I hear you FL, but that reminds me of what a guy at Forbes said (forget his name unfort). He was saying CPP could be like the cellulosic ethanol renewable fuels regs: Congress basically mandated that cellulosic ethanol would be invented and would be mandated as a major share of gasoline market by 2015, Well that's nice to say! Realistic or possible is another question.
E storage @80: I have not seen a modern assessment of energy storage options from the thinktanks. Might be very useful. Might lead to different technologies in settings where the E-transmission grid is in place, and where it is not. The latter takes us outside the CPP topic here. But for renewables to grow beyond few%, storage must play a role.
I haven't seen that from forbes. Maybe I missed it. Here is the negative one Obama's Clean Power Plan Is A Salad Bar For Special Interests Mainly lots of overly complicated regulations for lobbysts and lawyers. Not that the plan isn't doable. Here is teh positive one. Only One Loser In Obama's Clean Power Plan
Easier to enact? Holy bananas...How does a coal state achieve 40-50% CO2 reduction? Well if they shut down half their coal plants, that'll get em 25% CO2 reduction. Guess they'll just have to rebuild the entire state energy infrastructure, and pronto! Someone please hit the EASY button for me! Seriously press here (this is just a thumbnail sketch)
Storage in terms of pumped hydro is number one today. Compressed air is a possible good use, according to california energy commission. The big work today is on hydrogen (about 40% efficient). Batteries are being used as buffers for congession and gt start up, but if prices continue to fall may become number 1. The real reason we can get to high levels of renewables without much storage is fast cycling ccgt. These plants can quickly come on line, and manage changes of renewable. It requires new natural gas plants are built though, and coal and natural gas steam closed down. Which is why some utilities want to look to storage, they want to keep there 40+ year old plants going, especially those grandfathered. I don't think any state has a 40% reduction from today's level, they are much easier than that, but you did the data. What does it say? The question is how long should an old polluting coal plant be allowed to run without replacement. The last eia assessment in 2011 had 86% of coal power coming from plants built before 1985. The youngest will be 45 years old in 2030. Now the assessment really looked at 2009 and before, and we have shut down a little of that old coal and built some better stuff since then, but their are a tremendous number of highly polluting plants that should be shut down before 2030. Say a court fight and planning take 3 years, you should be able to build new infrasstructure in 5 years, that is 2024, to get a good part of the work done. There is banking, so states that do it early don't have to even hit the 2030 goal. I think 2012 steam plants were required to be at 1350 lbs. If an old coal plant is 2250 lbs and a new ccgt plant is 800 lbs, then 62% need to be converted. In a coal state that like only replaces some of their 50+ year old coal plants with ccgt, and no renewables are required. Imagine if most of the cars on the road were built before 1980, how much more polluted the air would be in our big cities. Natural gas and wind, what we have been building take less money than new coal plants, and what are the odds that we will let a new coal plant operate for over 50 years. Those wind turbines may only need maintenance.
And why would they have to rewire the transmission lines if they replace an old coal plant with a new natural gas one? The easy part is that many of highest carbon emitters are, in fact, old coal plants. They are going to need replacement with or without the CPP. Current environmental regulations already keeps the power company from simply rebuilding the old design, and I think building a 'clean coal' plant costs more than a natural gas one. I suspect nuclear will cost more, but might be worth the GHG reduction.
I now call it the America-at-a-Glance Summary Sheet. Please check my math if you don't agree. I'm on-line with this as of today. I could use a check. Virginia alone was 37% reduction and we are only 1477 lbs/MWhr
Your ethanol example shows exactly the problem with the government advocating technologies instead of regulating pollution. What if the government had focused on lowering pollution instead of advocating ethanol? Would we have any of these ethanol issues? My point is viable pollution regulations (Viable = enforceable) really alter the utility options. Utilities always go with the lowest risk path to find the maximum ROI. Now utility level storage might easily become the lowest risk path. Meanwhile, storage developers can focus on a multi-billion dollar market (every utility in the USA) instead of the former million dollar markets (government R&D grants).
Like in the side mirror, objects in a government document may apear larger than they are. There are 3 ways to meet the clean power plan, lbs of co2/MWh is just one of them. You can build renewalbes, you can swap fuels, or you can close power plants. If we continue to do what we have for the last decade those targets will be met, and there probably will be fewer lawsuits agains coal ash or inter state pollution from grandfathered plants without scrubbers. Virginia has 4 GW or pre 1970 grandfathered coal. If they just replace most of it with fast cycling ccgt, and some west virginia wind it done. 4GW of ccgt probably cost $4.5B, divide that by 15 years and its $100M/year for infrastructure, and the lower cost of coal is probably offset by the efficiency and lower maintenance of natural gas. Last year virginia sold 108 million mwh, so it would add $1/mwh or $0.01/kwh, going from $0.0907/kwh to $0.1007/kwh, but with cleaner air. I don't think that is a huge deal or difficult. Add some wind you can keep some of those high polluting grandfathered plants going. Ethanol was to lower oil imports as part of an all of the above energy policy from Clinton-Obama. Al Gore has admitted now that when he cast the tie breaker vote in the senate it was for politics, and the environmental benefit was small to non-existant. Still ethanol now substitutes for 5% of oil, which helped break opec again. To me methanol from natural gas might be a better additive, then using land and water, and using the natural gas to make fertilizer, pesticides, etc. Gen II biofuels may work, but again we should be clear where they are. If ethanol mandate was lower it might actually help? Lots of poltics in this one too. I don't think its as bad as cap and tax or switch grass or the corn ethanol mandates.
Wow got an email today from a Republican Virginia House delegate saying he is proud to say Virginia will be following EPA CPP rules to achieve 38% CO2 reduction (it's actually 37% but close enough). I just don't know if he gets that EPA is regulating the states, like they regulate companies. He needs to get beyond his happiness, to see if Virginia can actually comply. Maybe he knows something I don't, not sure yet.
Natural usage in electricity generation has been increasing. I am not sure how they plan to reduce carbon and keep the NG usage flat. I guess, replace the old power plants with newer more efficient ones. I made the graph based on the data from EIA.
I agree that it seems impossible to shut down all the coal plants and not use any nat gas to replace it. That statement gave me heartburn when the White House first said that on 2-Aug, but I have since decided that is not a mandated requirement. Sounds like PA and VA are taking similar approaches with public "listening" sessions scheduled for September/October. It's a little funny the DEP's have no idea yet how they are going meet the plans...they have never had the job of telling the Utilities what plants to shut down etc. It should be interesting. Seems like the only option for VA is to shut down every coal plant in the state. Maybe we can keep one or two small ones, which we sort of need as our renewables is mostly wood chip burning in "hybrid" coal plants. Our target is harder than PA (VA is 934 lbs CO2/MWhr).
I think natural gas usage in electricity would accelerate as coal plants are replaced. That's probably the biggest bang for the buck to reach the CO2 reduction goal. Solar and Wind are gaining in double digits (due to huge incentives) but they are peanut compare to others. Isn't it funny, plugin advocates are against FCV due to natural gas usage to produce hydrogen? It's domestic fuel and also used in electricity. They don't believe in the bridge fuel, either domestic or not. They want to reach 100% renewable tomorrow, damn grid stability.
Don't get me started USB, as our Country is wildly polarized, and I do not think it bodes well for us. But there is probably some bi-partisan agreement that coal-combustion per se is not too good for us.
Where have plug in advocates been against a bridge fuel and insist 100% renewable right away? If the powers that be insist hydrogen FCEVs, I am not against using natural gas for it. When FCEV advocates downplay how much of the hydrogen supply for the cars will come from natural gas in US, and up play to ability to make hydrogen from anything, and lab results for renewable hydrogen production, I will call them on it. Plug in advocates overstressed the greenness of the cars in the beginning, and rightfully got called out on it too.
Sorry USB I said PA. NJ/Christie is fighting the CPP a little bit, and that makes sense to me. NJ probably in a similar boat to VA having to get rid of all coal plants. With NJ's push to solar, NJ's CPP resistance may seem to be a surprise to some, but when I lived there the state/utilities adopted a strong pro-coal stance. They probably were not planning to just shut everything down. I spent a good chunk of my time in NJ arguing against NJ's pro-coal stance (official state policy) back in the 1990's. Perhaps there is a middle ground for some states such as VA, NJ maybe PA to ask for review of targets to make sure we got treated fairly.
They expect natural gas usage for power will increase 30% from 2012, that would mean the country uses 10% more natural gas in 2030 than in 2012, as most natural gas is used for heat and industrial processes. If industrial use goes up that adds to the increase. If the majority of new natural gas power plants are the fast cycling type, making at least 58% efficiency at power levels over 40% then fall in ghg is pretty easy. These will be repacing 33% efficient coal plants, and 40% natural gas. A new fast cycling ccgt natural gas plant produces only 1/3 of the ghg as an old coal plant during normal operation. These plants can be turned completely off at low load, as they turn on in 5 minutes and can reach full capacity in 20 minutes. The old coal plants have to keep running at low load conditions as they can take a week to go from off to full capacity, the old steam natural gas plants also take a long time to turn on and off, but not as long as coal. This makes adding wind and solar much more compatible with the natural gas. Capital cost for a new ccgt plant is about $1M/MW ($1.4M in a high regulation + cap and trade state like California) and operation and maintenance about $20/Mwh. If we assume 30 year life 50% utilization the levalized cost in a high cost state is probably $31/Mwh (not much), if natural gas prices stay here. Building renewables with the natural gas increases short term cost, but reduces risk of that fuel costs going up, and reduces ghg. Cost of coal electricity in the 50+ year old plants is lower, simply because coal is cheap, they don't pay for pollution control, and the cost of the plant was paid many years ago. Still replacing the really old grandfathered coal plants removes most of the unhealthy emissions, and those probably cost society much more than building new ccgt natural gas plants.
That was a very important point. It is not just coal vs NG, but inefficient vs efficient and major pollution to boot. I don't know of NG needing scrubbers to prevent acid rain.
I'm not sure where the states and utilities agree or disagree. I don't think the utilities would have a problem at all if they could raise rates to make it very profitable to them. I would see the states having issues with raising utilities rates.
