We’re screwed. Simple as that. Sorry folks, but I can’t think of a better word. Forgive my rudeness.
Here you will find a Nature article on how much fossil fuel has to remain in the ground in order to keep global warming at 2 degrees Celsius.
For those without access to Nature, I’ll quote from the abstract (emphasis mine):
Our results suggest that, globally, a third of oil reserves, half of gas reserves and over 80 per cent of current coal reserves should remain unused from 2010 to 2050 in order to meet the target of 2 °C.
Guess how likely that is, eh?
The Obama administration allocated a Lot of money for carbon capture and storage (CCS). This strategy seems doomed to fail. Here is a link to a CRS report provided by The Federation of American Scientists (FAS) via Secrecy News. I’ll give you a small quote, emphasis mine:
Authority to spend Recovery Act funds expired on September 30, 2015. Of $3.4 billion allocated for CCS activities,approximately $1.4 billion went unspent as of the spending deadline.The largest portion of the unspent funds, $795 million, was intended for FutureGen, which DOE suspended in February 2015.FutureGen faced various impediments that led to its cancellation, including delays in receiving required injection well permits from the Environmental Protection Agency, court challenges to its plan to sell electricity, and a lawsuit from an environmental advocacy group. Several other large CCS demonstration projects also were canceled, suspended, or failed to spend all of their Recovery Act funding before the 2015 deadline.
The sad thing is, the US strategy was largely dependent on CCS.
Those of you who think I’m beating up the USA again, will enjoy
this hotlink. In Saskatchewan, the Boundary Dam project tried to replace a coal-burning (lignite, actually) power plant with a carbon capture version. Again, emphasis mine, and here is a quote:
In 2015, internal documents from SaskPower revealed that there were “serious design issues” in the carbon capture system, resulting in regular breakdowns and maintenance problems that led the unit to only be operational 40% of the time. SNC-Lavalin had been contracted to engineer, procure, and build the facility, and the documents asserted that it “has neither the will or the ability to fix some of these fundamental flaws.” The low productivity of the plant had in turn meant that SaskPower was only able to sell half of the 800,000 tonnes of captured carbon dioxide that it had contracted to sell to Cenovus Energy for use in enhanced oil recovery at a cost of $25 per tonne. In addition to the lost sales, this meant that SaskPower had been forced to pay Cenovus $12 million in penalties.
This project was funded in part by the Canadian federal government ($240 million, CAD) and the original estimate of $1.24 billion became $1.5 billion. Saskatchewan taxpayers and ratepayers are on the hook for this.
OK, you say, so what’s your point? Simply this: depending on Carbon Capture and Storage is, apparently, bound to fail. SNC-Lavalin can’t do it in Saskatchewan, and Obama can’t do it in the USA despite significant dollars appropriated to try.
Now for the dumb questions (were you scrolling for this? Please advise.)
- Are we, as a species, likely to limit our fossil fuel usage as suggested in the Nature article as being required? Leave that much in the ground? Really?
- If you burn the fossil fuel, you have carbon dioxide (and other stuff, but let’s focus on the key greenhouse gas, OK?) which either gets into the atmosphere or doesn’t. The Saskatchewan attempt, if successful, would only have really sequestered about half of the CO2 created. Is that enough? Is that failure indicative?
- If those (or you, depending on where you’re reading this) clever Americans, who invented half or more of the technology sitting in front of me, can’t get it to work, what will the world-wide success rate be? Roughly zero?
- Finally, what next? Is there any ‘fall back’ plan?
I said they were dumb questions. We’re shafted, for sure. Sorry.
