According to today’s New York Times “it has become clear in recent months that the nation’s effort to develop the technique is lagging badly.” The effort to use abundant and cheap coal in a cleaner gasified form and capture the resulting carbon may come too late to be useful in the push to decrease greenhouse gas emissions:
“Coal’s had a tough year,” said John Lavelle, head of a business at General Electric that makes equipment for processing coal into a form from which carbon can be captured. Many of these projects were derailed by the short-term pressure of rising construction costs. But scientists say the result, unless the situation can be turned around, will be a long-term disaster.
…only a handful of small projects survive, and the recent cancellations mean that most of this work has come to a halt, raising doubts that the technique can be ready any time in the next few decades. And without it, “we’re not going to have much of a chance for stabilizing the climate,” said John Thompson, who oversees work on the issue for the Clean Air Task Force, an environmental group.
Dr. Thomas Cochran, along with Jerry Paul, will speak next Tuesday night at Dinner at the Square “The Nuclear Power Debate Version 2.0: What’s Old, What’s New, What’s Hype, What’s True.”
Here’s his advice to people in his field:
Always tell the truth. Always make understatements. And talk to your enemies.
Don’t you dare miss our next Dinner at the Square: “The Nuclear Power Debate Version 2.0: What’s Old, What’s New, What’s Hype, What’s True.” If you’ve caught our other dinners, expect more conversation this go round. This is a fascinating topic, one that most of us probably think we know things we’re plain old wrong about. So come!
Here’s the info:
Tuesday, April 29
5:30 to 7:30 PM
St. John’s Episcopal Church
211 North Monroe, downtown Tallahassee
Tickets are $25 pre-purchase and $35 on the day of the event.
Thanks to Anthony, a Dinner at the Square participant for giving me the heads-up on The Rocky Mountain Institute. Find their thoughts on energy here:
End-Use/Least-Cost Thinking
A Watt Saved is a Watt Earned/Demand-Side Management
What Exists is Possible
Systems Thinking
Tunnel Through the Cost Barrier
Market-Oriented Solutions
Regulatory Change
Small is Profitable
Stay tuned for the February edition of our newsletter, The Crier, for our draft recommendations list from our Dinner 2 conversation on Energy Alternatives a la carte.
Local governments and boards tend to be good at some things - fixing potholes, putting police officers on the streets, naming parks or schools for beloved village elders.
They tend to be less good at others, like, say, saving the world.
So it’s hard to make too much of the 60 or so people who turned out on a snowy, non-global-warming Thursday night for an event held by the Westport Green Energy Task Force. But it also might be a mistake to make too little.
It seems those folks in Westport are trying to do small, relatively painless things like replacing three light bulbs with compact fluorescents, dropping the thermostat a smidge, and turning off stuff they don’t use. Their goal is to reduce their calculated average 18 ton a year carbon footprint one ton a year for the next 3 years.
Said Kimberly Lake, vice chairwoman of the Westport task force “…trickle up isn’t enough. You need trickle down if you want to make massive changes.”
Sounds a little Village Square-ish up there in Westport.
Thank you to those of you who joined us Tuesday night for “Energy Alternatives a la Carte: Fossils and Sunshine and Garbage, oh my!”
We’re making our way through the tape to get you notes and to distill lessons out of our discussion. We also had some odds and ends fact check issues we’ll be working on and will get back to you once our crack team of ace reporters comes to some conclusions.
Until then, we invite those of you in attendance to use this thread to make comments, ask more questions. We plan to run a few more questions by Susan Story and Sam Kalen before we call this one a wrap, so if you want us to ask yours, now is the time.
For those of you who didn’t make dinner (we know it’s hard to believe that anyone might not have been there, they must be house-bound or something), take a look at draft recommendations from dinner one. We’re also delighted to have citizens outside of Tallahassee who are joining our blog conversation; we hope you consider yourself a member of the family, pull up a chair next to kooky Aunt Mildred and jump on in.
