Instead I concentrate on the energy architecture of the future, with my humble efforts focussing on increasing - perhaps marginally - the amount of nuclear in this country and also the US. The writer of this article seems to be doing the same thing. It was once suggested by a nuclear opponent that I provide some numbers showing that my position is correct, but I declined the privilege because I know that in reality the TV audience would not be interested in those or any other numbers, and the time taken to produce them would interfere with my exercise sessions and day dreaming.

Now that I think of it, perhaps you should reproduce the first paragraph in this appendix and attach it to a couple of thousand Christmas cards, which you can send to the White House and Department of Energy next December, What you don't have to mention though is that the popularity of 'capturing' and 'storing' CO2 is based on the money that some people expect to get from engaging in what Jeffrey Michel called "a thermodynamic" travesty. Unfortunately I have forgotten my thermodynamics, but I seem to remember referring to this practice on a number of occasions as an economic travesty.

Overall a very silly and expensive non-solution.

The author's combination of common sense and tongue-in-cheek approach is refreshing. I think the issues are a bit more pressing than he believes them to be, but he IS definitely pointed in the right direction.

We CAN make the entire energy picture better by gradually making CO2 an expensive thing to emit. This forces everyone to consider how efficiently they produce and consume energy, and to move toward low CO2 methodologies. A gradually increasing cost will gently herd the cats of industy, commerce and profitability in the right direction.

The operative issue is this: these costs must be globally applied in some way, or it will all be for naught. Getting THOSE cats herded and moving in the same direction is going to be tough, but I think our leading by example could be one excellent way to get most all the cats to follow.

A can of tuna wouldn't hurt, either...

Regads, RV

Our population excess is a race to the bottom. The fact that we are even quibbling about such things as our energy sources is testament to that. As is the fact that the world gets so much oil from countries that are basically detestable and would be shunned under any other circumstances.

Just a couple of re-directs:

1) CO2 sequestrestration is simply a strategy for oil companies in the EOR business to get paid for using CO2 for advanced oil recovery. They should pey their own freight.

2) Cap-and-Trade is just a way to funnel a large percentage of cash flows into the bonuses of bankers. A simple tax at source is a LOT cheaper to administer (as much as 20 to 25% exclusive of drug pricing, based on studies of health care).

3) By far the cheapest way to sequester carbon away from the atmosphere is to leave the coal in the ground. You plan to build a lot of new modern coal-burners which will last essentially forever, none of which can do anything but somewhat retard the progress of the problem, is no solution. Think that'll convince China the change course? Thought not.

4) Several others.

Otherwise, ha ha. Funny article.

"Statistical data on the human impact of sea level rise is scarce. A study in the April, 2007 issue of Environment and Urbanization reports that 634 million people live in coastal areas within 30 feet (9.1 m) of sea level. The study also reported that about two thirds of the world's cities with over five million people are located in these low-lying coastal areas. The IPCC report of 2007 estimated that accelerated melting of the Himalayan ice caps and the resulting rise in sea levels would likely increase the severity of flooding in the short-term during the rainy season and greatly magnify the impact of tidal storm surges during the cyclone season. A sea-level rise of just 40 cm in the Bay of Bengal would put 11 percent of the country's coastal land underwater, creating 7 to 10 million climate refugees."

1) IPCC consistently uses least-damaging estimates of outcomes.

2) IPCC has had to constantly revise upward its positions regarding eg. sea level rise predictions, as new data comes available. eg. they are presently hunting for some reason to declare more than a decade of satellite measurements of mass loss on Greenland and Antartica to be in error because they are much higher than their prior standard, tidal gauge measurements. If anything, IPCC presents the VERY BEST / OPTIMISTIC liklihood based on known science.

3) Every scenario IPCC considers ignores any and every possible Black Swan event. -- Under-glacier lubrication due to meltwater, sudden methane releases from artic bogland or offshore clathrates, EVERY potential feedback scenario, etc. etc.

However, given IPCC turns out to be correct, IDEALLY most of N. America outside of N Orleans and storm-prone east coast regions SHOULD see very little effect over the remainder of this century. Don't buy lowland in the Neatherlands or London, anywhere in Venice, etc. though. And forget much present farmland on river deltas, eg. Bangledesh, Myanmar, Vietnam, China... Perhaps those people can all move to Wisconsin and do jobs "N. Americans won't do", eh?

The problem today is the discussion has be captured by renewable power special interests to the exclusion of any reasonable discussion about what it really takes to reduce CO2 and what that will cost.

Mr. Fehring is pointing out how large the opportunity is to replace old, inefficient coal plants in the U.S. It would be interesting to know if European plants are as old as ours. We can largely leave the coal in the ground as old plants are retired if we replace them with nuclear generation. Wind is surprisingly ineffective in reducing emissions. That is due to the need to build new inefficient peakers to fill in when the wind is not blowing - which is most of the time. Solar is too expensive to be built in much more than token amounts. Those who believe CO2 is a serious problem, but refuse to deal with these realities will let the opportunity to replace coal with zero CO2 emitting generation pass us by. Since the self-appointed environmentalists are cow towing to renewable special interests who cannot deliver it seems we will be learning to live with global warming. Locate accordingly.

Thank you for injecting some common sense into today's energy and environmental controversies. I've been writing/editing in the energy business since 1975, and I agree that we should increase efficiency and develop all sources of energy, as you say. Many people fail to realize that efficiency helps the environment -- sometimes more than renewables do.

Similarly, many pundits and bloggers have an agenda promoting an energy source, while failing to see that we're going to need all of those sources.

I also agree with you that the bell has rung on climate change but it's not a disaster. When friends ask me what to do, I say do your best but don't expect it to matter much.

I'm not sure what you mean by "ultra-supercritical coal plants" -- the appendix suggests that these are IGCC (integrated gasification combined cycle). Could these be the next step beyond today's highly successful combined-cycle power plants? I don't know. The gasification technologies I learned about in the 1970s-early 80s were dirty and expensive. I'm not yet convinced that they're much better now, given decades of neglect (with some exceptions).

By the way, one idea from the later 80s, which I haven't seen revived yet, is cofiring or reburning natural gas or biomass with coal. I guess there must be a reason why no one's looking at it (or are they?).

Again, Mr. Fehring, I admire you greatly for daring to say that all of us should look beyond our own vision -- from "build nothing on planet earth" to "coal power now". Unfortunately, I don't have high hopes that America will adopt a realistic, pragmatic energy policy any time soon.

Thanks again for a refreshing article. Becky Busby becky@boxborosystems.com

They knew that the non-condensing steam engines that pulled almost all the trains worldwide got about 3 to 7 percent thermal efficiency. These were the locomotives of winning the west, the transSiberian RR, the Empire State Express, the Orient Express.

By all means we should use “waste heat” where we can effectively use it. Our automobiles are a good example. When I turn on the heater in my car the engine does not operate at increased thermal efficiency, yet power plants are credited with increased efficiencies when low temperature (so called waste heat) is used to heat a building. By this logic cars where the winters are severe are more efficient.

Of course we do not want to “throw away” energy. Or do we? It is rather ironic that traditionally those who don’t want to “throw away” have been denigrated as being cheap or evil. Whether it has been the meat packers who were attacked (by the muckrakers) for recovering everything from the animal but the squeal to casino operators (not who I normally support) vilified for washing playing cards for reuse.

Perhaps it is trivial but it has become common knowledge that a dishwasher (the machine, not the person) uses less hot water than traditional washing. I find that almost everyone believes it! Yet it is utter nonsense apparently based on the idea that one leaves the hot water faucet running continuously during the process. Not too long ago hot water came from a kettle heated on the stove. One kettleful might be used in the dishpan, a second kettle might be used to rinse – less than two gallons all together, far less than the usage of these efficient dishwashers.

I note that the Palms Dubai have "72 miles of shoreline" Manmade in about 7 years. So rich peple can more handily park their yachts and jet skis. But nobodys ever going to propose building 72 miles of dikes for the farmers of Bangladesh for when the 0.40 meter sea level rise salinates their farmland. Too bad that when the Indian continent split off from Africa it didn't carry a bit of that oil over to Bangladesh I guess. Sharing of the world's resources shoul be less of a lottery.

When American Indians had all of the resources of what is now the US and Canada most children died. Population was starvation limited - I see estimates that they could only keep a million or two alive at one time. But hadn't they won the lottery?

Such as the Dutch and Japanese should be in terrible trouble.

Alas, sharing is man's invention and had it been practiced widely we likely would have gone extinct ages ago.

A web site which acts as a depository for opposing data called iceagenow.com is worth reading. Seeking the truth requires examining all points of view and all available evidence to either prove or disprove the validity of the basic hypothesis. Its time to deflogisticate the argument and determine what is REALLY going on.

Suffice to say that I, along with most atmospheric scientists (realclimate.org) are in total disagreement with that premise.

That said, let me move on to the main area where there is agreement-improving energy efficiency.

While there are a lot of ways this can be achieved, the largest one by far is at the point of generation, whether that be coal, nuclear or to a lesser extent gas generation facilities. By installing a "bottoming cycle" at virtually any existing facility, based on the Atmospheric Vortex Engine technology, any plant's efficiency could cheaply be increased by about 50% (based on current electrical output) without burning any more fuel in the cycle at all. That would be a perfect opportunity to shut down the less efficient ones.

The thermodynamic basis for this increase can be read about in my article at Scitizen: http://www.scitizen.com/screens/blogPage/viewBlog/sw_viewBlog.php?idTheme=14&idContribution=1338

I hope the author will read this and take the time to formulate a response here.

Coal and petroleum are fossil fuels because local conditions caused acids and toxins to kill the bacteria that would have ordinarily decomposed the plant materials that composed them. Those acids and toxins were then cooked in under high heat and pressure for millions of years. Then we dig them up and release millions of years worth of toxic accumulations in minutes. And we keep doing it at ever increasing rates.

If we continue to use fossil fuels, we will become the fossils.

The problem is not population---the problem is consumption of resources. As an American Mr. H., you consume as much as 50 Chinese on average. Since poor people do not consume as much as wealthy people----as we move up the socio-economic ladder, the consumption rate increases geometrically because there are far fewer rich people than poor. Infants do not consume much, and might not survive to adulthood and wealth driven consumption.

It would make more sense numerically, politically, socially and economically to murder wealthy, high consumption people, than babies. Sort of like what happened in the French Revolution to the aristocracy during the Reign of Terror.

Is that the kind of population control you had in mind?

Well, if you are too cold in Wisconsin, you could always move to Death Valley.

Spend a summer there, and you'll find out in a hurry why it is called Death Valley.

If we heat up the entire climate of the world a few degrees----you'll be living in Death Valley no matter where you are at.

AND THE PROBLEM IS POPULATION! Everybody knows that, only they don't want to say it. And next to population the greed and brainlessness of our political masters, and the ignorance and irrationality of voters. That combination spells bad trouble in the future.

I'm not saying that some sort of climate change is not happening as change is the only constant in the universe. Glaciers and ice sheets have been melting since the end of the last ice age, so yes, the average global temperature has risen. There are myriad factors controlling climate and weather, the political class has seized on one molecule as the cause of all the "problems," forgetting that our species has prospered the most during warmer periods. As Deep Throat said in All the President's Men, "follow the money." The carbon tax will result in a huge transfer of wealth from the many to the few, and not accomplish the alleged goal of turning down the magic giant thermostat in the sky. The United States unilaterally reducing carbon output by 80% by 2050 is tantamount to national suicide. And all this based on a theory which is in dispute by the scientists studying the problem, and held as gospel by the lawyers, lobbyists, Goldman Sachs, and the government who will be on the receiving end of the money trail.

The point I am making is that we are going down a path which may not be the correct one, the basic premise needs to be re-evaluated to be sure it is fact, not theory. No weather scientists disagree that low atmospheric pressure and high ocean surface temperature contributes to hurricane formation, but enough people studying climate come to different conclusions about what is going on that to steer our society in a course which may not be correct could be disasterous.

And Len, your attitude of rejecting data not consistant with your preconceived beliefs, insulting and belittling anyone who suggests an alternative point of view, is like a little kid shutting his eyes, hands over his ears yelling "I don't hear you!"

I happen to be in favor of carbon taxes, which in one way or another would be returned to the people who pay them. The point then would be to - somehow - make the emission of too much carbon expensive, and thus cause a substitution out of emitting carbon. I had intended to do some work on this, but there is too much sun in Sweden now for me to bother at the present time . One thing however is clear, which is that I am NOT in favor of these or any other taxes being used to help finance crazy wars.

Responding to part of Jerry Toman’s comment of 7.16.09, I can only support the notion of recovering lost energy by means of a “bottoming cycle”. Whether still at conceptual stage or already developed commercially, any technology capable of recovering lost energy and converting this to electric power at utility scale, merits consideration. Selection must be based on a solid scientific evaluation. The three-legged stool is an analogy as good as any: Is it technically feasible? Is it commercially viable? Can it operate with little or no environmental impact? If “Yes” to all three, then go for it!

Increasing any thermoelectric plant’s dispatchable power output by at least 25% for the same amount of fuel consumed will reduce all GHG emissions per MW/hr of electric power generated. In some cases, at least, the host plant would not be modified in any way, thus avoiding scrutiny under New Source Review (NSR) rules.

For those technologies at a “ready-to-go” stage many could be up and running within one or two years, subject only to site constraints, transmission availability, geographic location, and governmental constraints. Such an approach would allow older coal-fired facilities to be phased out once they have fully depreciated. At this point it would be just good business sense for the owners to move to more efficient, but probably more capital-intensive alternatives.

References: http://www.coal.org/userfiles/File/Near_Term_White_Paper_11-07.pdf “Towards Near Term Actions to Reduce CO2 Emissions in the Electric Utility Sector” (Coal Utilization Research Council – November 2007).

http://web.mit.edu/mitei/docs/reports/meeting-report.pdf “Retrofitting of Coal-fired Power Plants for CO2 Emissions Reductions” (MIT Energy Initiative – March 23, 2009).

It was rich people that discovered and developed Penicillin, the Polio Vaccine, and lots of other stuff. Not to mention the Haber-Bosch process that gives us fertilizer. All of these accomplishments allowed the world population to rise 5-fold or so.

So the population has risen and now the poor complain there are no resources left for them. It's possible the developed countries will again be able to figure out something to address our energy shortfalls. But this time, it would be wise if such developments are also accompanied with some sort of population restraint, or we will find ourselves resource-limited again in some other area.

As I noted in the article, I believe there is significant potential to reduce carbon emissions by replacing some of the oldest units with higher efficiency (using ultra supercritical conventional units, combined cycle, integrated gasified combined cycle or pressurized fluidized bed units). I believe this approach makes more sense than capturing carbon emissions from existing units.

However, this will not happen unless the regulatory/political environment changes.

As a thermodynamist i have been working with a group of utilities to explore innovative ways of improving unit efficiency. While we are looking at bottoming cycles as part of this investigation, I have been discounting them because of the low available energy in the circulating water discharge.

I wasn't aware of the atmospheric vortex engine technology, which is a particularly novel approach. Thanks to Jerry Toman for passing this information along. I suspect that the boundary losses/mixing associated with a vortex may significantly reduce the potential energy that can be derived from such a bottoming cycle. However, I will bring it to the attention of the companies that I am working with, and will continue to follow the technology.

I also thank Alan Belcher for the information he sent regarding near term actions to reduce CO2 and retrofitting coal-fired plants for CO2 emission reductions.

I haven't seen many authors acknowledge the "global warming winners versus losers" issue. As I pointed out in the article, I believe it is clear that most of the United States and Canada will benefit from modest atmospheric warming. I am not suggesting that this should cause us to ignore climate change, however, because I fully recognize that there will be some areas of the world that are adversely impacted.

In the article I offer what I believe are pragmatic recommendations to address climate change. I'm glad that at least some people have given them thoughtful consideration.

Tom Fehring

We knew that the only fundamental way to raise the efficiency of an Otto Cycle (gasoline) engine was to raise the compression ratio. Or for a Diesel engine the compression ratio and cut off ratio.

Has anything changed?

"The thermodynamic basis for this increase can be read about in my article at Scitizen:

http://www.scitizen.com/screens/blogPage/viewBlog/sw_viewBlog.php?idTheme=14&idContribution=1338

Nothing changes when all thinking is done "inside-the-box".

If we couple a combustion turbine to a suitable electric generator we can convert the mechanical energy produced by the turbine into electricity. If we then use the exhaust gases from the CT to produce steam to drive a steam turbine hooked up to a second electric generator, we can then obtain additional electric power by much the same process as described above, and the combined electric output from such a facility would have increased significantly. But the thermal efficiencies of the CT and the steam turbine, considered individually as they should be, would remain substantially unchanged.

Compelling proof of this is evident in the much higher “overall energy conversion” efficiencies (80%+) which can be attained by a cogeneration, or a combined heat and power (CHP) facility compared to its thermoelectric counterpart producing electricity only at an excellent 46% efficiency, but having to dump its excess heat to some form of heat sink (cooling towers, once-through cooling).

The heat component of a CHP plant is, more often as not, used in some form of drying process, or perhaps for space heating. And in the vast majority of cases the end-user of that heat has to be located close to its source. However, if this energy were in the form of electric power instead of heat, it could then be shipped to wherever needed.

And here is the challenge I referred to earlier. We need to offer the electric power generation industry an energy conversion technology capable of converting low-grade heat into readily dispatchable electric power to be placed on the tie line along with the normal production of the host facility.

(I did not mention the Brayton Cycle. The ideal efficiency of the Brayton Cycle is identical to the Otto Cycle, i.e. dependent only on the compression ratio, simply e = 1 – 1/ r^(k-1) where e is ideal (limiting) thermal efficiency, r is compression ratio and k is the ratio of specific heats of the working gases. This had all been worked out (by Carnot b.1796) long before there were materials that could stand temperatures high enough to reap the benefits of high efficiencies. The centrifugal axial flow compressor also needed to be more highly developed. Behold the jet engine.)

The conventional Rankine Cycle plants, Otto Cycle and diesel engines are what we have. As others here have so well pointed out there are more efficient albeit much more costly way to make electricity. However if the billions of folks who have no electrical service are asked if they would prefer electricity now or save up for a more efficient plant X years from how I’d hazard a guess they would rather have it now. The best course is nuclear but alas the costs are surreal, note the present Montreal experience.

World population is still climbing by nearly 0.1 billion per year. Nearly all in the poorest countries.

Some thoughts on this: I notice he sort of emasculates the phrase by inserting "all". Kind of furnishes a universal escape. I remember a discussion about inserting "foolish" to "(Foolish) consistency is the hobgobblin of little minds." I tend to agree it sorta degrades the idea.

It was at least 60 years ago that I first heard the saying, used then more as a goad, an encouragemet, rather than an insult. For an art student, a poet, or a cook it can hardly be faulted. These things change but the laws of nature and the mutiplication tables don't. I have been trying to think of a case where it was justified as an insult in engineering. I have been admonished with the phrase when I only pointing out a proposed scheme violated arithmetic or thermodynamics. Or that hydrogen from water can never be a net source of energy. If those cold fusion guys had not been PhD academics would they ever have been given a hearing? Nobody said how great it was that they thought outside the box, yet they got ridiculed.

Thank goodness the Patent Office thinks outside the box lest we'd have thousands of perpetual motion machines with patents instead of only a few.

Conversion of low-grade heat energy into electricity is a tough proposition ...

There are two companies who make "waste heat to electricity" conversion systems, which are 8-9% efficient. Both of these are based on running fairly standard air-conditioning technology backwards - i.e. using low boiling point freon-like working fluids and boiling them with the waste heat, creating sufficient pressure to drive the compressor backwards, i.e. as a turbine, which then spins a generator. United Technologies , under their Pratt & Whitney division, sells this as their "PureCycle 200(TM)" system:

http://www.pw.utc.com/vgn-ext-templating/v/index.jsp?vgnextoid=7400b924618b0210VgnVCM1000004f62529fRCRD

The second such system is by ElectraTherm:

http://www.electratherm.com/products.html

I think that both of these systems are an ideal way to use waste heat, or geothermal heat, or solar-thermal heat, where the "cost" of the heat is very low.

My own idea in this area: Utilize waste heat to drive evaporative chiller systems, which create "cold sinks". These chilled fluid systems can then be used as a thermal efficiency driver for conventional high temperature processes, OR as an efficiency booster for the above two systems for UTC and Electratherm. Remeber that overall thermodynamic efficiency is as much a function of the heat-sink temperature as the high temperature part: Eff < (1 - (Tcold / Thot)) where the temperatures are in absolute deg.

Each layer of improvement has its own costs, and there will always be the law of diminishing returns which come into play. However, as energy prices increase, it eventually becomes worthwhile trying to squeeze a little more juice out of each energy turnip...

Regards, RWVesel

You stipulate the most of North America, outside of New Orleans would survive some small to moderate rise in sea level, correct?

I offer these three items for your consideration: 1 - The average height above sea level for the entire state of Florida is 30m. From a recent trip to Ft. Lauderdale, I suggest that the only things that would survive above the waterline in that area are the landfill sites, which reach 50-80 ft up. Florida and Louisiana are tied for second lowest average elevations 2 - The state with the lowest elevation is Delaware, at an average of 60 ft (27m). 3 - Most of New York City falls in the 10-20m elevation

In combination, these areas have a LOT of land, infrastructure, and population (millions of people) who reside at elevations of <2m.

We too would suffer ...

RWV

The one actual project done by UTC as a prototype, used two of the PureCycle systems, at a total project cost of I believe just shy of $2M, where at least 70% of that went for civil works. See the section entitled "Project Economics" on page six of the report at this first link below...

http://www.yourownpower.com/Power/2007GRCPaper.pdf

http://www.utcfuelcells.com/fs/com/bin/fs_com_Page/0,11491,0193,00.html

http://www.yourownpower.com/Power/grc%20paper.pdf

Chena Hot Springs Resort, the power consumer, claims $1k per day savings, but this assumes the systems is displacing on-site diesel generators. They were probably saving even more when diesel fuel in Alaska was going for $7 a gallon!

I would call either company to ask for some budgetary pricing on existing systems.

Regards, RWV