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It's been a while since I've seen the sly "natural gas is more environmentally-minded" argument passed off without clarifying that it is still a pollution sourc

by cjslep 9y ago

It's been a while since I've seen the sly "natural gas is more environmentally-minded" argument passed off without clarifying that it is still a pollution source. Or at least burying/deemphasizing it. I still remember an Areva VP at an ANS student conference around 2012 furiously pounding his fists repeating "Clean coal is not clean. Natural gas is not clean." The kicker is that the article buries the info pretty deep, and it isn't exactly a fair comparison (citing Bloom's unverifiable response vs hard data, presumably): > Bloom puts the emissions of its natural-gas cells in the range of 679 to 833 pounds of carbon dioxide per megawatt-hour, while coal plants released 2,252 pounds of carbon dioxide per megawatt-hour in the second quarter of this year I can put that number as "still definitely dirty" and would propose that pushing this form of energy production is not exactly "environmentally minded" given the state of renewables. Cutting in half is just not good enough, in the world of big powerplants. Edit: For the small powerplant world, I remain hopeful for traditional batteries, Small Reactors, or Reactor Batteries.

greeneggs 9y ago
> They are much closer to those of natural-gas plants, which, according to the index, averaged 938 pounds per megawatt-hour during the same period. To continue your quote. Perhaps with optimistic accounting these fuel cells are slightly better than natural-gas plants, but I expect that at best they end up being close. (Has Bloom really accounted for all the CO2 emissions in installing and running these?)
Retric 9y ago
30% (679/2252) to 37% (833/2252) is much better than half. Creating 1/3 the carbon and far fewer of many other pollutants is a massive improvement, it's like comparing a 20 MPG car with a 60 MPG car. The great thing about gas turbines is they are easy to turn off and on which helps adoption of cleaner but intermittent energy sources. Coal/Nuclear on the other hand is such as base-load power which is very much a bad thing. If you accept say 20% natural gas you can hit 80% renewable power with very little storage. Even 5% allows for a drastic reduction in the need for storage.

by cjslep 9y ago

greeneggs 9y ago

> They are much closer to those of natural-gas plants, which, according to the index, averaged 938 pounds per megawatt-hour during the same period. To continue your quote. Perhaps with optimistic accounting these fuel cells are slightly better than natural-gas plants, but I expect that at best they end up being close. (Has Bloom really accounted for all the CO2 emissions in installing and running these?)

Retric 9y ago

30% (679/2252) to 37% (833/2252) is much better than half. Creating 1/3 the carbon and far fewer of many other pollutants is a massive improvement, it's like comparing a 20 MPG car with a 60 MPG car. The great thing about gas turbines is they are easy to turn off and on which helps adoption of cleaner but intermittent energy sources. Coal/Nuclear on the other hand is such as base-load power which is very much a bad thing. If you accept say 20% natural gas you can hit 80% renewable power with very little storage. Even 5% allows for a drastic reduction in the need for storage.