If carbon capture is supposed to be the future, why does it keep striking out? Last week, Capital Power in Alberta cancelled the $2.4 billion carbon capture project for the Genesee Power Station, which is currently being converted from coal to natural gas. It’s the last thermal coal power plant in Canada west of Coronach, Sask.
Also last week, TransAlta canceled a wind project not far from Waterton Lakes National Park.
And Saskatchewan and Alberta are deepening nuclear ties.
TC Energy’s making bank on natural gas deliveries.
No tears from me for every CCUS and useless “green” energy project shut down. These projects are only even considerations due to massive subsidies. None of them are required, and only have some support due to the pushing of the anti-scientific lie of AGW.
Over 20 years ago, I worked as an architectural designer for Timber Frame homes at Kicking Horse Mountain Resort just south of the river in Golden, B.C. Ballast Nedam, the owner and general contractor of Kicking Horse Mountain Resort liked to use either geo-thermal heat OR in floor hot water heating for the homes and commercial buildings. In the intervening years, I have read that Geo-Thermal heat is not all it is cracked up to be, and I DO wonder what is now used at the resort.
I believe that we should try alternate sources of heat/energy but that we end up going back to the tried and tested fossil fuels and nuclear power because THEY WORK. I have stated previously on this site, I am a lover of history and geography. Up until the use of fossil fuels which started about 100-120 years ago, development was very slow in the western world and practically non-existent in the third world. Imagine relying on dried cow patties to provide fuel for cooking! With the advent of fossil fuels, whales are no longer killed for their blubber to provide oil for lamps, there is no longer piles of horse shit in the streets (one of the reasons why brownstones in New York City had their main floors built about 7-8 risers above street level) and people can live in inhospitable climates (I love Saskatchewan and Alberta but boy,oh boy the winters can be brutal!)
“I have read that Geo-Thermal heat is not all it is cracked up to be”.
Quite so. California went into geothermal heavily in the 1970s. All of those pockets of hot water were exhausted after less than a decade and long before they paid for the cost of installation. As for dung in the streets, with a horse population of several hundred thousand for cargo and personal transport, the big cities like London and New York were simply shovelling all of it into the river. Aside from pollution, all of this was causing frequent severe outbreaks of cholera, dysentery, and a host of other diseases and infections.
Only fossil fuels freed us from this cycle of urban disease and pollution. And the only effective substitute for it has been nuclear power.
As to winters, again I agree entirely. Humans are by origin a subtropical species. If not for burning things like wood, the world’s temperate climates are far too cold for us to survive.
saw once someone proposed calling us the fire ape. was our big break , heat and cooked food. easier to digest and far fewer parasites. fire is way before humans. and way before clothes .
Why would any sane person want to capture carbon? Carbon capture and sequestration is nothing more than feel good jibber jabber. I long for the day when someone will stand and say “Enough is enough”.
They think that the government will some how compensate them for producing 33% less usable power, which is consumed by the carbon capture equipment…
Carbon capture struck out because the federal government is running out of our money.
Let the CO2 free in the atmosphere fields oof wheat and barley will turn it to oxygen, sugar and starch.
Carbon capture? Get a grip!
Unless it pays for itself in enhanced hydrocarbon recovery, it is nothing more than a green indulgence.
Tom Harris will say that Carbon Capture to reduce carbon (dioxide) emissions, is the most insane idea anyone could have come up with.
Think for a moment what would happen if all that concentrated CO2 ever leaked. It won’t end well. Hint: It already happened. Everything died. It’s not that CO2 is toxic, but it is heavier than air, so that much CO2 will actually displace the air in the area, suffocating every living animal (and human) in the vicinity.