New emission technology will save millions
Updated
It's less than three weeks to the Climate Change summit in Copenhagen but already, the international political will to reduce carbon emissions appears to be faltering.
But while cutting greenhouse gases carries costs to some traditional industries, it also provides plenty of opportunites to develop new technologies. Those technologies are under discussion at an Australian Academy of Technological Sciences and Engineering Symposium on in Brisbane today.
Presenter: Sen Lam
Speaker: Revis James, Director of the Energy Technology Assessment Center at Electric Power Research Institute
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JAMES: No they're not irreconcilable but to satisfy both at the same time it will require a transformation of the combination of technologies that we use to produce electricity and deliver electricity.
LAM: And are those technologies available?
JAMES: Some are, some are not, for example well established technologies like natural gas fired power plants, which have lower emissions than coal or nuclear power plants or wind turbines are available. The capability of capturing CO2 from coal plants is available but not cost-effective yet, and needs to be improved substantially. So there's research that's needed as well as available technologies.
LAM: And Revis I understand that the electricity sector some people are saying can provide CO2 emission reductions. What are the technologies required to do that?
JAMES: Well as I said earlier it requires a change in the combination of technologies. So for example in the United States 50 per cent of electricity generation is from coal plants, and 20 per cent is from natural gas and another 20 per cent is from nuclear. Those coal plants would have to either be replaced with other technologies or have to capture CO2 in order to produce electricity and meet our demand while reducing emissions. So that would require the introduction of CO2 capture and storage for example. We've done several analyses that would indicate that the least cost pathway to achieving reduced emissions while meeting demand, will probably involve a substantial increase in the amount of renewables along with CO2 capture and storage and nuclear, and will also involve substantial investment in increasing the efficiency with which we use electricity.
LAM: So in other words a happy balance but that's always sometimes difficult to achieve. What about carbon capture and carbon storage technologies, is that a viable option for coal fired power plants for instance?
JAMES: Well we think it is, I can speak from the US perspective, in the United States we've been performing research on those technologies and approving them for quite a few years now. And we are continuing to do that and a lot of investment's being made by the US government and private industry to improve the technology. Most of the challenges that remain with that technology are engineering issues; how to scale it up, how to make it more cost-effective, increase its reliability, things of that nature. And then those are significant challenges, but they don't require basic scientific breakthroughs. So we feel pretty confident.
LAM: Should we even be looking at coal though in this day and age? Isn't it better to put resources into creating better sources of alternative energy like wind and solar and so on?
JAMES: Well I think when you look at the amount of energy that we use in the world and when you consider the fact that we have so many growing economies, for example notably India and China, we're going to need to utilise pretty much all the resources that we have available. And so the real question is not should we use one technology or another, but rather how can we use the right combination of things in such a way that we can reduce our costs while meeting all the environmental objectives that we would like to meet. And that will involve substantially increasing renewables, but I think it's going to require that we continue to find a way to use existing resources we have like coal for example.
LAM: And might it be palatable to governments and energy sectors around the world, is the political will there?
JAMES: That's a question mark, increasing costs of producing energy are always politically very unpopular. And naturally when technologists such as myself and people at EPRI say that additional costs will be needed to develop technologies, the first question that are asked is do we really have to do that? Are there other ways in which we could perhaps avoid that? And some of those questions are still being asked, so it's going to take some time to create the consensus that we have to face up to this balanced portfolio.
LAM: But I think you might find that most people would be quite happy to pay for clean energy?
JAMES: Well certainly there are polls and a lot of sources of information to validate that. But of course the amount of the extra cost that people are willing to accept is variable depending on what type of economy you're in, where you live in the world and the other economic conditions that you're experiencing.
