BY Glen Tschirgi
12 years, 4 months ago
Hat tip to Instapundit.
Isn’t this just swell? According to this article in Technology Review, there are two, new approaches being tested for making coal-burning power plants cleaner and more efficient:
A pair of new technologies could reduce the cost of capturing carbon dioxide from coal plants and help utilities comply with existing and proposed environmental regulations, including requirements to reduce greenhouse-gas emissions. Both involve burning coal in the presence of pure oxygen rather than air, which is mostly nitrogen. Major companies including Toshiba, Shaw, and Itea have announced plans to build demonstration plants for the technologies in coming months.
The basic idea of burning fossil fuels in pure oxygen isn’t new. The drawback is that it’s more expensive than conventional coal plant technology, because it requires additional equipment to separate oxygen and nitrogen. The new technologies attempt to offset at least some of this cost by improving efficiency and reducing capital costs in other areas of a coal plant. Among other things, they simplify the after-treatment required to meet U.S. Environmental Protection Agency regulations.
The article doesn’t state how much money is being sent down the rat hole to develop these new technologies, but, regardless of the amount involved, this is such a colossal waste that I don’t know whether to laugh or punch the fake rhino head on the wall.
The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency is still on a holy crusade against “global warming” by reducing carbon dioxide emissions, despite the fact that the anthropogenic global warming (AGW) theory has been repeatedly exposed as a sham. As a result, precious time, money, talent and resources are being directed towards solving a “problem” that doesn’t exist.
The Left wants to talk about stimulating the economy, but what about the stimulative effect of lowering the cost of electricity to businesses and consumers? Imagine the effect of simply eliminating the EPA’s carbon dioxide emission standards on the generation of electricity? This is the sort of thing that should be high on Romney’s to-do list in January 2013.
