National Post   November 4/2005

Coal comes clean   by Tom Adams

Once a dirty, low-tech energy source, the coal industry is reinventing itself, thanks to a scientific and engineering revolution that is sweeping the world. A new generation of coal plants, cleaner than most gas-fired plants, is now in operation in the United States, Japan and Europe, with even cleaner plants under development.

Coal’s transformation into a clean, high-tech fuel stems partly from economics ¨C high fuel prices justified the R&D that brought these innovations online ¨C and partly from pressure from environmental groups that have been demanding, and getting, cleaner coal technologies. The result is cleaner coal that costs a fraction of yesterday’s alternatives, such as natural gas and nuclear.

Ontario was, until recently, part of this success story. Starting in 1994, the province capitalized on earlier technological advances by upgrading several dirty plants, making them among the cleanest on the continent. For example, the pollution-control equipment installed on Ontario Power Generation’s Lambton units 3 and 4, although not as good as more recent technology, nevertheless lets these units contribute about the same amount of smog and acid rain as Ontario’s gas plants, and less than many of the gas-fired stations in neighbouring states from which we buy power. Unfortunately, because Ontario’s McGuinty government stopped the province’s coal-cleaning program to make good on an ill-advised election promise, clean coal units comprise only 13% of Ontario’s fleet.

The only significant difference between modern coal power and the McGuinty government’s massive gas-fired power expansion is in the cost to consumers. Coal has a large and growing cost advantage over gas in North America ¨C its historical advantage of 5 to 1 has become 20 to 1 and is predicted to increase further.

Because of this drastic fuel price difference, the smart money is abandoning natural gas: Many natural gas stations in the U.S. are available for resale, sometimes from creditors, and often for pennies on the dollar. Invenergy, one of the companies building gas-fired generation in Ontario under contract to the provincial government, bought a mostly-built $300-million gas-fired generator in the U.S. earlier this year for $21-million.

The clean Lambton coal burners today deliver power at less than four cents per kilowatt hour, about 40% cheaper than the price consumers pay for power from the Bruce A nuclear station. Power from coal is even more valuable, given its ability to meet peak-hour needs ¨C a flexibility that nuclear plants, which must run flat-out, do not have. Yet Premier McGuinty recently announced that he will close these clean coal units in 2007, despite severe power shortages that threaten Ontarians with blackouts at peak periods.

Converting some of Ontario’s dirtiest coal plants could deliver large amounts of flexible power for less than five cents per kilowatt hour. The only alternative available for meeting Ontario’s requirements for large amounts of flexible electricity output supply is gas-fired power, which currently costs about 11 cents per kilowatt hour.

Building new coal plants would deliver even cleaner power ¨C half that of Ontario’s retrofitted plants. Many excellent sites are already available, such as the former coal-fired generation sites in the Toronto Portlands and the Toronto suburb of Mississauga. The Mississauga site could supply coal through a pipe-based, just-in-time inventory system, allowing the Toronto Portlands site to be developed cleanly and on a small footprint.

Locating cleaner new coal plants inside cities is key to minimizing overall fossil fuel emissions and to hedging against tougher future emission rules. Urban power stations can replace conventional furnaces by piping waste heat to commercial, industrial and residential customers. This kind of district heating network has slashed emissions at the world’s cleanest coal plant, in Copenhagen, Denmark. Completed in 2002, the unit operates at triple the efficiency of Ontario coal plants and is designed to blend biofuels with coal.

Unlike nuclear power’s technical and commercial uncertainties, clean coal technology is mature, fast to construct and so reliable that coal-plant equipment suppliers now routinely guarantee the environmental and production performance of their equipment. Alberta’s cleanest coal unit ¨C copied from a new Japanese station ¨C was completed earlier this year on time and on budget after just 36 months of construction. Existing coal plants are being refurbished in just 18 months. By contrast, the last nuclear refurbishment, at Pickering unit 1, took seven years with consumers, not the builder, on the hook if it doesn’t perform as promised.

Ontario faces blackouts, soaring prices and even an increase in pollution if it shuts down its clean coal plants while importing dirtier power from nearby states. Yet this is the Ontario plan, recently reaffirmed by Dwight Duncan, a leading light in the Ontario Cabinet. Only "Neanderthals" would reject gas fired plants for clean coal, he stated.

WARMING TO COAL:

Poll margin of error: +/- 4% 19 times out of 20.

Power Workers Union poll conducted among 600 adults 18 years of age and older in Ontario from Oct. 13 to 20, 2005.

88% believe the government should rethink its energy plan.

73% favour keeping coal plants open if the use of new technology reduces the harmful emissions from the coal plants.

52% disagree that Ontario has enough electrical energy to meet it future needs.

91% support the installation of clean-burning coal technology.

88% believe the Ontario government should rethink its energy plan.

A reader responds

Clean coal: What about CO2?

Re: Coal comes clean, Tom Adams, Nov. 4

Mr. Adams goes to great lengths to extol the cleanliness, cheapness and flexibility of "clean coal." However, he conveniently fails to acknowledge the major environmental cost of burning coal ©¤ the continued release of massive amounts of CO2.

"Clean coal" technologies have not yet changed the basic chemical equation of combustion: (CH20+ O2 ->CO2 + H20). This means a tonne of coal burned with "clean coal" technology releases the same amount of CO2 into the atmosphere as a tonne of coal burned with "dirty coal" technology.

Among those who study global warming there is widespread agreement that CO2 emissions are the major factor in climate change making "clean coal" a major contributor to climate change.

When considering "clean coal" as an option for Ontario’s base load power production it is important for all Ontarians to understand that these plants will release CO2 into the atmosphere, non-stop, for many, many decades and in so doing will certainly ensure Ontario’s legacy as a major contributor to climate change.

Jane Forbes, instructor, Science and Technology, OISE/University of Toronto, November 19, 2005

Tom Adams responds: Modern coal technologies, such as those in use at world’s cleanest coal plant, in Copenhagen, Denmark, have demonstrated that coal plants can achieve lower carbon dioxide emissions than those of the natural gas-fired plants Ontario is currently building. Even without the most advanced technologies, carbon dioxide emissions from coal approximately equal those of gas, if the gas is derived from imported liquified natural gas, expected to be North America’s largest new source of gas.

Re: Clean Coal: What About C02?, Letter, National Post, Jane Forbes, Nov. 19.

Ms. Forbes, of OISE/U of T, should know more about combined-cycle clean coal technology before she criticizes it.

In a nutshell, the process entails the combustion of coal in a self-contained oxygen-deficient environment, and in stages results first in CO plus other gasses and then CO2, N2, NOx and H2. All gasses are captured, so that the CO2 can be sequestered and the H2 separated. In addition to heat, the H2 byproduct has energy value.

We had an excellent presentation by the Clean Coal Power Coalition at our CIM branch in Winnipeg about two years ago, and the industry estimate then was that electricity prices in the order of 8 cents per kWh were required. The current marginal cost of producing additional power from natural gas- driven co-generation likely exceeds that price at current natural gas prices, so here we are in the future.

Credit is due to a committed environmentalist like Tom Adams for being prepared to discuss appropriate use of coal within the discipline of a scientific framework.

S. Mark Francis, Winnipeg chair, Canadian Institute of Mining Metallurgy and Petroleum, Winnipeg