Black Energy

"SIMPLE SOLUTIONS FOR PLANET EARTH (BOOK 1) "(http://simplesolutionsbook1.com/) considers black energy to be all fossil fuels and nuclear fission. While the price of oil today settled into the 123/barrel range, coal, too, I should have earlier reported, has been surging. They blame China, which until recently exported the stuff, but is now importing. Higher coal prices of course mean higher electricity bills.

How much does coal cost? Five cents per pound. What can you buy today for that price? Of course, now you need to ship the stuff, which adds a new term to your energy lexicon: carbon footprint. Now, rock stars are criticized for flying long distances, thus adding carbon dioxide into the atmosphere. Local foods are further in vogue because the carbon footprint is low. Shipping Castello blue cheese from Europe is incurring some wrath. Coal, too, suffers from having to move the bulk.

I once worked for the Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory on "in situ" coal gasification. This Latin term means processing the coal in place, underground, by cracking it (originally using nuclear energy in the Plowshare Program...but when I was involved with conventional explosives to avoid public backlash), producing methane and hydrogen, but, also a lot of carbon dioxide. No problem, pump the carbon dioxide back into the ground, thus cracking more coal. Someday, even this carbon dioxide might be used to produce methanol. The problem was that the process was too expensive and risky. But with oil at 123/barrel, it's worth another look.

Incidentally, gasoline is ten times more expensive than coal on a weight basis. Comparing BTU/pound, coal provides five times more energy than natural gas. However, with regard to effective energy, coal produces twice the amount of carbon dioxide than natural gas. Getting lost in all these numbers? "BOOK 1" attempts to make sense of all this.

Are we reducing coal consumption because of global warming? Nope, the fastest growing energy resource today is coal. Again, China is blamed. The U.S. Department of Energy reports that just less than half our electricity comes from coal. By 2030, on top of expanded production, about 54% of our electricity will be coal-fired. That is 22 years from now. You can, thus, also blame the USA.

Wait a minute. What about wind power, solar photovoltaics, et cetera? Well, you see, that is the problem. Huh? Read "BOOK 1".

Clean coal? All our presidential candidates take the higher road and mumble something about this potential. But, they are looking for votes, and America is the Saudi Arabia of coal.

But what about global warming? Well, actually, it is technically possible to capture the carbon dioxide produced by burning coal, then converting this gas into methanol, leading into the topic of yesterday. The economics today look terrible, so the prevailing attitude is to geologically store this greenhouse gas. "BOOK 1" goes into an experiment we had in Hawaii to "safely" store carbon dioxide deeper in the ocean, but environmentalists went bananas.

Read Chapter One of "BOOK 1" for the truth about coal. Tomorrow, nuclear energy.

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