Renewable sources are not enough. Clean coal is the energy source of the near future.

Today, coal produces more than 40% of world electricity, in fact being the basis of modern life activity.

This article will discuss the current situation with the use of coal in the energy sector, why it is currently not possible to abandon it, and about the technology of purifying coal combustion products and their distillation for later use.

Proof that good things are not always wrapped up in beautiful packaging can be found by taking the fast train from Beijing to Tianjin, and after that, driving to the coast. Tianjin, the third largest city in China, was founded as the seaport of Beijing on the Yellow Sea, but in recent years, the city has mastered and made so much land on its muddy coast livable that it actually began to move deeper into the mainland water emerged a new port, in which life is actively boiling. There are dozens of factories and business enterprises in this hyper-industrial zone, which are filled with highway trucks, each of which consists of a set of pipes, reactors, valves, ventilation openings, vessels, cracking units, compressors, chimneys and distillation units. In short, this is a landscape to which James Cameron could turn for inspiration while working on the ending of Terminator 2.
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Among these buildings, as big and faceless as its neighbors, is the building called GreenGen, a giant state-owned electric power company built by the Chinese Huaneng Group together with a number of other firms, departments of the Chinese government and, equally important, Peabody Energy, the largest privately held coal company from Missouri.

By western standards, GreenGen is a secretive place. My requests for interviews and trips there for weeks remained unanswered. When I finally decided to pay them a visit, the on-site security not only denied me access, but also refused to confirm the name of the company. As I drove away from the entrance, I saw the blinds on one of the windows move away and through them someone's eyes watched my departure. I think that behaving like this is stupid, because GreenGen is a company worth billions, which extracts carbon dioxide from coal-fired power plants and, through special channels, moves it to an underground storage facility that is located many miles from where it was burned. Part of the new wave of coal-fired enterprises can be called the most consistent effort by China, and perhaps the whole world, to combat climate change.

Most people rarely see coal, so they have a habit of imagining it as a relic of the 19th century, a black mass, lying on the streets of the Victorian era. However, in reality, a piece of coal, an artifact almost everywhere of the 21st century, is the same symbol of our time as the iPhone. Today, coal produces more than 40% of world electricity, in fact being the basis of modern life. This percentage is growing: over the past decade, coal has made a greater contribution to the global supply of electricity than any other source.

Nowhere else is the advantage of coal becoming as evident as in the fastest growing, most populated region of the planet: Asia, and, in particular, in China. Over the past few decades, China has rid several hundred million people of poverty. It is possible that this can be called the largest increase in the level of welfare in history. This progress could not take place without industrialization, which, in turn, could not happen without coal. Over 75% of China’s electricity comes from it, including energy for giant electronics factories where iPhones are assembled. Even more coal is spent on heating millions of homes, smelting steel (China produces almost half of the world's steel), burning limestone to produce cement (China produces almost half of the cement produced in the world). In its feverish pursuit of development, China burns as much coal as the rest of the world, and this fact alone makes climate scientists shudder.

China is already emitting a quarter of the world's greenhouse gases — more than any other country. According to estimates by the International Energy Agency, a research and development organization based in Paris and sponsored by 28 developed countries, Beijing will double the number of coal-fired power plants by 2040. If this happens, China’s carbon dioxide output will increase by two, or even three. “Coal is too cheap, it’s so much, and it’s too accessible thanks to reliable suppliers to replace it with something,” says fuel analyst John Dean, president of consulting firm JD Energy, “China is setting up solar and wind energy at an enormous pace, but he will have to use more and more coal to meet growing demand. ”

However, dependence on coal is not only a problem for China. Countries around the world, even European countries that advertise their environmental performance, understand that they are not able to wean themselves off from using coal. Germany, which is often praised for being under the banner of solar and wind energy, not only gets half of its energy from coal, but also, in 2013, opened more coal-fired power plants than in any other year in the past two decades. In neighboring Poland, 86% of electricity is generated from coal. South Africa, Israel, Australia, Indonesia - they all depend on coal more than ever. The United States, to some extent, is an exception: the share of coal in the production of electricity in America fell from 49% in 2007 to 39% in 2013, to a great extent, due to the start of shale gas production using hydraulic fracturing, which sharply reduced natural gas prices, competing fuel. However, critics, quite rightly, point out that coal exports from the United States reached record highs: the share of star-striped coal in Europe and Asia has never increased so dramatically. According to the Institute for the Study of World Resources, a group of scientists conducting environmental studies, nearly 1,200 new large coal enterprises are planned to be built in 59 countries of the world. As climatologists warned in November, in a joint statement, a sharp increase in coal use leads to "consequences that can only be described as catastrophic."

This, in some way, brings me back to the inhospitable enterprise in Tianjin. GreenGen is one of the most relevant attempts in the world to develop a technology called carbon capture and storage, or CCS. Essentially, CCS is very simple: industries burn as much coal as they did before, but remove all pollutants. In addition to cleaning soot and soot, now standard practice in large factories will be the separation of carbon dioxide and its injection into the ground, where it can be stored for thousands of years.

Many climate and energy researchers believe that this technology is vital to avoiding climate catastrophe, as it would allow the whole world to continue burning its most abundant resource while simultaneously drastically reducing carbon dioxide and soot emissions. And although this will hardly be talked about often, it may even be more important than any future technology based on renewable sources that could appear in the coming decades. Stephen Chu himself, a physicist, a Nobel Prize winner, who was the US Secretary of Energy until last year, called the CCS essential. “I don’t know how we can move forward without her,” said Chu.

Energy Consumption Rates (Original Size)



Our dependence on coal will not end soon. Despite the fact that renewable energy is waiting for a boom in the next decade, coal will still remain the world's main source of energy.

Unfortunately, this step will be incredibly difficult. Although the basic concepts are clear and understandable, the development of reliable, large-scale technical tools in the field of CCS will take a long time, will be unpopular and breathtakingly expensive. Engineers will need to spare neither money, nor time for scrupulous calculations, refinement and dangerous experiments. In the end, the world will receive several thousands of huge structures, which will callore eyes to everyone. At the same time, environmentalists are opposed to this technology, convinced that it is a slate for the coal industry to the detriment of cleaner alternatives such as solar and wind energy.

As a result, CCS is simultaneously recognized as the critical technology of the future, and, at the same time, in a difficult position. In 2008, at the G8 summit, the energy ministers of the participating countries recognized the key role of carbon collection and storage and “strongly supported” the recommendations of the International Energy Agency to launch the “20 large-scale demonstration CCS projects” by 2010. However, the number of such projects in the world is actually decreasing. The exception is China, where a dozen large CCS enterprises are in the process of planning or manufacturing.

China is probably quite suitable for the role of leader, as the most polluted place in the world. In addition to this, the energy companies there are partially owned by the state and therefore they cannot actively sue the government in order to stop its CCS program. At the same time, the fines are not waiting for them, either from the government or from the lawyers of the shareholders, if the introduction of this expensive, experimental technology affects their profits. In any case, everyone else should be grateful to China for joining the game, says Fatih Birol, chief economist at the IEA. It is necessary for someone to find a way to collect and store carbon dioxide on a large scale before it is too late.

“I don’t know any other technologies that would be so crucial for the health of the planet and, at the same time, so uninteresting for us,” says Birol, “China seems to be the only place in the world where it is gaining momentum.”

Coal can not be ignored

Coal is MEGO until you start living next to it. MEGO is an old journalistic slang, stands for “my eyes glaze over” . And they call it a good but too boring story to read. In America, where coal is burned far from human eyes, readers tend to respond to the word "coal" by closing the page.

However, people in Hebei do not consider MEGO coal, in any case, according to my impressions. Hebei is the province that surrounds Beijing. When the capital began preparing for the 2008 Olympics, the government sent coal-fired power plants and factories that pollute urban air beyond its borders. For the most part, these enterprises have moved to Hebei. The province has many new jobs, however, besides this, its air has become the dirtiest in all of China.

Out of curiosity, I hired a taxi to drive around Tangshan City, Hebei, which is located northeast of Beijing. Visibility was about a quarter of a mile - a good day, as the driver told me. The smoke screen gave the buildings a blurred look of an old photograph. Most recently, Tangshan was a relatively poor place. And now on the outskirts of the city there is a whole series of luxury car dealers: BMW, Jaguar, Mercedes, Lexus, Porsche. Most of the cars were in the room, and those that were exhibited outside were covered with gray bloom.

People say that coal is everywhere. One truck driver, with the intonation of proud mockery in his voice, told me that we were breathing the worst air in the world. A graduate of the University in striped socks Hello Kitty noted that, every time she wipes her face, something black is left on the napkin. This “something”, she said, is called PM2.5. PM2.5 is a technical jargon, denoting particles with a diameter of not more than 2.5 micrometers, capable, because of this, to settle in the lungs. Respiratory problems are typical, she says. “Everybody is sick, but the government will never report it.” I drove to a metallurgist who told me that Tangshan plans to clean his air for 30-35 years. “We are a city of industry, a city of coal,” he said.

Dirty air is not only a problem of little-known places in remote regions of China. Facial masks that help filter out pollution are becoming more commonplace in large cities such as Shanghai and Guangzhou. One firm, called Vogmask, sells masks on which large companies can place their logos, using smog as an opportunity for branding. A few days before my trip through Tangshan, more than 10 million people in the northeastern city of Harbin were caught up in coal pollution: the schools were closed, people stayed at home, the highways were blocked, as drivers did not see the road. During my visit, a Peking newspaper came into my hands with a colorful advertising insert on the whole page about “the project of the first high-tech condominium, in which real-time control of the PM2.5 level is implemented.”



According to a large research project involving almost 500 scientists from 50 countries, air pollution annually leads to 1.2 million premature deaths in China. Another study showed that eliminating coal pollution in northern China would increase the average life expectancy there by nearly five years. (For comparison, the elimination of cancer will increase the average life expectancy in the US by only 3 years.) Last year, a group of 10 Chinese scientists considered that reducing the PM2.5 level to that in the US would reduce the death rate in major Chinese cities by an amount from 2 to 5 percent. In other words, it can be said that in some places, the side effects of inhalation of air are the cause of every twentieth death.

Having learned about these figures, the wealthy Chinese begin to send their children to other countries. The less well-to-do Chinese, like the people with whom I spoke in Hebei, have practically no place to turn for help. “What good is it in these jobs (in Hebei) if they come at the expense of our lives?” A woman in Hello Kitty asks.

The influence of coal evaporation in China extends far beyond Hebei. Smoke from coal-fired power plants rises high and absorbs sunlight, heating the air. Black coal particles interact with clouds, helping them accumulate heat and block solar radiation. Soot sits on glaciers and ice fields in small drops, covering them with a thin black film, and sunlight is less reflected from such ice. Thus, particles of coal dust actually help to melt the glaciers of the poles and expose the Himalayas. Last year, an international team found that emissions from black coal were the second largest contributors to climate change. Dangerous of them, of course - only carbon dioxide emissions. Coal is the main source of both.

CO2 Emissions Growth (Original Size)



Combustion of coal is a source of more than 70% of CO2 emissions, reducing to an indecent level the emissions of any other fuels that are used to generate electricity. With plans to build more than 1,200 additional coal-fired power plants in 59 countries around the world, this cloud of greenhouse gases can grow to 4 billion tons, an increase of almost 50% in 2020.

The simplest solution would be to immediately impose a ban on the operation of all 7,000 coal-fired thermal power plants that are currently operating in the world, including almost 600 of them located in the United States. It is very easy to do ... and impossible.

“There are alternatives to using natural fuels for energy,” says Barry Jones, general manager of the CCS Global Institute, an association of international government organizations and energy companies based in Australia, “but for some coal-related industrial processes, there are no alternatives.” Examples include steel and cement, basic building materials for any modern society. Most of the steel is melted in large blast furnaces, which require coke for this, solid fuel that is produced by burning coal in an environment with low oxygen levels. Being not only a source of energy, coke literally keeps iron ore in a furnace and participates in chemical reactions that turn cast iron into steel. According to Václav Smil, an energy researcher and author of many works on this topic, the production of tons of steel requires almost half a ton of coke. Coal is also the main fuel for cement producers. “In theory, coal could be replaced,” says Jones, “but for this, every single cement plant in the world would have to be rebuilt.”

From the point of view of China, it is much more important that more than a quarter of its citizens still live on less than $ 2 a day.All these people - more than 350 million men, women and children, the whole USA living in poverty - want to have schools, sewers, warm houses and asphalt-paved highways, that is, all those things that people in other places rejoice without even thinking about of them. China cannot provide enough energy to create and maintain all this with the help of oil or natural gas: it has too small reserves of both and there is no reason to import them at high prices. (Asian prices for natural gas are about five times higher than prices in the United States.) China’s solar, wind, or atomic energy prices cannot be met, even though all these types of energy are growing faster there than in any other country. . It is important to take into account the fact that the country is in third place in the world in terms of coal reserves.

China, like most parts of the rest of the world, “will have to use coal,” says Dean, “or just leave people without electricity.” And given the fact that coal is not going anywhere, businesses around the world will have to find a way to collect and store their emissions. “To abandon the development of this technology would be insane.”

Collection and storage is our best option at the moment.

Inner Mongolia is a cold, dry place without vegetation. It can be called North Dakota of China. People from other parts of China are doubtful about the idea of ​​moving there to live because of the long winters and summer sandstorms. Despite this, some of them do just that, because Inner Mongolia, like North Dakota, is becoming the center of the country's energy supply, with a large number of jobs. Near the city of Ordos there are two coal mines, the 2nd and 3rd largest in the world. There are plans to develop part of another coal deposit, after which, the total area of ​​work will be about 3 times the size of Los Angeles. All of them are managed by the Shenhua Group, a state-owned company that is the largest coal producer and processor in the country.

In 2006, Beijing launched a new national company to accelerate coal production and develop capacity to cleanse and convert coal to liquid fuel, which will allow the country to use its coal to replace imported oil, gasoline, natural gas, and petrochemical products that make it from the bottom. In response, Shenhua built a $ 2 billion venture near Ordos, which turns coal into something you can pour into a car's fuel tank. Directly outside the plant is one of several gas stations in the world that sells liquid coal.

Unfortunately, every kilowatt-hour produced from coal produces about a kilogram of carbon dioxide. For comparison: natural gas emits just over 500 grams per kilowatt-hour, nuclear and solar sources, of course, do not produce any emissions. Turning coal into liquid fuel produces even more CO2 emissions than generating electricity from it. This to some extent explains why Shenhua has taken under its wing an enterprise in Inner Mongolia, which by some standards can be called China’s most important CCS initiative.

The steep bank of the Ulan Moron River, which flows through a huge coal deposit, was chosen as a place to implement the idea. The size of the CCS project is small. It involved only 20 of the 1,700 workplaces of the enterprise. However, according to the chief engineer Maoshan Chen, “his role is great”. Shenhua launched the project, anticipating that following Beijing’s decree to make coal more common would soon be followed by others prescribing a reduction in coal emissions. “The government would inevitably adopt regulatory standards,” he says, “It's only a matter of time.” And indeed - the first wave of emission standards appeared in November. The government outlawed some types of coal mines, as well as the use of particularly dirty coal. By the time Chen said, Shenhua had long ago decided to “get ahead of everyone else” and launched a project on the Ulan Moron River. GreenGen produces more carbon dioxide, but at the moment, instead of storing it, they are more likely to sell it to manufacturing companies of soda (storage is planned for the next phase, in 2020). The Ulan Moron project, in contrast to this approach, already "includes everything - both mining and storage," says Chen.

Shenhua began a feasibility study in 2007 with a consultation at the US Department of Energy. “Many US researchers took part in the planning, both at the Ministry of Energy and the Livermore National Laboratory. E. Lawrence, ”says Chen. This was followed by help from scientists at Peking University, Beijing University of Chemical Technologies, Tsinghua University, the Chinese Academy of Sciences and the geological departments of oil companies. The Ministry of Science and Technology of the People's Republic of China and the National Committee for Development and Reform - the state planning agency - also contributed. According to Chen, so many scientists needed, because CCS includes not only its own field of activity - chemical technology, but also "geology, economics, atmospheric chemistry, industrial production and about a dozen other areas of knowledge." Construction began in June 2010, and six months later, after the object was commissioned, the company began a performance test. Last year, their initial phase reached full capacity, extracting and sending over 110,000 tons of carbon dioxide to be stored in the underground layer of salt water. If all goes well, by 2020, Shenhua will be able to lay off at least 2 million tons of CO2 every year.

China launches such CCS programs as a Shenhua enterprise faster than any other nation. The determination with which this country is trying to change the situation with the emissions of coal enterprises is unique. According to the International CCS Institute in the world, only 12 large-scale projects for the extraction of carbon dioxide are currently operating in full force, most of them in the United States. However, none of them do what is most needed now: they are not factories that would take and store emissions from large coal-fired power plants. Instead, they mostly take CO2 from gas fields and oil refineries - a daunting but secondary task. This month Canada is planning to open the first such coal enterprise worth $ 1.2 billion. And yet, it remains fair to say that there is so little experience in mining and storing emissions from coal enterprises in the world, that environmentalists say that CCS is nothing more than a bloated fake in the field of energy, a fantasy invented by coal companies, to wash and green the originally dirty industry. Energy analysts have different opinions. CCS is a real technology, but it is “as real as stem cell medicine is,” Magi Coert-Baker wrote in Before the Lights Go Out, a remarkable recent study of the state of energy supply systems. "This is still a concept car, not a minivan, standing at the entrance to the garage of your neighbors."

Debugging CCS to the “minivan stage” requires overcoming many interesting technical difficulties. The most developed technology for producing carbon from emissions is known as "amine refining." It includes the passage of gas released during the combustion of coal through a solution of water and monoethanolamine (MEA). MEA is an extremely unpleasant chemical: it is toxic, flammable, eater, and has a strong, ammonia-like odor. However, it forms a strong bond with carbon dioxide, separating it from other products of combustion. This process creates a new chemical formation called MEA Carbaminate. (In technical terms, dissolved in water CO2 is a weak acid, sometimes scientists call such a compound carbon dioxide, and MEA weak alkali; the reaction familiar to us from school suggests that they react to form salt.) Urea MEA together water is pumped into a distillation column, where either the pressure is reduced, or the mixture is heated. Heat or expansion of the working space by reducing the pressure give a backlash and decomposition of MEA carbamate to CO2 and MEA. Carbon dioxide and water vapor are blown out, ready for storage, and MEA is returned to react with the next batch of carbon dioxide. (However, due to the fact that the CO2 concentration in the emissions of Shenhua is higher than that of conventional factories, it uses some other method.)

Experts in the field of energy believe that before modern society moves to renewable energy sources, there will be at least one more century. Until then, they believe, collection and storage is our only way to do something with 10.4 billion tons of carbon dioxide, which is annually emitted by coal-fired power plants.
The following explains amine treatment - the best of the methods tested to date, which usually allows you to get rid of 90% of the company's greenhouse emissions.

Coal power plant operating on the principle of collecting and storing emissions (Original size)





It is not so easy to bring this seemingly simple process to the scale of a plant that can physically process millions of tons of CO2. Large power plants produce large amounts of CO2 and need large buildings to collect it: multi-storey metal towers with pipes and valves. The chemical mixtures used in them are toxic and corrosive, constantly attacking the machines and threatening the lives of the operators who work behind them. Most of the IEA deteriorates during each cycle and needs to be replaced.

However, the most important is the fact that the constant heating of the whole tower of MEA carbaminate solution requires a considerable amount of energy. As a rule, calculations are made according to which CCS will eat from 20 to 30% of the power output of a power plant. Given the fact that coal-fired power plants can convert only 50% of the energy stored in coal into electricity, the introduction of CCS at the station will mean an increase in the consumption of black matter by 40-60%. Reducing the damage to nature from digging and burning coal, thus, leads to digging and burning even more coal.

These costs in professional jargon are called parasitic. Often, according to calculations, the parasitic costs are estimated at $ 100 per ton of stored CO2. It is known that the 500-megawatt power plant emits about 3 million tons of carbon dioxide per year. Arithmetic tells us that collecting all the gas produced by thousands of stations will roughly cost $ 2 trillion a year — a figure that does not include the billions needed to build CCS facilities. This is a calculation made on the knee, based on incorrect assumptions that all power plants are the same, that they are not modernized, that there is no economy from the growth of production, that these enterprises do not switch to natural gas, which produces less emissions. Nevertheless, the general conclusion that CCS, based on existing technology is unacceptable roads, has every reason to be.

As for the storage situation, on the contrary, it looks relatively simple and understandable. “Nature itself proves that this concept is possible,” says Chen. After all, oil and natural gas deposits are nothing but natural carbon storages. CCS simply recreates or refills them.

As a rule, an oil or gas field consists of two layers of rock. The bottom layer has a porous structure, like a sponge, the cavities of which are filled with petroleum products. Above it is the second layer: an overlap of gas-tight rock. Oil and gas companies drill the floor, freeing liquids and gases under it. CCS is the reverse process: companies pump liquid CO2 through impermeable rock into permeable rock and when it is filled to the top, the hole is sealed forever, creating something like a tomb, a symbol of mankind's obsession with energy.

According to geologists, the continents are riddled with potential burial sites, which in the United States alone will last for a century. Obvious objects of interest include salt formations - underground saltwater reservoirs, as well as developed oil fields. The word “developed” here does not mean that the oil was completely pumped out of them. As a rule, in such places the remaining oil products, the volume of which is up to two thirds of the total volume of the field, are too dense and viscous to extract them at a reasonable price. Carbon dioxide injection will change this ratio: when it gets into the rock voids, the gas mixes with the crude oil, reducing its thickness and pushing it in the direction of the borehole hole. (After extracting all available oil, the well will be plugged.)

In theory, carbon dioxide can be hidden in these dens until the sun explodes. In practice, it is necessary to keep it for about a century: just so much time is necessary so that carbon dioxide reacts with the surrounding rock and forms solid minerals. And until now, no one can say for sure how to keep it intact for such a long period of time. In the Shenhua project, Chen made a list of questions his team was trying to answer. Does carbon dioxide leak to the atmosphere from the ground? Does it spread between layers of rock beneath the ground? Does it penetrate underground waters? Does he react chemically with solid rock? What happens if the pressure in the pump changes? And if the rock will crack, and the gas will fill more space in it? What about earthquakes? Chen said that they use heavy machinery, “striking hard on the ground to see how this will affect the distribution of CO2.”

Today is the time for innovation. Under the ground are coal reserves, the amount of which is enough for more than a century of production. This figure is so great that, according to two climatologists from the University of Victoria, made in 2012, complete combustion of coal reserves will raise the average temperature on Earth by 6.7 degrees Celsius. These calculations are actually made with a reservation, because as soon as the temperature reaches a certain point, the current climate model will stop working, making our future almost unpredictable. “Our society will live all life, side by side with the use of coal,” wrote Andrew Weaver, one of the researchers, in his letter.

Shortly after I received the letter from Weaver, the National Committee for the Development and Reform of the PRC announced that in 2013 new mining projects were approved, which will produce more than 100 million tons of coal, six times more than a year before.

That part of the CCS project Shenhua, which is responsible for storage is easy to lose sight of. Its main component is a cement platform with an area of ​​just over 1000 square meters. m. on which there are 3 large containers, shaped like sausage. The pipe going downwards connects capacities to the pump of the impressive sizes. From the pump down comes a second smaller pipe that runs along the walls of the courtyard approximately at the height of a belt, connecting with a red, closed valve with a device that slightly resembles an old fire hydrant. Next to it is a sign that says in red with the inscription that the crane is located above the pipe that pumps compressed carbon dioxide to a depth of 2.5 km underground.

At the other end of the enterprise there is an administrative building with a small screen that shows how it all works. On the walls hang graphs and charts that do not represent any visual interest. The accompanying texts describe the geology of Inner Mongolia, gas chemistry, test projects.

From these images, you will never know that in the west, CCS is causing a lot of controversy, that it is actually mocked by major environmental activists, including the Sierra Club and the Rainforest Action Network. In 2008, Greenpeace released a large study that adhered to the view that CCS is a “dangerous adventure”, partly because “safe permanent storage of CO2 cannot be guaranteed.” Instead of “false hope” of carbon harvesting, Greenpeace and other activist groups insist that “real solutions” for climate change are “renewable energy and its effective use”.

Most scientists and engineers agree with Greenpeace that humanity will ultimately need an energy system based on renewable energy sources: three-quarters or even more can be provided by the sun and wind, with the support of sources such as tides and geothermal heat. To come to this, however, is not so easy. It is not for nothing that the former adviser to the president on energy, Chu, who warmly supports this undertaking, believes that the introduction of solar and wind energy on such a wide scale cannot happen until the end of the century.

Speaking about this, Chu notes the obstacles to this goal. No one has ever provided the whole nation with solar or wind energy, completely or at least to a greater extent, for a long period of time. “No one else has done this,” he says. Moreover, “there are times when bad weather is worth a whole week, or during the week cloudy weather persists over an area of ​​hundreds of kilometers. It happens that the wind stops blowing throughout Washington or Oregon within two weeks. At this time, guess what you need? Reliable source of energy. ”

Where do we get energy from during long, long periods of bad and windless weather? Several companies are experimenting with “shifting loads,” that is, with technologies of storing solar energy generated during the daytime, with the aim of using it at night. However, no one has ever built technical facilities that could store enough energy to provide it with entire regions for one or two weeks. , , — , . , , . , - , -, , . — . , , 2005 .

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Chu to some extent agrees with this. “The parasitic costs now make the introduction impossible,” he says, “We need to do something in order not to double the cost of electricity.” Nevertheless, he believes that CCS has good short-term prospects for practical implementation. “Based on what I know,” he says, “I don’t see any unrecoverable interference, nothing is impossible.”

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Beijing, however, sees the situation differently. Rich coal reserves are at the same time both national wealth and national concern. The Chinese government faced two urgent tasks: to save people from poverty and avoid the worst effects of industrialization. As a result, Chen tells me, "we have to make CCS work." A moment later, he smiled: a thought occurred to him. “If we can launch CCS here, maybe this will help other companies catch up and continue our initiatives.”