Can King Coal Clean Up Its Act?

by Bill Onasch / May 2009

King Coal is summoning all his minions to sell new, improved Clean Coal. Rallying around their friends and partners of the American Coalition for Clean Coal Electricity are the CEOs of the United Mine Workers, Boilermakers, IBEW, and the AFL-CIO Industrial Union Council. The coalition includes such good public citizens as Peabody, Caterpillar, Alcoa, General Electric and all Class I railroads.

Bob Baugh, IUC executive director, is getting downright impatient: “Our nation needs good jobs and new technology that will cut our carbon emissions. It is time to quit talking about advanced coal technology and begin building it.”

Well, I agree with part of brother Baugh’s declaration—it is indeed time to stop talking about the scam of clean coal, also known as carbon capture and sequestration (CCS). Here are some undisputed facts:

• CCS does not exist on a commercial level anywhere, never has, and is thus unproven in practice.

• It’s estimated that CCS would consume as much as 40 percent of a power plant’s energy production.

• Storage of massive amounts of CO2 underground or under water is untested and risky. Escape of captured CO2 could have catastrophic consequences.

• The capital investment for universal CCS would be enormous, greatly reducing the economy of coal and boosting electricity rates.

Otherwise, it’s not a bad idea! Carbon emissions are frying our biosphere. The top climate scientist James Hansen feels sufficiently motivated to call coal fired power plants “factories of death.” They are as much or more of a threat to the members of the Mine Workers, Boilermakers, and IBEW as the rest of us. I’m sure our labor statespersons have heard something about this. But, like their employer partners, they remain fixated on a short-term bottom line—in their case dues paying members in their jurisdictions.

EPA discovers global warming is bad

It was not allowed during the eight years of Bush 2. It didn’t happen during the previous eight years when Al Gore was vice president. EPA Administrator Lisa Jackson was nearly breathless as she announced an “endangerment finding” that “confirms that greenhouse gas pollution is a serious problem now and for future generations.”

Despite its tardiness, so far so good. U.S. citizens now have one less embarrassment to worry about. But this “confirmation” of what climate scientists have been shouting for more than a decade was not accompanied by any proposed new regulations, or even broad suggestions concerning what might be done about this “serious problem.” The agency still defers to their political masters for action initiatives.

It looks like debate in Congress will center around two options—cap-and-trade and cap-and-dividend. Cap-and-trade has been around a while. In the USA there’s long been a market for credits to allow pollutants causing acid rain. It merely adds a little cost to doing business, which is passed on to the consumer.

The European Union established a huge carbon cap-and-trade scheme as their main tool in meeting the modest goals they agreed to in the Kyoto Accords. But they were so generous in handing out initial carbon permits that the market has virtually collapsed for lack of demand. And it is almost certain that not a single EU country will meet their greenhouse gas reduction quotas.

Cap-and-trade has not deterred plans for dozens of new coal-fired power plants in Germany and Italy. France has got off easy because of their reliance on nuclear power—a different type of environmental disaster in the making.

Such a dismal outcome could have been anticipated—as many did. We have seen failed markets destroy the jobs and life savings of millions. Why should we trust market mechanisms to save our biosphere from destruction?

Cap-and-dividend is a bizarre scheme cooked up by Peter Barnes, who made a fortune from Working Assets, a “socially responsible” money-management firm. He now aims to save the planet, and markets through what the Washington Post calls “a mix of capitalism, populism and environmentalism.” He would assess a weighted tax on carbon usage and then send everyone a “dividend” similar to the royalty payments all citizens of Alaska receive from oil companies. As spaced out as this may seem, it’s actually been proposed in a bill introduced by the co-chairman of the Renewable Energy and Energy Efficiency Caucus in the House.

While such nonsense is being seriously debated, the Guardian published a poll showing nine out of 10 climate scientists now believe the goal of limiting global warming to 2C is no longer possible. An average rise of 4-5C by the end of this century is more likely, they say, given soaring carbon emissions and political constraints. As the British paper explains, “Such a change would disrupt food and water supplies, exterminate thousands of species of plants and animals and trigger massive sea level rises that would swamp the homes of hundreds of millions of people.”

While my friends in the Sierra Club are rushing to bring out ads supporting President Obama’s climate policy—which seems as fluid as the melted Arctic ice—I’m going to keep working to knock down those “political constraints” that make our scientists so pessimistic about reducing emissions.