BublicPlog: My rebuttal on some energy research for BC...

Original email:

Yes these are the 2 coal plants. Like how they’re called “coal/biomass”…The Princeton coal/biomass is a misnomer – the “biomass” is wood, likely pine-beetled from nearby Manning Park, and is unlikely to be a large proportion of what they’re burning.

“While proponents of these projects have described them as "clean coal" projects, in reality they are far from clean. While described as state of the art, in reality they are run of the mill. In fact, the proposed plants would generate 70 times the nitrogen oxide, 260 times the sulphur dioxide and 7 times more particulate matter than the Sumas II power plant in Washington State that your government successfully opposed. In addition to this the plant would emit mercury and over 1.8 million tonnes of greenhouse gasses every year.”

http://www.bcsea.org/policy/files/BCSEA-2006Sep-Coal%20Fact%20Sheet.pdf

My rebuttal:

Sorry… but this doc seems like a lot of FUD… It talks about what they could make for emissions, not what they will make.

According to that doc, the plants will be Circulating Fluidized Bed (AKA Fluidized Bed Combustion = FBC) reactors. That seems to be the cleanest way they could burn coal, assuming they use “Pressurized Fluidized Bed Combustion”. Assuming they’re combined cycle (because they’d be stupid not to be), they should expect to be getting around 44% efficiency if they don’t include the low-grade steam that could also be used.

Emissions. Vs a std old coal powered plant. (lots of info from http://www.netl.doe.gov/technologies/coalpower/Combustion/FBC/APFBC/APFBCprojects.html)

	Standard Pulverized Coal Plant	AP-FBC
SO₂	19.5 lb/MWh	0.7 lb/MWh
NOx	19.2 lb/MWh	2.2 lb/MWh
Particulate	0.43 lb/MWh	0.02 lb/MWh
CO₂	2,335 lb/MWh	1,630 lb/MWh

Bidder Name	Project Name	Nearby City	Energy Source	Plant Capacity (MW)	Total Energy (GWh/yr)
AESWapiti Energy Corporation	AESWapiti Energy Corporation	Tumbler Ridge	Coal / Biomass	184	1,612
Compliance Power Corporation	Princeton Power Project	Princeton	Coal / Biomass	56	421

So, according to the total energy quoted, they would pollute:

SO2: (2033000 MWh/yr) * 0.7 lb/MWh = 1423100 lbs = 635 tons/year

NOx: 1997 tons/yr

PM: 18 tons/yr

CO2: 1.5 Megatons/yr (ouch!)

These values are much less than the article quotes. The article is looking at 30-40 year old coal plants in Ontario.

Didn’t bother finding info on natural gas turbine plants, as I believe the Sumas project would have been.

I’m happy the plants are at least next to coal mines. It’s better than spitting out more CO2 and burning more oil only to ship the stuff to China to burn!

So yeah, the article is FUD, but coal plants still suck compared to conservation.

Some more links:

http://www.katabaticpower.com/index.html

http://www.seabreezepower.com/projects/knobhill/

http://www.aeoliswindpower.com/sites/investor-07.html

some links regarding energy co-operatives:

http://www.friendsofbruce.ca/Photos,Maps,Etc/Toronto_Wind_Energy_Co-op_Windmill.html

http://www.peaceenergy.ca/

finally some interesting info on photovoltaics in Vancouver – study sponsored by BCHydro:

http://www.bchydro.com/rx_files/environment/environment3929.pdf