Another CCS scam bites the dust
October 10th, 2022
Here’s a real DOH! which could have been avoided, but DOE through several administrations keep throwing good money after bad for carbon capture and storage pipedream:
The ill-fated Petra Nova CCS project: NRG Energy throws in the towel
NRG’s Petra Nova project $$$:
Short version? FAIL! From the article:
Following this FAIL, the understatement of the century, from the article:
Yet CCS is a big part of the latest federal energy efforts. It’s also a huge boondoggle for not just outfits like NRC, but for certain “non-profits” like Great Plains Institute:
And check out these salaries:
Great Plains Institute helped push coal gasification, for extreme amounts of money…
Great Plains Institute – is Joyce getting their $$ worth?
January 18th, 2007
… but that pales in comparison for the dollars for this recent round of “carbon capture” promotional funding. Unreal…
Once more with feeling — carbon capture is not real, is not workable, is a waste of $$ and effort.
Rulemaking Initial Comments – Minn. R. Ch. 7849 and 7850
May 12th, 2017
The Minnesota Public Utilities Commission rulemaking for Minn. R. Ch. 7849, Certificate of Need, and 7850, Routing and Siting, is slowly moving forward. Here are the final drafts up for review before they go to the Commission for a rubber stamp and release for general comment:
Final initial comments on drafts were due on Monday and here they are, in alphabetical order:
20175-131687-01_Goodhue Wind Truth – Marie McNamara
20175-131650-01-1_Great River Energy
20175-131683_ITC Comments and Attachments
20175-131686-01_NoCapX – U-CAN – NRG & GWT
Reply comments are due by 4:30 p.m. on May 31, 2017. eFiling is preferred! If you need to register to eFile, GO HERE! It’s easy, quick, and makes filing a breeze. Get to work — there’s a lot here to comment on!
Gangs of America – good reading these days
February 9th, 2017
Looking forward to catching up with Ted Nace soon in San Francisco. He’s author of Gangs of America: The Rise of Corporate Power and the Disabling of Democracy — get your copy HERE.
Alan Muller and I had the good fortune of meeting him through our “no coal” work and the “No New Coal Plants” list that was instrumental in stopping so many coal gasification plants across the U.S., including Minnesota’s Excelsior Energy Mesaba Project (see also www.camp-site.info)and the NRG coal gasification plant proposed for Delaware. He wrote this Orion article about that coal gasification fight (a couple things are off — hey, Ted, it’s an ORANGE crate!!):
And from that, he also also wrote:
Climate Hope: On the Front Lines of the Fight Against Coal
Check these out, you can find them reasonably priced at www.abebooks.com. Support your independent bookseller!
Trump and ‘clean coal’ — just say NO!
November 13th, 2016
After this election, there are so many things to be concerned about, so many reasons to be utterly horrified… a Muslim database, Trump’s fraud trial to begin November 28th, promise of mass deportations, sharp increase in hate crimes, assaults and threats on the street and in the schools (and online, oh my!). Trump’s “100 Days” plan was out in October, and has many points, full of words to decode, including a ‘clean coal’ reference, showing he’s clueless, just clueless:
Trump’s Contract with the American voter — the First 100 Days
In the 2nd and 3rd debate, Trump used those two words that have deep meaning to me, “clean coal,” because of Excelsior Energy’s Mesaba Project here in Minnesota, and because of the NRG proposed IGCC plant in Delaware, both of which were defeated after a long protracted fight. There is no such thing as ‘clean coal.”
Coal gasification is one thing that my coal-plant designing Mechanical Engineer father and I had some bonding moments over, going over EPRI coal gasification reports from the 80s and the Mesaba application… And I had the pleasure of meeting and working alongside my father’s boss’s son, who is also an engineer, formerly with NSP/Xcel, who knew what a bad idea coal gasification is. Oh yeah, we who fought these projects have learned a lot about coal gasification, “carbon capture and storage,” and will not go there again (see Legalectric and CAMP – Citizens Against the Mesaba Project sites for more info). We know it doesn’t work. And experience with the few projects that did go forward, what a mess, cost overruns beyond the wildest SWAG estimate, inability to get the plant running… Trump, don’t even think about it:
IGCC – Pipedreams of Green & Clean
IGCC, coal gasification, is nothing new. And despite its long history, it’s a history of failure, failure to live up to promises, failure to operate as a workable technology, and failure to produce electricity at a marketable cost, failure to produce electricity at all! On top of that, it’s often touted as being available with “CO2 capture and storage” which it is not. That’s a flat out lie. Check this old Legalectric post:
More on Carbon Capture Pipedream
A key to this promotion is massive subsidies from state and federal sources, and selection of locations desperate for economic jump-start, so desperate that they’ll bite on a project this absurd, places like Minnesota’s Iron Range, or southern Indiana, or Mississippi. The financing scam was put together at Harvard, and this blueprint has been used for all of these IGCC projects:
That, coupled with massive payments to “environmental” organizations to promote coal gasification, and they were off to the races.
Joyce Foundation PROMOTES coal gasification
Doris Duke Charitable Foundation & IGCC – WHY???
VP-elect Mike Pence should know all about coal gasification, he’s from Indiana. Indiana is coal generation central, and has had a couple of IGCC projects planned, construction started, and built. Indiana’s Wabash Valley plant is a perfect example, a small IGCC plant that was built, and after it was “completed,” took 22 on-site engineers to keep it running, now and then, at a greatly reduced capacity.
Wabash River Final Technical Report (it was “routinely” in violation of its water permit for selenium, cyanide and arsenic)
When they tried to sell the Wabash Valley plant recently, of course no one wanted it:
Wabash Valley coal gasification plant closing!
And another Indiana plant, with huge cost overruns that never started operating:
Rockport coal gasification plant dies – Indianapolis Star
Coal News: $2.8B coal gasification plant in Indiana canceled
And then there’s Edwardsport IGCC plant, also in Indiana, what a disaster:
Edwardsport plant not at promised capacity
Settlement won’t be the last word on controversial Indiana coal plant
Duke Energy Edwardsport Plant Settlement Expanded
The original settlement in September was a response to the plant’s rising operating costs while failing to meet performance expectations.
In the new agreement, Duke Energy agrees not to charge customers for $87.5 million of the operating costs of the Edwardsport plant, $2.5 million more than the original agreement.
And note that problems with Edwardsport tie in to similar problems with the Kemper IGCC plant in Mississippi:
Indiana ‘cease fire’ could provide a model for Mississippi regulators
Yes, in Mississippi, the Kemper IGCC plant is proving to be a problem, and yes, folks, note the Obama promotion of IGCC — after all, Obama is from Illinois, a coal state, and had lots of support from coal lobbyists. Check this detailed NY Times article:
Piles of Dirty Secrets Behind a Model “Clean Coal’ project: Mississippi project, a centerpiece of President Obama’s climate plan, has been plagued by problems that managers tried to conceal, and by cost overruns and questions of who will pay.
The sense of hope is fading fast, however. The Kemper coal plant is more than two years behind schedule and more than $4 billion over its initial budget, $2.4 billion, and it is still not operational.
The plant and its owner, Southern Company, are the focus of a Securities and Exchange Commission investigation, and ratepayers, alleging fraud, are suing the company. Members of Congress have described the project as more boondoggle than boon. The mismanagement is particularly egregious, they say, given the urgent need to rein in the largest source of dangerous emissions around the world: coal plants.
Trump, just don’t.
Nuclear? I don’t think so…
November 6th, 2010
A little birdie sent this about “our Stevie,” former Minnesota Asst. A.G. Steve Corneli, now a Senior V.P. at NRG, is in the news.
Steve Corneli — he was the one who “clarified” that nuclear stranded costs (BIG BIG $$$$ which Northern States Power was claiming were due in the event of deregulation which they were fighting for) was really stranded ASSETS! Yes, dear readers, you’ve heard this before, but if you haven’t read this report, from the dark ages of 1997, please do, because incorporating this shift in perspective on stranded costs can free your soul!
And you may remember that dreadful idea on his watch that NRG should put an IGCC (coal gasification) plant in Delaware at its Indian River site with THIS, below, as a site plan, I kid you not:
Oh, my, that instills confidence, doesn’t it!
And so what’s he up to now? He’s pushing nuclear power, and next to him, there’s the Obama administration pushing nuclear power… and they wonder why we’re “disappointed?”
The fate of nuclear power after midterm elections
by Brian Wheeler, Associate Editor, Power-Gen Worldwide
In the largest shift of power since 1948, Republicans took over the U.S. House on midterm election night. And the nuclear industry could benefit from the Republican takeover as part of the clean energy legislation.
In a statement released the morning of Election Day, Don Gillispie, CEO of Alternate Energy Holdings, Inc., said that if Republicans won, the other big winner would be nuclear power. Well, we do know that Republicans have won the House and have made up ground in the Senate as well, even though Democrats still hold the majority.
Historically there has been more support from Republicans for nuclear power. But Steve Corneli, senior vice president of market and climate policy for NRG Energy, said there is an increasing awareness from Democrats that nuclear power can be an important part of energy independence and a zero-carbon emission future.
Michigan representative Fred Upton, like many Republicans, is a supporter of nuclear power in the U.S. Upton is also a strong contender to head the House Energy and Commerce Committee; the committee that sees over the national energy policy.
“Through a greater commitment to nuclear, we have a unique opportunity to cut greenhouse gases, provide stability to our electrical supply and create jobs,” Upton told Reuters.
John Boehner (R-OH) is expected to take over as the new Speaker of the House and is also a strong proponent of nuclear power.
“The new Congress will be more pro-nuclear than any Congress we’ve seen in decades,” said Gillispie.
And President Obama continues to promote nuclear power, too.
“There’s been discussion about how we can restart our nuclear industry as a means of reducing our dependence on foreign oil and reducing greenhouse gases,” Obama said during a speech the day after the midterm elections. “Is that an area where we can move forward?”
As of now, that seems to be possible. The White House has requested an additional $36 billion in federal loan guarantees for new nuclear plants and it seems that Republicans are likely to support the measure, even with a big focus during the campaign on reducing government spending.
But Corneli said the interesting part is that the important policy measures that are needed to help jump start the nuclear renaissance are the ones with the lowest cost to federal treasury, and those are the federal loan guarantees, “which really don’t cost the treasury anything.”
“Essentially it is self-financing,” he said. “It seems like the stars could be lining up right now for a boost in nuclear power development.”
Corneli said nuclear is established and the existing fleet of nuclear reactors provide the lowest cost power currently on the grid, but there hasn’t been a new plant built in roughly 30 years.
“We actually think that nuclear power has the potential to be the real foundation of clean energy technology,” he said.Gillispie seems to agree.
“When the history of nuclear power is written, Nov. 2, 2010 will be a major turning point for the industry,” said Gillispie. “It will mark the beginning of a dramatic resurgence for nuclear power.”