Wonky Wednesday: Latest Comments on Energy
The PSC has posted the most recent round of comments on the energy RFP. John Austin, who used to work for EPA and lives in Rehoboth Beach, has some particularly enlightening comments:
One of the many facts that has come to light in the bid review process is that the net output of the [NRG] IGCC would be just 400MW. Where does the other 230MW go? The bid explains that 50MW would be needed to run the compressors for CO2 sequestration. The rest would be consumed to make the syn-gas and power the gas separation units to isolate the hydrogen sulfide from the hydrogen rich syn-gas before it is burned. This is not an efficient use of natural resources.
In other words, the energy cost of sequestration is enormous. Here’s an interesting tidbit:
There is also another problem revealed with this data. Units 1 & 2 have but 10.5 pounds of mercury emission allocation to transfer to a new unit. There is no more. The unit would have to be reduced in size or increase mercury removal if it were to be permitted.
You can read more on the subject over at TommyWonk.
Great catch Tom. This is extremely ugly, it also paves the way for NRG slowly migrating their sequestration energy into “profitable” energy down the road.
Because NRG was reluctant to release so much economic, environmental and engineering data, it had been difficult to quantify the costs associated with carbon sequestration. Now that some of the crucial data have been released, we can start to measure coal’s costs in terms of energy inefficiency.
Delaware has an opportunity to install a forward-thinking, fixed cost, aesthetically pleasing and safe power plant. We should grab this opportunity and make a bold statement to the rest of the states…
I’m generally an optimist, but i could not be more pessimistic about Delaware doing the right thing.