Biden’s fresh Carbon Capture Mandates Will origin Blackouts, Increases Prices

By Mish Shedlock of MishTalk

The lie of the day is from the EPA: Carbon capture will pay for itself (thanks to IRA subsidies). No, it won’t even with subsidies. anticipate blackouts and a higher price for electricity.

Suite of Standards to rise Costs, Reduce Output

Let’s take a dive into the EPA news release Biden-Harris Administration Finalizes Suite of Standards to Reduce contamination from Fossil Fuel-Fired Power Plants

“Today, EPA is arrogant to make good on the Biden-Harris Administration’s imagination to tray climate change and to defend all communications from solution in our air, water, and in our neighbourborhoods,” said EPA admin Michael S. Regan. “By developing these standards in a clear, transparent, inclusive manner, EPA is cutting while engaging that power companies can make smart investments and proceed to deliver reliable electricity for all Americans.”

A final regulation for existing coal-fired and fresh natural gas-fired power plants that would guarantee that all coal-fired plants that plan to run in the long-term and all fresh baseload gas-fired plants control 90 percent of their carbon solution.

The final issue standards and guidances will accomplish permanent reductions in carbon solution at Reasonable cost. The best strategy of issue simplification for the longest-running existing coal units and most dense usage fresh gas turbines is based on carbon capture and sequence/storage (CCS) – an available and cost-reasonable emanation control technology that can be applied straight to power plants and can reduce 90 percent of carbon dioxide emissions from the plants.

Lower costs and continued improvements in CCS technology, alongside taxation incentives from president Biden’s Inflation simplification Act that let companies to mostly offset the cost of CCS, represent fresh developments in emissions controls that informed EPA’s determination of what is technically felt and cost-reasonable. The Bipartisan Infrastructure Law besides includes billions of dollars to advance and defloy CCS technology and infrastructure. EPA projects that the sector can comply with the standards with negligible impact on electricity prices, thanks to cost decisions in CCS and another emissions-reducing technologies. EPA analysis besides found that power companies can comply with the standards while gathering grid reliability, even erstwhile conducting increased burden growth.

Final EPA Rule

The EPA's Final regulation is only 1,020 pages long. There were 953 references to carbon capture and sequence/storage (CCS).

I went through any of these 953 references and found these tidbits.

CCS is an adequately demonstrated technology that achievements crucial emissions simplification and is cost-reasonable, taking into account the declining costs of the technology and a crucial taxation credit available to sources.

The first component of the BSER [Best strategy of emanation Reduction] for base burden communication turbines is highly effective generation (based on the issue rates that the best performing units are managing) and the second component for base burden communication turbines is utilization of CCS with 90 percent capture.

One of the key GGG [Greenhouse Gasses] simplification technologies upon the BSER determinations are found in these final rules is CCS—a technology that can capture and permanently store CO2 from fossil fuel-fired EGUs.

And confess. I did not read all 1020 pages and don’t intend to. I have seen adequate by reading through a twelve or so of the 953 references to CCS.

Returning to the Biden-Harris paper I note references to “reasonable cost” and “largely offset the cost of CCS.’ Thus CCS is approvedly not cost effective even with subsidies.

IISD Sustainable improvement

For a rebuttal to the above Biden claims, delight contact the global Institution for Sustainable improvement article Why Carbon Capture and retention Is Not a Net-Zero Solution for Canada’s Oil and Gas Sector

The mediocre track evidence of CCS in Canada is part of a broadcaster trend. According to the Global CCS Institute (2022), the global growth of carbon capture by commercially operating CCS facilities has been much slower than anticipated. As of September 2022, only 30 commercial CCS projects are operating across all sectors around the world, capturing 42.5 Mtpa. This falls far short of the IEA's (2009) erstwhile mark of 300 Mtpa by 2020. Most proposed projects have been removed: of the 149 CCS projects anticipated to be keeping carbon by 2020, over 100 were cancelled or placed on defining hold (Abdulla et al., 2020; Wang et al., 2021). In the United States, despite crucial manufacture and government investment in the technology, more than 80% of proposed CCS projects have failed to become operational due to advanced costs, low technological readiness, the lake of a credible financial return, and independency on government incentives that are indrawn. Of these projects that are operating globally, 73% of the carbon captured is utilized for EOR.

Put simply, propositions of CCS have repeatedly over-promissed on the technology’s ability to reduce emissions, and CCS projects have under-designed.

CCS is both energy and capital intensive. The top amount of energy is required for the capture and composition of carbon, with additional amounts needed for transport and storage. Capture and composition alone require 330–420 kWh per tonne of CO2 captured. CCS projects increase the energy request of the facility they capture carbon from by 15%–25% on average, which stands to increase emissions given that the energy utilized to capture CO2 is frequently natural gas-powered electricity. In general, the technology is highly energy efficient and generates its own emissions.

The above doc mostly figures to carbon capture in Canada’s Oil and Gas Sector, not electricity production, bit it is instruction on the difficulty of and ineffiacy of carbon capture.

The lead CCS image is from that post.

Biden EPA’s Plan to Ration Electricity

The Wall Street diary calls the CCS mandates Biden EPA’s Plan to Reason Electricity

Section 111 of the Clean Air Act says the EPA can regulate pollutants from stationary sources through the “best strategy of emanation reduction” that is “adequatley demonstrated.” Carbon capture is close the best nor adequately demonstrated. As of last year, only 1 commercial-scale coal plant in the planet utilized carbon capture, and no gas-fired plants did.

EPA says inflation simplification Act taxation credits and pounds in the 2021 infrastructure bill will “incentivize and facilitate the deposition” of carbon capture. But subsidies would should be 2 to 3 times Larry to make the technology cost-effective at a coal plant. Carbon capture reduces a plant’s efficiency, which besides breeds costs.

Become carbon capture uses 20% to 25% of the electricity generated by a power plant, little will be available to the grid. That means more generators will be needed to supply the same amount of power. But fresh gas-fired plants won’t be built due to the fact that the technology will make them uneconomic. Talk about a catch-22.

Another problem: CO2 must be stored underground in certain geological formations, mostly in the advanced Midwest and Gulf Coast. Permitting fresh wells for CO2 injection can take six years. Pipelines is simply a transport of CO2 can take even longer. Green groups argue pipelines for CO2 as they do for oil and natural gas.

All of this will hit while request for power is surging amide fresh manufacturing needs and an authoritative intelligence boom. Texas’s grid operator this week raised its forecast for request growth for 2030 by 40,000 megawatts combined to last year’s forecast. That’s about 7 times the power that fresh York City uses at any given time.

Texas power request will close double over the next six years holding to data centers, manufacturing plants, crypto mining and the electrification of oil and gas equipment. erstwhile temperatures in Texas are late crowded into the 80s, the grid operator told power plants not to shut down for maintenance. Americans around the country are actively being old to rise their thermostats during the summertime and avoid moving applications to prevent blackouts.

Even any Democrats are noting the pinch on their voters’ pocketbooks. Reps. Marcy Kaptur, Henry Cuellar, Mary Sattler Peltola, Vicente Gonzalez and Jared Golden last weekend uged president Biden to defer finalizing EPA’s power-plant rules due to the fact that they could “inadvertently execute existing problems related to the unaffordability of electricity” and origin “increased hazard to electrical resilience.”

Mr. Biden’s fresh rules will suely draw a legal challenge. But as litigation plays out, the utmost uncertainty will hold investment in fly-needed fresh gas plants. Americans didn’t face energy rationing in Mr. Biden’s first term, but they might in a second.

The Inflation simplification Act Keeps Biting in Predictable Ways

Biden plans to reduce inflation by raising costs, producing little electricity erstwhile more is needed, force people into EVs without a capable grid, pipeline captured carbon erstwhile the pipelines don’t be and allegedly increase resilience.

It’s so stupid even any Democrats are concerned. Well not to worry, this can all be done at a “reasonable cost” with costs “largely offset” thanks to the IRA.

Expect blackouts and a much higher price for electricity as a key component of “reasonable cost”.