Celia on CCS
September 10th, 2008Posted by: Roger Pielke, Jr.
I just heard an interesting talk by Michael Celia, chair of the Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering at Princeton. The talk (abstract in PDF) was remarkably bullish on the idea of geologic sequestration, even though Prof. Celia emphasized that he did not see his role as an advocate for CCS (Carbon Capture and Storage, e.g., from coal plants). Points that I took from the lecture:
1. Storage reservoirs are not an issue for CCS to make a major contribution to the problem. Celia spoke of 2-3 “wedges” but this was not expressed as a ceiling.
2. Leakage seems to be a non-issue, in some respects, but a lot hinges on how the policy process defines “leakage”. From the standpoint of contributing to less carbon dioxide into the atmosphere, leakage appears to be rather small, based on his research.
3. When asked about costs, he said that he cost is a “non issue” (though he said that his response was a bit flippant). he observed that he understood the costs of CCS to add about $0.06 kW/hr, and pointed out that there is no reason for anyone to pay these costs without some price of carbon emissions.
4. He was pretty dismissive of ocean sequestration when asked, but didn’t offer much more than suggesting that it was politically not viable.
Overall, it was a very bullish presentation on CCS.
September 10th, 2008 at 2:08 pm
I know I’m the token non-climate science person around here, but I’m also a bit of a jargon hater. CCS means what, exactly?
September 10th, 2008 at 2:20 pm
Good point, now updated. Carbon capture and storage.
September 10th, 2008 at 2:49 pm
So if CCS is effective, wouldn’t that support a policy of doing nothing at all for the next half century (since the overall benefit/cost analysis of a warmer climate is cacluated as a net positive). Then, at the point that the analysis begins to tilt negative, only then implement CCS.
September 10th, 2008 at 3:14 pm
“He observed that he understood the costs of CCS to add about $0.06 kW/hr…”
And…
“When asked about costs, he said that the cost is a ‘non issue’ (though he said that his response was a bit flippant).”
“A bit flippant”? As they would say on The West Wing, “Ya think?!”
A cost addition of 6 cents per kilowatt hour to coal-fired power would be huge. That would essentially double the cost…or even more (assuming he’s talking about the cost to produce electricity with coal increasing by 6 cents per kWh).
Wonderful Wikipedia says that a pulverized coal plant without CCS costs 4-5 cents/kWh, and a pulverized coal plant with CCS and geological “storage” (really disposal!) costs 6-10 cents/kWh. So Wikipedia doesn’t necessarily have the same absolute cost increase value…but it’s definitely a substantial increase.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Carbon_capture_and_storage
September 11th, 2008 at 7:14 pm
Some back-of-the-envelope calculations:
1) Coal generates approximately 2 trillion kilowatt hours per year in the U.S.
2) The average price of electricity from coal is probably about 7 cents a kilowatt hour. So that’s about $140 billion a year.
3) If CCS adds about 6 cents a kilowatt hour, that would be about $120 billion a year more in electricity costs to do CCS for all coal-fired plants.
4) That’s about $390 a year for every man, woman, and child in the U.S.
That’s a lot of money.
September 11th, 2008 at 8:17 pm
Some additional calculations:
1) Assuming 90% removal efficiency, CCS for all coal-fired plants would remove about 1.7 billion metric tons of CO2 every year.
2) The cost per metric ton of CO2 would therefore be about $71.
3) In 10 years, the cost would be $1.2 trillion, and 17 billion metric tons of CO2 would have been removed.
4) Assuming that doubling CO2 from 380 to 760 ppm raises the global temperature by 2.5 degrees Celsius (i.e., a climate sensitivity of 2.5 degrees Celsius), and given that 1 ppm is about 2.1 GtC…
5) The 17 billion metric tons of CO2 would be 17 times 12/44 = 4.6 GtC.
6) That would be about 4.6/2.1 = 2.2 ppm of CO2.
7) So that $1.2 trillion dollars would buy a reduction in temperature of 2.2 ppm/380 ppm times 2.5 degrees Celsius = 0.014 degrees Celsius temperature reduction.
So…why not simply pile the $1.2 trillion in a big pile of bills and set fire to it? At least it would be a swell bonfire.