Should the only new coal plants built use coal gasification with carbon capture and sequestration?

Question

In order to lower there emissions as much as possible to prevent environmental damage and the resulting economic damage that comes from that, which if not prevented would be much higher in cost?

Answer 1

A lofty goal, but it will increase the cost of the power in the near term and there is no known way to sequester the carbon even if it is captured.

The cost estimates for 2 pilot projects are going from high to higher without construction starting.

Answer 2

It only makes sense if you make everyone else use coal gasification and sequestration. Don't forget about the immediate economic damage of not having electricity. The key is to spend just enough on prevention so that the costs do not exceed the damage. The fear is to spend so much on prevention that the costs outweigh the damage you are trying to prevent or fix. At best, it is a waste of money. At worst, it causes more harm than good. Carbon sequestration technology isn't proven at large scale processes and it is expensive in capital and energy use.

If you require new coal plants use coal gasification and sequestration, the costs would prevent people from building more modern and efficient power plants and make the existing dirty coal power plants run longer and harder, making more pollution. It would also drive more wind farms and gas fired power plants which would cause the electricity supply to be more unreliable and expensive.

A more rational approach that would work for not only coal power plants but cars which are the largest source of global warming gases is to charge increasingly higher and higher registration fees for older cars and plants. We have cars and power plants not because we want to pollute the the planet but because they do something very useful for us. Electricity is essential, as well as the ability to go from one place to another. However, some power plants and cars do this better than others. It would make sense that we reward the ones that do them better than the ones that don't do them well.

For cars, people can freely buy new cars without any retrictions. This allows people to buy cars that may not be using the BEST AVAILALBE TECHNOLOGY such as all electric cars to reduce carbon dioxide, but it does let them pick between diesel, CNG, or ethanol or high mpg cars.

The current system for power plants is called New Source Review. It has prevented those who want to run new and better power plants to use the only one option when it comes to best technology to prevent pollution. The choice of best technology is decided by the government and not the owner of the new plant. This stifles technology advancement into one path and prevents people from trying halfway technologies and only encourages people to run their power plants older and dirtier. The idea of not requiring new power plants to use coal gasification with carbon capture and sequestration is that any new coal power plant is better than any old power plant. The more we encourage the construction of new power plants, the more we can encourage old power plants to shut down.

If the goal is to reduce the carbon output in the most economical way possible, one solution is to implement a carbon tax for every time someone takes carbon from solid or liquid form and converts it into gaseous form. That way, people will pay only how much they contribute to global warming compared to everyone else. When coal is burned, a tax will be paid. If companies can think they can save money by reducing the carbon that goes into the air, they will invest in carbon capture technology.

Answer 3

Would you be willing to pay the much higher costs for electricity that would result? My guess is probably not. Just look at the complaints over the cost of gasoline, much of which is due to various environmental regulations.

Answer 4

It would be much easier to achieve your goals by building new Nuclear power plants instead of coal fired ones.

Answer 5

Seems like all that would drive the price of coal up above the price of alternatives. Fine then, build the alternatives.