EPA's proposed new Power Plant CO2 limits

Germany: well on the way to substituting nuclear with solar. I have no reason to think that once that is complete they will not build new capacity with solar and/or wind. The toughest nut to crack is phasing out dirty coal already on the grid. The US has also failed in this regard.

As I understand the new EPA regs, new coal has to be no dirtier than natural gas. That makes a lot of sense, although like Germany, solar would compete with new coal regardless just on economic grounds alone, or perhaps with up to a 2 cents/kWh clean energy subsidy. And since NG is preferred over coal as a peak demand plant, that will continue with or without the regs.

 

There should never be a small plant coal exception. These produce disproportianate pollution. If there is natural gas, it should be used. If not grid upgrades to get power to the area, especially solar or wind.

I was in boston 10 days ago, with some of the mit folks that study these things, and this is going to be headed to the courts. The only way a new coal plant would pass is if it uses ccs. That tech makes power about 25% more expensive, but requires geological features. I don't know what will happen in the court system. In Texas, Illinois, and California, new coal simply won't be built without doe money and carbon capture. The 3 us plants with the technology have federal money to offset costs, but what if these don't demonstrate its effective? China and Germany also are building such plants, but none have been running long enough to see how well it works. In some of other states utilities will likely sue.

 

That is what germany is doing, but not the US.

It all depends on how you look at ghg, coal mining pollution, and fracking pollution. Lots of different opinions out there, but opinions are like as$holes, everybody's got one. If you simply want to use less coal and remove a lot of the particulates, mercury, etc, then you shut down the old coal plants and build new ones that are more efficient and lower polluting. That is the Germany strategy, well and they are shutting down the nuclear plants are replacing some of that with coal and some with wind, a tiny bit with solar, etc.

If you think, ghg if we go the way the world is going, and everyone follows their promises, the world will likely get to 4 degrees centegrade (7 degrees fareigheight) by 2100, which could be majorly bad. Now figure that we have many coal plants that are 50+ years old, we may not want to build anymore that can pump out all that carbon dioxide in the US (they are going to do it anyway in china). Its likely politically easier to close down 40 year old coal plants than new ones. Now the coal utilities are likely to sue over this new law, but with the prices of natural gas, wind, and solar today, a new coal or nuclear plant is very risky, unless the politicians promise to allow the utility to pass costs along to the consumer. CCGT gas is much cheaper to construct, but the fuel may get more expensive in the future.

Coal with ccs is 10% to 15% less efficient than a plant that does not need to capture the carbon dioxide. There is plenty of coal though, and after that coke can be made from the oil sands This inefficiency does add to costs of the power produced, and without a coal power tax, the only way utilities will build ccs is outlawing the old tech, or subsidising construction costs. In the pilot plants in the US, Germany, and China the governments are subsidizing costs.

Even if coal was 50% efficient, a gas ccgt plant would produce substantially less carbon dioxide, but the question is should we be building ccs on ccgt also?

 

4 degrees C by 2100 is way out of line and is unlikely.
IPCC AR5 estimate according to Wikipedia
"The global surface temperature increase by the end of the 21st century is likely to exceed 1.5°C relative to the 1850 to 1900 period for most scenarios, and is likely to exceed 2.0 °C for many scenarios"
If the next 87 years is anything like the past 15, there will be no increase in temp.
Since weve already added 0.8 C since 1900 ,I presume the IPCC is estimating only an additional 0.7C by 2100.

 

I would never try to argue new science against wikipedia but,

Future Climate Change | Climate Change | US EPA

Now with the projected ghg emissions with everyone fufilling their promises we should serve at 7 degrees F (4 degrees C). Now sensitivity may be lower or higher than those models, but it certainly is not less than 0.5 (linzden) for a doubling, and that will be far higher than 0.

 

AR5 is the newest "science".
EPA graph is from 2008.
Observed temps today have already fallen below the lowest estimate in that graph,meaning those estimates are spectacularly wrong.

 

A 4C increase in mean global temperature by 2100 is viewed as even odds by IPCC-5 if scenario 8.5 is followed. The following is from the summary for policymakers:

Here is RCP8.5 in detail: pdf

From the same document, an easy to read table

 

I have not seen any new ar5 charts showing the spread. We do have this
http://www.climatechange2013.org/images/uploads/WGIAR5-SPM_Approved27Sep2013.pdf

It lowered the lowest estimate, it did not change the medium estimate as shown in the chart I gave you. Now what new science are you talking about. I ended with a lower low range estimate than the ipcc in my post to you.

 

From your link to the summary.
"Global surface temperature change for the end of the 21st century is
likely
to exceed 1.5°C relative
to 1850 to 1900 for all RCP scenarios except RCP2.6. It is
likely
to exceed 2°C for RCP6.0 and
RCP8.5, and
more likely than not
to exceed 2°C for RCP4.5. Warming will continue beyond 2100
under all RCP scenarios except RCP2.6."

 

Translating RCPs to CO2 emissions:




In 2012 Worldwide CO2 emissions were 31.6 Gt, and RCP8.5 implies about 5000 Gt additional CO2 emissions over ~ 90 years. This works out to a 1.172% annual emissions growth. Since the current worldwide growth rate in population is 1.14%, this scenario could occur if:

• No change in population growth rate
• Close to zero (0.032%) average annual economic growth rate per capita
• CO2 emissions -- business as usual, no change in fractional use of fossil fuels

The take-away point is that RCP8.5 is FAR from a worse case scenario.

 

Yes those are the lower bounds of the sensitivity curves, based on emissions. RCP2.6 really is based on all the countries almost instantly dropping 80% of ghg emissions. That is not happening. What about the upper bounds of the range? What if sensitivity is 4.5 or worse the unlikely 6.0 that would mean we get much hotter temperatures as shown in my graph above, or here from the ipcc 5 report spm 33 on the report I linked
http://www.climatechange2013.org/images/uploads/WGIAR5-SPM_Approved27Sep2013.pdf
and the speaker I saw did round, she said 4 degrees C if everyone follows there promises, but the report says 3.7 degrees. 4 is not an outlier, it is right in the range of possibilities if the world doesn't reduce ghg past current commitments.

The good news is vp biden said that the us is on track to drop ghg 17% bellow 2005 levels by 2020, which is what the US has committed to do. This new law is really about the next stage to drop things further than current commitments, which by the way would not greatly increase electricity costs. If future coal plants get say 10% of the us energy mix (old ones, nat gas, nuc, hydro, wind, solar) and they raise costs by 25% versus other coal, electricity prices in the US only go up 2.5%. Its likely with low cost natural gas and wind, new ccs coal will be less than 10%.

 

The key to this new coal rule is the slow down in non-government subsidiesed new coal plants. It will surely be challenged in the courts. It does nothing to shut down existing coal, in fact it slows down the trend to shut down coal plants, as new ones are more expensive.

The key factors in shutting down old coal plants are lower natural gas prices, and lawsuits that grandfathered plants have made close down when caught doing too many modifications to stay grandfathered. The epa has also passed interstate pollution laws, and tried to use one against some bad texas plants. EPA lost in court, and if the regulations had been written better and more fairly it would not have. Those plants should have been given a few years to shut down.

The thing that would drop coal pollution further faster would be a tax on coal, say $50/ton. If a plant used ccs you might rebate the tax. At $50/ton tax for coal, natural gas and wind look like much better investments, and grids would switch faster to them. This regulation really is a gift to the coal utilities, if a tax or stronger regulations are not put in place.