Following in the tracks of DeSmog again. So, the $1.8B carbon capture and storage commercial scale demo has fallen apart due to excess costs (or possibly other things: here is what they say; there seems to be some dispute over the siting. Since this is probably largely a boondoggle, which town gets the jobs is probably an important part of the project). This is bad news for all the people (including Hansen) who are counting on CCS to rescue us from our woes.
Stoat
Taking science by the throat... climate, rowing, and misc.
Profile
My family and me.
More...
Make sure you're familiar with the Comment Policy
Confused by my constant use of abbreviations? Then you need the Glossary
Search
Recent Posts
- Amerika headed for theocracy?
- Grauniad hangwringing
- A testable prediction by a nutter
- Cold in Cambridge
- Chris Huhne
- Justice and Injustice
- Black to play
- RFS 9: Kill Hollywood
- Plan 8 from outer space
- I feel dirty
Recent Comments
- Eli Rabett on Grauniad hangwringing
- Steve Bloom on Amerika headed for theocracy?
- Hank Roberts on Amerika headed for theocracy?
- Sesli Chat on A testable prediction by a nutter
- Martin Vermeer on Grauniad hangwringing
- The Bishop of Stratocaster on Grauniad hangwringing
- Doug Cotton on Grauniad hangwringing
- Steve Bloom on A testable prediction by a nutter
- Lazar on Grauniad hangwringing
- Lazar on Grauniad hangwringing
Archives
- February 2012
- January 2012
- December 2011
- November 2011
- October 2011
- September 2011
- August 2011
- July 2011
- June 2011
- May 2011
- April 2011
- March 2011
- February 2011
- January 2011
- December 2010
- November 2010
- October 2010
- September 2010
- August 2010
- July 2010
- June 2010
- May 2010
- April 2010
- March 2010
- February 2010
- January 2010
- December 2009
- November 2009
- October 2009
- September 2009
- August 2009
- July 2009
- June 2009
- May 2009
- April 2009
- March 2009
- February 2009
- January 2009
- December 2008
- November 2008
- October 2008
- September 2008
- August 2008
- July 2008
- June 2008
- May 2008
- April 2008
- March 2008
- February 2008
- January 2008
- December 2007
- November 2007
- October 2007
- September 2007
- August 2007
- July 2007
- June 2007
- May 2007
- April 2007
- March 2007
- February 2007
- January 2007
- December 2006
- November 2006
- October 2006
- September 2006
- August 2006
- July 2006
- June 2006
- May 2006
- April 2006
- March 2006
- February 2006
Blogroll
- My personal blog
- Back Seat Driving
- Bryan's Blog
- CIP
- QS/DA
- Deltoid
- Eli t Rabett
- Jeb
- John Fleck
- Only In It For The Gold
- Real Climate
- RP Sr
- RP Jr
- Sagredo
- Some are Boojums
- My view on climate change (Bart)
- Science of Doom
- Timmy
Other Information
| Co-moderator of globalchange mailing list | Subscribe to globalchange |
| Browse at groups.google.com | |
« Cars and planes, young and old | Main | Morano madness »
Less clean coal
Category: climate fuels
Posted on: January 30, 2008 2:24 PM, by William M. Connolley
Find more posts in: 
Environment
EnvironmentTrackBacks
TrackBack URL for this entry: http://scienceblogs.com/mt/pings/62752
Comments
In the old days, there was this thing called "progressive commitment" in R&D organizations (like my old Bell Labs).
1) Research
2) Applied research
3) Exploratory development
4) Development
5) Scale-up and deployment
I don't know enough about this specific project to know, or about the current state of CCS in general, but I observe that nothing guarantees that any given project is the right one, and in particular, one must be really wary of building big projects (4 & 5) prematurely, even though people love to have them in their area.
I can think of 2 Bell Labs projects that managed to burn $1B each (back in the 1970s, when $1B was real money :-)) by disobeying progressive commitment rules.
Put another way, I can't tell whether this is:
a) An unfortunate cancellation of a project in 2) or 3), which would have been of great value in moving forward.
OR
b) A fortunate avoidance of a premature 4) or 5) that would have wasted a lot of money.
Can anyone comment?
Posted by: John Mashey | January 30, 2008 4:39 PM
any idea how much CO2 could have been offset with $1.8 billion CO2 offsets?
Posted by: Sam-Hec | January 31, 2008 2:04 AM
Isn't the IPCC itself counting on CCS for something like 25-30% of total emission reductions to get us all out of hot water?
It's bad news, I think, much worse than some geo-engineering scheme falling apart.
[I only read WGI, who don't have to care about CCS. At the moment, in the US, CCS is obviously non-economic, because releasing CO2 is free. I wonder what price CO2 permits in the EU would have to be to simply make up the extra fuel costs for CCS? -W]
Posted by: Brian Schmidt | January 31, 2008 1:45 PM
From your link: projected cost overruns require a reassessment of FutureGen's design.
Just to look for hope and the bright side: maybe they will revaluate and end finishing the project after that? It is a very important project!
Dave Briggs :~)
Posted by: Dave Briggs | February 1, 2008 4:38 PM
Uhh, hello! Global warming is over. We can all go home now. A new meta analysis of famed groundhog, Punxsutawney Phil's long-winter/early-spring predictions indicate that climate change is reversing since George W Bush got into office. Now that's some good science. Check out the
data...http://republicanfiction.com
Posted by: Republican Fiction Project | February 2, 2008 9:18 AM