Viv Forbes recently presented yet another poorly thought through effort, this time attempting to support the coal industry that he is a part of by raising a concern about the water vapour resulting from burning fuels with a high hydrogen component such as natural gas.
While it is true that burning coal with very little water content produces little water vapour from the actual burning, have you seen the huge volumes of vapour belching from the cooling towers at major coal fired power stations? The coal is just used to boil water, making steam to drive the turbines, the steam is then released to the cooling towers in an attempt to recover some of the water. Gas turbine generators do not have to produce steam to turn the turbines but run them directly and end up producing not only far less carbon dioxide, but also far less water vapour.
If Viv was actually concerned about the effects of water vapour, he would push for the replacement of coal fired steam driven generation with natural gas turbines.
Paul Carberry
Tamworth
