I'm giving two lectures this week at the Colorado School of Mines (CSM) titled "The Politics of Coal." In those lectures, I'm trying to map out the debate over the future of coal-fired power plants for students. It has been interesting preparing those lectures, from an academic perspective, while also trying to understand current political debates over the future of coal.
First, let me say that I'm very concerned about climate change: much of my work is directed toward trying to understand how we can move past the politicized scientific debates toward thinking about social and political changes that address the looming climate crisis. But what I've learned -- primarily as a result of working at CSM (which likes to refer to itself as "catholic" on matters of energy production, meaning it supports all avenues and technologies) -- is that energy-related issues are rarely as simple as political debates make them out to be.
The debates over "clean coal" are illustrative. There are those who strenuously argue that clean coal technologies are so much hogwash (see Joe Romm's work on clean coal propaganda at the blog Climate Progress). Others (frequently politicians) are quick to support coal capture and sequestration (CCS) technologies as climate solutions.
Neither is really correct.
It is, of course, good to be wary of "industry" propaganda when it comes to energy issues -- we would be smart to view such campaigns critically. Yet it seems important that the cooler heads in the energy debates also be heard.
A recent report issued jointly by the non-partisan Consortium for Science and Policy Outcomes (CSPO) at Arizona State University and the Clean Air Taskforce offers a careful examination of technologies such as CCS, and aims to determine the state of the technology, along with what it might take to ramp that technology up to "utilities-level" implementation.
The take-away? CCS must be part of our future climate policy portfolio, yet it is only one of many technological innovation pathways that must be pursued. The authors write that "climate change is a systems problem, and solutions will be multiple and largely incremental."
So clean coal is, in one sense, not "real." Or, at least, the promise of it is not. It's not the magic bullet for our climate and energy problems that some hope it would be. There are only a few demonstration projects (all eyes on Mountaineer!), and these are very expensive and small in scale. Utilities, which are incredibly risk averse, will never pursue large-scale innovation in this field on their own.
On the other hand, coal-fired power plants provide around 50% of our electricity in this country, and phasing out coal, if that is even politically possible, is going to be a long, drawn-out process. It would be foolish to ignore CCS one of many possible mitigating technologies in the meanwhile.
It doesn't make sense to put all of our hopes for climate remedies in the CCS basket; nor does it make sense to throw that basket away. With a problem like climate change, it's a question of all hands on deck.
Carl Pope: Who's Got a Scorecard?
The comments about mountaintop removal are right on--it is dirty, nasty stuff. And CO2 sequestration does little to address some of the other problems with coal, like fly ash spills, mercury poisoning, etc. Our current scrubbing technologies are also terrible for water supplies (a great article in today's NYT talks about this).
And yet, we find ourselves intricately tied up with coal, and shutting down coal plants all at once is politically and economically impossible, at the current moment.
My point is simply that it's important to be clear-eyed about coal, and to take steps to mitigating its nastiness. Because coal IS nasty, for humans and the environment both; and we need it to be less nasty, but we also seem to want it to be cheap, but making coal "cleaner" is very nasty. The problem is incredibly complex. So we really need lots of smart people involved in all sorts of technologies--sequestration, wind, solar, even nuclear. It's not an either/or, in my book. We've got to fund everything. We've got to throw the book at it.
Thanks for the good comments, everyone.
Jen
you would be much less likely to support any carbon emitting sources like coal.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fTlLDGWfAPs
You are 100% correct, we do need to "throw the book at it." While I doubt coal will ever remain a viable long-term solution due to the environment damage of procuring it, and using it (clean coal is at best a dream), there are many other cleaner alternatives like Solar, Wind, Geothermal, and (reluctantly) Nuclear Power.
Clean coal is like healthy cigarettes. It's a magical mystical beast which never appears in the real world.
Also, why is it that progressives are not screaming about China or India? You can't see three blocks down in some cities in China because of the smog?
Because we don't live in China or India. Duh.
How about we take the log out of our own eye before talking about the mote in someone else's? You know... kind of like the Bible says.