What if climate change could be fixed without destroying the fossil fuel industry and without putting the coal miners and natural gas frackers on the street? It turns out we can address carbon dioxide emissions without taking away their livelihoods or spending trillions of dollars.
The most unsettling aspect of the various versions of the Green New Deal, whether it is the one proposed by Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez or the one proposed by Bernie Sanders, is not their immense multitrillion-dollar cost. The most awesomely frightening feature of the ideas to do battle with climate change advanced by the Democratic presidential candidates is their utter lack of seriousness as solutions.
Each plan begins with destroying the fossil fuel industry, continues with a complete transition to renewable resources such as solar and wind, and ends with prohibiting anything else that might emit greenhouse gases, from the internal combustion engine to belching cows.
The Democrats’ climate change plans seem to demand the destruction of civilization in order to save it. Moreover, the Green New Deal would never pass Congress, and candidates advocating it are at serious risk of losing in 2020 as a consequence.
Fortunately, an existing solution can already curtail greenhouse gas emissions without destroying the world’s primary reliable means of generating electricity. A company called NET Power has been testing a prototype natural gas power plant in La Porte, Texas, a few miles southeast of Houston. The power plant uses a technology called the Allam Cycle which, instead of emitting carbon dioxide into the atmosphere, uses it to turn electrical turbines. The power plant sequesters excess carbon dioxide for later sale to customers who can use the gas to create a variety of products.
So far, the test has proven successful. NET Power plans to start selling full-production versions of the carbon capture plants in a couple of years.
Another company, called 8 Rivers, is developing its own carbon capture plant that burns gasified coal. The effort faces serious but not insurmountable challenges to getting to a pollution-free way of generating electricity from coal.
Where would carbon capture plants sell the excess carbon that they generate? Besides companies making carbon fiber and carbon nanotubes, a couple of technologies are being developed that could prove a lucrative market for carbon dioxide.
Down the road from the NET Power’s carbon capture plant, researchers at Rice University in Houston have created a process that turns carbon dioxide into a liquid fuel that can be stored and burned in fuel cells. The fuel packs in more energy than hydrogen. The electricity can come either from the same carbon capture plant or from a renewable source such as wind or solar.
A Finnish company called Solar Foods has developed a process that uses carbon dioxide along with water, electricity, and some additional vitamins to create a protein powder called Solein. The powder is due to show up as an additive for protein shakes and yogurt in the near future. The Solar Foods process involves harvesting carbon dioxide from the air and using solar energy for electricity. However, there seems to be no barrier to using electricity and carbon dioxide from a carbon capture power plant. The technology comes from an idea developed by NASA and is being looked at by the European Space Agency as a way to feed future space settlers.
The Democratic presidential candidates are ignoring real-world solutions to the problem of climate change while clinging to unworkable fantasy plans that have no possibility of succeeding or even being enacted. Sanders has dismissed both carbon capture and nuclear energy as solutions. The other candidates do not seem to have even heard of carbon capture as a viable technology.
Politicians proclaim that climate change is the existential crises of our age. They keep insisting that we should “listen to the scientists.” But in crafting solutions, they seem to be turning a deaf ear to the engineers. It is almost as if politicians like Sanders have another agenda besides climate change in mind.
Mark Whittington, who writes frequently about space and politics, has published a political study of space exploration titled Why Is It So Hard to Go Back to the Moon? as well as The Moon, Mars and Beyond.
