Category: Environment

Recent research has highlighted the possibility of burying, or sequestering carbon dioxide in deep, disused coal mines. Not only might this allow us to reduce atmospheric carbon dioxide levels but the process would displace usable methane (natural gas) from the coal and extend the length of time we will have this resource available to us as a fuel and chemical feedstock.

However, I felt that the while the concept sounds viable initially, there are several loopholes in the whole carbon burial argument, especially when releasing methane is also brought into the equation. I asked team leader Thomas Brown of the US Department of Energy’s National Energy Technology Laboratory about my concerns.

First the whole process will require its own energy supply, which will in turn release CO2, as well as being expensive to undertake in practice. Moreover, most of the methane retrieved in this way will end up being burned as fossil fuel and adding still further to the global carbon footprint.

“You are correct,” Brown told me, “Cost projections for CO2 sequestration indicate it will be expensive and a great deal of research is currently underway to bring these costs down.” He points out the methane release process is quite encouraging because for every 2-4 units, or moles, of CO2 trapped, just one unit of methane is released.

“This suggests that [the process] has the potential to be more cost effective than the [alternative approach] of sequestration in deep saline aquifers,” Brown adds.

The coal bed methane will certainly be useful nevertheless and Brown points out that CO2 released by burning it will in turn have CO2 capture systems in place. “It is an additional energy source that can be utilized instead of venting it from coal seams to the atmosphere,” he says, “it also provides some offset for the cost of sequestering CO2 – methane is much more detrimental to the environment as a greenhouse gas than CO2.”

He adds that sequestration in coal seams my not be a viable option owing to low permeability values and swelling of the coal itself, which he discusses in his research paper. “More R&D is required,” he told me.

According to the UK’s Energy Savings Trust we have at least 12 gadgets on standby or recharging at any one time, including TVs, mobile phones, mp3 players, which adds up to a cost of about 40 pounds ($80) a year on domestic electricity bills. There is a strong call from environmental lobbyists for us to power down our electrical devices and now John Clare, outgoing head of one of the UK’s biggest high street electrical retailers, is calling on manufacturers to eradicate the “standby” button from devices such as DVD players and TVs.

According to Clare, when given a choice between a less efficient and a more energy efficient product, customers choose the least costly option. “Standby buttons costs so much money and produce carbon emissions,” he told BBC Radio 4’s Today show, “of which many consumers are not aware.” He suggests that because our modern lifestyles demand so many electrical gadgets that the onus should be on the manufacturers to produce more energy-efficient products and for retailers to keep the consumer informed of the energy ratings of these devices and not just the “white goods”, such as washers and dryers which already have an efficiency code.

The interviewer pointed out to Clare that the standby mode on a television is very important to the elderly and those of limited mobility. Clare responded by saying that such people can “use remote controls”. At this point, I got rather confused. He is advocating that manufacturers get rid of the proverbial “standby button”, which means that a device would be fully powered down to save energy. That’s fine, sounds sensible. But, if there is no standby mode and the device is fully “off”, how will a remote control help the elderly person who may not be able to clamber from their chair, bend to switch the TV on? Doesn’t the remote control require the device to be in a ready, “standby” state before it will function.

Clare then back peddled slightly and said that the standby button could perhaps be a kind of optional accessory that those of us capable of bending to reboot our TVs could have so that we might save that $80 or so a year. But, generally the elderly are those who might benefit the most from such an annual saving, and they would essentially be excluded by having to choose the standby button option.

It is true that the dreaded standby button is wasting energy, there are claims of their using up to 8% of total device consumption. But, there is evidence that hard powering devices on and off reduces their lifespan considerably compared to standby mode.

Regardless, the “Western” lifestyle, overall is far more of a problem. The amount of energy wasted by standby mode is trivial compared to the amount of energy wasted in using a washer-dryer several times a week. Even the “A” class, most energy efficient white goods use vast amounts of water (which costs energy to produce) and electricity, and the juice pulled by a standard television when in use far outweighs even the most inefficient standby mode. The Energy Saving Trust asserts that we should power down fully and switch off our chargers (presumably that includes those that don’t have trickle mode and so use no electricity when charged to capacity!).

The real problem is not standby mode at all. It is our attitude to consumption in general. Admittedly, there is an old adage that we should look after the pennies, and the pounds (dollars) will look after themselves. But, when it comes to power and water consumption, this is simply not true. Save a few milliwatt hours by unplugging your charger every day is not going to offset the consumption inherent in running a mobile phone network (all the construction and maintenance and operation of powered masts and exchange systems) nor the same for TV.

It makes sense to power down properly, but do not think it will save the world. Getting rid of your electrical laundry goods, TV, and car, might. But eradicating the standby button most certainly won’t.

The gist of a recent press release regarding research into alternative fuels for reducing the environmental impact of transport and helping us head towards a sustainable transport system said that there is basically no single alternative fuel that could provide all the answers. The research in question, published in the International Journal of Alternative Propulsion drew up a league table of alternative fuels that placed petrol (gasoline) and diesel at the bottom in terms of their negative environmental impact, closely followed by hybrid liquid gas driven vehicles. Surprisingly, at the top of the league table was the use of hydrogen fuel cells running on hydrogen obtained from converted methane. Surprising because one would assume that the use of methane, or natural gas, would have such an environmental impact as to push it down the league table and moreover be unsustainable.

The study’s authors, Karl Høyer of Oslo University College, Norway and Erling Holden of the Western Norway Research Institute, do concede, as is mentioned in the press release, that there is no alternative fuel that is 100% sustainable and has a zero carbon footprint. That is perhaps inevitable. However, there is research being undertaken that would suggest that natural gas is not the limited fossil fuel we might think. Indeed, there are vast reserves that are apparently produced by bacterial activity that might feed the league-topping fuel cells mentioned in Høyer and Holden’s paper.

One commentator, John Zerbe of the USDA Forest Service, in Madison, Wisconsin, was not convinced that the Høyer and Holden league table was valid at all. This is what he had to say on the matter:

“I think the most significant conclusion from the Norwegian scientists’ work is that currently there is no consensus regarding sustainable transport development. They obviously considered the relative importance of energy use, carbon dioxide emissions, and nitrogen oxide pollution differently than I would have. There is no way that I would rank fuel cell powered vehicles using hydrogen gas obtained from natural gas methane at the head of the list.”

Granted, fuel cell powered vehicles should be efficient. Chevron has stations that dispense hydrogen made, mostly, from natural gas. So, energy use with the fuel cell vehicle powered by hydrogen should be good and there is probably no nitrogen oxide pollution.

However, until Chevron has some experience, it is hard to know what the hang-ups will be. Use of fossil natural gas will certainly be bad for global warming. It is already conceded that hydrogen isn’t amenable to long distance transportation. So Chevron makes hydrogen close to where it is being used. Imagine the difficulties in filling a fuel tank on a vehicle with 5000 psi hydrogen. It seems impossible that they could prevent all leaks, and hydrogen at 5000 psi is probably more prone to explosion than gasoline or diesel at atmospheric pressure.”

Zerbe suggests that the best well-to-wheel evaluation would have to take into account a complete lifecycle analysis. Energy use would certainly be important in such an analysis, but a lifecycle analysis could be weighted so that generally more acceptable limitations, such as the unsustainable nature of fossil fuel natural gas is considered a more negative factor.

A TV public relations campaign is set to air at the beginning of February. The ad campaign sponsored by Avaaz.org is set to demand that G8 leaders put climate change, or global warming as we used to call it in pre-euphemistic times, at the top of the next Summit agenda in June.

Avaaz says this is the first such advocacy campaign and will demonstrate how citizens of every country might take the necessary concerted action on urgent global problems, such as climate change, poverty, and the Middle East crisis to persuade world leaders of the need for decisive steps towards finding solutions. The organisation anticipates a campaign launch with 880,000 participants from 168 countries.

‘Our political leaders are moving at sluggish pace as we approach a point of no return in global warming’ said Ricken Patel, the Canadian-British Director of Avaaz.org. ‘Global public opinion has been called the ‘new superpower’, but there is a huge gap between the world that most people want, and the world we have. The lack of action on climate change is a powerful example of that gap, and Avaaz.org will work to close it.’

Climate change is not a new issue, it’s not forty years ago that we were being warned that we were heading for a global ice age, we have had poverty ever since the first human traded an animal skin for food, and the crisis in the Middle East is as old as the cradle of civilization itself.

Can global citizens really stand up and be counted when it comes to such political activities? Or, are we doomed to repeat the same errors we see throughout history again and again?