CSX CEO says it will buy no more cars or locomotives for dying coal transport

[Gramp]

So much nonsense in that Aug. 3 NY Times article.  (sidenote - the temp. gage in the photo reads 111 degrees. Checking the Galveston high temps for today and the last two weeks shows that the highest temp for the period was 91 degrees).

CO2 a pollutant?  Oxygen must be, too?  H2O is toxic if you ingest too much of it.

Govt. regulation - Have a look at Venezuela lately?  Turkey?

Socialism is a philosophy of failure, the creed of ignorance, and the gospel of envy, its inherent virtue is the equal sharing of misery. Winston Churchill

A good friend of mine grew up in East Germany until he was 16.  (Was able to get to West Berlin then).  His parents owned and operated a farm.  The government confiscated their land, equipment, everything.  He lived under the watchful eye of  the STASI.  Everyone suspicious of everyone else.  The capitalists who were the country's wealth creators either escaped or were smushed.  The country no longer had the ability to create anything, build anything.  I've asked him, how can someone get through to these people here who have warmed up to or have been indoctrinated to socialistic ideas?  He said flatly it is not possible.  They will not listen to facts.  They have no point of reference.

Frustration quelled.     

[schlimm]

Gramp

A good friend of mine grew up in East Germany until he was 16.  (Was able to get to West Berlin then).  His parents owned and operated a farm.  The government confiscated their land, equipment, everything.  He lived under the watchful eye of  the STASI.  Everyone suspicious of everyone else.  The capitalists who were the country's wealth creators either escaped or were smushed.  The country no longer had the ability to create anything, build anything.  I've asked him, how can someone get through to these people here who have warmed up to or have been indoctrinated to socialistic ideas.  He said flatly it is not possible.  They will not listen to facts.  They have no point of reference.

I have relatives who lived in the former DDR to die Wende.  Not a good place or easy life but what does that have to do with climate change (other than atrocious pollution in that failed state)?  Climate change is about science and our roles as stewards of this earth, not politics, no matter how hard some folks try to muddy the waters with that distraction.

[zardoz]

Gramp

So much nonsense in that Aug. 3 NY Times article.  (sidenote - the temp. gage in the photo reads 111 degrees. Checking the Galveston high temps for today and the last two weeks shows that the highest temp for the period was 91 degrees).

CO2 a pollutant?  Oxygen must be, too?  H2O is toxic if you ingest too much of it.

First of all, it is quite likely that the thermometer was in the sun, resulting in an erroneous reading.

Second, yes, CO2 is a pollutant that, along with too much O2 and H20, will indeed kill you. However, I've also read that the same can be said for beer, pizza, ice cream, and chocolate (although I'm still working on a proof ). No documentable results yet, but the Scientific Research continues....

[tree68]

zardoz

First of all, it is quite likely that the thermometer was in the sun, resulting in an erroneous reading.

Shhhhhhh!  We need the masses to think it's +111F - not that +91F isn't too danged hot to work - especially in Houston, where the humidity was probably also around 111% - or felt like it.

[Shadow the Cats owner]

No at least here my boss doesn't want cheap trucks if he did he would be buying Freightliners for 40 grand less a unit.  However we as an industry want something that is reliable and not going to put us in bankrupcy court when the warrenty runs out on the major systems and then the repair bills start to roll in.  When your dropping 20 grand per truck to fix a system that 10 years ago wasn't even on anything on the road and the same parts are the ones that fail and the answer you get from the engineers is that is the best they can do peroid you start to scream.  When a engine overhaul was 10 grand parts and labor just 5 years ago for a truck with 1 million miles on it is now 40 grand for a truck with 600 grand on it you wallet starts to hurt.  Yet all these repairs and added costs were forced upon us in the name of fighting climate change.  These are not one time only charges EGR systems fail all the time DPF and SCR systems are failing and those costs of repair are on us to get the truck running after the warrenty is up.  Can you afford to see repairs like that when people refuse to pay more for your service we have been forced to for years and now it is at a tipping point.  One of 2 things is going to happen rates are going to have to go up nationwide or the nations Logistical chain is going to snap all due to pressures put on it from global warming regulations that destroyed our engines.  Sorry but I deal with this crap on a daily basis I see the checks that are cut to pay for repairs and cringe.  

[jcburns]

Shadow the Cats owner

When a engine overhaul was 10 grand parts and labor just 5 years ago for a truck with 1 million miles on it is now 40 grand for a truck with 600 grand on it you wallet starts to hurt.  Yet all these repairs and added costs were forced upon us in the name of fighting climate change.  Sorry but I deal with this crap on a daily basis I see the checks that are cut to pay for repairs and cringe.  

Yeah, but if you looked at the bills that families who had to pay for kids with lung conditions generated by the diesel trucks before the pollution mods you'd cringe too. It's hard to look at this stuff globally, or even beyond the narrow focus of "diesels and repairing them costs way more now," but we have to.

We COULD make the decision that hey, it's life, let the families at the other end of the CO2 equation pay the bills, it's a tough world, let's go back to Tier 0 locos.

But I sure don't want to.

[SD70M-2Dude]

jcburns

Shadow the Cats owner

When a engine overhaul was 10 grand parts and labor just 5 years ago for a truck with 1 million miles on it is now 40 grand for a truck with 600 grand on it you wallet starts to hurt.  Yet all these repairs and added costs were forced upon us in the name of fighting climate change.  Sorry but I deal with this crap on a daily basis I see the checks that are cut to pay for repairs and cringe. 

Yeah, but if you looked at the bills that families who had to pay for kids with lung conditions generated by the diesel trucks before the pollution mods you'd cringe too. It's hard to look at this stuff globally, or even beyond the narrow focus of "diesels and repairing them costs way more now," but we have to.

We COULD make the decision that hey, it's life, let the families at the other end of the CO2 equation pay the bills, it's a tough world, let's go back to Tier 0 locos.

But I sure don't want to.

In the locomotive world, I think we would only have to go back to Tier 3 to get rid of a lot of the costs associated with emissions reduction.  The jump from Tier 3 to 4 also provides a good example of what Larry mentioned in an earlier post, that eventually the cost of cleaning something up may outweigh the benefits.  And for all my belief in man-made global warming and pollution reduction, I agree with him.

For example, the current Tier 4 GE locomotive (ET44AC, using Exhaust Gas Recirculation) uses MORE fuel than the equivalent Tier 3 unit, requires more costly maintenance and is less reliable.  I am not intimately familar with on-highway trucks or their current emission control system but I imagine those with EGR have similar problems.

[jcburns]

It's gotta be a more humane calculation. It could be argued that even if Tier 4 is cumbersome, it pushes the development of systems that wouldn't otherwise have been developed and, over time, they'll improve fuel consumption and maintenance costs.

Meanwhile, fewer kids (or pasty old white guys with emphysema) in the hospital.

The "outweigh the benefits" calculation MUST take that into account.

[tree68]

jcburns

Meanwhile, fewer kids (or pasty old white guys with emphysema) in the hospital.

We'd keep a lot of them out of the hospital if we simply did away with smoking materials....   A good deal more than cleaning up some Diesel exhaust. 

This from an EMT who has seen people ask if they can light up - as they breath oxygen through their nasal cannula.

I'm sure there are those out there looking for Tier 5 - where the exhaust is cleaner than the intake air.  

[RME]

SD70M-2Dude

For example, the current Tier 4 GE locomotive (ET44AC, using Exhaust Gas Recirculation) uses MORE fuel than the equivalent Tier 3 unit, requires more costly maintenance and is less reliable. I am not intimately familar with on-highway trucks or their current emission control system but I imagine those with EGR have similar problems.

Twentysomething Federal line and staff agency personnel tend to forget the effect of additional fuel burn on emissions -- they get the red mist on ppm and forget the aggregate.  Perhaps nowhere was this clearer than the NOx standards in Tier 4 final, where the standard was arbitrarily written only a couple of tenths of a percent under what EMD could produce at the 'ragged edge' of the test cycle without SCR.  You could calculate the added "nitrogen oxide" pollution that would result from redefining that standard in no more than pounds per locomotive-year -- distributed of course into an enormous volume of air over time.

Note two things here: first, that nitrogen-oxide emissions from combustion engines are NOT the same nitrogen oxides that produce the pollution stress -- the chemical transformation only occurs with other pollution cofactors (which have conveniently been greatly reduced by more meaningful forms of "environmental" control than nitrogen displacement in the intake charge and reduced heat rise per stroke); and second, that the health problem from 'particulates' is not the visible smoke and soot nearly as much as it is small accumulations of 'nanoparticles' deriving from chemical and physical factors unrelated to overt pollution control -- most significantly, passing almost unreduced through any commercial DPF or emission-catalyst setup.  In both these cases, the expensive mandated pollution control devices do essentially nothing to clean up things for 'kids with lung conditions' -- but they sure do increase cost, complexity, layers of bureaucratic oversight and opportunities for draconian enforcement with personal animus.

Are there places where modern pollution controls on locomotives are important? Yes, with idling power in places like Davis Yard (one recent cited example) being relevant.  There the improvement of Tier 3 over Tier 0 or below can be significant, even if there is some associated extra cost in precise injection systems or external coolant heating for extended shutdowns or whatever.  But there would be far more value in enforcing transient smoke reduction at throttle-up than in reducing NOx to Tier 4 final levels on locomotives.

DPF on trucks is a feel-good approach, applicable to the era when California had automatic smoke-opacity meters hooked to some on-ramps to catch folks emitting too much "PM".  That's not the stuff that makes the problems with particulates, and frankly until someone at EPA can show me an approach that works effectively on the nanoparticulate emissions the use of any regenerative filter scheme involving a measurable additional fuel burn out of my pocket is worse than just stupid.

Part of the discussion of AGW that isn't factoring into this discussion is the degree to which 'feel-good' "carbon" reductions actually address the issue, either at small scale or in larger or fully global-level scale.  I am frankly sick of the politicized cap-and-trade or carbon-credit strategies, which are far more effective at lining the right pockets and providing the right openings for coercion than actually addressing prospective metastable changes.

Note that AGW is colossally different from "pollution" in the old familiar senses.  I can remember just how awful air quality in the New York area could be in the pre-EPA epoch - when I was a boy both Rockefeller Center and GCT were black buildings, and it was a rare day you could see much past 72nd St from the George Washington Bridge at the 180s.  I'd never go back to an era in Los Angeles where vehicles didn't have strict control over HC and CO emissions, or reasonable limits on nitrogen oxidation; I'd never want to go back to the old days of Pittsburgh or Bethlehem or the Ruhr, or a flaming Cuyahoga, or a Jersey Shore redolent of sewage.  Just don't go telling fibs about 'climate getting warmer' or the supposed direct health effects of any anthropogenic greenhouse-effect driven atmospheric warming, especially to the largely scientifically-illiterate group that used Cliff Notes to study in school, Kaplan strategy manuals for subsequent testing, and now sources like the New York Times as 'settled' authority for the very complex arguments and models that govern (at least, should govern) climate science.  And don't go mandating politically-driven reductions that cost hundreds of thousands in direct costs and waste to achieve disproportionately small, possibly statistically-insignificant, actual reductions in meaningful levels.

[Euclid]

SD70M-2Dude

 

Euclid

There are two problem with Option #2.  This is the first problem:  You will not end up with a cleaner planet if manmade global warming is false and you act on it anyway.  This is because if the MMGW premise is false, there will be nothing that needs be be cleaned up.  The premise is that too much CO2 is the danger.  If it turns out that there is not too much CO2, there was no danger, and thus nothing gained in reducing the CO2.

The second problem with Option #2 is that it totally ignores the lost money spent on reducing CO2 when it was not necessary. 

I would re-write Option #2 as this:

Man-made global warming is false, but you beieve it to be true and act.  End result is nothing gained in terms of "cleaning the planet", and a huge waste of money and resources that that will set back the lives of several generations as they struggle to pay for the waste of the bad choice. 

I think the bad consequences of Option #2 are similar if not worse than the bad consequences of Option #3.  That is why we need to think and study much more carefully before running off in a panic toward Option #1.  It may turn out to be Option #2.

 

 

 

CO2 emissions and other types of pollution (NOx especially) go hand in hand.  By lowering the amount of fuel burned globally you reduce the emissions of those pollutants.  And reduce the environmental damage from the production of those fuels (acid mine drainage, groundwater contamination, leakage from abandoned wells etc).  That is why I listed Option 2 as still having a positive result, just not as positive as Option 1. 

 

 

Actually I would say that CO2 and other types of pollution don’t go hand in hand. The emissions that have yet to be eliminated other than CO2, can be eliminated while still continuing to burn coal economically.  Emission of CO2 cannot be eliminated without making coal economically unviable.  So the only way to eliminate CO2 from coal is to eliminate the use of coal.  So the debate about cleaning up coal by eliminating it is supported only if we know that eliminating CO2 emissions is necessary.  It is unrelated to any intentions to further reduce the traditional, non-CO2 components of coal pollution. That can be done far cheaper than eliminating the use of coal.   

So I would revise Option 2 accordingly:

Option 2:  Man-made global warming is false, but you believe it to be true and act.  End result is still a cleaner planet the cost of unnecessarily stopping the use of coal  (even/positive) (negative). 

[rdamon]

Until we find out Urea is bad for us like MTBEs...

[erikem]

VOLKER LANDWEHR

 But there are estimates. I will not give links to avoid discussions about bias. But google for "social cost of carbon", defined as cost in $ for each additional ton of carbon dioxide for economic damages.

I've seen some analysis that shows carbon has a net benefit from higher agricultural productivity and fewer deaths from cold in conjunction with a low climate sensitivity.  

[RME]

Euclid

The emissions that have yet to be eliminated other than CO2, can be eliminated while still continuing to burn coal economically. Emission of CO2 cannot be eliminated without making coal economically unviable. So the only way to eliminate CO2 from coal is to eliminate the use of coal.

At the risk of further homogenizing what's left of Dobbin:

1) Much of this hinges on the technical definition of 'burning coal economically'.  Several of the techniques for reducing key contaminants in coal combustion (sulfur being one that comes to mind) involve technologies with very large setup and process expenses, but that have high increasing return to scale.  If the 'end result' from the combustion is price-competitive with alternatives, even very complete removal or passivation of "pollutants" from direct combustion can be practical.

This goes hand in hand, however, with issues of stranded cost, expected return on investment, acceptable measures of risk, and other things that are not amenable to pure technological discussion.  So far, we've achieved reasonable net 'residual' elimination in both the evolved combustion gas and the solid waste product.  Some of this is done with more-or-less proprietary 'clean coal' solutions -- I suspect at least some of the peddled solutions have a snake-oil component to them.

2) It does NOT follow that some intermediate, perhaps high, level of sequestration of CO2 cannot be "economically used".  This was an early point established in some of the clean-coal research; it's a bit analogous to the development efforts of 93% pure silicon for solar panels that would be 'reasonably as good' functionally for existing photovoltaic technology but cost dramatically less to produce in needed form.  At least some of the argument for algae-diesel synthesis involves using more or less bypass combustion gas (from either a forced or induced draft boiler system) as the carbon source for photosynthetic growth and multiplication in a 3D circulating tube setup -- it is not likely you'd start up using even a significant percentage of a large plant's CO2 emission, or even more than about 40% at full baseline combustion rate, but that's 40% you don't have to sequester with more aggressive methods.

3)  It does not necessarily follow at all that "Emission of CO2 cannot be eliminated without making coal economically unviable" - in fact, no few of the clean-coal cycle discussions I have seen require only about a third extra mass of coal to produce all the necessary power to achieve net segregation (it depends in part on whether the sequestration is solid, pressurized and/or cryogenic, and can be extrapolated to all 'reservoir' or recycling costs for the sequestered material).  Even net of all the added infrastructure costs to implement a sequestration cycle (and in the greater world, a sequestered-CO2 handling and storage chain, reuse markets, etc.) that is not something that impossibly discredits coal, or by extension any other reasonable 'fossil' fuel, from economical use.  The problem today is that fracked natural gas is cheaper, and renewable alternatives often better subsidized or perceived, than good clean-coal alternatives.

4) There is no necessary restriction on how the coal, or more precisely the carbon and hydrocarbon content, is prepared for combustion and subsequently 'oxidized to liberate heat'.  Note that several versions of progressive SRC produce highly useful feedstock forms (powder, pulverized, pea for torrefied-mass cofiring, shaped briquettes) which have little to no meaningful ash content or that can be mixed with appropriate 'pure' fluxing or ash-like constituents (e.g. for effective cyclone combustion with controlled atmosphere/minimum nitrogen).  Cost here, again, is not really that much more in powerplant-demand quantities -- it just isn't something that is quite price competitive with cruder, or perceived-sexier, alternatives.

In my opinion, I see much the same kind of organized misrepresentation of truth that is widespread in some of the academic European climate 'science' being used in connection with clean coal.  When you see full-page ads mocking the idea of clean coal as an unrealized scam ... without any indication or proof other than that 'those evil coal people are outright lying' ... and the various folks doing the clean-coal research want to commercialize their own little pieces at highest profit without telling how the trick is done ... truth tends to suffer from too much lack of analysis.

I do recommend, though, that before making the usual sorts of exaggerated 'conclusion' statements about this, you actually do some research into basic industrial CO2 recapture or process recycling, or adjunct recapture of atmospheric CO2 and see if the prospective reductions 'work' in your chosen models of atmospheric climate dynamics.

[tdmidget]

RME, you have used the abreviation SRC multiple times without, as near as I can tell, telling us what that mmeans. We can't have a intelligent discussion without that knowledge.

[erikem]

I seem to recall Solvent Refined Coal as the unabreviated form.

[Euclid]

RME

I do recommend, though, that before making the usual sorts of exaggerated 'conclusion' statements about this, you actually do some research into basic industrial CO2 recapture or process recycling, or adjunct recapture of atmospheric CO2 and see if the prospective reductions 'work' in your chosen models of atmospheric climate dynamics.

RME,

I was only responding to SD70M-2 Dude and his posting of a simple, six-point statement about the consequences of waiting for proof before taking remedial action or not.  I needed to keep it as simple as possible.  My basic point is right there as clear as a bell even though the use of so few words can open up all manner of possibilities to challenge on other levels as you have shown. 

He was basically saying that if we kill coal to reduce CO2, and it turns out to have been unnecessary, we will still have benefitted because we will have ended all of the other pollutants from coal even though eliminating CO2 from coal was later found to have been uncessary.

But if we find that there was no reason to remove CO2 by killing coal, we will have killed coal needlessly because we could have eliminated those other emmissions without killing coal. 

So I think it would pay to wait until we have a better understanding of the CO2 issue before we rush to kill coal notwithstanding the crisis we are said to be facing and its associated belief that remedial action must be taken without delay.  

[SD70M-2Dude]

Euclid

He was basically saying that if we kill coal to reduce CO2, and it turns out to have been unnecessary, we will still have benefitted because we will have ended all of the other pollutants from coal even though eliminating CO2 from coal was later found to have been uncessary.

But if we find that there was no reason to remove CO2 by killing coal, we will have killed coal needlessly because we could have eliminated those other emmissions without killing coal. 

So I think it would pay to wait until we have a better understanding of the CO2 issue before we rush to kill coal notwithstanding the crisis we are said to be facing and its associated belief that remedial action must be taken without delay.  

The issue of CO2 levels and global warming have been studied for over 100 years, and heavily in the past 40.  How much more research do you propose we do, perhaps keep going until we get a convenient answer that we want?  What if that never comes? 

And I stand by my comments about certain pollution and environmental damage going hand-in-hand with coal mining or oil/gas production (I am not just focusing on coal).  Mines are not nice places, with black, acidic water draining away and lagoons of even blacker sludge from the washery (which often leak).  That gets into the local creeks and rivers unless it is strictly controlled, which is costly.

As RME noted it is the fracking boom and its cheap natural gas that has really been displacing coal, not some left-wing green conspiracy.  If that were true we would be seeing far more wind turbines and solar installations than gas plants.

Fracking has its own problems, notably earthquakes and groundwater contamination.  In Alberta we have been lucky so far and have very little (if any) groundwater contamination, and have only recently started to see earthquakes.  It remains to be seen how much those things will worsen as the boom continues.

That is a field that truly deserves further study.

[SD70M-2Dude]

erikem

VOLKER LANDWEHR

 But there are estimates. I will not give links to avoid discussions about bias. But google for "social cost of carbon", defined as cost in $ for each additional ton of carbon dioxide for economic damages.

I've seen some analysis that shows carbon has a net benefit from higher agricultural productivity and fewer deaths from cold in conjunction with a low climate sensitivity.  

That is of course if you live far away from the equator, and away from the shoreline...

[RME]

tdmidget

RME, you have used the abreviation SRC multiple times without, as near as I can tell, telling us what that means. We can't have a intelligent discussion without that knowledge.

Sorry about that; I had it in there and then took out the technical stuff as too arcane and the definition went with it.

As erikem said, 'solvent-refined coal' -- there were at one time a great many references to various forms and approaches via the NTIS technical literature service and on government-agency web sites.

The basic idea is that you can find solvent mixtures that dissolve the carbon and hydrocarbons in coal, but not the sulfur or ash-forming constituents.  You can then distill off (and recover) the solvent mixture, controlling how the carbon-bearing materials come out of solution. 

The process can be done at small scale with comparatively little equipment, but of course works best at full 'industrial' scale.  I still have a large bottle of the "best" general solvent around the turn of the millennium, n-methyl pyrrolidine, sitting behind my desk.

SRC was likely the method used to produce the toner-like carbon powder that was the fuel for the famous coal-burning Eldorados.  I believe one of the remaining issues with the chemical process (trace amounts of remaining structural sulfur bound in biological compounds from the original plants forming the coal beds) has been recently addressed with a revised chemical wash process developed to make extremely low-sulfur biodiesel in 'one pass'.

Note that you may well turn around and put additives back in the SRC carbon product after it's been purified.  That's particularly important if you are going to use a cyclone combustor with FGR and enriched oxygen firing (FGR is 'flue gas recirculation', the analogue in steam generation to EGR in motors) because cyclones need a relatively lavish source of fusible ash to work properly.  This is one of the places the 'right' kind of torrefied wood can become really useful.

[Anonymous]

erikem

I've seen some analysis that shows carbon has a net benefit from higher agricultural productivity and fewer deaths from cold in conjunction with a low climate sensitivity.

You are right. There are areas in the world that might be better off. But what about all those areas that will get too hot to live, too dry to plant anything or those areas that just disappear because of rising sea water levels like Bangladesh or the Florida Keys.

It's not a local but a global problem. Locally there might be gains globally it costs.
Regards, Volker

[Anonymous]

Shadow the Cats owner

Yet all these repairs and added costs were forced upon us in the name of fighting climate change.

These cost were not for measures against climate change but to make the air cleaner. As you said in other posts the milage of your trucks got down dramatically. So they emit more CO2.

The USA's emission standards were primarily set to clean the air as I understood them. The German standards were set to reduce CO2. NOx were not that important, til now.

CO2 and NOx emissions are linked. You have to find a compromise.
Regards, Volker

[tdmidget]

RME, all I can find about solvent refining of coal is out of date (latest is 1983) and it's all academic papers that I am not paying for. Virtually all was aimed at liquifaction of the coal which would not help power generation. The most encouraging and largest scale was an 18 day run at Ga Power's Plant Mitchell, a 22.5 megawatt unit used mainly for testing and research, in 1983. In any case no one seems to realize or account for the energy to produce it. Where is that coming from? The stuff in the bottom ash still has to be handled somehow. Apparently it is possible to produce a solid fuel that burns clean, but at what cost?

[RME]

Almost all the historical work in SRC was either academic or the sort of long-term pie-in-the-sky-tomorrow tech development that characterized Fischer-Tropsch-style gasification/fuel synthesis in the same period (which I think is what you mean by 'liquefaction of the coal' - you wouldn't burn carbon in n-methyl pyrrolidine!).  Almost all you need to know about it, historically, is reflected in its impact on contemporary energy practice ... <cue the crickets chirping>.

I have a longstanding interest in producing relatively low-cost liquid 'carrier' fuel that is less refined/engineered than typical diesel fuel, and also in solid fuels with controlled and reliable ash characteristics and low sulfur.  In part this specifically involves 'next-generation' steam power, which has comparatively little packaging area, balance, or weight capacity for things like electrostatic precipitation, fly-ash recovery or sulfur extraction -- that means 'engineering the fuel' has to be a preferred option.  I always saw SRC restricted to this sort of field, and not to typical baseline power generation where there are better coal-handling and pollution-control means available (and at least at the time money and interest in building them) using conventional Rankine-cycle equipment in well-established ways.  Until there is a mainstream 'case' for commercializing that sort of process, I wouldn't expect to see heavy funding for a resumption of overt SRC research.

There were a couple of key papers, available free via the Web at one time, that covered the effective minimum scale that would 'make sense' for the required solvent extraction and recycling flows, associated heat balance and power consumption for realtime "drying" of the product (and extraction of solvent from the bottom solids) - I think one even had tables of required makeup solvent per ton of product per day, and some of the required amelioration (pyrolysis, iirc) of the flows containing the various solvent slips. 

There are alternative uses for refined SRC carbon; the Japanese 'specialty product' that GM used for the aforementioned coal-turbine Cadillacs was one, although I never did find out precisely what the 'first best use' of that stuff was at the time.  At least part of your question about both the solvent extraction and handling of residual streams also involves a critical capitalization volume and throughput; in particular the prospective uses of the 'usual sort' for inorganic ash constituents in many coal feedstocks may be considerably restricted if even trace amounts of the 'wrong kind' of solvent or other process materials remain in it.

With some care, the energy footprint involved in SRC can be made comparatively small, especially if some effective use of solar or other renewable heat can be applied to evaporating the solvent effectively.  There is little other heat or pressure requirement, much of the cost of crushing the coal to increase its surface area for quicker solution is common to other systems that would use coal firing, and the development of appropriate pumps, pipe and valve lining materials, and so forth that feature relatively low operating power and long service life is almost fully OTS at this point (compared to the mid-'70s to mid-'80s situation at the peak of the Carter administration's alternative fuel development efforts.)  At large scale in a good recirculating setup, I think reasonable process cost (considering the interesting possibilities for several of the products) would not be difficult to achieve, and permit a reasonable profit margin for the operating company at least. 

Note that this is still in the 'well to wheel' framework of production-energy-cost analysis; I'm not including any carbon credit activity, EPA interest or discouragement, etc. as they are too uncertain to incorporate until much closer to design-freeze time, and indeed might be net positive rather than restricting in a manner essentially impossible to predict over the time span associated with systems development.

[RME]

Ulrich

... I knew I was close at a quarter. Will be interesting to see what it is in 20 years.. maybe up over a half by then.

I certainly see no reduction in either the setting up for production or the marketing of wind-turbine units (at a variety of scales and optimizations for wind speeds).  I don't really know how much of the available resources for wind were 'low-hanging fruit' so that getting from 25% to 50% will be much harder in a variety of ways than getting where we are now.

I do know that a great deal of current solar power is a scam as it is commonly presented as a 'renewable' source.  Even leaving out the problems with the technologies used to make PV panels, much of the equipment has what I'd consider a relatively short effective service life, after which it becomes inoperative or progressively degraded and will (how convenient!) need to be replaced.  Remains to be seen if production of solar can be ramped up to the reliable level that makes new-build PV cost-effective in context net of all the production needed to maintain solar contribution at the current levels reported.

Of course, there are some large-scale renewable-energy projects that could be implemented -- offshore wind farms being one example -- that would get us progressively advanced with comparatively little pushback from people who have to live around large-scale renewable generation.   i'm all in favor of cost-effective renewable life cycle development instead of either fossil or nuclear at this time.

[Euclid]

SD70M-2Dude

As RME noted it is the fracking boom and its cheap natural gas that has really been displacing coal, not some left-wing green conspiracy.

We certainly agree on that point.  There is no conspiracy. 

[Bruce Kelly]

Natural gas has been only part of the story.

http://www.politico.com/agenda/story/2015/05/inside-war-on-coal-000002

 

[SD70M-2Dude]

Huh, who knew that using financial logic and hard legal arguments would do a better job of swaying corporate actions than 'bleeding heart'-style protests? [/sarcasm]

[Euclid]

The article linked above by Bruce Kelly should be an eye-opener for those who believe that the price of natural gas is killing coal.

The near universal, thumbnail explanation for the death of coal is that it is purely due to economics in the falling price of natural gas making coal unable to compete.  With this explanation, it is not regulations that are killing coal, and nobody is waging a war against coal.  Coal is simply dying because the market says it is obsolete. 

It is true that what ultimately stops new coal plants is economics, but it is the economics of not being able to comply with objections of the anti-coal activists such as the Sierra Club’s “Beyond Coal” movement.  It is not just the economics in the cost of alternative fuels like natural gas.  Far from it. 

From the linked article:

There will be no formal surrender in the war on coal, no battleship treaty to mark the end. But Beyond Coal’s leaders believe they can finish most of their work setting the U.S. electric sector on a greener path over the next five years. The next phase of the war on carbon would be to try to electrify everything else—cars and trains that use oil-derived gasoline and diesel, as well as homes and businesses that rely on natural gas and heating oil. Nilles hopes power companies like OG&E and DTE that Beyond Coal has spent the last decade fighting with—but then cutting deals with—can become allies in Phase Two. And allies will be vital, because if King Coal seems like a rich and powerful enemy, it’s a pushover compared to Big Oil.

“Once we’ve taken out coal, we’ll need to take on oil, and who better to help than our new friends in the utility sector who can make money from electrification?” Nilles says with a grin. “It’s a long fight. This is how we win.” 

[Gramp]

And how much electricity will have to be generated to power all these vehicles and heat all these homes, and what happens to electricity prices?