof or down on the sidewalk, I completely agree that growing things that require CO2 makes perfect sense. Of course, we would need to stop cutting everything down instead to make room for roads and buildings and normal economically driven growth, would you happen to have any thoughts on how economic activity in general (the prime driver in CO2 emissions) can be tamped down at the same time?

Personally, I'm planning to produce around 13.5 Cubic Yards of Biochar a year, which covers a 72.9 people at 5 Cubic Feet. So we need another 111,111,111 people doing what I am to cover the world. Actually, far less as their are a growing number of commercial enterprises making thousands of tons of biochar and selling it for as little as $150/CY when ordered in lots bigger than 14 CYs. This way rich people can buy carbon offsets for their carbon intensive lifestyles similar to Plants.

My nearest neighbor is about 10 yards away from the sides of my suburban house, and I've got maybe 20 yards to the fence of the neighbor behind me. Typical suburbia. I'm betting you aren't constrained as such. Any ideas on what local rules where most people live (cities, suburbia, etc etc) and how far back these rules would need to be rolled back to when everyone was using wood stoves in order to free up the ability of everyone on my block to begin what most closely resembles burning our garbage like we did in the old days?

It has always struck me that single solutions might fit one set of circumstances/living style/region/country, but certainly might not fit another. The folks deforesting the Amazon for example, they would be great biochar creators, they have all this waste organic material laying around (from cutting down the forests to make room for ranch land), no one minds the particulate pollution because there aren't many people around and if they complain, the would be farmers and government just kill them, and if it weren't for all of this accompanying deforestation, it would be great.

I might venture that simple solutions, or single solutions, might not be as scalable as some might think, as they apply their solution to their circumstances, but not that of others.

Just think for a mere $4K a year you can go on with your old carbon intensive lifestyle knowing you have paid your penance to the little woke proles.

Well, after I get the local air pollution laws changed (including those laid down by the EPA in areas with a past record of pollution being remedied by the Feds), all my neighbors can be convinced to do the same as we send up pyres of smoke from our biochar manufacturing and then trying to convince the county that this is for the good of CO2 sequestration, let alone the EPA.

In conclusion with: reduction in ICE vehicles, rising oil prices, rising BIO char production, increases in solar power, increases in wind power, elimination of oil based fertilizers, pesticides, and hampering new well construction, we have this global warming thing under control.

Peace

You sound pretty hopeful Hitman. And more rural than most. I do hanker for the days of burning our trash out back near the corn field, growing our own food, or trapping or shooting it, with 100 acres of wooded hills to wander around on doing as I pleased, but it has been many a year since America was more agrarian than not. The solar and wind stuff seems to be progressing, EVs show some signs of being useful, good luck with pesticides and fertilizers, and the oil and gas industry will stop drilling new wells when they can't afford to make a good return on their investment (which could be lower demand and corresponding prices) or the practice is banned outright. I think Greenland will melt before that happens, but we are all allowed to be optimistic, each in our own way.

[Plantagenet]

It's certainly a good idea to capture CO2 from both NG and coal-fired power plants.

The problem, as KKK has pointed out above, is that there is no good and cheap way to do it.

I wish the EPA luck with their new regulations........the real problems will arise if they start to shut down existing NG plants that don't meet their standard.

AND there is another serous problem with NG power plants.........they also emit methane or CH4, which is a far more powerful greenhouse gas then CO2.

There are CH4 leaks from the NG wells, NG storage tanks, and NG pipelines all the way from the wellhead to the power plant.

The whole effort to cut US CO2 emissions as a way to stop global warming is doomed to failure anyway, because global CO2 emissions continue to rise rapidly. Even if we did everything right in the US we couldn't stop the global increase in CO2. AND we clearly aren't doing everything right in the USA....for instance, while on one hand the Biden administration in the US is calling to regulate CO2 from NG power plants, on the other hand Biden has restarted selling oil from the strategic petroleum reserve in order to make gasoline cheaper so people will
drive more and release MORE CO2.

biden-admin-draws-spr-down-4th-straight-week


Biden restarted sales of oil from the SPR a month ago to keep the price of gas low, so people can drive more and release more CO2.

Cheers!