Gasification better for environment but adds to energy costs

CORPUS CHRISTI — Local discussions surrounding the proposed Las Brisas Energy Center have hit on a buzzword that also is shaping the national energy debate — gasification.

In a nutshell, gasification involves super-heating a solid fuel, such as coal or petroleum coke, to produce a synthetic gas. That gas then can be burned to produce power or put through other processes to form chemicals, fertilizers and fuels.

Gasification produces fewer air pollutants than burning the petroleum coke directly to power electrical generators, such as in the Las Brisas plant proposal, making it a favorite alternative championed by environmental groups. But Las Brisas officials argue gasification would ruin the commercial viability of their plant.

There’s evidence to support both sides. Although gasification technology emits only a fraction of many air pollutants, it could add 5 percent to 25 percent to the price of energy produced, industry experts say. That could make it virtually impossible for a project to compete in a non-regulated state such as Texas.

The technology used to produce power through gasification, known as Integrated Gasification Combined Cycle, has been proposed in Corpus Christi before, on the same site as Las Brisas. Tondu Corp.’s plan for a 600-megawatt plant was the only one of 19 proposed power plants statewide in 2006 that did not draw opposition from environmental groups. But plans were scrapped last year because of the increased costs.

“Corpus Christi is a natural location for the application of IGCC,” Tondu Corp. President Joe Tondu said last week. “We were unable to identify a market that was willing to pay for an additional cost that IGCC could generate.”

But the economic effect in the long run is less clear — future regulations on carbon dioxide emissions could make gasification-produced electricity 25 percent cheaper, according to the Gasification Technology Council based in Arlington, Va. The technology makes it much cheaper to capture carbon.

Jim Childress, executive director of the council, a national trade group of chemical and energy companies, said the debate in Corpus Christi is a classic example of those surrounding coal and coke plants.

“What we’ve seen happen is that over time these battles end up being a draw and nothing gets built,” Childress said.

BY LOUIS BERGERON                                                                     LM Glasfiber

Wind power is the most promising alternative source of energy, according to Mark Jacobson.

The best ways to improve energy security, mitigate global warming and reduce the number of deaths caused by air pollution are blowing in the wind and rippling in the water, not growing on prairies or glowing inside nuclear power plants, says Mark Z. Jacobson, a professor of civil and environmental engineering at Stanford.

And "clean coal," which involves capturing carbon emissions and sequestering them in the earth, is not clean at all, he asserts.

Jacobson has conducted the first quantitative, scientific evaluation of the proposed, major, energy-related solutions by assessing not only their potential for delivering energy for electricity and vehicles, but also their impacts on global warming, human health, energy security, water supply, space requirements, wildlife, water pollution, reliability and sustainability. His findings indicate that the options that are getting the most attention are between 25 to 1,000 times more polluting than the best available options. The paper with his findings will be published in the next issue of Energy and Environmental Science but is available online now. Jacobson is also director of the Atmosphere/Energy Program at Stanford.

"The energy alternatives that are good are not the ones that people have been talking about the most. And some options that have been proposed are just downright awful," Jacobson said. "Ethanol-based biofuels will actually cause more harm to human health, wildlife, water supply and land use than current fossil fuels." He added that ethanol may also emit more global-warming pollutants than fossil fuels, according to the latest scientific studies.

Original Story from Reuters.

A U.S. flag flutters in front of cooling towers at the Limerick Generating Station in Pottstown, Pennsylvania May 24, 2006. REUTERS/Kevin Lamarque

LOS ANGELES (Reuters) - The Bush administration has dropped controversial plans that would have allowed some existing power plants to expand without having to install new pollution controls.

Environmentalists declared victory on Wednesday while a spokesman for the Environmental Protection Agency said there was not enough time left in its term for the administration to finalize the rules changes it had sought.

Abandoning a second proposed change, the EPA also said it will not seek to loosen rules concerning plants near national parks and wilderness areas, according to the environmental group National Resource Defense Council (NRDC).

The Bush administration has for much of its tenure sought to change the manner in which existing industrial plants including power plants trigger the "new source review" provision of the Clean Air Act. The "new source review" was added to the Clean Air Act by Congress in 1977.