coal will remain king for the foreseeable futu

Interesting article that talks about Eskom's coal plants in South Africa and its UCG plant. Interesting their attitude towards UCG exctracted from the article below.

"The technology opens the door to the next generation of power generating technologies, which combine high efficiency gasification technology with gas turbines to yield one of the cleanest coal technologies presently available, potentially significantly reducing carbon dioxide emissions."

http://www.busrep.co.za/index.php?fSectionId=561&fArticleId=5616336

Coal will remain king for the foreseeable future electricity supply
August 25, 2010

By Dan Marokane


Submit your comment

While a great deal of attention is being given to renewable energy sources, such as wind and solar power, to help meet South Africa's electricity needs, the country must not lose sight of the fact that for many decades to come coal is going to be the country's primary power source.

Coal is abundant - we have some 200 years' supply under our soil. It is South Africa's cheapest energy source and will remain so for the foreseeable future. And, as the World Bank has acknowledged, it is only coal-fired power stations that are large enough, and can be built quickly enough, to meet South Africa's rising electricity requirements, and facilitate economic growth and job creation.

This does not mean that we should not place a high priority on the development of wind and solar power generation. Eskom has conducted extensive research on renewable energy sources for many years, and the World Bank loan will fund a solar thermal power plant and a new wind farm. This, coupled with the roll out of new nuclear capacity, will help Eskom meet its commitment to reduce the amount of coal in the energy mix to 70 percent by 2025.

However, we have to keep these developments in perspective. The new solar and wind plants will each generate 100 megawatts of power. The new Medupi coal-fired plant, which will receive the bulk of the World Bank funding, will generate 4 800MW, as will the second new plant, Kusile.

South Africa currently has a generating capacity of nearly 40 000MW, and Eskom plans to double this to 80 000MW by 2025 to meet continued economic growth.

The only way to fuel this demand economically is by using South Africa's vast reserves of coal to generate the electricity required for factories, mines, businesses and residential homes.

South Africa has abundant coal reserves. On average, we produce 224 million tons of marketable coal annually, representing 6 percent of global production and making us the fifth-largest coal producing country in the world. Some 53 percent of the coal produced in South Africa is used for electricity generation.

Other advantages include the reliability of coal-fired power stations, South Africa's very well established electricity-from-coal infrastructure and, most fundamentally, the fact that burning coal to generate electricity is the most cost-effective and energy efficient way to do so.

South Africa's significant coal reserves are estimated at 53 billion tons, representing 11 percent of the world's coal reserves. Based on Eskom's present production rate, this equates to almost 200 years of coal supply, providing a secure and sustained energy supply for the foreseeable future.

Coal is, at the moment, the most cost-effective and viable option for meeting the base-load electricity requirements of Africa's largest economy. Base load means power generated around the clock, every day of the year.



Important as they are, renewable energy sources cannot for many years to come be more than a small part of the country's power generation mix, which includes gas, nuclear, electricity supplied by independent power suppliers and power bought from our neighbours, such as the hydro-electricity supplied by Mozambique.

Nevertheless we must accept that coal has significant local and global environmental impacts. As such we must ensure that future coal operation addresses these impacts. In order to minimise local environmental impacts our new coal plants are being fitted with state of the art environmental control technologies. For example:

Eskom will retrofit the 4 800MW Medupi coal-fired power station with pollution-mitigating flue gas desulphurisation (FGD) technology. All six of the 800MW generation units being installed at the 840ha site near Lephalale will eventually include FGD, which will result in a reduction of about 90 percent in the gaseous emissions of sulphur dioxide gas from the station's chimneys. Eskom's Kusile plant includes FGD technology from the start.

In order to reduce our global carbon footprint we are ensuring that our new power stations use the latest clean technologies. In addition to continuing research into renewable energy sources, we are also exploring new technologies such as underground coal gasification (UCG), where coal is converted underground into a synthetic gas which can be used for power generation.

The UCG pilot plant at Majuba power station near Volksrust in Mpumalanga is already capable of producing enough gas for the cooking and heating requirements of about 1 000 medium-sized houses.

The UCG technology application is a first for Africa and the front-runner in terms of Eskom's research and development of clean coal technologies.

The technology opens the door to the next generation of power generating technologies, which combine high efficiency gasification technology with gas turbines to yield one of the cleanest coal technologies presently available, potentially significantly reducing carbon dioxide emissions.

In the longer term technologies which will remove CO2 from coal plant emissions and store it deep underground, or convert it to useful by-products, are being explored.

In addition, we have already demonstrated the feasibility of co-firing biomass with coal.

We have a good start in the fact that our coal is "cleaner" than northern hemisphere coal, and therefore produces less noxious emissions.

Coal has to be South Africa's primary energy source for the foreseeable future. The fact that we are able to mitigate its potential damage holds bright promise for the future of cleaner and greener energy production in South Africa.