Richard Muller, the physics professor at the University of California-Berkeley and the co-founder of the Berkeley Earth Project, was a long-standing skeptic of global warming. He recently concluded that global warming was real. Ironically, the Berkeley Project was heavily funded by Charles Koch Charitable Foundation, which has a long history of backing those denying climate change. Muller's conversion just puts him in line with the vast consensus of scientific opinion, notably expressed through the United Nation's Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change. It is ever more important to focus on the solutions to mitigate climate change. The last national-level effort in the United States (cap and trade program) died in Congress in 2010. Recent actions in California provide a silver lining, however, and an inspiration for the nation. A cap and trade program went into effect in the state on Jan. 1, as a result of legislation (AB 32) enacted in 2006.
The most potent greenhouse gas is CO2 (carbon dioxide); it contributes about 60 percent to global warming. It held steady at about 280 ppm (parts per million) in the atmosphere for the 10,000 years that preceded the industrial era. Since 1750 it has increased by 40 percent to 396 ppm today. Roughly two-thirds of the CO2 emissions result from burning coal and natural gas, primarily for the generation of electricity. (The remaining one-third comes from burning liquid fuels, such as gasoline.)
The EPA has proposed a rule that would cap the amount of CO2 that new fossil-fuel electricity generation units could emit at 1,000 pounds per megawatt-hour. Coal-fired units emit about 1,800 pounds of CO2 per megawatt-hour, while natural gas units emit about 800 pounds per megawatt-hour.
The EPA's motives have been questioned, that it really wants to shut down coal-fired power plants. That is a canard. The broad mix of solutions for reducing the CO2 from power generation includes switching from coal to natural gas, the capture of carbon in power plants burning fossil fuels, nuclear power and renewable energy (wind and solar).
The abatement efforts in the United States alone will make very little difference worldwide. Most of the world will continue to burn coal to generate electricity. Coal is cheap and easily mined. Its deposits are abundant, and are widely dispersed, discouraging formation of cartels. While coal and natural gas account for about one-third each of the electricity production in the United States, the share of coal-fired power is 79 percent in China and 69 percent in India. The rapidly expanding economies of such developing countries are likely to rely even more on coal to fuel their soaring electricity needs. The development of abatement technologies and regulatory regimes for emission of CO2 must, therefore, occur internationally, along the lines of previous efforts under the auspices of the United Nations, such as the Kyoto Protocol.
Burning gas generates about half the amount of CO2 as does burning coal, and the natural first step would be to convert from coal to natural gas wherever the latter is abundant. Thanks to hydraulic fracturing, or "fracking," the United States has seen a boom in recent years in shale gas production. But conversion from coal to gas will only get us half way there.
In the carbon capture process, the CO2 is removed from post-combustion flue gases, is compressed and transported to the point of disposal, where it is injected into suitable deep underground rock formations (such as, depleted oil and gas reservoirs, and saline water-saturated reservoir rocks) or directed to a use that results in permanent emissions abatement, such as enhanced oil recovery.
The technologies available for capturing CO2 include absorption, adsorption and membranes. Adsorption and membranes hold high promise, but they also require considerable development effort. Absorption is a mature technology in the natural gas and chemical processing industries. But its application to power plants is new, and requires demonstration at mid-level scale. The only demonstration project globally for absorption in post-combustion capture of CO2 is in the construction stage in Canada, due to come online in 2014.
How viable is carbon capture compared to the other abatement options? The absorption technology, aided by a major emphasis in research may limit the increase in the cost of power to 15 percent; the current estimates of the cost increase approach 50 percent. The cost of nuclear power is in the same ballpark as power generated in a fossil fuel plant, but nuclear requires four to eight times higher initial capital than a gas burning plant. Wind electricity costs between 15 percent and 25 percent more than standard electricity. Solar power costs more than twice as much.
So, carbon capture is competitive and viable. It is also the most strategically appropriate technology to focus on because the world is going to keep burning coal to generate power, no matter what. The chief emitters of CO2 — China (24%), the United States (18 percent) and the EU (14 percent) must take the lead in developing the carbon capture technologies. Concurrently, they must also enact regulatory legislation to put an appropriate price on carbon to support all viable abatement technologies.
The rising sea levels resulting from climate change threaten 180 U.S. coastal cities by 2100, with Miami, New Orleans and Virginia Beach among those most severely affected. The urgency of the need to mitigate climate change cannot be overstated.
Sardul Singh Minhas is president of Minhas Consulting Group of Anaheim Hills.