On November 23, the Utah Division of Air Quality issued an "Intent to Approve" letter for a new coal to liquids facility outside Wellington in Carbon County, UT. The public comment period before final approval goes until Jan 15. (Tim Wagner from the Utah Physicians for a Healthy Environment told me about this.)
The project is described in a 300 page document at http://www.deq.utah.gov/businesses/R/RevolutionFuels/docs/RevolutionFuels%20projectfile154900001-15.pdf The major drawback of the coal to liquids technology used in this facility is that it generates a lot of CO2. But this CO2 is in a highly concentrated form, therefore it could be captured and sequestered (CCS) fairly easily. Unfortunately, the proposed facility does not do that. It just releases the highly concentrated CO2 into the air. Even with a modest carbon tax, CCS would pay for itself, but since our carbon tax right now is zero, this facility has a huge carbon footprint in order to save a little bit of money. The latest IPCC report is talking about the necessity of negative emissions, i.e., the necessity of taking CO2 out of the atmosphere again. This is a daunting task because of the low concentration of CO2 in the atmosphere, it is measured in parts per millions. One way to extract CO2 from the atmosphere would be a very similar technology as the one used here, but with biofuels or garbage as feedstock instead of coal. Such facilities might play an important role in an integrated energy system. But since our energy production is not organized as a system but "organized" by the market, in which each facility must first of all make money and its synergies with others are only a secondary consideration, this technology is being used to get more coal out of the ground (although we all know that most coal must stay in the ground), and it is pumping more CO2 into the atmosphere instead of getting CO2 out of the atmosphere. I see this as an example how the market functions as an autopilot "directing our material production system to the wrong target" as I wrote in [E3228]. Instead of directing us away from the abyss, the market steers us right into the abyss, like the elevator going to the storey of the building which is on fire. The metaphor of the invisible hand is no longer valid when we are dealing with planetary limits; the market prohibits a rational use of resources and technologies. Hans G Ehrbar _______________________________________________ pen-l mailing list [email protected] https://lists.csuchico.edu/mailman/listinfo/pen-l
