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.
CXY Price at posting:
9.7¢ Sentiment: None Disclosure: Held
