💧simon holmes à court Profile picture
Sep 19, 2020 14 tweets 7 min read Read on X
🤓 carbon capture & storage has been given a bad rap.

yes, we've wasted $billions trying to graft it on to coal — we absolutely need to give up on that — but it's likely we'll eventually need the technology.

firstly… #CCS+coal:
there are / have been just 3 significant #CCS+coal projects:

1. boundary dam🇨🇦: $1.4bn project captures CO₂ from a 110 MW coal unit (tiny), averaged 0.592Mt/yr since oct 2014 — 40% below design.

25% of the plant's power goes to extracting and compressing the CO₂. Image
2. petra nova🇺🇸: heralded by @JoshFrydenberg in 2017, cost US$1bn to build, captured ~4mtCO₂ before being mothballed this year as was uneconomic.

NRG built a 75MW gas power station to power the CCS project. Image
3. kemper project🇺🇸: after 10 years of construction and US$7.5bn the project was abandoned and converted to a gas power station. Image
[each of these projects uses/used/was going to use the captured CO₂ for "enhanced oil recovery". ie, using CO₂ to make more CO₂… which would be a bit like the fire brigade knowingly hiring arsonists.]
🇦🇺 we had a go building a #CCS+coal power station in QLD.

the "ZeroGen" project spent $188m in gov't grants before being abandoned as they realised $1.7bn for a 390MW plant was ridiculous.

living up to its name, ZeroGen generated zero energy & sequestered zero tonnes of CO₂.
there's a lot of debate about whether #CCS+coal works.

there's *no* doubt _technical_ feasibility has been demonstrated in 2 small (and several tiny) projects, with some failures.

however also *no* doubt that it's utterly uneconomic.
i'm so confident that #CCS+coal will remain a dud that i've offered this bet:

(no takers)

longbets.org/837/ Image
…but don't be down on #CCS as a technology!

@Chevron is using it to capture "up to" 4 mtCO₂ from one of their LNG plants — just 40% of #gorgon's emissions. took 3 years, finally working.

we should require *every* LNG project in australia to sequester *all* of their emissions.
👇this australian technology provides a pathway to decarbonising cement manufacture using #CCS.

lured to europe thanks to a €12m grant + carbon price, right around time @HonTonyAbbott ripped half a $billion from ARENA and killed our carbon price.

…and there are other industrial products that might benefit from similar tech.

…and #CCS+bioenergy (if done responsibly) provides a credible path to actually pulling CO₂ out of the atmosphere.
it's a crying shame that the coal sector hijacked an important decarbonisation technology (that they never intended to implement) to prolong their life / muddy the debate.

…a little dated, but i wrote this up here:
theguardian.com/commentisfree/…
...oh, i forgot. we’ve been here before.

gov’t wanted to allow the CEFC to invest in #CCS in 2017.

i did this interview with @SabraLane:

#GroundhogDay

abc.net.au/radio/programs…

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More from @simonahac

Jul 20
hardly a week goes by without some 🪿telling me that "saudi arabia built a nuclear power station in just 8 years" or similar.

south korea built it for the UAE & it'll be 16+ years from formal announcement to project completion.

no, it was not on time & likely not on budget Image
any 🪿telling you nuclear can be built in australia in 2-3, 5, 10 or 15 years:
• ignores years of work required before construction starts
• doesn't understand IAEA's "construction" ignores _years_ of actual construction
• assumes an established regulator & warm supply chain.
Read 6 tweets
Jun 28
🤓 icymi, latest data from @EnergyInstitute is out!

this dataset has been lovingly curated since 1952, until recently by @bp_plc.

a good report, lots of charts and most exciting for energy nerds, lots of raw data!

i knocked up a few charts 🧵

energyinst.org/statistical-re…
🤓 global electricity generation by technology

gas and coal still growing, but at a slower pace than renewables.

quite likely we'll see coal and gas both peak in the next few years. Image
🤓 global nuclear and wind+solar, as energy

nuclear peaked in 2006. IEA expects that a new peak may be set in 2025. Image
Read 9 tweets
Jun 18
☢️ with the #coalition expected to announce its #nuclear plan on wednesday, here are 18 questions every diligent journalist should be seeking answers to:

🧵
1. how will dutton remove the ban?

the coalition would require control of the senate to repeal the ban, which is embedded in two acts.

the coalition hasn’t controlled the senate since 2004-2007.
2. which state(s) would dutton build the reactors in?

only VIC, NSW and QLD grids are big enough to handle a large nuclear reactor.

WA, SA and TAS grids are too small to host a GW-scale reactor.
Read 20 tweets
May 20
🤓 you'll probably hear scary claims today about "blackouts" in NSW, due to a "reliability gap".

…caused by delays with SA-NSW transmission line, a few batteries & mothballed generators.

to meet the 99.998% reliability standard, NSW needs to build more kit.

not a big deal. 🧵 Image
the eraring power station has 4 units, each 720MW. delaying closure of 1-2 units could fill the gap.

a 500MW–1GW gas generator operating <10 hours a year would also suffice. lower emissions and might be cheaper?

helpfully AEMO has provided 9 options to fill the gap: Image
small reliability gaps are forecast in VIC and SA, but far enough out that they'll likely evaporate… as they often do for this regular report.

why? because the reports show what happens if we don't do anything more than committed — and we pretty much always do.
Read 6 tweets
May 15
i attended the ‘navigating nuclear’ conference on monday in sydney.

up front: there were some high quality presentations — on issues such as health impacts, safety culture, regulatory systems. Image
…but sadly there was also some abject nonsense…
the presentation below argued that we have two options:

1. build a complex grid of wind, solar, hydro, hydrogen, batteries, pumped hydro, transmission and EVs.

2. just build nuclear and use existing powerlines.

…apparently #2 is the way to go. 🙄 Image
Read 10 tweets
Mar 21
⚛️ @abcnews's recent #FactCheck made a classic rookie error in calculating that the latest US nukes had "build times of 10.1 and 10.4 years".

depending how you count it, it took somewhere between 13.9 years and ~19 years to build them.

easy mistake to make.

let me explain… 🧵
ABC's analysis assumes the build time is the elapsed period between "construction start" and "grid connection" dates.

in the real world, a nuclear power building project begins years before "construction start" and often finishes months after "grid connection".
"construction start" is defined by the IAEA as the "the date when first major placing of concrete for the base mat of the reactor building is made."

"grid connection" is when "the plant is first connected to the electrical grid for the supply of power."

pris.iaea.org/PRIS/Glossary.…
Read 18 tweets

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