IPCC climate report

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#2136418 29-Nov-2018 09:07

MikeB4:

With the reserves of natural gas NZ has investment into new power generation from NG would not seem prudent. Maybe the investment would be better spent on wind or solar production.

Agreed. If we were to, say, swap out the coal boilers with NG boilers at Huntly then it might be worthwhile in the short term because NG is much lower emission (and also has less contaminants) than coal. But other than that, renewables are now the cheapest generation technologies. And that trend will only continue.

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#2136421 29-Nov-2018 09:23

Where else can we add more hydro, including man made lakes? Benmore is only 75 sq km

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#2136710 29-Nov-2018 17:09

tdgeek:
Yes. There is nothing wrong with burning fossil fuels, the problem is emissions. If you can burn FF and have no emissions, that's a huge bonus. Employment, supplementing green hydro, which would give a buffer as we move people to electricity, and many so ons.

The Stuff article did mention that we are a soft touch for this, give support, then the company flags it and leaves, with the IP they gathered for free. The Govt needs to be in this as a partner I feel.

I am going to call Nonsense on that.

Basic science 101.

Hydrocarbon + oxygen (that has heat applied results in) carbon dioxide and water as the result.

This is a basic definition of [hydrocarbon] combustion.

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#2136758 29-Nov-2018 18:04

TwoSeven:
tdgeek:
Yes. There is nothing wrong with burning fossil fuels, the problem is emissions. If you can burn FF and have no emissions, that's a huge bonus. Employment, supplementing green hydro, which would give a buffer as we move people to electricity, and many so ons.

The Stuff article did mention that we are a soft touch for this, give support, then the company flags it and leaves, with the IP they gathered for free. The Govt needs to be in this as a partner I feel.

I am going to call Nonsense on that.

Basic science 101.

Hydrocarbon + oxygen (that has heat applied results in) carbon dioxide and water as the result.

This is a basic definition of [hydrocarbon] combustion.

Call nonsense? Maybe you should read first. This is about carbon capture. Carbon capture means capturing carbon if that’s not clear. Hence zero emissions

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#2136760 29-Nov-2018 18:14

Without wanting to be too hyperbolic about it, @TwoSeven has a point. The reason you burn the fuel is that that releases energy. If you then have to capture and store the exhaust somewhere, that costs you energy, which was the point of burning the fuel in the first place. In the long run, the economics favour not burning fuel rather than burning it and trying to clean up afterwards. We would do better to concentrate on renewables than get side-tracked by what is still unclear as a long term answer. After all, even if carbon sequestration works, the fossil fuels are still going to run out.

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#2136792 29-Nov-2018 18:24

tdgeek:
TwoSeven:
tdgeek:
Yes. There is nothing wrong with burning fossil fuels, the problem is emissions. If you can burn FF and have no emissions, that's a huge bonus. Employment, supplementing green hydro, which would give a buffer as we move people to electricity, and many so ons.

The Stuff article did mention that we are a soft touch for this, give support, then the company flags it and leaves, with the IP they gathered for free. The Govt needs to be in this as a partner I feel.

I am going to call Nonsense on that.

Basic science 101.

Hydrocarbon + oxygen (that has heat applied results in) carbon dioxide and water as the result.

This is a basic definition of [hydrocarbon] combustion.

Call nonsense? Maybe you should read first. This is about carbon capture. Carbon capture means capturing carbon if that’s not clear. Hence zero emissions

Its still call nonsence because one then has to dispose of any captured carbon and the only way that can be done long term is to leave it in the ground in the first place.

The technique you describe is called carbon scrubbing. There are two basic issues - firstly, some of the chemicals required to scrub the co2 are probably worse than the Co2 in the first place - the second thing is once you have gathered up the C02 - what do you do with it?

I would suspect the answer would be stick it in the ground in an industrial landfill and leave it for a future generation to deal with.

I find a lot of these things that people suggest sound logical and are good ideas, but I often see they either leave out a crucial piece of science or rely on some critical component getting invented.

There is nothing stopping anyone from moving to renewables now, other the the desire to do so.

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#2136803 29-Nov-2018 18:52

TwoSeven:
tdgeek:
TwoSeven:
tdgeek:

Yes. There is nothing wrong with burning fossil fuels, the problem is emissions. If you can burn FF and have no emissions, that's a huge bonus. Employment, supplementing green hydro, which would give a buffer as we move people to electricity, and many so ons.

The Stuff article did mention that we are a soft touch for this, give support, then the company flags it and leaves, with the IP they gathered for free. The Govt needs to be in this as a partner I feel.

I am going to call Nonsense on that.

Basic science 101.

Hydrocarbon + oxygen (that has heat applied results in) carbon dioxide and water as the result.

This is a basic definition of [hydrocarbon] combustion.

Call nonsense? Maybe you should read first. This is about carbon capture. Carbon capture means capturing carbon if that’s not clear. Hence zero emissions

Its still call nonsence because one then has to dispose of any captured carbon and the only way that can be done long term is to leave it in the ground in the first place.

The technique you describe is called carbon scrubbing. There are two basic issues - firstly, some of the chemicals required to scrub the co2 are probably worse than the Co2 in the first place - the second thing is once you have gathered up the C02 - what do you do with it?

I would suspect the answer would be stick it in the ground in an industrial landfill and leave it for a future generation to deal with.

I find a lot of these things that people suggest sound logical and are good ideas, but I often see they either leave out a crucial piece of science or rely on some critical component getting invented.

There is nothing stopping anyone from moving to renewables now, other the the desire to do so.

I suggest you call out the company who proposes this. You clearly know more than them.

Renewables, sure, I agree. We wont be equipping every house with a 7kW array. Its not economic. And from what I gather here, it wont make much difference. WE cant farm wind everywhere. If you mention more hydro, which I agree with, there are environmental impacts. If you feel that farming natural gas and capturing the emissions is a problem, talk to them. As you will know, the Earth will not reach the IPCC levels, not even close. Not even when China is exceeding them. So, ci,ate change is a done deal, dont focus on green energy as there is no will. Focus on managing what will happen

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#2136805 29-Nov-2018 19:01

SaltyNZ:

Without wanting to be too hyperbolic about it, @TwoSeven has a point. The reason you burn the fuel is that that releases energy. If you then have to capture and store the exhaust somewhere, that costs you energy, which was the point of burning the fuel in the first place. In the long run, the economics favour not burning fuel rather than burning it and trying to clean up afterwards. We would do better to concentrate on renewables than get side-tracked by what is still unclear as a long term answer. After all, even if carbon sequestration works, the fossil fuels are still going to run out.

Yes, I get that and agree. But we are at a point where anything goes. We will fail to reduce emissions, thats already done. So anything, such as this company's idea that can burn natural gas, and be emission free is well worth a look. If its a no go, thats fine, its worth a look.

Sequestering carbon. There seems little interest in this, I assume economics. Whats carbon? Its in trees, its also what pencil leads are made of. So, ignoring economics why can't we sequester carbon in a solid form? Make it into bricks? Liable to be WAY uneconomical, but that will change. It wont actually as it will be too late. We will be spending megabucks, rebuilding damaged countries re weather and water level. We will have less area to grow food. We will be desalinating water. Then, the economics of making it now (which are uneconomic) will seem silly.

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#2136807 29-Nov-2018 19:06

I don't know what is involved in wave generation, or what the problems with that are, but I would think just on general principles that if anything like the level of investment devoted to fossil fuel generation was applied to that, it would probably become a viable alternative very soon. There is no lack of wave energy around New Zealand.

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#2136809 29-Nov-2018 19:15

TwoSeven:

There is nothing stopping anyone from moving to renewables now, other the the desire to do so.

Tell us your ideas, backed up by economics, as you and me or the Govt will need to provide it

Renewables, you have hydro, solar, wind, and tide.

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#2136810 29-Nov-2018 19:20

Rikkitic:

I don't know what is involved in wave generation, or what the problems with that are, but I would think just on general principles that if anything like the level of investment devoted to fossil fuel generation was applied to that, it would probably become a viable alternative very soon. There is no lack of wave energy around New Zealand.

I agree. To me, anything goes, as what is not economical now, will be dirt cheap after its turned to custard. I'd like very house to have 7kW solar PV. Export the rest back to the grid. Every house to haver solar tubes for hot water. Every house to have two wind generation tubes to get wind energy, even if its just a few hundred watts per hour. Way too costly. But get back to me in 50 years... We will be desperate by then.

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#2136820 29-Nov-2018 20:03

Rikkitic:
I don't know what is involved in wave generation, or what the problems with that are, but I would think just on general principles that if anything like the level of investment devoted to fossil fuel generation was applied to that, it would probably become a viable alternative very soon. There is no lack of wave energy around New Zealand.

There is nothing difficult about it and its done in many places, also a technology called marine current generation.

Solar farming is another technique - including urban farming (where not everyone has space for solar), community and country solar farming as well.

I dont agree with large scale hydro as it destroys too much of the surrounding ecosystem. But I do agree with micro-turbine swarms in human made pipelines.

Large scale wind farming we know about but there is space in the personal and micro wind farming sectors.

The same goes with solar roads and pathways - gap in the market.

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#2136930 30-Nov-2018 07:23

tdgeek:

Sequestering carbon. There seems little interest in this, I assume economics. Whats carbon? Its in trees, its also what pencil leads are made of. So, ignoring economics why can't we sequester carbon in a solid form?

To make carbon dioxide into solid carbon means detaching the O2 from the C, which by definition costs exactly as much energy as burning the C released to begin with, so without even trying to calculate losses due to inefficiency, the goal was to get energy out of the process and therefore making CO2 into a solid that way doesn't fly. You could maybe make it a solid by further reacting the CO2 into CO3- and end up with some sort of carbonate, (at the cost of more of your original energy) but carbonate is water-soluble so you can't store it; it will simply leach into the ground water.

You could directly freeze the CO2 into dry ice, but now you've just spent most of the energy you were trying to extract by burning the carbon into turning it into a big ball of ice, which needs to stay as a big ball of ice, which means you need to keep it in a big fridge forever (even assuming you can build a fridge big enough to hold a hundred billion tons of frozen CO2) - which costs you energy (forever).

So that only leaves squeezing it to high pressure liquid (energy) and pumping the liquid somewhere (energy) hoping it will stay there. Exhausted oil wells are a reasonable bet because if they weren't well sealed by the surrounding rock then there wouldn't have been a big puddle of oil there to begin with. But nobody is really sure how hot high pressure CO2 will interact chemically with the rocks in the long term, so we don't know how long it will stay there.

Turning CO2 into trees is always the dream but sadly that just isn't happening either. I've seen reports out this week that the Brazilian rainforests are being cut down faster than ever, and their new president is on record saying he wants to cut it all down so short of invading Brazil I don't see that as our saviour alone. (Mind you: that would be an ironic outcome compared to the latter half of the twentieth century).

Personally I think what we need to do is go all electric for transport except long haul aviation (which might be able to go hydrogen powered); use a mix of renewables and new-generation nuclear fission for the electricity; plant as many new trees as possible, and as many of those as possible should be proper native reforestation projects rather than timber farms, although even timber farms are better than nothing, and we will always need timber anyway. Carbon capture and sequestration should continue to be researched for emergency measures where we end up sucking CO2 out of the general atmosphere - but not as a way to carry on burning non-renewable resources which are going to run out regardless of how 'clean' we make it to burn them.

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#2136963 30-Nov-2018 07:29

Thanks for the detailed post, much appreciated. What is your opinion on this http://www2.nzherald.co.nz/the-country/news/article.cfm?c_id=16&objectid=12166840

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#2136969 30-Nov-2018 07:46

tdgeek:

Thanks for the detailed post, much appreciated. What is your opinion on this http://www2.nzherald.co.nz/the-country/news/article.cfm?c_id=16&objectid=12166840

I would support switching coal boilers to gas boilers as gas releases less CO2 than coal joule for joule, but I wouldn't support any new combustion thermal plants. The Allam Cycle isn't a magic way to ensure no CO2 is produced. The supercritical CO2 turbine cycle is simply a somewhat higher system-efficiency fossil fuel burner compared to the superheated steam turbine cycle. That's good, I guess, but "less" is still more than "zero" and the gas or coal it burns are still going to run out, and still have to be dug out of the ground and transported to site with all the other risks that that entails.

If we were really that concerned about risks to stable base load generation from going 100% fickle renewable energy then we'd be building a nuclear station instead.

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