I don't see that there is much different than ordinary syngas creation in any IGCC plant. There is no doubt that IGCC plants are thermally much more efficient, than an antiquated coal plant that it replaces. An intrinsic benefit of IGCC plants is the scrubbing of low temperature gas before burning it, to remove toxic materials. Provisions exist to do CCS in all IGCC plants.

To the degree that they must overly promote their own process to get approval for such coal plants past green loons, they can certainly do so. Even if the CCS option doubles the cost per KWh from 4-7 cents per Kwh, it is stilll cheaper than alternatives.

Such as building "renewables" like some half-witted, very intermittent windmill at 18-21 cents per KWh; or the 25 cents plus per Kwh that an intermittent Solar plant costs to produce electricity.

Mannstein,

Thank your local PUC who has caved into every green loon around. How many 'green' generation projects have they undertaken that produce nothing; or tiny amounts power after massive expenditure. That 18-20 cents for wind is for 'nominal or rated power'. But what you get out of a windmill by Utility experience is about 8% of nameplate rated power. The real cost of a deliverable and useable KWh is then .20/.08 or $2.50 a KWh actual. Or didn't you know that?

The windmills can't run in wind under 3 mph; or they will wipe their bearings. And they can't run in wind over 8 mph; or they will fatigue and tear of their airfoils. How often do you think the wind blows precisely between between 4 and 7 mph ? Not much. Like 8% of the time.

In the absence of having the power your 'green loon' plant was to have have generated; your Utility must import power from someone else who is willing to sell it. And they will for 30+ cents a KWH plus a fee to whatever Utilities charge to move the power between the seller and buyer for use of their transmission lines.

But as reserve margins shrink, thanks to your demagogic "Consumer Advocates", fewer Utilities are allowed to have much spare power to sell, and the further you have to go to get it. And so the price climbs.

Then the governments put taxes on it.

Your price is the blended price of all the various generation methods available, plus a profit, plus all the damn taxes imposed all the way around.

That adds up. You say to 18 cents per KWh. And you wonder why industry is fleeing and moving out?

I think its is significant that there are some 35 nuclear plants in the pipeline for construction in the USA for the next decade. Not a single one in the Northeast, or West Coast.

So there are none the so-called Blue States where green loons predominate. Now the Clueless One wants a Ration and Tax energy bill; and freely says it will quintuple prices, like that was a goodness, somehow. So 18 cents a KWh will become 90 cents a KWH.

Kiss a green loon and thank him for your utiltity bill.

Carbon sequestration doesn't work - plus the methane will be burned in the end. That's why you can't make coal clean, no matter how much green soap you use.

The overall reaction is coal + water -> CO2 + methane, right? Every ton of coal, on combustion, produces ~2.7 tons of CO2. A plant of this type that consumed 3 million tons per year of coal would still result in some 8 millions tons of CO2 being pumped into the atmosphere that year - because the methane would be burned.

The only plausible use for the CO2 stream is in Enhanced Oil Recovery - but this is all just part of the lobbyist effort, isn't it?

See this from Center for North American Energy Security, an unconventional fossil fuel lobby group:

"As a result of these developments, CNAES’s principals began a new unconventional fuels outreach program in 2007. The objective was to create a single organization to coalesce unconventional fuels advocates in all of the affected private and governmental sectors around a unified program to advance the development and use of all of the five unconventional fuels sectors studied in the Task Force report: Heavy Oil, Tar Sands, Shale Oil, Coal-to-Liquids and Enhanced Oil Recovery."

This is just more PR for dirty fuel programs that could barely limp along without massive state subsidies - all rely on an assumption of high future fossil fuel demand and $100 a barrel oil prices for profitability, don't they?

The energy sector should just admit that unconventional fossil fuels are a big mistake, and move on, despite the efforts of lobby groups:

Mr. Corcoran said there has been intense lobbying in the United States to limit the use of Canadian oil sands. "The new development is that there is pushback. A number of the major oil companies ... have substantial interests in Canada. ConocoPhillips, Exxon Mobil, Shell, have a corporate strategy to develop the oil sands and are well aware of the sizeable market here in the U.S.

On the other hand, this process might be very useful for converting biomass waste to methane. The main difference is that wood chip cellulose has more oxygen atoms than coal does, but the basic principles are the same - and methane burns far cleaner than wood does, too.

The difference with biofuels is that the carbon source was the atmosphere, not geological deposits - so burning biofuels results in no net carbon additions to the atmosphere.