Articles by Sean Casten

Alberta sets aside nearly $4 billion for public transport and CCS

From Greenwire ($ub. req'd) comes this news from Alberta that sounds so promising and then gets it so very wrong.

First the good news: Alberta, under continuing pressure to do something about their tar-sand driven boom in CO2 emissions, has committed to using C$4 billion worth ($3.92 billion) of their budget surplus to lowering CO2 emissions. Whatever one thinks of tar sands, that's admirable.

But then, in an all-too-common case of confusing the path with the goal, they have announced that the money will be split into two $2 billion funds: One set aside to boost the use of public transport and the other set aside for carbon capture and sequestration (CCS). Better yet, some of the CCS will be used for enhanced oil field recovery, defeating the initial purpose.

The good news is that governments are taking climate seriously. The bad news is that climate policy remains a decidedly shoddy endeavor. We can do better.

Story below the fold.

Connecticut wants to hide carbon prices

The Regional Greenhouse Gas Initiative is far from a perfect GHG bill. It is heavily allocation loaded, focuses only on a small sector of the economy (power plants >25 MW), and doesn't have any direct carrots to go with sticks.

The good news, such as it is, is that RGGI leaves many details to the discretion of the states, such that they can provide state-level patches to correct those absences in the overarching model. They can also make it worse.

Earlier this week, Connecticut chose the latter. As Restructuring Today ($ub. req'd) reports, Connecticut Gov. Jodi Rell (R) has decided that if the price of carbon gets too high, she should rebate the money back to rate payers to make their energy cheaper.

In other words, rather than letting markets allocate capital in response to the price of carbon, we should hide that price from energy users. Yuck.

Story below the fold.

Forbes on utility objections to combined heat and power

Forbes has a nice story about the historic barriers that electric utilities have thrown up to block efficient power generation. This is nothing new to those of us "in the trenches," but it is nice to see this topic aired from more visible podiums. It's worth the time to read for anyone who thinks that the only barrier to low-carbon generation is technological development.

CCS: Environmental whack-a-mole

Carbon capture and sequestration gets heralded as a great way to lower CO2 emissions and keep burning coal. Unfortuantely, it also kills the efficiency of the coal plant, meaning that every other environmental externality associated with coal-fired generation -- from mountaintop removal to power plant siting -- is exacerbated by CCS. Planet Ark puts it succinctly:

The process called carbon capture and sequestration requires as much as 20 percent of the electricity a power plant generates.

That essentially means that for every five coal plants using the technology, a sixth would be required just to power the capture and burial of carbon dioxide produced.