We were discussing SO2 emissions from Coal fired power stations in another thread. I was struck by the thought that just perhaps  if we could get CCS to work (and that's a big if), they could offer the possibility of mitigating the global warming trend or Australia's contribution to it. 

SO2 emissions normally cause acid rain, and in most cases, acid rain has had some devastating effects, especially in pine forests, where entire lakes in Northern Canada and Scandinavia  have been rendered totally devoid of life.

In Australia, most power stations are located in WA, which is separated by huge expanses of desert where emissions  disperse before arriving at highly populated areas, or on the Eastern seaboard where emissions will disperse harmlessly into the Pacific. I suspect that as a result, SO2 emission control is more lax in Australia compared to other parts of the world.

Thinking aloud, it's well known that sulphates and SO2 have a net negative forcing.  To determine whether there is a net advantage  will involve a consideration of the residence time and fate of CO2 in the atmosphere.

The emission figures for various Coal fired power stations is available on the NPI website.  What level of scrubbing efficiency are those emissions consistent with? I suspect that emission handbooks have been used to determine these figures, because I doubt of any of the Power stations have real time emission monitoring.   

So my question is whether or not there is an opportunity to mitigate carbon emissions by deliberately emitting more SO2, and to quantify this effect - ie how many tonnes of CO2- equivalent would this offset?

I'll try to collect the data

Comments? - Chimp?

Right. In Australia,  we use 2229 PJ (Petajoules) of coal for Electricity generation.

Working on 1PJ = 43000 tonnes black coal and based on black coal as a first approximation, that equates to 

96 million tonnes black coal

Average Sulfur content = 1%

So that gives us 96 million tonnes @ approximately  1% sulphur on average.

This gives us 0.96 million tonnes of sulphur or 1.92 million tonnes of SO2.

From the National Pollutant Inventory web site, we get total SO2 emissions from electricity generation in Australia. The figure is 580,000 tonnes of SO2. Coal fired generation accounts for 80% of total generation. Sulphur content of other sources is negligible.

That means that 30% of the total SO2 produced by coal consumption is emitted to atmosphere.

I come to two conclusions.

1. This confirms what I already know - many power stations in Australia do not scrub their stack gases to remove SO2.

2. Intuitively, I suspect that the NPI emissions are understated. I'll do some detailed work to confirm that.