Ed Note: “Electric natural gas compressors contributed to the near collapse of the Texas power grid in 2021,” Ed Ireland argues below. “All U.S. power grids face the same risk.” His first-hand knowledge of this instance of ‘deep decarbonization’ politics gets to the why-behind-the-why of the still-debated Texas blackout, the worst electricity debacle in the history of the industry.
… Continue Reading“The anti-fossil fuel movement started pressuring North Texas cities and towns to require electric compressors on natural gas pipelines based on arguments that the air pollution from natural gas-powered compressors was causing increased asthma and other health problems…. I said that electrifying natural gas pipeline compressors was a terrible idea that could affect the availability of natural gas when it was needed most, such as during bad weather events. Unfortunately, I lost that debate….”
Ed. Note: The current government-led drive for battery electric vehicles (EVs) can be informed by history. In the 1890s through about 1920, electric vehicles went from market dominance to market rejection, outcompeted by the gasoline-powered internal combustion engine. This post, and others at MasterResource (here and here), revisit the early history of the electric vehicle.
Electricity was the early front runner for horseless carriages, and the great man of electric utilities, Samuel Insull, got out in front. In 1898, Chicago Edison opened battery-charging stations and offered promotional rates to jumpstart this market. “Load-leveling” rates meant cheap off-peak charging at wholesale to serve this embryonic market.
In 1899, Insull became president of the $25 million Illinois Electrical Vehicle Transportation Company, the western branch of the Columbia Automobile Company of New York, to market electric cabs and carriages in Chicago.…
Continue Reading“CCS has been slow to take off due to the cost of capture and the limited salability of carbon dioxide as a product. Thirty-nine CCS facilities capture CO2 around the world today, totaling 45 million tons per year, or about one-tenth of one percent (0.1%) of industrial emissions produced globally.”
The Environmental Protection Agency is working on a new rule that would set stringent limits on carbon dioxide (CO2) emissions from US power plants. Utilities would be required to retrofit existing plants with carbon capture and storage (CCS) technology or to switch to hydrogen fuel. Others call for the use of CCS to decarbonize heavy industry. But the cost of capture and the amount of CO2 that proponents say needs to be captured crush any ideas about feasibility.…
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