Germany Plans to Build New Coal PLants Despite Global Warming

Germany Plans to Build New Coal PLants Despite Global Warming

www.dw-world.de

German Chancellor Angela Merkel has said measures for protecting the environment are a top priority during her six-month European Union presidency.

Germany and other EU-member states agreed on a binding reduction of carbon dioxide (CO2) emissions by 20 percent by 2020 compared with 1990 levels. The EU also proposed a 30-percent cut if other nations followed suit.

(visit the link for the full news article)

There are 26 coal plants either being built right now or are planned to be built, and Germany is not the only country doing this.

Coal fire plants are the biggest producers of CO2, but Germany wants to stop building nuclear plants in favour for coal plants as they say coal is the future and they want to stop their dependance on other countries for power.

So on the one hand we have EU countries saying we have to stop the increase of CO2 emissions and on the other they are doing the contrary.

Other countries are planning to do the same thing, hence the question is why make alarmist claims when they don't intent on mitigating CO2 emissions?

Be prepared for a global tax, and i am not talking only about companies being the ones paying for these taxes. Al Gore set a precedent when he bought "carbon credits" for using more than the amount of energy used in regular households.

www.dw-world.de
(visit the link for the full news article)

Well it can be good or bad.

I fyou just build coal firing plants, than yes they are bad for the
environment.

However, technology exists to make clean coal plants, that is the CO2
is not put into the atmosphere, rather it is contained, and can be dealt
with in the cleanest way possible.

In fact I remember reading awhile back about some MIT scientists
developing some special algae that would consume the CO2 and
convert (the majority if not all) it into oxygen, before it leaves the
smokestakcs.

sounds like Germany has got their head on straight

building "known risk & damage" coal fired plants
whereas the nuke plants are prime targets for the
Jihad-ists or whomever...

France has dozens of 'target' electric generating plants,

just why should Germany elect to become a potential victim?

when they can spend 'carbon credits' or 'CO2 pollution credits'
to maintain a OPEC & radical-Islam free source of energy production
that somewhat removes the German economy from the whims
of the non-western dictates that comes out of Iran or Saudi Arabia??

the issue is a lot more involved, than gut feelings of 'what's right'
although i do appreciate the try at demonizng German self reliance

Oh i see, so paying "carbon credits" or some other gimmick as a global tax is going to make things right about "the Global Warming scare"?

It is obvious this was a ploy all along to implement a new global tax system. Guess who is going to be paying most of the taxes?...

BTW, it is more than Germany's self reliance we are talking about, if we were to replace the name of the country with "United States" there would have been an outcry from European countries and many members in these forums...

[edit on 26-3-2007 by Muaddib]

What type of plants are they building? Are they implementing any of the Clean Coal technologies that I've been hearing so much about the past few years? Algae has been demonstrated to reduce emissions from Coal plants by a significant amount.

www.usatoday.com...

Fed a generous helping of CO2-laden emissions, courtesy of the power plant's exhaust stack, the algae grow quickly even in the wan rays of a New England sun. The cleansed exhaust bubbles skyward, but with 40% less CO2 (a larger cut than the Kyoto treaty mandates) and another bonus: 86% less nitrous oxide.

After the CO2 is soaked up like a sponge, the algae is harvested daily. From that harvest, a combustible vegetable oil is squeezed out: biodiesel for automobiles. Berzin hands a visitor two vials — one with algal biodiesel, a clear, slightly yellowish liquid, the other with the dried green flakes that remained. Even that dried remnant can be further reprocessed to create ethanol, also used for transportation.

The decrease in NOx emissions has me really excited as that is often cited as a significant contributor to asthma and asthma attacks.

I hope they are smart about this and implement this cheap and effective solution. It's a double whammy as the process also creates fuel.

[edit on 26-3-2007 by sardion2000]

[edit on 26-3-2007 by sardion2000]

That I know of it hasn't been tested yet, at least not that technology.

There are clean coal plants right now, which is used by developed countries but others like China and India are not using this technology although they are trying to build some, right now China has about 100 such projects to build these clean coal plants, which reduces CO2 by 50%

ge.ecomagination.com...@v=030820071036@/site/index.html?kw=clean%20coal%20plants&c_id=cleancoal#igcc/introduction

Maybe even a combination of both technologies would be better, but they have to get rid of some problems such as coal plants not only emit CO2 and nitrous oxide, they also emit heat, and the heat emitted by coal plants damages algae, so they have to find a way to get around that problem first.

One thing is to feed CO2 to algae in a lab environment, another thing is to put this theory to practice. It could be possible, but that i know of noone has built one yet.

Althou heat does improve the reproductivity of algae, too much heat is also bad. If they could find a way to keep the temperature emitted from coal plants to about 109 F, they would solve that problem.

[edit on 27-3-2007 by Muaddib]

So - what's the problem?

I thought the author of this thread defends the theory, that CO2 emissions do not cause Global Warming - but rather some Universal force from outside our planet?

The problem is that meanwhile they talk about "reducing CO2 emissions and everyone is looking at the United States to do so" other countries are building more coal plants. The technologies to make coal plants completly clean have not been put to practice.

If you would actually bother to read what I posted it seems obvious the whole "Global Warming Scare" was made to implement "carbon credits" and other global taxes which at the end you and me will be paying if all this nonsense continues.

Originally posted by Muaddib
If you would actually bother to read what I posted it seems obvious the whole "Global Warming Scare" was made to implement "carbon credits" and other global taxes which at the end you and me will be paying if all this nonsense continues.

So there really is no "Global Warming" caused by CO2?

Just our Solar System warming up?

And we can go on and thrown all the gases in the air like there is no tomorrow?

I wonder which country in the world has most cars, most airplanes, most tanks, most ships?

Please get of your pedestal and stop pointing fingers all around before you do not clean in front of your lawn...

Why should industrialized countries act first?

• In terms of historical emissions, industrialized countries account for roughly 80% of the carbon dioxide buildup in the atmosphere to date. Since 1950, the U.S. has emitted a cumulative total of roughly 50.7 billion tons of carbon, while China (4.6 times more populous) and India (3.5 times more populous) have emitted only 15.7 and 4.2 billion tons respectively (although their numbers will rise).
  
  
• Annually, more than 60 percent of global industrial carbon dioxide emissions originate in industrialized countries, where only about 20 percent of the world’s population resides.
  
  
• Much of the growth in emissions in developing countries results from the provision of basic human needs for growing populations, while emissions in industrialized countries contribute to growth in a standard of living that is already far above that of the average person worldwide. This is exemplified by the large contrasts in per capita carbons emissions between industrialized and developing countries. Per capita emissions of carbon in the U.S. are over 20 times higher than India, 12 times higher than Brazil and seven times higher than China.

[edit on 27/3/07 by Souljah]

Here is a link to Swedish technology

Vattenfall's technology modifies a conventional coal plant, by burning the fuel in pure oxygen instead of air (which is mostly nitrogen). Conventional coal plants generate a flu-gas mixture of mostly nitrogen with some carbon dioxide and water; capturing the carbon dioxide is expensive because it takes a lot of energy to separate the carbon dioxide gas from the nitrogen gas. In oxyfuels technology, the flu gas is mostly carbon dioxide and water, the latter being easily condensed and removed -- yielding pure carbon dioxide, which can be collected.

[edit on 27-3-2007 by sardion2000]

Maybe Germany is throwing so many coal powered plants on the line so they can build a revenue source selling carbon points. After all the carbon point system is based on "reducing" carbon output. So if they know have X extra output over what is needed they can sell some of their points by taking a few of the systems offline and "reducing" their carbon output.

That's great because Gore and the like will have more sources to buy their carbon points from! And they'll be saving the Earth in the process!!

Originally posted by Souljah

So there really is no "Global Warming" caused by CO2?

The geological record show that CO2 lags temperature... even in this current warming temp[eratures were increasing 260 years before CO2 levels began to increase. Perhaps you should study the subject first before you start making statements you obviously knwo nothing about.

Originally posted by Souljah
Just our Solar System warming up?

and you think that's no big deal?...

Originally posted by Souljah
And we can go on and thrown all the gases in the air like there is no tomorrow?

Where did i say that?..... I have explained thousands of times and you have been present that even though curbing pollution is a good idea it is not going to stop or mitigate Global Warming....and we can't stop all pollution either, you are too closed minded to understand that billions of lives depend on use of coal and wood, including third world countries, and because of plastics and other oil derivatives there are millions of people who are alive today who would not have lived very long.

Originally posted by Souljah
I wonder which country in the world has most cars, most airplanes, most tanks, most ships?

Originally posted by Souljah
Please get of your pedestal and stop pointing fingers all around before you do not clean in front of your lawn...

That's exactly what you need to do, and stop trying to blame everything on the U.S. like you always do because you feel left out and because you want to "bring the revolution to other people with your exagerations and lies trying to blame everything on the United States"...

You show graphs from 1996 and you think that's the proof that the U.S. is causing Global Warming?...

BTW Souljah, this is about Germany, not another one of your posts trying to blame everything on the United States...

Originally posted by SmallMindsBigIdeas
...............
That's great because Gore and the like will have more sources to buy their carbon points from! And they'll be saving the Earth in the process!!

No human is "going to save the Earth"...

The Earth has gone through worse upheavals than what is happening now and it came out ok everytime...

There have only been a few times when Earth has had a low concentration of CO2 like today and most of the time the concentrations of CO2 were much higher..

Earth has had times when temperatures were similar to the present and CO2 levels were between 4,000 and 4,400 ppm...now it is at 370 to 380 ppm and some are claiming the Earth will become another Venus or Mars....

The maximum CO2 levels the Earth has had has been 7,000 + ppm and there was never runaway global warming and Earth didn't become like Venus or Mars....

We can help the environment but we can't change, mitigate or stop the climate from changing...

[edit on 27-3-2007 by Muaddib]

Originally posted by Muaddib
Where did i say that?..... I have explained thousands of times and you have been present that even though curbing pollution is a good idea it is not going to stop or mitigate Global Warming....and we can't stop all pollution either, you are too closed minded to understand that billions of lives depend on use of coal and wood, including third world countries, and because of plastics and other oil derivatives there are millions of people who are alive today who would not have lived very long.

I understand the fact, that we just can not stop using all of our energy sources - yet, we ALL have created this situation, in which Earth is warming up (with or without the help from our Solar System). Yet the problem is, that all of those energy sources create GREENHOUSE GASES - remember those?

Six main gases considered to be contributing to global climate change are carbon dioxide (CO2), methane (CH4) (which is 20 times as potent a greenhouse gas as carbon dioxide) and nitrous oxide (N2O), plus three fluorinated industrial gases: hydrofluorocarbons (HFCs), perfluorocarbons (PFCs) and sulphur hexafluoride (SF6). Water vapor is also considered a greenhouse gas.

That's exactly what you need to do, and stop trying to blame everything on the U.S. like you always do because you feel left out and because you want to "bring the revolution to other people with your exagerations and lies trying to blame everything on the United States"...

So - let us say that CO2 is causing Global Warming - and if you check out the numbers and the graphs you can see that United States have emmiteda cumulative total of roughly 50.7 billion tons of carbon in 46 years since 1950, and which is far the biggest number of ALL countries in this World; including the most populated countries of China and India. Sorry Mate, but United States remains as the world’s largest emitter of greenhouse gases. It:

• Accounts for roughly four percent of the world’s population.
  
• Accounts for approximately 23% of global emissions and 42% of industrialized country emissions.

And what is the deal with Kyoto Protocol?

The US being the world’s largest emitter of greenhouse gases, pulled out in 2001, leaving treaty ratification dependent on Russia, responsible for 17% of world emissions.

I wonder where is Germany in those numbers...

You show graphs from 1996 and you think that's the proof that the U.S. is causing Global Warming?...

So you actually did not read the title of the graphs, did you?

BTW Souljah, this is about Germany, not another one of your posts trying to blame everything on the United States...

Sorry - let us check the graphs for Germany:

Doing "good" - but nearly not as "good" as United States did in 46 years.

Maybe even a combination of both technologies would be better, but they have to get rid of some problems such as coal plants not only emit CO2 and nitrous oxide, they also emit heat, and the heat emitted by coal plants damages algae, so they have to find a way to get around that problem first.

Check out the link to the pure O2 combustion chamber, instead of just using regular Air. Then condense it to remove the water vapor from the mixture, that would cool the exhaust, perhaps even putting additional heat exchangers to speed the process, and then feed it to the algae tanks and then to the Clean Coal filters.

Hydrogen Hopes

Check out this video, Part 3 around half way through, they talk about the MIT Test Plant.

[edit on 28-3-2007 by sardion2000]

Greenfuel already has a pilot project going right now so it's being tested. I just saw an update on the discovery channel and it looks like they have most of the problems figured out. They said they were focused more on commercialization now. Hopefully they go public.

Originally posted by Souljah

I understand the fact, that we just can not stop using all of our energy sources - yet, we ALL have created this situation, in which Earth is warming up (with or without the help from our Solar System). Yet the problem is, that all of those energy sources create GREENHOUSE GASES - remember those?

Six main gases considered to be contributing to global climate change are carbon dioxide (CO2), methane (CH4) (which is 20 times as potent a greenhouse gas as carbon dioxide) and nitrous oxide (N2O), plus three fluorinated industrial gases: hydrofluorocarbons (HFCs), perfluorocarbons (PFCs) and sulphur hexafluoride (SF6). Water vapor is also considered a greenhouse gas.

First of all CO2 amounts to a whooping 0.0370% to 0.0380% of the Earth's atmosphere, meanwhile the most "evil greenhouse gas water vapor" keeps being ignored by folk like yourself. 99.99% of water vapor is natural, and water vapor is the most abundant greenhouse gas at 95% of all trace gases.

Methane levels are decreasing, not increasing. As for the other anthropogenic greenhouse gases, supposedly the one we are emitting the most and the whole debate in which some scientists are claiming mankind is the cause of Global Warming/Climate Change is because of CO2].

Now, the geological record shows that CO2 lags temperature, even during this current warming, CO2 levels are behind the temperature increase by about 260 years.

Originally posted by Souljah
So - let us say that CO2 is causing Global Warming -

Except for the fact that CO2 levels have lagged temperatures, and in the geological record CO2 levels have been higher than now, and even temperatures have been similar to present with much higher levels of CO2 than now, and there has never been "runaway Global Warming".

So tell us souljah, why aren't you discussing the irony that the German government is actually planning to build more coal plants, instead of trying to derail the thread by once again blaming everything on the U.S. like you always do?...

Originally posted by St Udio
..............
the issue is a lot more involved, than gut feelings of 'what's right'
although i do appreciate the try at demonizng German self reliance

BTW, my intention on posting this thread was to show that there are European countries that are not going to follow the Kyoto protocol or any other such plan to reduce CO2. My intention was not to demonize Germany, but to show that the whole Global Warming debate is being used to implement a global tax, as well as being used as a political tool.

Correct me if I am wrong, but isn't most coal in Germany Lignite or soft? No need to answer I can tell you yes it is and Luscar coal in Canada has two plants that use it as well as plants in ND that all use the latest technoglogy ending in zero emissions or very close to it.

miningmatters.org...


www.gcrio.org...