By Marguerita Choyl
Dirty, yet abundant and easily shipped, coal is starting to challenge natural gas as the fuel of choice for new power plants.
This is because coal prices are relatively cheaper and not so volatile, industry executives and experts say.
Utilities around the world have increasingly turned to gas to meet a doubling of electricity demand over the next 25 years, while curbing greenhouse gas emissions, like carbon dioxide (CO2), blamed for causing global warming but this is changing.
"The role of natural gas role in power generation is not a slam dunk. There are relative price, emissions and security issues to take into account," said Gerald Doucet of the World Energy Council on the sidelines of a gas conference this week.
At a separate coal conference, the mining industry was also upbeat about demand to turn coal into synthetic fuels like diesel or gas, and urged greater efforts to develop technology to clean up the fuel's emissions.
"The prospects are improving for coal-fired stations. The future is clean. The coal industry can play a great role. It's a great opportunity which we must not lose," said Leigh Clifford, chief executive of Rio Tinto.
DEMAND GROWTH
Demand for coal is growing faster than expected, rising 25 percent in the last three years, to 1.1 billion tonnes.
"Coal is the only fuel with sustainable growth. Coal has stepped up to fill the void left by the limitations on oil and gas," said Gregory Boyce, president of the largest U.S coal producer Peabody Energy.
The International Energy Agency (IEA), the West's energy watchdog, says coal will continue to dominate electricity generation with a 40 percent share, as most of the world's supplies are conveniently located in the strongest and fastest growing economies, the United States, China and India.
"This is likely to continue as demand for power grows mainly in the developing economies. But coal must remain competitively priced, especially as pollution abatement costs increase as carbon emission plans increase," said IEA chief Claude Mandil.
The European Union's emissions trading scheme that began this year has allowed gas and coal to compete for future power generation market share as CO2 allowances were given free to polluting power stations, says Europe's top power producer EDF.
"Gas is no longer the obvious environmental choice as it was two years ago," said Dominique Venet, executive vice president for gas at French power giant EDF.
Venet said that coal would be the preferred fuel for future power generation with oil at $40-45 per barrel, free CO2 allowances and coal at $42.50 a ton.
EDF, the world's largest nuclear power producer, will add its 59th reactor by 2012, but also plans to modernize four coal-fired plants, and to re-open four oil-fired plants as it mainly uses its thermal plants to meet peak demand.
Other European utilities agree fuel choice has become more difficult, but most say gas will be the main option.
"The trend for all energy prices is up. I am not too pessimistic about gas for power generation," said George Verberg, president of the International Gas Union.
CARBON CAPTURE
The IEA estimates it will cost $100 per ton of CO2 emitted to stabilize global emissions by 2050, but this could be more than halved with carbon capture and storage (CCS).
"When it comes to coal, progress is being made on reducing the CCS cost and as soon as it gets down from $100 now to around $40, the coal business will be able to say they we can deliver cheaper electricity and meet the CO2 requirements," Doucet said.
He said Carbon Sequestration Leadership Forum, a 17-nation group working on technology to reduce CO2 emissions, aims to reduce the costs to $40 by 2012, when the Kyoto Protocol's period ends.
"I would not put my money against it," Doucet said.
Copyright 2005 Reuters Limited.
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We kids, all 10- 12-year old guys, had a 'clubhouse' nearby where we would gather from time to time to watch the action, observe the fast moving trains traveling between steel mills (Gary), oil-refineries (Whiting), the east coast and elsewhere. Because the intersection of Calumet Avenue, Indianapolis Boulevard, and 110th Street (into the Indiana side by three or four blocks) had around ten railroad tracks crossing the street(s) a few feet apart from each other, and at various angles, the three or four railroads going through that crossing operated 'union' signals and crossing gates at various places in the mess of it, and they also employed a person (I seem to remember a fat, enormous lady quite often) to also work there as a crossing guard. Two or three minutes before a train (sometimes fast moving, sometimes crawling at a snail's pace) reached that five-pointed intersection and the half block north of it, the fat lady would flip some switches in the little house where she worked, and as the bells started ringing and the lights would flash and the gates go down, she would waddle out of her house with a red flag and another stop/go sign; hold up her sign and flag to direct traffic one way or another around the area. Since a dozen or so fast moving trains coming through that intersection was normal each day, and an equal number of very slow, almost crawling through trains as well, the intersection was always a mess. The Whiting (passenger) Train Station was also by there, where New York Central, B&O and Pennsylvania RR passenger trains would stop to take on or discharge human passengers, so the fat lady was quite busy all day as I recall.
Motorists unfortunate enough to drive through that labrinyth would as often as not 'bless' that fat lady as she was trying to get them to stop. For trains going westward to Chicago, the motorists would see if they could 'beat the train' by driving fast like bats out of hell driving down Indianapolis toward the next crossing, which occurred at
103rd Street (in Chicago, on the Illinois side). Sometimes they made it, other times a fast moving train going _east_ got to 103rd Street before they could get that far, so they had to wait down there instead.Behind the Lever Brothers plant (remember Rinso Laundry Soap? 'Rinso White and Rinso Blue' as the lady would sing on the television ads) at that intersection was a dirt road referred to as 108th Street which ran from Calumet Avenue to the backside of the electrical generator plant and evenutally connected up with some Chicago street back there somewhere. The motorists who could not get onto Indianapolis in time would sometimes go barreling down that dirt road behind the electrical generator plant hoping to beat the trains, etc. If they 'got stuck' behind one of the slow moving 80-car Edison coal trains pulling through, woe was them! Now you will be a half-hour for sure getting through that intersection. But we kids always knew better than the fat lady or the bells and lights and gates. So off we would run to our clubhouse where we could hide, smoke cigarettes, look at forbidden magazines and best off all, go examine the automatic hopper which dumped the coal out of the railroad cars one by one into the bottomless pit below.
One day a sort of stern older man found us around the coal hopper. "I have told you little bastards a dozen times not to play around here. It is dangerous! Now I am going to take you inside to see the superintendent." He marched us inside the gothic fortress to an upper level (connected with 'cat walks' and stairs to the ground level where there was an office with windows looking out over the work area below, one or two women at work, a drinking fountain and I suspect the only air conditioner in the place (one of the older, window-mounted units.) He told the super about 'these little bastards, I have caught them several times playing around by the (whatever the big machine was called).' The super warned us again; 'if you guys want to look around in here, come and ask me to show you; _never_ go around by yourself.' He gave us quite a tour, walking around on the various cat-walks looking at the furnaces below, and since it was about time to change shifts, I noticed how presently a new group of men wandered in and each of them stood by one of the furnaces and began doing what the man who had been there before had been doing. Although the process was mostly automated, where each furnace had a conveyor belt going up to it loaded with coal which would now and then push a few chunks of coal into the furnace, the men working there had shovels and had to now and again scoop some coal off the floor which had fallen from the conveyor belt and scoop it in the furnace also. They also tended to the water supply (again, almost entirely automated) but occassionally would open or close a valve which filled the 'kettle' above the furnace with water. These 'kettles' above each furnace were somehow or another plumbed 'in series' to each other and a large steam turbine at one end of the room. The high pressure steam caused the turbine to spin, which in turn created electricity. It all went off to a grid somewhere else in the area which went out to serve the citizens of Chicago. There was a humongous looking 'lightening rod' mounted in the ground nearby and the super explained, "now and again, if you guys are around the area when there is a very bad electrical storm, watch how lightening in the sky is 'attracted' by what these workers are doing here."
He pulls this old-fashioned looking pocket watch out of his vest pocket and announces to us, "it is time to change shifts. Will you guys help me with the whistle?" Well, of course you know we would. Mid all the overhead plumbing which eventually ran to the steam turnbine and the source of electricity there was a strap and a chain hanging down out of the air. Attached to it up there somewhere was a steam whistle, which tapped into the steam pipes at some point. My friend, shorter than I, could barely reach the strap handle which hung down there from several feet above it in the air, but I was able to reach it okay. "Wait until I tell you, then pull down on the strap and the chain, hold it a few seconds until I say so, then release it." When he said to do it, I pulled the chain; my friend grabbed it when it came down easily in his reach. Upon pulling the chain, the first thing I heard was a loud 'whoosh' sound as steam started escaping and then after a second or two, the whistle started tooting. After about five or ten seconds, the super said to let it go which we did. The chain and strap jumped back into the air on its own from some sort of spring loaded tension in it, and the whistle quit sounding. About half the men on the work floor (the ones who had been there earlier) handed over their shovels or scoops or whatever tools they were using to the other man who had 'relieved' them, and headed for the door. Like most
10-12 year old kids, we were quite thrilled to have made that happen. Looking out the window in the super's office, we saw the fruit of our whistle-pulling labor. Guys were getting in their cars and driving out onto Indianpolis Boulevard to go home for another day.I asked him if I could call my grandpa who would have gotten home by then and been wondering where I had gone. Super asked me, "Chicago or Whiting?" I told him Whiting, he said "use the third button on that phone". The phone had a rotary dial on it, two of the line buttons were marked 'SOUth Chicago 8-2000' and one of the buttons was marked 'Whiting 18'. I used Whiting 18 and told the familiar lady who answered the number I wanted. Grandmother drove over and picked me up, but as I and my friend were leaving, the super reminded me again, "you guys are _not_ to get into stuff around here on your own. _Always_ come in the front door and ask for me. _Never_ just wander around by the coal hoppers or anything else." One thing I noticed there, not only that day, but earlier and later as well, was an almost continuous haze of coal-dust in the air, at least on the working floor, but not up above in the super's office, where the air conditioning unit seemed to remove most of the dust.
I went there a couple more times, taking friends of mine to meet this nice man (the super); we abandoned our 'club house' since it did not seem like fun any longer (having seen the real thing up close), and once when I was 14 or so, we went to the 99th Street beach to swim; a bad storm came up, the lifeguard made -EVERYONE- get out of the water, and as the skies darkened, I looked over to the southeast at the old gothic fortress and saw bolts of lightening in the sky aiming at it and understood why the lightning rod on the side was so important. Sometime that summer or maybe the next one I went once again to meet the super; I asked for him by name (although I have now forgotten his name) and the lady who answered me over the intercom from the office to the downstairs lobby said sort of casually, "oh, Mr. (name), well he is no longer here. He died about a year ago, of lung cancer." I really would think all those filthy coal-driven turbines would be long gone by now. PAT]