Arguments
The Quest for CCS
Posted on 13 January 2016 by Andy Skuce
This article was originally published online at Corporate Knights and will appear in the hard copy Winter 2016 Edition of the Corporate Knights Magazine, which is to be included as a supplement to the Globe and Mail and Washington Post later in January 2016. The photograph used in the original was changed for copyright reasons.
Human civilization developed over a period of 10,000 years during which global average surface temperatures remained remarkably stable, hovering within one degree Celsius of where they are today.
If we are to keep future temperatures from getting far outside that range, humanity will be forced to reduce fossil fuel emissions to zero by 2050. Halving our emissions is not good enough: we need to get down to zero to stay under the 2 C target that scientists and policy makers have identified as the limit beyond which global warming becomes dangerous.
Shell boasting about its government-funded Quest CCS project, on a Toronto bus. (Photo: rustneversleeps) "Shell Quest captures over one-third of our oil sands upgrader emissions"
Many scenarios have been proposed to get us there. Some of these involve rapid deployment of solar and wind power in conjunction with significant reductions in the amount of energy we consume.
However, many of the economists and experts who have developed scenarios for the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) believe that the only way to achieve the two-degree goal in a growing world economy is to invest in large-scale carbon capture and storage (CCS) projects. These technologies capture carbon dioxide from the exhausts of power stations and industrial plants and then permanently store it, usually by injecting it into underground rock layers.
Even with massive deployment of CCS over coming decades, most scenarios modelled by the IPCC overshoot the carbon budget and require that in the latter part of the century, we actually take more carbon out of the atmosphere than we put into it. Climate expert Kevin Anderson of the Tyndall Centre for Climate Change Research at the University of Manchester recently reported in Nature Geoscience that, of the 400 IPCC emissions scenarios used in the 2014 Working Group report to keep warming below two degrees, some 344 require the deployment of negative emissions technologies after 2050. The other 56 models assumed that we would start rapidly reducing emissions in 2010 (which, of course, did not happen). In other words, negative emissions are required in all of the IPCC scenarios that are still current.
One favoured negative emissions technology is bioenergy with carbon capture and storage (BECCS). This involves burning biomass – such as wood pellets – in power stations, then capturing the carbon dioxide and burying it deep in the earth. The technology has not yet been demonstrated at an industrial scale. Using the large amounts of bioenergy envisioned in such scenarios will place huge demands on land use and will conflict with agriculture and biodiversity needs.
Even the relatively small use of biofuels in Europe that relies on North American wood pellets is already causing land-use impacts in the southeastern United States (John Upton of Climate Central has recently published an excellent report on this titled Pulp Fiction). The European demand for wood pellets is driven by an EU policy that deems biomass use to be carbon-neutral. However, evidence is mounting that this is not the case. It takes energy to collect, process and transport the pellets. It also matters whether the wood used is waste that would otherwise be left to rot or burn, or whether it is taken from mature trees. And, of course, it can take many decades for a forest to regrow to its previous size.
Six thousand feet under
The scale required of CCS and BECCS in most two-degree emissions scenarios is staggering. Humans consume vast amounts of fossil fuels at present, and the basic chemistry of combustion, which takes up oxygen, means that the mass of carbon dioxide produced is 2.8-3.7 times the mass of the fossil fuel itself. To get to zero emissions using CCS requires that three times or more matter be put back into the ground than was originally taken out.
At present, North Americans produce about 40 times the mass of carbon dioxide than we do of household garbage. Already, many cities and towns struggle to find sufficient landfill sites for their trash. Relying on CCS and BECCS for mitigation will create a much bigger need to find room in safe storage sites underground.
Carbon dioxide is stored as a supercritical fluid at the temperatures and pressures of the geological disposal layers, typically at a depth of 1,000 to 3,000 metres. This fluid has about half the density of water, but has some physical properties closer to those of a gas, allowing it to be injected into rocks with small pore spaces. [Graphic by John Garrett]
Even though the volume of the compressed carbon dioxide fluid is much less than the volume it takes up as a gas at the surface, the quantities are still colossal. Calculations based on the most detailedpublished two-degree mitigation scenario by Detlef van Vuuren and others at Utrecht University in 2011 estimate that the volume of carbon dioxide in need of disposal by the end of the century is more than 60 billion cubic metres per year. That is equivalent to disposing of the volume of the water in Lake Erie every eight years.
Injecting such a high volume of fluid into the ground is not without consequences. Existing subsurface fluids, mostly brines, will be displaced and there may be effects such as increased chances of earthquakes at some sites where there are faults nearby.
The injected carbon dioxide must not be allowed to leak, not only because even slow leakage defeats the object of storage, but also because a rapid leak could pose a health hazard. The majority of the best storage sites are in sedimentary basins perforated by many tens of thousands of old oil and gas wells. Many of these wells have not been abandoned properly and could provide conduits for carbon dioxide to migrate to shallow aquifers or to the surface.
If CCS is proposed in populated areas, one can expect there to be widespread public resistance to CCS projects in the same way that there are objections today to fracking and nuclear waste disposal. Widespread implementation will not simply be a matter of technology and economics.
The carbon treadmill
There are currently 14 CCS plants in operation around the world. All but three of these are associated with enhanced oil recovery (EOR) projects, in which the carbon dioxide is injected to force more oil out of an oil field. This brings up more carbon to the surface to be burned, making it disingenuous to regard such projects as mitigation solutions. In the absence of a carbon price or a government grant or mandate, there is currently no commercial case for CCS apart from EOR.
The average capacity of the current 14 projects is about two million tonnes of carbon dioxide per year. According to some IPCC scenarios, we will need to dispose of 40 billion tonnes of carbon dioxide per year by 2090. That means that if we started in 2020 we would have to build 250 such plants every year, about one every working day for 70 years. University of Manitoba energy historian Vaclav Smil has argued convincingly that it is impossible to imagine that such a rapid transformation of the global energy system could take place.
Canada currently has two major CCS projects underway. The Boundary Dam in Saskatchewan captures carbon dioxide from a coal power station and sells the gas to Canadian oil company Cenovus, which uses it for an EOR project. However, there are reports that there are serious technical problemswith the project and it has so far only been able to capture a fraction of its one million tonnes per year capacity.
Secondly, Shell has just started the Quest project in Alberta. This project is designed to capture one million tonnes of carbon dioxide per year from a heavy-oil upgrader and inject it into a deep, Cambrian-age sandstone layer. According to Shell, the estimated cost of this project works out to $72 per captured and stored tonne of carbon dioxide. The project has received $860 million in government support.
The emissions of greenhouse gases emitted in Alberta’s upstream sector (the emissions involved in producing, but not consuming, Alberta’s oil and gas) amount to 73 million tonnes of carbon dioxide equivalent per year. So, roughly speaking, 70 Quest-sized projects would be required to make the Alberta upstream industry carbon neutral, assuming no future growth.
In contrast, the recent report from Alberta’s Climate Leadership Panel on emissions mitigation mentions CCS just three times. The provincial plan unveiled by the province in November was similarly scarce on any mentions of CCS. There does not appear to be the political appetite within Alberta to launch such an ambitious adoption of CCS, even with the government’s embrace of a $30 per tonne carbon tax by 2017.
Even if it were possible to get to 2100 with a mix of CCS and BECCS, it would not constitute a sustainable solution. Humanity would find itself stuck on a treadmill of increasing fossil and biofuel use with a growing need to sequester carbon dioxide. Sooner or later, either fuel resources or the resources of disposal sites would be exhausted.
At best, CCS and BECCS would be able to provide a stopgap to a more sustainable future.
SharonK @ #50 , you make a good point about the need for home-heating with oil, for those who are not connected to the electric grid [powered by hydro, nuclear, wind, or solar . . . solar presumably from somewhere south of lattitude 60. ] .
There is no immediate problem in shortage of available oil, for 20 years or more ( I expect) . In the longer run, as coal & petroleum oil are phased out, it would be a logical political decision for households such as yours to receive "privileged priority supply" of petroleum oil, during the tail-end of the phase-out process. Eventually, there would be a reasonable-sized industry producing organic-origin liquid fuel [jetfuel & diesel] for planes and ships and heavy machinery . . . and presumably a fraction of that supply would be allocatable to "special needs" households which are off the grid.
I am unclear about the number of households which it would be uneconomic to supply grid electricity to, in future years. Clearly there are many isolated houses and small townships, to which that might apply, at present. My guess is that they would total a very small fraction of the world's liquid fuel for transport industry requirements. But I am happy to be corrected, and I would be grateful if you could give an authoritative or reasonably close estimate of house numbers which are currently "off-grid" and requiring oil-type heating by absolute necessity (not choice) .
Sharon,
You are talking about living in an extreme environment and the truth is to live there you are being subsidised by others. This is all tax payers money and the externalities involved have not, it would seem, been fully realised until now.
The world turns.
Sharon, you talk about bias, yet use language such as "people down south turning off the oil companies." I'd say that is language more emotionally charged than the "boasting" you mentioned. You indeed live in an environment with features unusual to most others. Some of them seem to be especially adverse to an asthma sufferer. That is not anybody else's fault.
I would not buy without substantiation that the nuclear power plant project was discarded only because one group of people advocated against it. Perhaps the risk/benefit/cost analysis was unfavorable on its own.
Eclectic @#51,
We are conncected to the grid for electricity, but we have natural gas furnaces because, currently, electric heat is only considered suitable for three-season climates (e.g., places like Vancouver) as the cost of heating with electricity through a long, cold winter is prohibitive. Even heating with natural gas is a financial burden for lower-income families.
Most of our electricity currently comes from coal and gas. Only 2% is from hydro, 4% wind, and 3% biomass, although there is proposed generation with projects underway for thermal and renewables.
My concern is that we’re going to need a great deal of innovation in order to replace the energy needed from fossil fuels without causing massive land use and food supply problems. For example, the hydro dam project currently in question near us would flood a significant unique river valley subclimate agricultural area that would have allowed us to grow more food locally.
This is why I support CCS as we transition to renewables. For some areas of the world, it’s going to be a while before we can survive without fossil fuels, so we should reduce the CO2 emissions as much as possible in the mean time. And it doesn't make sense, financially or environmentally, for Canada to import oil.
Canada does not have a large population compared to the US, but many of us have nine months of winter and three months of bad skiing. :) In reply to bozzza @#52 and Philippe @#53, we don't consider our environment to be extreme, and I'm not aware of our being subsidized by tax payers. In any case, I love winter as long as I have a warm home. If we all moved to a more moderate climate, that would cause population shift problems.
I just thought I'd offer a Canadian perspective. We're targeted a lot as the culprits of climate change, even though we only contribute 2% of the global emissions. Considering our vast area (transporation challenges) and frigid climate, I think we're doing well, and we're striving hard to do better. We're not boasting; we're just communicating in practical ways that we care about the environment too.
In 2003, this study would have indicated GSHP would have been a viable heating option for much of Canada much like such systems are are in very northern europe. How do prices stack now? Non-carbon energy sources certainly have a price but then so do FF in terms of climate damage and for that matter CCS. Given cost of CCS, is it really a cheaper option than the alternatives?
Sharon, thanks for your thoughtful comments.
I admit that I was a little snarky referring to Shell "boasting" about their CCS project, but I was annoyed at the fact that they were giving themselves a big pat on the back for operating what is largely a taxpayer-funded project.
I didn't intend to scare people about having CCS in their neighbourhoods and the Shell Quest project appears very safe from what I have read about it. However, if CCS is deployed at the massive scale that is required to make a dent in climate change, there are bound to be accidents as companies try to cut costs and are eventually forced to use less-than-optimum sites.
In sedimentary basins that have been pierced by tens of thousands of oil and gas wells, some of them leaking methane today, it may prove hard to find good disposal sites.
My main point, though, was that CCS in populated areas is bound to run into public opposition. The recent events in California with the uncontrolled blowout at the methane gas storage site are not helpful at all, even if the possibility of a CO2 blowout happening is much lower.
I'm not anti-CCS, by the way, just skeptical that it can deployed as a silver bullet at scale and in time to solve the climate crisis. There probably are places (eg, in the oil sands or at gas-fired power plants) where CCS could play a useful role.
I lived in S Alberta for twenty-five years and I'm well aware of how long and hard the winters can be (and that N Alberta has it much worse). Home heating in the Great White North does indeed seem to be a difficult problem to solve without fossil fuels. I was encouraged to read recently about the Drake Landing project in Okotoks. See comment #9 on this thread on the Alberta carbon tax. Solutions like that, along with retrofitted, super-insulated homes might get us a long way there. Still, when it's -40C for a weeks-long cold snap, some form of furnace inside the house is likely required.
Sharon,
It seems to me that the only reason natural gas is cheaper for you to use is because you do not pay for the very large damages that you cause when you use it (this applies to all fossil fuel use, I don't want to pick on you). If you have to pick up your portion of the cost to move Miami, Norfork and Bangladesh you might find out that methane is not as cheap as renewable electricity any more. If we build a power system that does not use fossil fuels (wind, solar and nuclear if it is economic) than you can be warm and not contribute to the distruction of others homes at the same time. Andy's link provides one alternative for you that is hopeful.
The issue with AGW is that a small amount of CO2 from me does not seem all that bad. When we add up all those small contributions humans are damaging the global commons. In order to fix the problem of damaging the commons everyone must move to low carbon technology.
If a carbon fee is implemented that covers the damage carbon does than we can see what is really the cheapest way to go. Fortunately, alternatives have been developed that can produce all our energy without damaging the climate.
Thanks, Sharon, for your expanded comments.
I would still be interested to know your estimate (or better, an authoritative figure) for the number of Canadian households that are off the electric grid. But please don't trouble to dig that out, if you feel my request is onerous for you!
My own region is known for its 100% lack of skiing . . . and 100% of households possessing air-conditioning. So if I may make an easier request . . . and ask you what your local electricity cost [marginal cost] per Kw-hour averages out as. And also ask you a more personal question ~ how many Kw-hours [alternatively: BTU's] does your house require in total year-round heating? And how that compares in oil cost for you.
I hope that there may be some marginal but significant scope for your local houses to "super-insulate" ~ but I realise we are talking multiple thousands of dollars, there, for the upgrade (if any possible!). Of course, the whole question here is the long term alterations that will happen in energy supply in Canada (and worldwide).
As a partial comparison : a relative of mine living in Germany, has changed houses, and, although grid-connected, he uses the previously-installed oil heating. I presume that this is because his marginal (oil) cost is lower ~ without accounting for the externalized costing of the oil. His immediate overall heating costs have dropped, since he installed triple-glazing in the windows and super-high insulation in ceilings/walls. The installation costs were high ~ many thousands of Euros ~ but that amount was supplied as an interest-free loan (from the German government) specifically ear-marked for house insulation upgrades.
That seems an enlightened policy by the government ~ and I hope your recent "governmental upgrade" may bring similar policies to Canada. Certainly we need that sort of change too, right where I live !
Thank you for your responses as I am genuinely interested to learn of ways we can transition from fossil fuels in Canada without collapsing economically, agriculturally and otherwise. I'm still wondering especially about the land use issue if we shift in a major way to hydro and renewables.
In response to #58 Eclectic, regarding households that are off the electric grid, I found this information: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Off-the-grid
Environmental concerns in Canadian off-grid communities
"Canada has about 175 aboriginal and northern off-grid communities." You can read more at that link. There are many other individual homes that are off the grid.
Regarding our electricity cost, it has varied greatly. For example, January 2012, it was 15.1940¢/kWh, whereas January 2015, it was 7.423¢/kWh. For natural gas January 2012 was $3.057/GJ, and January 2015 was $2.760/GJ. We often pay more than double the energy cost in distribution costs.
In 2014, we used 122.25 GJ (natural gas) for heating our 1226 sq ft. very well-insulated home and single-car garage/shop, and 9259 kWh for power (including powering a block heater on cold winter days so our vehicle will start - our garage is a shop - no room for the car). It cost just under $4,000 for heat and electricity for the year. Unfortunately, most people, especially lower income families, have less insulation in their homes, so it would cost more. It would be interesting to compare the power required to provide a home in a warm climate with air conditioning for a year.
In response to #55, scaddenp,
The information on GHSP is very promising. My husband's parents in southern Manitoba had this installed, and we have looked into it. Unfortunately, according to a report: "Feasibility of Ground Source Heat Pumps in Alberta" (Prepared By: Dave Miller and Tanya Maynes, March 2008), "In all cases, calculations using numbers representative of an Alberta energy mix showed that switching from conventional forced air furnaces to GSHPs resulted in an increase in GHG emissions." Also, I think my husband said it cost about $45,000 to install. But maybe in the future, when our area has more wind, solar power, etc.
#57 - Michael,
I'm well aware that we damage the environment and thereby cause suffering for others, and that we can lessen the damage with our choices. It's so good to see that some people recognize a connection between consumers and industry in this AGW problem! So many people demonize those who extract the fossil fuels, while they as consumers continue to use them for their own benefit. In regard to heating our home, natural gas is relatively "low carbon." It emits about 50% less carbon dioxide than coal and has the potential to be combined with CCS (when this technology is matured).
Right now, it would seem that a high-efficiency natural gas furnace is probably the best source of reliable heat for our existing home (currently - pun intended - electricity in our area doesn't come from renewables). We could use solar panels combined with GHSP if we saved up a LOT of money, but we'd likely still need a furnace, which is already a LOT of money.
#56 - Andy. Thank you for replying to my comment. I am certainly open to anything you have to say. (And I love the photos of your dog.) I agree CCS is suitable for oil sands which are usually in remote areas. And they are, of course, a transitional solution.
Thank you for the link to the Drakes Landing project. Wow! What a great plan for new neighbourhoods. I hope many more of these will be built. Ironically, if our oil industry "tanks" we probably won't be able to afford such ideal innovations. Right now, many I know have lost their jobs or fear they will lose their jobs or that their businesses will go bankrupt. This includes biologists, fish and wildlife specialists, reclamation specialists and environmental scientists and technologists who were working alongside industry to minimize effects on the environment. It trickles down even to us artists (I'm a nature photographer). The curator in Fort St. John, B.C. said sales are down 40% from last year, because most of their customers worked in oil related jobs.
There is a book called "Creativity: the psychology of discovery and invention" by Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi (don't ask me how to pronounce his name!). He makes the observation that innovation is sparked by a perceived problem. However, innovation often, eventually, brings about other unintended problems, requiring further innovation. I think it would be most helpful if the issue of AGW could be addressed in light of this truth. AGW is an unintended problem created by consumers and industry together. Most people know there's no silver bullet. Even the production of solar panels has an environmental impact. As Rumpelstiltskin says in the TV series, Once Upon a Time, "Magic comes with a price, Dearie."
What distresses me most about this issue, besides, of course, the people affected by rising water levels, etc., is what I would call "the psychology of blaming." It's easy to target the tar sands because Canada has a great deal of industry in one area, and statistics and images can be used to paint them in the worst possible light - to the point where they are perceived as one of the biggest contributors to climate change. But from what I understand, if we shut down all of the tar sands, it would reduce global emissions by 0.16%. Even the 2013 Skeptical Science article, An Updated Look at What Keystone XL and Alberta Tar Sands Mean for the Climate, indicates that the "dirty" part of the tar sands (if all the expansions had gone through and the maximum had been sent through Keystone XL for 40 years) would contribute only 0.2% to the global carbon budget. And CCS has the potential to reduce the dirtiness to less than 0.2%.
By focusing the public's blame on the tar sands, are we, in the grand scheme of things, "straining out a gnat and swallowing a camel"? The camel might represent our cars, or the trips we take for the sake of pleasure, or the oil we import across the ocean from Saudi Arabia, or other places where they don't have the same regulations...
The oil industry certainly needs to be held accountable, and I was encouraged by your link to the article about Alberta's energy plan which involved consulting with industry.
Ironically, I believe we're going to need a strong fossil fuel industry in order to transition to renewables. We need their expertise and resources. And I do think CCS may prove to be an important part of that transition. Hopefully, as they work with the technology, it will become less expensive and more effective, while we innovate together with renewable alternatives.
Thanks again for your good work. Your articles and comments are most helpful. I have been an environmentalist since the 80s, and I am on a task force to address this AGW issue within the Anglican Church in regard to the suggestion that it is immoral to invest in fossil fuel companies. Our priest referred me to this website, and I'm so glad he did.
I read your post Sharon and a couple of things bother me. Of course, there are a lot of people whose jobs and livelihood depends on the oil industry in Canada. And in Australia, there are lots of communities that depend on coal mining, each could claim only a small percentage of total carbon emissions attributable to their specific community. The same could be said of the oil production of a small African country where I used to live. And so on all around the World. So what do we do then? Nothing? Because we can not disrupt any community? The international finance industry had no such scruples when they repackaged loan assets, leading to the 2008 fiasco. Strangely enough, that has already been forgotten, and it seems such lesser insult to the economically minded.
The current slump in prices is largely a result of speculation, as were the spikes that happened in the past. The problem is, one can not use the excuse that too many people depend on oil so we can't do anything about it. The hard truth is this: there is no long term future for humanity that includes the industrial scale use of fossil fuels. None. The two are in fact mutually exclusive. So one must be chosen over the other. Which will it be? Once we have that figured out, we ideally would try to make the transition into nothingness for the other as painless as possible. Even if we choose the better option, that may still not be completely painless but neither is life.
And please don't lecture me on how it's like to lose one's job and livelihood. I was working in aviation when the 9/11 attacks sent the all job market down the tubes, including my job. I'm still here. What Westerners these days call hardship would be considered a very comfortable life in 95% of non Western locations. Even the miserable 2008 economic recession did not manage to reach anywhere close to great depression levels. No long lines to get soup. No shanty towns of homeless people. No epidemic. Just a little less comfort and security. The net loss resuting from this greed-induced fiasco was in the trillion range. It was absorbed by the World economy, with only Greece still having consequences.
We can spare a few hundred billions into something that likely holds the key to long term future. How much could we gather if we had the 100 richest people in the World commit 1% of their wealth, as a start?
Philippe, I would identify with you, but not lecture you, on what it's like to lose one's job and livelihood.
I hope I did not imply that we should do nothing about our CO2 emissions. On the contrary, we must do all we can. We have chosen to transition. CCS is one solution in the transition plan.
Sharon
An open question. Could your heating requirements - which are obviously significant where you live - be met by ground-sourced heat pumps? Is that considered? Is that on individual citizens radar where you live? Is that on the radar for the authorities?
Sharon: It's a common argument that the upstream emissions of the oil sands amount to only 0.2% of the world's emissions, with the implication being that it is an amount that is too small to worry about.
As a rejoinder, one could argue that the proportion of the world's population that lives in Alberta is only 0.06%, so why should the rest of worry about what happens to them?
Having worked in the Alberta oil patch myself through many brutal rounds of downsizing, particularly in the 1980s, I know what a devastating effect these oil busts can have on individuals and their families. I still have many friends in the province who are watching their investments of time and expertise circle the drain, through no fault of their own. In particular, I feel bad for the many younger people who have kids, mortgages and student loans who suddenly see their futures change from one of prosperity to one of uncertainty and the fear of personal bankruptcy. It's really tough.
So, I would not be inclined to make that kind of a counter-argument since it appears indifferent to individual suffering. It's in the nature of the climate crisis that negative effects of the climate impacts and the effects of the economic disruption that mitigation will bring are not distributed fairly or evenly.
As you point out, all change brings with it winners and losers, much of it unintended. A nasty feature of the climate crisis is that those who will suffer most had the least to do with causing the problem. Also, the changes to to the climate will endure for millennia. In contrast, the damage from the worst catastophes of the past would heal in the space of a generation or two.
I would agree though that the oil sands are often demonized disproportionately. The coal industry, for example, is far worse. And the critics of oil producers are often themselves big consumers.
PS, somebody once told me that "Csikszentmihalyi" is pronounced "cheeks sent me high".
Sorry if I misinterpreted your meaning Sharon. I remain skeptical about CCS. It's a question of scale. Total yearly anthropogenic CO2 emissions are about 100 times that of volcanic activity. The sheer amount is staggering. Equally staggering is the scale at which CCS would have to be deployed to make a dent in it. It is a geological scale undertaking. The cost would be a significant factor, so would be the energy expenditure. I am not sure that CCS on a large scale makes sense from the thermodynamic point of view.
#63 - Hello Glenn,
I addressed GHSP possibilities for our area in #59, but have since done more research. Because of our current energy mix, switching from natural gas to GHSP would acutally increase our emissions. As Alberta replaces coal with solar, wind, etc., this option will begin to make sense for more Alberta homes.
Our friend, Dr. Jim Sandercock (NAIT) has made some interesting predictions regarding the future of our alternative energy. "Geothermal is probably going to maintain its quiet majority in the alternative energy space. There are a lot of installations in the Edmonton area already – over 1,000. They’re particularly effective when they’re part of commercial buildings..."
One factor is that commercial buildings often have air conditioning (which GHSP replaces), whereas most homes here don't, so the benefit for homes is not as great.
According the Calgary Geothermal Inc., installing GSHP for our existing 1226 sq. ft. home would cost about $30,000 plus $15,000 for our detached single-car "garage" shop. This does not include travel and hotel costs. (There may be a company in Edmonton; I just haven't found one.)
One of the obstacles they often meet is that they have to be able to get a drilling rig into your yard. Unfortunately, that would be impossible for us unless we bulldoze our neighbour's garage. :(
One thing I did discover in my research is that Albertans can choose a green energy plan for electricity. I'm sure you're familiar with the concept, but...
"If you're looking to support solar power in Alberta, you need to locate a solar energy company and purchase your supply from it...it's not as though you actually have wind or solar electricity pumped directly to your outlets. Instead, the supply you purchase from renewable energy companies is simply added to the giant pot that is the energy grid. Purchasing a green energy plan means your energy use will be offset in the grand scheme of things because an equivalent to your usage was produced by a renewable energy company."
Also, if you use natural gas for heating, you can determine your carbon footprint and offset your consumption by purchasing carbon offsets or renewable energy credits (investments in renewable energy projects).
And so, Glenn, I thank you for your kind suggestion and question. I have learned a great deal in the process of answering it.
Sharon:
When I lived in Regina, Saskatchewan, we had to replace our furnace, and looked seriously an a ground source heat pump option. At the time (about 12 years ago?), it would have cost us about $20K to install a system to heat a 1600 sq.ft. bungalow. Half of that cost would have been for the drilling; the oher half for the heating/cooling system (using existing hot air ducts in the 20-year-old house).
We also ended up opting for a high efficiency gas furnace, for several reasons:
It would make more sense for a new house, and would surely make a lot more sense for places where people don't have access to natural gas and use electricity to heat directly.
We also ended up opting for a wind-generated electricity supplement on our electricty bill ("green power"), to encourage SaskPower to pursue renewalbe options.
#58 - Eclectic
I'd like to know how much you spend on air conditioning in a year, how many kWh at what price, etc. It would be interesting to compare requirements and expenditures from opposite sides of the thermometer!
#67 - Bob Loblaw
Thank you for your comments and insights. I didn't even think about the landscaping issue.
It looks like we'll be following in your footsteps. But our daughter and son-in-law may go with GSHP if the economy improves to the point where they can build a home. They'd like a self-sufficient country dwelling some day.
#63 - Glenn - A friend of mine brought up a question regarding GSHP in cities. If every house in the neighbourhood had GSHP installed in an attempt to get off fossil fuels for heating, would this diminish the heat available to each individual home?
#64 - Andy
I've learned so much from your post and the comments, not the least of which is how to pronounce Csikszentmihalyi!
Andy and #65 - Philippe -
I hope to speak to Lori Motherwell next week. I took some photography classes with her when she lived up north. Last I heard, she is the (I must say "brilliant") engineer in charge of the Quest CCS project in central Alberta. It would be interesting to get her perspective on the future of CCS technology.
Philippe, the reason I said I would identify with you regarding losing your job as a pilot is that we moved up north for my husband's first job as a pilot in '82. A recession hit that summer, and his job lasted only 4 months. This after spending four years and all of our spare cash on his flight training. You're right, people adapt. But maybe CCS can prevent the squashing of a few dreams at least by allowing the tar sands projects and related jobs to wind down gradually as we transition to renewables.
Sharon @ #68 , for your interest for comparisons, my details are :-
House: single storey, sort of bungalow, with old stone walls plus at rear a portion with "brick veneer" ( = single layer outer brick wall, timber load-bearing inner wall, with plasterboard innermost facing, and fibreglass insulation inbetween ). Roof : corrugated iron. Fibreglass insulation resting on top of ceilings. Windows : laminated glass (single layer).
Residents: 3.5 adults [ you guessed it ~ 1.5 adult children ].
Heating: rarely used [ yes, I can hear your sigh, even at this distance ]. Basically used only a few days a year, in winter [ and yes . . . Not Winter As We Know It, Captain ] ~ when we use a reverse-cycle air-conditioner (heat-pump) for maybe 6 hours a day on the "coldest" days only. Woollen pullover & jacket worn in the house.
Cooling: refrigerant air-conditioner, up to 6 Kw draw. This really sucks up the electricity . . . but is used for 12 hours per day, mostly only during heatwaves of more than 2 days duration ( 48 hours being the house's thermal inertia "rise time" from its previously-tolerable natural coolness ). For moderately hot conditions, plain electric fans (about 50 watts) are adequate. For the actual air-conditioning, the thermostat is usually set at 28 degrees C . . . though if North American visitors complain about the swelteringly-hot house, then we lower the Set Temp down to 24 degrees.
Costings: I have expressed in Australian dollars ~ usually roughly equal to Canadian dollars. And rounded to nearest $10. Costs/bills include "GST" = Goods and Services Tax [federal government]. I have excluded "service charges / connection fees" which are essentially an additional impost by the supply company, and largely unrelated to actual power consumption.
~ Full year to approx June 30th 2015 : Electricity $2210, from a consumption of 6160 Kw-hours ( billed at various levels from 33 to 40 cents per Kwh ). This is for all power consumption in the house ~ with the exception of a ( 12-month ) bill of $140, for gas heating of water for hot showers [and a tad for the washing machine].
Please note : the electricity supply is generated by very roughly one third wind turbine, one third gas-burning, one third coal-burning. The coal-burners are very slowly being phased out. The wind turbine percentage is sometimes a bit higher in fine cool weather . . . and sometimes much lower in mid-summer when a million air-conditioners are roaring. In other Aussie states, the wind turbine percentage is much lower. I have not included the now-increasing level of private roof-top solar-electric panels. The supply companies' output from solar-PE or solar-concentrated thermal turbines . . . is minuscule.
I my own case, I do not have rooftop solar-PE panels. The sunshine level does make solar panels possible for me ( although presently an unattractive 20-year break-even . . . rivalling the service life of panels & system. ) Nevertheless, as good policy, I am certainly prepared to "invest" in solar-PE . . . but I am hampered by having an old house with many part-shaded complex roofing-angles [ not quite Munster / Rocky-Horror mansion style! ], combined with shading from overhanging trees. I gather that standard large panels [250 - 300 watts each] are rendered ineffectual by partial shading falling on the panel surface ~ and that clear sunshine or evenly-clouded sky is what they require. There are rumours that in future, large panels made of many independent smaller sections will allow good power generation even when patchy moving shadows are falling on the surfaces.
I am sorry that so little of this is applicable to you, but I hope you have found some interest in "how the under half live".
That is indeed what my understanding was Sharon. However, I disagree that it would be a wise use of resources. CCS would have to be deployed on an immense scale to offset even only the emissions of Alberta's tar sands. Furthermore, capturing and storing carbon will be an energy consuming enterprise, energy that would have to be carbon free if the whole thing is to make any sense. So the CCS solution will have to absorb its own carbon and then some. I think it would be better to employ resources in developing new energy sources and infrastructure and offer opportunities in these fields in priority to the workers whose jobs may be suppressed by the abandonment of the tar sand exploitation.
#69 Eclectic
So you're not just on the opposite side of the thermometer, but on the opposite side of the earth! I have a cousin down under. And one of Australia's great musicians, Tom Richardson, has performed in my daughter's cafe numerous times because he fell in love with a Peace Country girl while performing at the North Country Fair.
At first, I thought, "33-40 cents/kWh"! Yikes, no wonder you wear sweaters inside on cold days. (We do too, and sheepskin shearling slippers). Then I realized that, with distribution charges, even if our rates are as low as 8.4 cents/kWh, we pay 24 cents/kWh. Still not as high as you.
When we built our home in 1983, the Alberta government offered a free "energy-efficient house design" course. So we built our home with 6" thick fibreglass-insulated walls with an air tight vapour barrier inside, and a 1" blanket of styrofoam on the outside, air-to-air heat exchanger (needs to be replaced), R40 insulation in the attic, a wooden insulated basement, with our biggest windows on the south side and a 6' roof overhang to let the low angle sunshine in in the winter and give us shade in the summer (only one small sealed window on the north side). We planted diciduous trees on the west side to give us shade in the summer, but not winter. We had good, dual pane wooden windows but the wood was affected by mildew from condensation, and some seals were broken, so we recently spent $15,000 on new windows and doors (dual pane, low-e glass, filled with argon gas, multi-chamber uPVC frames). Still our carbon footprint for electricity and heat for our house is 15.4 metric tons of CO2e for the two of us (kids moved out). We do have a small shop with only 4" walls and a separate small natural gas furnace. That increases our GJ total.
The solar heating blues... The trees that shade your house from heat (reducing your need for air conditioning) would also shade the solar panels that could provide you with power for air conditioning. And where we live, when we would need the solar power the most to heat our homes, the sun arrives late for work and leaves early.
I think solar (and other) projects might make more sense in the context of community.
There is an event coming up here in April, planned by a lady in our church - Solar PV and Biomass information for Northern Communities. Paul Cabaj will take attendees through the process of a community solar project, and how they can build on the model of a community owned solar farm being developed near Drumheller. And Mark Porta, from International Clean Energy Consulting Inc., will give details on 1 MW biogas digester plants that run on waste wood and/or municipal solid waste.
And the innovation goes on... Thanks for the info and sharing of ideas.
Andy,
LAND USE
Has anyone addressed the issue of land use in regard to replacing all of our fossil fuels with renewables?
Just as one example, switching to hydro affects agriculture.
If we look beyond climate change, is flooding farmland and wildlife habitat environmentally preferable to improving oil sands with CCS technology?
And if we all switched to hydro for heating, what would it cost to replace all of our natural gas furnaces? Would this not produce collosal waste? I guess if we replaced them as they got to be 30 years and older it wouldn't be as wasteful. Can we wait that long?
"A canola farming family in the Peace River valley won top prize in a yield contest with last year's harvest—on land rented from BC Hydro that will be lost to the Site C dam reservoir.
"I came back to work on the family farm from the oil patch because I realized that I'll never be able to eat oil, drink liquefied natural gas or breath electricity, but... I can help feed the world and clean the air with the food I grow."
This is why I'm wondering if a combination of technologies like CCS and other innovations might help us juggle all the issues. We can't just focus on lowering CO2 emissions; at the end of the day, we still have to deal with the logistics of producing and delivering food and keeping people from freezing (while we transition to renewables), and paying for it all.
Sharon, you might like to check out this post on cattle and GHGs and the long and sometimes rancorous discussion that follows. I'm not completely sure what to believe about the potential to store carbon in the soil, but I think it could help a little, while not being enough to make a big difference to the climate in the timeframe we have left.
It sounds as if you also might enjoy reading the free e-book Sustainable Energy-without the hot air, which would answer some of your questions, while probably raising many more. It was written by British physicist David MacKay and is really just a whole bunch of easy-to-follow back-of-the-envelope calculations to see what it will take to decarbonize Britain's energy supply. It's very useful for bringing some of the more speculative and optimistic projections about renewables down to earth.
As BC resident (and a big consumer of hydroelectricity for my home heating) I'm torn on the question of Site C and the destruction it will cause. A pet peeve of mine is that there is little talk of using the excess electricity to supply Alberta with power to aid with Alberta's shift to intermittent renewables. Instead, I think the power might get used for LNG liquefaction plants, which is rather self-defeating.
I really should be planning to install air-source heat pumps, but have been putting it off because of the capital cost. A few neighbours have installed them, but ironically I think their main motivation was not so much to have more efficient winter heating, but to provide air conditioning in our often hot summer weather. So yes, I'm aware of the capital costs involved with a switch to more efficiency and the trade-offs involved.
I wish it were more straightforward!
Sharon, thank you for your information. It sounds like you are "doing good" with your house ~ and also finding that, like the international space station, a completely "airtight house" has a moisture problem. Hmm. Clockwork dehumidifier?
You are very right about the often-unacceptable disadvantages of extensive land-flooding for hydro power. (Nor are tide & wave-based generators doing well, either).
Even outside Canada, most of the settled world is under increasing shortage of water, and "wasting" it on power-generation is not a practical choice.
Sharon,
This post reviews a paper (Jacobson et al 2015) that proposes using renewable energy to supply 100% of all power for the economy. They do not propose much new hydro because people object to flooding so much and most of the best spots are already built. For the entire USA they propose 3 new dams in Alaska, but they are not required for the proposal. They do propose adding hydro to existing dams and a little run of river but that does not flood any land. I have not heard of any plan that proposes extensive hydro.
If you read Jacobson's paper they have a section on land use. They feel that land use is acceptable. Some people object to the appearance of windmills on a lot of land. I don't think windmills look too bad, especially compared to the problems with AGW. What do you think?
The big problem I see with CCS is that there are no demonstration projects for CCS that are economic. If we set up the immense CCS plants required to address AGW, how will they be paid for? If a coal plant adds CCS it will not generate electricity at a reasonable price. All fossil fuels become uneconomic when they have to pay for the environmental damage they cause.
"All fossil fuels become uneconomic when they have to pay for the environmental damage they cause."
That, indeed, is the problem.
#75. Michael,
Thank you for referring me to the Jacobson paper post! I left a comment at #81.
In regard to windmills, I think of them as symbols of green energy, so I don't think they look bad at all, when I see them in someone else's back yard.
Sending windmills out to sea seems like a perfect solution to me. But how do we get the energy to all the places it needs to be? (I have more reading to do.)
I get what you're saying about CCS and the true cost of fossil fuels. CCS costs may come down as technology progresses.
But maybe dirt would work better (#42). I grew up on a farm, so I'm inclined to like that as a contributing solution.
#75. Michael,
I don't know if we're really in a position to be too picky about how renewable energy innovations look, considering what's at stake, but I have two friends who live across the alley from each other. One friend put in solar panels to provide electricity for her home, and the other friend is ticked off with her for spoiling her view. Some people don't want it in their back yard or their neighbour's back yard. But they're still friends. So there's hope.