Mark Wooldridge Bio

40 years in operations and maintenance of power, chemical, and petrochemical plants and refineries. BSME from the University of Southwestern Louisiana (now the University of Louisiana--Lafayette). Firm believer that a combination of improved efficiency in new and existing plants, biofuels--particularly algae biofuels, solar, wind, and wave power along with nuclear is needed to provide economically and ecologically sound power.

About Carbon Capture and Sequestration is a Waste

In my mind CCS is a massive waste for the following reasons: 1) It more or less permanently removes oxygen from the atmosphere--there is no photosyntesis occuring thousands of feet underground. 2) It more or less permanently removes carbon from the carbon chain--ditto the remark above. 3) It consumes 30 to 40% of the power of a power plant making that plant less efficient. Super-critical steam plants are about 40% efficiently thermally. CCS will make the plant 28.6% efficient. For every MW to the grid 30 o 40% more fuel will be consumed and 30 to 40% more heat rejected to the environment. This wastes fuel resources and puts more water vapor into the environment also. Water vapor is a stronger greenhouse gas than CO2--plus more heat to trap. Sounds like CCS contributes to global warming rather than decreases it. 4) CCS is expensive from both capital cost and operating cost aspects and subtracts from the amount of power available. Who is going to pay the cost for this--let me guess--could it be the consumer? That should be a fantastic impact on the economy. Solar and wind energy may be expensive but at least they put back something for the costs. 5) The "scientific" evidence that manmade CO2 is a major cause of global warming is seriously compromised by the information that primary proponents of the theory manipulated data and suppressed dissenting views. Pursuing CCS quite possibly amounts to throwing hundreds of millions--soon to be hundreds of billions--of dollars at a problem that may not be significantly real. 6) As for Mr. Zwim's statement including the phrase "...the support of government funding,...": there is no government funding, it is TAXPAYER funding and I am not too keen to have my tax dollars spent on a destructive technology that decreases efficiency, increases global warming, and has absolutely no payback ever. The use of taxpayer funds to support these studies is misguieded corporate welfare.