There is a bitter fight going on about building the world’s largest methanol plant in the tide flats of Tacoma. Northwest Innovation Works (NWIW), which is owned by the Chinese government and BP (British Petroleum), are planning a $3.4 billion investment at the Port of Tacoma. Due to the larger-than-expected public concern, NWIW has asked the city to pause the environmental review while they try a media blitz to swing public support. I think the proper term for this pause is “greenwashing the public.”
The term “greenwashing” is defined as “a form of spin in which green PR or green marketing is deceptively used to promote the perception that an organization’s products, aims or policies are environmentally friendly.” “Greenwashing efforts can range from changing the name or label of a product to evoke the natural environment on a product that contains harmful chemicals to multimillion-dollar advertising campaigns portraying highly polluting energy companies as eco-friendly.” In this case, the greenwashing machine has been working overtime. I am sure they are going to meet our environmental standards, but when NWIW tries to convince the public that the methanol plant is environmentally friendly and will help the environment, that is like putting lipstick on a pig to make it look pretty.
To start at the beginning, look at the owners of the company: China has one of the worst environmental records in the world. Their citizens go around with masks on to prevent inhaling the pollutants in their cities. Their use of coal with little cleaning equipment is impacting the whole world. This Chinese company has little or no past building experience, and their partner, BP, is still not through cleaning up the Gulf of Mexico after the oil spill. We are really picking strange bedfellows if we want a proven environmental track record.
They claim that the methanol plant will be a clean industry by using natural gas instead of coal in China. They are, in essence, saying they cannot stand any more polluted air in China and want to export it to Tacoma. The very inference that natural gas is better than coal is also being disproven: It is true that natural gas will create less CO2 when burned, but there is much more damage done by natural gas leakage when producing it at the fracking well site. Natural gas is mostly methane and is one of the worst greenhouse gases possible. In fact, it is 86 times worse than CO2 for trapping heat in the atmosphere over a 20-year period. So when the small fracking leaks occur at the well, somewhere between 1.5 to 5 percent of the natural gas is released. This amount is multiplied 86 times for CO2 comparison in burning coal. So there appears to be no benefit – and probably a disadvantage – in burning natural gas instead of coal. This is contrary to what NWIW would lead you to believe. Greenwashing!
They claim they will use a new proprietary process called Ultra Low Emissions (ULE) to help the environment – again, this is only wordsmithing to frame their position in the best possible light. In fact, the complete opposite is true. Their ULE process uses electricity to partially heat the process to make methanol. When electricity is used, it is obvious that they do not have to burn any fuel and will limit the emissions at the site. They can claim reduced emissions. But the inconvenient truth they do not mention is that the electricity has to come from somewhere, and it had to use fuel to generate the electricity. The efficiency of generating electricity from a coal or natural gas boiler/generator is low, usually between 35-40 percent. There is also a transmission loss while sending the electricity to the end user of about 10 percent. So the total efficiency is about 33 percent, which means you would need about 300 percent more fuel to use electricity for heating the methanol process. The truth about their proprietary process is that there will be less pollutants and CO2 “at the manufacturing site” by using electricity for process heating, but it will create 300 percent more CO2 at the “electrical generating site.” That is not good for the environment on a regional or global basis. More greenwashing!
Methanol itself is not a very pleasant chemical. It will be used to produce plastics in China (whether the world needs more plastics is another conversation). Methanol is very toxic to humans and can cause blindness, coma and death. It is commonly called “wood alcohol” and is used frequently to denature other alcohols to prevent them from being consumed. One of the worst characteristics of methanol is that it creates a large oxygen demand when spilled. What makes this so significant is that even small spills will consume all the oxygen out of water so that nothing can live. Puget Sound has about 6 mg/liter of oxygen dissolved in the water. Most fish need about 4mg/liter to breath. These are very small amounts, (6 mg of oxygen = 0.00021 ounces). If 1 gallon of methanol is spilled in the Sound, it will completely deplete the oxygen from 198,000 gallons of water. So a relatively minor spill of only 100 gallons would kill everything in 19.8 million gallons of water. That would probably wipe out the Blair Waterway. The worst-case spill would be to lose the contents of a tanker of methanol. That would kill everything in south Puget Sound. This Exxon Valdez-type of spill would deoxygenate 9.3 trillion gallons of Puget Sound water and kill all livings things in it. To put that in a different perspective, it could kill by asphyxiation everything in 8.4 cubic miles. This would be a volume that is 1 mile wide by 1 mile deep and 8.4 miles long – salmon, flounder, crabs, clams, etc. This is not a very friendly chemical, and no amount of greenwashing can change it.
The proponents keep telling everyone to wait until the facts are all available. They really are just waiting to try a different spin to win public support. I hope their media blitz will fall on deaf ears when the scientific basis they are touting is really exposed. This try at wordsmithing and greenwashing are needed in order to frame the project in a different light. I think the harder they try, the more the public will realize the deception. “Oh what a tangled web we weave when first we practice to deceive.”
Steven Storms, BSChE, PE, AIChE, Tacoma
