Parasitic energy loss an oft-overlooked downside to cleaner coal and carbon capture
Articles — By forcechange on November 10, 2008 11:32 am
The Toronto Star, in writing about cleaner coal and carbon capture and storage, writes:
“an often-overlooked problem associated with gasification of coal and the capturing and storing of carbon: each of these processes creates its own demand for electricity.
In the United States, that means if all existing coal plants were converted to clean coal and their emissions were captured and sequestered, it would require 320,000 megawatts of new electrical generation to compensate for the parasitic losses – that is, for the extra power required to capture the CO2, compress it, and pipe it safely into permanent underground storage.”
As with all alternatives, cleaner coal technologies may have numerous unintended consequences. Beyond the question of whether it is safe to pump billions of tons of carbon into the earth’s crust, the increased electricity demand to power the parasitic losses from these techniques, is another issue that must be considered
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