From: DeSmog Canada
by Carol Linnitt
Thanks to Alberta's tar sands, coal-powered energy production just got cheaper, and dirtier.
That is largely due to an often overlooked byproduct of bitumen upgrading: petroleum coke. The byproduct, commonly referred to as petcoke, is derived from the excess heavy hydrocarbons necessarily processed out of bitumen in the production of lighter liquid fuels like gasoline and diesel. The leftover condensed byproduct, petcoke, bears a striking resemblance to coal, and is being integrated into coal power plants across the US and internationally, contributing a tremendous amount of carbon emissions to the tar sands price tag that has been previously unaccounted for.
That is, until the research group Oil Change International released a research report that calculates the use of petcoke in American energy generation increases the proposed Keystone XL Pipeline's emissions by a staggering 13 percent.
The report, Petroleum Coke: The Coal Hiding in the Tar Sands, suggests that while groups like the European Commission use specific inputs to determine a 'well-to-wheels' analysis of tar sands emissions - which figures the unconventional fuel emits emissions 23 percent greater than conventional crude - such calculations do not account for petcoke and so only tell a portion of the story.
“Petcoke,” states the Oil Change website, “has even higher carbon emissions than already carbon-intensive coal, emitting between 5 to 10 percent more CO2 than coal per unit of energy produced. A ton of petcoke yields on average 53.6 percent more CO2 than a ton of coal.” MORE
That is largely due to an often overlooked byproduct of bitumen upgrading: petroleum coke. The byproduct, commonly referred to as petcoke, is derived from the excess heavy hydrocarbons necessarily processed out of bitumen in the production of lighter liquid fuels like gasoline and diesel. The leftover condensed byproduct, petcoke, bears a striking resemblance to coal, and is being integrated into coal power plants across the US and internationally, contributing a tremendous amount of carbon emissions to the tar sands price tag that has been previously unaccounted for.
That is, until the research group Oil Change International released a research report that calculates the use of petcoke in American energy generation increases the proposed Keystone XL Pipeline's emissions by a staggering 13 percent.
The report, Petroleum Coke: The Coal Hiding in the Tar Sands, suggests that while groups like the European Commission use specific inputs to determine a 'well-to-wheels' analysis of tar sands emissions - which figures the unconventional fuel emits emissions 23 percent greater than conventional crude - such calculations do not account for petcoke and so only tell a portion of the story.
“Petcoke,” states the Oil Change website, “has even higher carbon emissions than already carbon-intensive coal, emitting between 5 to 10 percent more CO2 than coal per unit of energy produced. A ton of petcoke yields on average 53.6 percent more CO2 than a ton of coal.” MORE
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