The Future of Coal
September 2nd, 2007
Should we, the nation’s beleaguered taxpayers, be required to spend billions of dollars on an oxymoron?
First, while climate science is complicated, climate policy is simple. We need far lower levels of greenhouse gases in the atmosphere, which means we must start decreasing emissions immediately. Our highest priority for taxpayer dollars should be the deployment of market-ready energy efficiency and renewable energy technologies and the rapid development of those that are still in gestation.
The “DOE and industry have not demonstrated the technological feasibility of the long-term storage of carbon dioxide captured by a large-scale, coal-based power plant,” according to a December 2006 Government Accountability Office (GAO) report. And the U.S. Department of Energy doesn’t expect to have demonstrated the feasibility for at least a decade. Meantime, solving the climate problem gets more expensive and complicated every year.
Second, the rationale for large public subsidization of clean coal is specious. The argument goes like this: We have one hundred or more years worth of coal supplies and the stuff is cheap — it exists, therefore we must consume it. But if ample supplies and low prices are the criteria, we should be investing all of our money in solar. We have a 4.5 billion year supply of sunlight and it’s free.
Third, clean coal will be expensive. The GAO predicts that electricity from clean coal plants will cost up to 78% more than electricity from conventional coal plants, not counting carbon pricing. Clean coal will require construction of pipelines to move carbon from the power plant to the sequestration site and permanent monitoring, which means extra cost. Meantime, DOE’s goals are to bring the cost of low-speed wind power down to 3.6 cents a kilowatt hour by 2012, geothermal electricity down to 3-5 cents by 2010, and photovoltaic electricity down to 5-10 cents by 2015. By the time clean coal is market-ready, will it be cost-competitive?
Fourth, clean coal won’t be that clean. DOE’s goal is to reduce carbon dioxide emissions 90% — a huge improvement, certainly, but not as good as solar and wind. Meanwhile, coal is mined by the biggest fossil-fueled shovels known to man, then transported long distances by train. That produces more carbon dioxide, as well as considerable other environmental damages. The wastes from mountaintop mining in
Fifth, while it’s true that the rest of the world is building two coal plants a week and the
Climate change is nature’s way of telling us that it’s time, finally, for the world’s economies to be rebuilt for clean and sustainable energy. Current coal plants don’t qualify. Clean coal is the industry’s oxymoronic strategy to keep a carbon-rich resource relevant in a carbon-constrained world.
Our national coal policy should be as follows:
- Federal research on carbon sequestration should continue. But the federal government should require a higher cost-share from the coal industry. (The Energy Policy Act requires a cost share of only 20% for research and development, and even that amount can be waived by the Secretary of Energy.).
- We should ban the construction of any new conventional coal power plant, period. We need to avoid all “lock-ins” — projects that commit us to 40, 50 or 60 years more of greenhouse gas emissions.
- We should require existing plants to improve their efficiency with the best available combustion technologies.
- No coal miner or coal community should be left behind. Insofar as workers and communities are hurt by these policies, we should help them develop new skills, jobs, and local industries.
Coal deserves our thanks for helping build one of the most prosperous nations in history. But it was once a dinosaur, and it is again.
– Bill B.
September 2nd, 2007 at 10:59 am
“We should ban the construction of any new conventional coal power plant, period.”
That’s green ideology in a nutshell. Total intransigence, and dissregard of reality.
As I said before: no new power plants means blackouts coming soon. Balckouts means people buying home generators, and pollution rising 3 fold.
September 2nd, 2007 at 12:01 pm
Bill;
Great post, although I disagree with you on one point. The government’s highest priority should be policies that capture all available cost-effective energy efficiency options and to do R&D on effeiciency so that envelope continues to exapnd.
ACEEE is conducting state-by-state analyses of the capacity for efficiency, on-site generation and load managment techniques to displace the need for new generation. The results for Texas and Florida are in and they show that efficiency — or negawatts — can displace the need for new generation for the next 15 years or more at a lower cost than new generation. And that’s before one factors in externatilities, or rapid price rises in fuel.
Other state studies are on the way and are expected to show similar results. My point is not that we don’t need renewables, but rather that we need to extract all poosibl efficiency gains from the system and continue to do research on ways of making the system more efficient as a first priority. The only way renewables can supplant fossil fuels at scale is to have a vastly more efficient system. The energy density of fossil fuels has allowed for profligate use — a “luxury” a renewable-based system can’t afford - nor can our economy.
Which leads to an econobabble explanation for putting efficiency first — investing in a more expensive option (renewables) before the less expensive one (efficiency) is a supotimal allocation of resources which, economists tell me is not only bad public policy, but some kind of moral failling as well.
Bottom line, loan guarantees, performance contracts, codes and standards, smart zoning, mileage standards, tax credits, preferred amortization schedules, better underwriting in insurance decisions, better bonding criteria, etc. are tools the federal, state, and local governments could aply to our energy system — and they would put the wind in the sales of efficiency and renewables.
But if we don’t move forward aggressively with efficiency at the same time we do with renewables, we’re just buildng capacity we don’t need at prces we can’t afford.
September 2nd, 2007 at 12:08 pm
Even at the power plant itself, the 90% reduction in CO2 from CCS is not real (not even counting the effects Joe mention, such as transportation of coal to the plant). The plant itself must burn more coal (and thus produce more CO2) to generate the energy required for CCS. MIT’s The Future of Coal provides some data: cheapest non-CCS plant to build today: ultra-supercritical pulverized coal (164,000 kg/h coal feed, $0.0469/kWh, 738g CO2/kWh emitted). Cheapest 90% capture CCS plant of the future (projected): IGCC (228,000 kg/h coal feed, $0.0652/kWh, 102g CO2/kWh emitted). Note it takes an extra 64 tonnes per hour to feed the “clean coal” plant. Instead of having 10% the emissions (a 90% reduction), it has 14% of the emissions (i.e. 38% more)
of the original. And there’s always the risk of a Lake Nyos sort of disaster if sequestration fails.
September 2nd, 2007 at 12:16 pm
John’s point about efficiency needs to be repeated over and over again. There are almost enough efficiency gains to be made in the U.S. to get rid of coal.
It is not surprising that ACEEE finds Texas could power itself without a single new plant for years. Consider that Texans gulped 14,602 kWh per capita in 2003 when Californians sipped only 6,732 kWh per capita in the same year. Yes, Texans used almost 2.2 times as much electricity person! If Texas had California’s policies, and its usage fell to California’s over the next 30 years, think of what could be saved!
September 3rd, 2007 at 11:07 am
I’m with Bill, though I might modify his dictum slightly: “No new coal plants that are not equipped with carbon capture and storage.” That is not the green ideology, it is the planetary necessity. We can — and must — provide all of the energy services people need without destroying the planet for the next 50 generations.
September 3rd, 2007 at 1:11 pm
I’m with Bill, too, although I’d favor a complete moratorium on new coal plants. CCS is expensive, unproven, and ultimately unecessary.
Bottom line: with a full court press on efficiency, judiscious use of renewables and on-site generation, we can go 20 years without needing a single new large base-load generating plant. In the intervening years we could research ways to make our economy even more efficient, while improving renewable energy and energy storage technologies to the point they could provide any new power generation needed.
As for the economy? Well efficiency measures create jobs and retain capital within communities where it has the greatest multiplier effect. And when it comes to renewables, the companies and countries that corner the market on clean energy will prosper, and those that don’t will import their hardware from them.
It sems to me the second law of thermodynamics has something to say about the folly of using coal in a carbon constrained world. How can it make any sense — technologically or economically — to dig up high carbon coal, burn it, then capture the carbon and burry it?
Tom Toles, the Post’s poltical cartoonist, captured this folly in a recent cartoon. He pictured a series of rock strata. Above the picture the caption read: “Is there a reliable way to sequester carbon?” Below the picture the caption read, “Yes. Leave the coal in the ground.”
Doesn’t that say it all?
September 3rd, 2007 at 2:56 pm
Through my green lens, Jacob, reality looks quite different than a future of coal power plants driven by consumer demand. In my reality, we have reached the point where environmental policy cannot be driven by consumer appetite for energy. Rather, energy policy must be responsive to, if not governed by, the realities of climate change, as serious, deadly and disruptive as those realities seem to be.
I completely agree with John that energy efficiency is Job 1, and didn’t mean to imply otherwise. Although energy efficiency in the U.S. economy has been improving, there is ample untapped potential for improve it further and that should be our first strategy to ensure that electric power (as well as other forms of power ) remains sufficient and reliable.
There are other strategies, too, of course, including greatly expanded use of distributed generation to reduce strain on the grid, and the deployment of renewables.
There is another very important strategy that few seem to have the courage to talk about because it invades hallowed ground. I remember years ago visiting a web site developed by one of the “educational” organizations for the coal industry. The introduction on the home page made the statement that “cheap energy is an American birthright.” It’s not, of course, and neither is unbridled use of natural resources.
Dealing effectively with climate change (as well as with peak oil and the general insecurity of depending upon finite resources) will require not only new technologies, but new behaviors, driven by new values, driven by a more realistic understanding of ecosystems and our utter interdependence with them.
Smart technologies can accomodate stupid behavior, but only to a point. We in the United States seem to have the notion of limitless resources and unbridled freedom written into our national DNA, and that is in many ways what has made us so successful and innovative a society. But where real limits exist and we slam up against them, we need to learn to recognize reality and work with them. Carbon emissions into the atmosphere are one such case.
At some point — and I think we’ve reached it — our appetites as consumers will have to take second place to our obligations as a species to other species, as a people to other people, and as a generation to other generations.
That, to me, is the new reality. And those who do not adjust to new realities — be they individuals, communities, companies, societies or species — are doomed to darwinian decline. If that’s green ideology, I’ll take it. It’s far better than the alternative.
May 14th, 2008 at 9:35 am
I can’t wait for my blackout. There’s a big screen TV I’ve had my eye on. Everyone shout, “LOOTING TIME!” Whoops, I forgot no electricity to watch my new big screen. I’ll have to pilfer a generator first. Since gas is so expensive I’ll need a siphon to get some from my neighbors car. Oh, I forgot to tell you, I’ll be looting because I lost my job. No electricity, no computers will run at work, so they asked me to only work part-time. Thank god for the 2nd amendment. I’ll need a gun to protect my gas and generator. Or I could move to France where 90% of the power is nuclear. This country is full of ignorant fools. Most of them are either liberal tree huggers or conservative, sneaker wearing, hal-bop worshippers.