Requiring Fossil Fuel Companies to Pay for the Transition to a Carbon Neutral Economy

The Earth from space (Credit: NASA)

by Marcel F. Williams 


Civilization's relentless use of fossil fuels continues to deposit-- excess CO2-- into the Earth's atmosphere. This is not only causing a steady increase in global temperatures but also an increase in ocean acidification and a gradual, but relentless, rise in global sea levels. But the United States and  the rest of  the industrialized world could be completely carbon neutral by the year 2050 if  nations simply-- mandated-- that the fossil companies pay for a gradual transition to a carbon neutral economy. Under this scenario, heavy carbon taxes would only be necessary for individual energy companies that fail to meet the national mandates.

Various technologies-- already exist-- that could make the world's energy economy completely carbon neutral: nuclear, solar, wind, hydroelectric, biomass, etc. But fossil fuels are also used for the production of industrial chemicals and fertilizers. Fortunately, important industrial chemicals like methanol and chlorine and fertilizers like ammonia can also be produced from carbon neutral sources of electricity.

36% of electricity generation in the United States is already carbon neutral (19% nuclear and 17% renewable). In the state of California, more than 50% of the electricity consumed by Californians is carbon neutral.  The use of natural gas for heating and cooking in America could, also, be easily   replaced by electricity produced from carbon neutral resources.


It should be Federally mandated by Congress that at least:

1. 40% of all electricity produced by a public or private utility be carbon neutral by the year 2025,

2. 50% by the year 2030,

3. 75% by the year 2035,

and, 

4. 100% by the year 2040

The penalty for utilities that fail to meet the federal mandates should be a 50% sin tax on all electricity produced from that individual utility until that utility company finally complies with the Federal standards. Revenue from the sin tax could be used to plant trees in parks and forest within the US in order to remove excess carbon dioxide from the atmosphere.

 There's enough room at existing nuclear power facilities in the US to increase nuclear capacity to 480 GWe  (93% of current US electricity production). And this could easily be done by deploying small centrally mass produced nuclear reactors (SMR) to existing sites. Since nuclear meltdowns would be impossible for small nuclear reactors, their introduction into existing sites could eventually replace large existing reactors making commercial nuclear power facilities even safer than they already are as the safest mode of electricity production in the US. Nuclear and renewable electricity in combination could easily make America's electric grid completely carbon neutral by 2040.

Geographically, photovoltaic power plants and wind power plants could be placed almost anywhere if they were simply used to produce renewable methanol (eMethanol). Of course, renewable facilities that are deployed in the most optimally productive areas wold produce the most methanol.

Methanol can be produced through the synthesis of hydrogen and carbon dioxide (CO2). Hydrogen can be produced from the electrolysis of water while carbon dioxide can be extracted from the atmosphere or from the combustion of biomass.  So renewable methanol could be produced from nuclear, solar, wind, and hydroelectric power and from urban, agricultural, and forest bio-waste.

Renewable methanol could also produce electricity through fuel cell power plants and by using existing  natural gas electric power plants  retrofitted to use methanol.  If eMethanol were used to fuel  all of the natural gas electric power plants in America, US electrical utilities could be at least 67% carbon neutral. If eMethanol replaced natural gas in the state of California, California electricity would be 85% carbon neutral.

An additional benefit of using eMethanol for electric power production is that each initial deployment of a methanol electric power plant would have a carbon negative effect on the Earth's atmosphere-- if the CO2 from the flu gases emitted from a methanol electric power plant is recycled to produce more renewable methanol. So the transition from a fossil fuel electric economy (coal, natural gas, oil) to a renewable methanol electric economy could actually reduce the amount of CO2  deposited in the Earth's atmosphere.  Once all fossil fuel electric power plants are either shut down or retrofitted to use eMethanol, a renewable methanol electric economy could further reduce the amount of CO2 in the atmosphere by substantially increasing the human use of electricity in third world countries (more than 900 million people in the world still don't have access to electricity). Increasing electricity demand  by increasing the number of electric and plug-in-hybrid electric vehicles could also have a carbon negative effect if this increase in electricity is supplied by the deployment of methanol electric power plants.

If should also be Federally mandated by Congress that a-- specific percentage-- of transportation fuels and industrial chemicals be derived from carbon neutral resources, a Federal mandate of  least: 

1. 5% by 2025,

2. 20% by 2030,

3. 40% by 2035,

4. 60% by 2040,

5. 80% by 2045,

and, 

6. 100% by 2050

Again, the penalty for fossil fuel energy companies failing to meet the Federal mandates will be a 50% sin tax on all of the non compliant fuel or chemicals sold in the US.

Renewable methanol could also help with the transition for transportation fuels and industrial chemicals and fertilizers from fossil resources to renewable resources. Methanol is already starting to utilized as a cleaner alternative fuel for the shipping industry.

Methanol can be converted into gasoline and blended with gasoline derived from petroleum to any level, or eGasoline could completely replace gasoline from petroleum in current internal combustion engines. Gasoline that is a mixture of eGasoline and gasoline from petroleum might result in a reduction in fuel cost due to the reduced demand for petroleum. With the increased use of electric vehicles, hydrogen fuel cell vehicles, and methanol fuel cell vehicles,  and plug-in-hybrid vehicles that utilized gasoline much more efficiently, the cost of petroleum derived gasoline should fall dramatically. The increased production of carbon neutral methanol and gasoline should also decrease its cost over the course of thirty years. 

Dimethyl ether can be derived from the dehydration of methanol. Vehicles that use diesel fuel can be easily and cheaply modified to use dimethyl ether. Modified diesel fueled vehicles could initially use dimethyl ether derived from natural gas and a growing percentage of eDimethyl ether.

Carbon neutral jet fuel can also be derived from a chemical modifications of methanol and dimethyl ether. And hybrid electric  airplanes and airships could be fueled by renewable methanol or dimethyl ether.

The production of ammonia for fertilizer and other industrial use can easily be derived from nuclear, solar, wind, and hydroelectric sources of electricity through the electrolysis of water and the extraction of nitrogen from the atmosphere.

American EEZ marine territories

Communities that are not fond of the idea of living near large nuclear, wind or solar electric power facilities  could import carbon neutral methanol remote US territorial waters in the Pacific. The ocean imported eMethanol could be used in natural gas electric power plants retrofitted to use methanol.  In such extremely remote ocean locations, synthetic fuels and industrial chemicals and fertilizers could be produced by floating nuclear, solar, wind, or OTEC power facilities. Tankers could transport carbon neutral fuels and chemicals to towns and cities along the American coastlines, inland to states along the Mississippi River and inland through the Saint Lawrence Seaway to states that border the  Great Lakes.   

The Great Lakes and the Saint Lawrence Seaway

The Mississippi River and its tributaries

Links and References

An existing site policy for small nuclear reactors

US Electricity Production in 2018 by Source

Methanol Institute: Power Generation

Synthetic fuels (Methanol to gasoline)

Producing Renewable Jet Fuels from Carbon Neutral Methanol

Dimethyl Ether

The Production and Utilization of Renewable Methanol in a Nuclear Economy

The Case for Remotely Sited Underwater Nuclear Reactors

Deploying Ocean Nuclear Energy Flotillas into International Waters for the Carbon Neutral Production of Synthetic Fuels, Industrial Chemicals, and Fertilizers

The Future of Ocean Nuclear Synfuel Production

Thousand-tonne Scale Demonstration of Solar Fuel Synthesis Starts Operation in Lanzhou, China

Solar Fuel Synthesis Pilot Plant Starts Operation in China

Giant Floating Solar Farms Could Extract CO2 From Seawater, Producing Methanol Fuel

 

The Methanol Alternative: 2012 Methanol Forum

 

Nuclear Synfuel Economy

The Methanol Economy

Gasoline from Air & Water

The President, British Petroleum, and the Synthetic Fuel Economy

by Marcel F. Williams

In the President's speech last night about the BP Gulf Coast environmental crisis and the petroleum industry, he said the following:

"I am happy to look at other ideas and approaches from either party –- as long they seriously tackle our addiction to fossil fuels. Some have suggested raising efficiency standards in our buildings like we did in our cars and trucks. Some believe we should set standards to ensure that more of our electricity comes from wind and solar power. Others wonder why the energy industry only spends a fraction of what the high-tech industry does on research and development -– and want to rapidly boost our investments in such research and development.
All of these approaches have merit, and deserve a fair hearing in the months ahead. But the one approach I will not accept is inaction."

We've already known how to convert urban and rural biowaste (garbage) into gasoline, diesel fuel, and jet fuel for decades. Such local resources could replace nearly 20% of our petroleum needs and provide jobs practically everywhere where garbage is produced (that's every city, town, and farm in America).

But biowaste conversion to liquid fuels waste 80% of its total carbon content. If you added hydrogen to the mix produced from clean electricity from nuclear and hydroelectric power plants, nearly 100% of our transportation and industrial hydrocarbon chemical needs could be met. Once we starting using fuel efficient plug-in-hybrid vehicles and fuel cells, the US could actually become a major exporter of clean carbon neutral fuels.

Obviously, we're not going to replace petroleum overnight, but we can start the transition if the President and the Congress would simply-- mandate-- that at least 10% of all gasoline, diesel fuel, and jet fuel sold in the US be derived from carbon neutral resources by 2020, 50% by 2030, and 90% by 2040. And any of these fuels sold in the US that does not reach these percentages should be slapped with a heavy carbon tax.

To me, its that simple!

Daily Kos New Papyrus Poll

Nuclear Synfuel Economy
http://newpapyrusmagazine.blogspot.com/2008/01/nuclear-synfuel-economy.html

Synfuels and the Price of Oil
http://newpapyrusmagazine.blogspot.com/1999/01/synfuels-and-price-of-oil.html

Gasoline from Air and Water
http://newpapyrusmagazine.blogspot.com/2008/11/gasoline-from-air-and-water_24.html

Obama Seeking New Ideas on Energy and Climate
http://dotearth.blogs.nytimes.com/2010/06/15/obama-seeking-new-ideas-on-energy-and-climate/

Navy Looks to Biofuel to Power Fleets
http://newpapyrusmagazine.blogspot.com/2010/05/navy-looks-to-biofuel-to-power-fleets.html

Synfuels and the Price of Oil

by Marcel F. Williams

In January of 2007, petroleum prices dipped below $60 per barrel. But by March of 2008, oil prices had begun to peak above the $100 per barrel mark. And by July of 2008, oil prices had risen above $140 per barrel! But as the global economy began to decline, oil prices had again fallen below $100 per barrel by October of 2008 and as of late February 2009, the price of oil now stands at below $40 per barrel. Average gasoline prices in the US have also declined from a record $4.11 per gallon in July of 2008 to below $2.00 a gallon as of February of 2009.

Advocates of alternative fuels have bemoaned the current low price of oil as a hindrance towards weaning America off foreign oil and the petroleum fuel economy. However, I view low oil prices as a great economic opportunity to gradually introduce the higher priced carbon neutral synthetic fuels into the American hydrocarbon fuel economy as a component of our total liquid transportation fuel economy.

In 2006, the USA consumed more than 20 million barrels of oil per day while producing only 8 million barrels of oil daily while importing more than 12 million barrels of oil per day.

Thanks to America's importation of huge amounts of foreign oil, several hundred billion dollars of America's national wealth is being exported to foreign nations on an annual basis. And as we continue to use petroleum products for fuel and industrial chemicals, we continue to add substantially more excess CO2 to the atmosphere which is heating up our planet, accelerating the melting of the ice caps, and raising global sea levels.

With oil prices so low, some have argued that this is a perfect time to increase taxes on gasoline in order to fund alternative fuels and to provide incentives for drivers to continue to conserve fuel. However, some believe that raising taxes during a global economic recession (or depression) is a bad idea. However, I believe that mandating the a certain percentage of all gasoline, diesel fuel, and aviation fuel be composed of carbon neutral synfuels is a better alternative than raising taxes and would be a far more effective means for moving America away from the petroleum fuel economy.

If the Federal government mandated that just 5% of all gasoline, diesel fuel, jet fuel and industrial hydrocarbon chemicals in the US be composed of carbon neutral hydrocarbon fuels and industrial chemicals by the year 2015 and 10% by the year 2020 then a huge new carbon neutral synfuel industry could be created in the United States that could possibly completely replace the need for foreign and domestic petroleum in the US by the year 2050 and possibly even sooner.

Sources for these carbon neutral hydrocarbon fuels and industrial chemicals could come from:

1. Urban biowaste (garbage and sewage)
2. Rural biowaste (agricultural biowaste and forest by products)
3. Hydrogen from water electrolysis combined with CO2 extracted from air via clean nuclear, hydroelectric, wind, and solar electric power resources.

All of these sources of hydrocarbons could produce carbon neutral gasoline, diesel fuel, aviation fuel, methanol, methane, in addition to industrial chemicals such as hydrogen and ammonia. However, there is only enough easily available urban and rural biowaste to supply about 6% of America's total petroleum needs. So any substantial environmentally friendly increase in carbon neutral synfuels beyond that level would probably require a substantial increase in synfuels from the synthesis of hydrogen and carbon dioxide via clean nuclear, hydroelectric, wind, and solar electricity resources.

The current cost of these synthetic fuels and industrial chemicals would be generally higher than similar fuels derived from petroleum. However, these relatively more expensive synfuels would only be a small percentage of the total fuel cost since they would initially only be a small percentage of the total fuel content.

For instance, the GreenFreedom advocates argue that current nuclear reactors combined with electrolysis and CO2 extraction technologies could produce 18,000 barrels of oil equivalent gasoline per day for a 1000 MWe nuclear reactor at an estimated operating cost of just $1.40 per gallon. However, this doesn't include the capital cost of the nuclear reactor and the associated synthetic fuel facility and a reasonable profit margin which they conclude would raise the price of nuclear produced gasoline to $4.60 per gallon. Of course the capital cost of nuclear reactors and synfuel facilities would probably fall dramatically due to economies of mass production since it would require the construction of at least 700 new 1GWe reactors to produce enough gasoline for US consumption, or perhaps only half as many reactors (350) if all gasoline vehicles in the US are PHEV (plug-in-electric vehicles) in the 2020s.

So if all gasoline in the US were required to consist of at least 10% carbon neutral gasoline then $2.00 per gallon gasoline from petroleum combined with $4.60 per gallon of carbon neutral gasoline would cost $2.26 per gallon. Of course, if you're driving one of those future plug-in-hybrid vehicles (PHEV) in the 2020s then the cost of electricity could cost you as little as $0.75 per gallon. So your equivalent cost per gallon using 50% electricity, 45% gasoline from petroleum and 5% carbon neutral synthetic gasoline would be approximately $1.88 per gallon. Using nuclear derived carbon neutral gasoline alone in a PHEV would cost you approximately $3.05 per gallon which is still far below the peak cost of $4.11 per gallon US consumers payed for gasoline in July of 2008.

References and Links

1. Green Freedom: A concept for producing carbon-neutral synthetic fuels and chemicals, Los Alamos Labs, November 2007 F.J. Martin and WL Kubic,

2. Gasoline from Air and Water

3. Gasoline from Nuclear and Renewable Energy

4. The Plug-in-Hybrid Revolution

5. Crude Oil Futures

6. Petroleum (Wikipedia)

7. Country energy profiles

Gasoline from Air and Water

by Marcel F. Williams

Fossil fuels are predominantly responsible for putting excess carbon dioxide and methane into the Earth's atmosphere, greenhouse gases that are melting our polar ice caps, raising global sea levels, and causing more extreme climate conditions around the world. The coal and natural gas power industry has looked looked towards future technologies for the on site capture of flu gas in order to recover and sequester carbon dioxide. However, there is no cost effective technology for capturing the CO2 from the mobile producers of carbon dioxide: automobiles, trucks, aircraft, and sea craft.

But there are new technologies that are rapidly being developed that may eventually divorce carbon dioxide polluting sources of energy from the need for on site capture and sequestration of carbon dioxide. These devices are sometimes referred to as mechanical trees. But what they do is to simply extract and recover carbon dioxide from the atmosphere. And these future technologies appear to be far more efficient at extracting CO2 from the air than the plant life on our planet.

Some argue that these carbon dioxide from air extracting technologies could be the saviors of the fossil fuel industry. Ironically, such future technologies could also eventually lead to the complete extinction of fossil use on this planet if the CO2 taken from the atmosphere is used in combination with hydrogen from water to produce hydrocarbon fuels such as: gasoline, methanol, diesel fuel, jet fuel, and dimethyl ether.

Hydrogen

Because the combustion of hydrogen produces only energy and water, hydrogen via the electrolysis of water through hydroelectric, nuclear, wind, and solar has often been proposed as a replacement for hydrocarbon transportation fuels. Liquid hydrogen fuel has been used in US space craft since the days of the Apollo Moon program. And liquid hydrogen has also been frequently proposed for future generation subsonic and hypersonic airliners and aircraft. Hydrogen fueled buses now transport commuters in many urban areas in the US. And hydrogen automobiles have been demonstrated by many automobile companies around the world .

However, hydrogen automobiles have a substantially shorter range than hydrocarbon fueled vehicles and are a lot less efficient than electric vehicles. Refueling hydrogen vehicles also takes much longer than refueling with gasoline, ethanol, or methanol. Because of the hydrogen embrittlement of metals like steel, hydrogen pipelines are more expensive to maintain than natural gas and oil pipelines. Aircraft, seacraft and ground vehicles, and the infrastructure associated with these vehicles, would also have to be completely replaced if we completely replaced our fuel economy with hydrogen.

Hydrocarbon fuels from CO2 and hydrogen

Alternatively, there are several demonstrated methods for synthesizing hydrocarbon fuels by utilizing carbon dioxide in combination with hydrogen which could allow a country to avoid any major overhaul in its transportation energy infrastructure.

Chemist have known how to produce methanol from hydrogen and carbon dioxide for more than 80 years:

CO2 + 3H2 → CH3OH (methanol) + H2O

Methanol is mostly used as a feedstock for making other chemicals. But methanol can be converted into dimethyl ether (DME), a fuel that can be effectively used in diesel engines equipped with new fuel injection systems. The fact that dimethyl ether produces no black smoke, soot, or sulfur dioxide is an clean advantage it has over diesel fuel.

Methanol can also be converted into high octane gasoline via the Mobil Oil methanol to gasoline (MTG) process. Back in the 1980's, the New Zealand government produced 600,000 tonnes of gasoline a year from methanol derived from natural gas using the MTG process.

Methane gas can also be synthesized from hydrogen and carbon dioxide:

CO2 + 4H2 → CH4 (methane) + 2H2O

And methane can also be converted into diesel and jet fuels via Fischer-Tropsch and hydrocracking processes.

Mechanical extraction of atmospheric CO2

Plants capture carbon dioxide from the atmosphere while utilizing sunlight to convert the CO2 into starch. During photosynthesis, trees, for instance, convert carbon dioxide and water into starche molecules and oxygen through a series of oxidation and reduction reactions:

6 CO2 + 6 H2O + sunlight ---> C6H12O6 + 6 O2

Some farm crops and trees can produce up to 20 metric tons per acre (4047 square meters) of biomass a year. One tonne of dried tree consist of 0.45 tonnes of carbon which would translate into the extraction of 1.65 tonnes of carbon dioxide annually extracted from the atmosphere. That's 33 tonnes of CO2 per acre extracted on an annual basis.

Even though the concentration of CO2 in the Earth's atmosphere is a meager 0.04 per cent, companies like GRT (Global Research Technologies) in Arizona and Canadian researchers at the University of Calgary have already built machines that can extract carbon dioxide from the atmosphere far more efficiently than any tree or any other source of biomass. GRT claims that its carbon dioxide air extraction system is a thousand times more efficient than a tree of equal size.

GRT CO2 absorbent material

The University of Calgary team has shown that they could capture CO2 directly from the atmosphere with less than 100 kilowatt-hours of electricity per tonne of carbon dioxide. Their carbon dioxide from air extraction tower was able to capture the equivalent of about 20 tonnes per year of CO2 on just one single square meter of air scrubbing material. Astonishingly, this suggest that even the most conservative estimates would allow these CO2 extracting machines to produce more than 80 thousand tonnes of carbon dioxide per acre annually.

University of Calgary carbon dioxide extraction machine

Because of the need for cheap electricity for hydrogen production, only nuclear and hydroelectric facilities would be currently viable for hydrocarbon fuel production utilizing carbon dioxide from air extraction technologies. Hydroelectric facilities currently produce electricity at 0 .85 cents per kwh while electricity from nuclear facilities currently cost 1.68 cents per kwh. Wind and solar thermal electricity, however, is much more expensive and ranges from over 4 cents per kwh to over 6 cents per kwh.

At the Los Alamos National Laboratory in Los Alamos, New Mexico, F. Jeffrey Martin and Williams L. Kubic, Jr. have developed the Green Freedom concept for using the cooling towers of nuclear reactors to extract carbon dioxide from the atmosphere for the production of gasoline and methanol. They argue that a 1 GWe power plant using their Green Freedom method could produce 18,000-bbl/day of gasoline or 5000 tonnes a day of methanol.

Carbon neutral hydrocarbon synfuel production at nuclear and hydroelectric facilities would not only allow such power facilities to produce transportation fuels and industrial chemicals, they would also allow them to pump methanol and oxygen up to 80 kilometers away to high efficiency power plants for the production of peak-load and back-up-load electricity and commercial waste heat. Nuclear power plants could therefore not only produce base-load electricity but could also supply methanol fuel to replace greenhouse polluting natural gas power plants which are used for daytime peak-load energy and back-up energy for wind and solar power plants.

In 2006, the US consumed nearly 21 million bbl/day of petroleum for transportation fuel and industrial chemical use. If we assumed that nuclear power plants replaced all of the petroleum used in the US in 2006, that would roughly require more than a thousand new 1Gwe nuclear reactors, over 1000 GWe of electrical capacity. Existing nuclear sites that already have nuclear reactors could probably add an additional 200 to 300 Gwe of capacity. However, if one large centralized nuplex (nuclear park) with about 30GWe of average electrical capacity were set up in every state in the union, then that could add an additional 1500 GWe of electrical capacity, more than enough to replace all of our petroleum needs today and probably our needs 30 years from now.

If the new Obama administration is going to invest substantial R&D money into new energy technologies, I would strongly suggest investing in the fast tracking of these carbon dioxide extraction from air technologies that could revolution synfuel production by helping to achieve US independence from the petroleum fuel economy while protecting the global environment from the dangers of global warming and climate change.

Links and References

1. Green Freedom: A concept for producing carbon-neutral synthetic fuels and chemicals, Los Alamos Labs, November 2007 F.J. Martin and WL Kubic,

2. GRT (Global Research Technologies, LLC)

3. Giant Carbon dioxide Vacuums

4. Snatching Carbon dioxide from the Atmosphere

5. CO2 capture from air

6. First Successful Demonstration of Carbon Dioxide Air Capture Technology Achieved:

7. First Successful Demonstration of Carbon Dioxide Air Capture Technology Achieved by Columbia University Scientist and Private Company, (2007) Earth Institute News Archive, 04/24/07

8. Carbon capture and storage:

9. Researchers Scramble to Create CO2-Busting Technologies:

10. CO2 capture from ambient air: a feasibility assessment:

11. Carbon Capture and Storage A False Solution

12. The Case for Carbon Dioxide Extraction from Air

13. Klaus S. Lackner, Patrick Grimes, Hans-J. Ziock, Capturing Carbon Dioxide From Air

14. K. Schultz, L. Bogart, G. Besenbruch, L. Brown, R. Buckingham, M. Campbell, B. Russ, and B. Wong HYDROGEN AND SYNTHETIC HYDROCARBON FUELS – A NATURAL SYNERGY General Atomics Poster

15. G. Olah, A. Goeppert, and G. Prakash, (2006) Beyond Oil and Gas: The Methanol Economy, Wiley-VCH Verlang, Weinheim, Germany

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