The Chronicle Herald.CA
Columnist.
H John Harker.
Sixty years ago,in a different time of challenge and
tension,Great Statesmen gathered around a common purpose
and created the North Atlantic Treaty Organization.
In doing so,they showed how worthy they were of the
mantle fashioned not long before,by a trio of leaders
who mastered the North Atlantic in war and ensured that
it would see us safe from totalitarian domination.
President Roosevelt,PM Churchill and PM Mackenzie King
met in Quebec City in 1943.They knew that the North
Atlantic could save us all.Its the same today.
The existential threat we face,however,is not armed
might of a hostile power.
Its our seeming inability to both provide our peoples
with secure,clean,energy and slow to a halt the
polluting of our environment and the warming of our
planet.
Can our leaders,successors in office to the great trio
of 1943,meet and overcome the threat we currently face.
Yes,if they turn, as did their predecessors,to the North
Atlantic,truly an ocean of destiny.
The port of Sydney,Nova Scotia, served as a major convoy
staging point when Roosevelt,Churchill and Mackenzie-
King set about winning the battle of the Atlantic.
It has its name to the Sydney coal field a vast deposit
of quality coal under the water of the North Atlantic
stretching from Nova Scotia to Newfoundland and Labrador.
This deposit,amounting to 150 BT, cannot be mined,and nor
should it be in this carbon conscious era.
But the energy it contains can be accessed,and must be,
if we are to enjoy secure clean energy and protect our
environment.
Here's how,Technology now exists through which we can
safely burn the undersea coal where it is,leaving the
ash behind where once was the coal,and clean harvesting
the synthetic gas,or syngas, which would be given off
in huge quantities.
The technological process is UCG,which converts coal
in-situ into gas and because of the in-situ chemical
conversion process,the syngas is low in many contaminants
normally associated with burning coal such as sulphur,
tar, particulates and mercury.These are mostly left in-
situ with the ash.
And syngas is made up,in equal measure,of natural gas
we are familiar with and hydrogen now touted as the
cleanest possible fuel source,vital to future prosperity
from California to Colchester.
Carbon dioxide is present but can be captured and set
apart joining the ash itself under the ocean floor,to
remain there undisturbed.
In conventional mining,ash management can be costly as
well as problematic.The economics of UCG are very
favorable at today's energy prices,not next years,a mere
50 mt of undersea coal will produce $250 Million worth
of clean energy for 25 years and there are a least 250
blocks of 50 MT in the Sydney coal field.
The deposit could be exploited massively for many years
enabling us to transition to a fossil-free low carbon
economy.
And as we do so,it will be possible to similarly clean
harvest undersea coal fields elsewhere,along part of the
UK coastline,or in the Gulf of ST.Lawrence,estimated to
hold a further 200 BT.
Yes this takes technology,but it is available,it takes
capital,but this is affordable.IT ALSO TAKES LEADERSHIP.
Is this available? are the President of the U.S.,PM of
Britain and the PM of Canada,men that their predecessors
were.
Will they meet,perhaps in Halifax,and see in the Sydney
coal field what their predecessors saw in the water of
the North Atlantic,the battle ground they could and must
win.
[H John Harker is president and vice chancellor of Cape
Breton Uni in Atlantic Canada and serves as an exc/comm
member of Canada's national Research Council.[[end]
Powerful stuff one wonders where Canberra's thinking is
at present,we know they are talking...then again perhaps
that's all they are capable of.
HM.
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