Obama's Coal Conundrum

Does Obama need to keep touting "clean coal" as part of the solution to America's energy and economic woes?

While coal is abundant in the United States, it is far from the clean-as-driven snow energy source that coal industry lobbyists would like us all to think and according to new report out today it is hardly the answer to America's economic problems.

The report released today by the WorldWatch Institute finds that a transition to renewable energy sources promises significant global job gains at a time when the coal industry has been hemorrhaging jobs for years.

An estimated 2.3 million people worldwide currently work either directly in renewables or indirectly in supplier industries. The solar thermal industry employs at least 624,000 people, the wind power industry 300,000, and the solar PV industry 170,000. More than 1 million people work in the biomass and biofuels sector, while small-scale hydropower employs 39,000 individuals and geothermal employs 25,000.

Jeff Biggers points out yesterday on Huffington Post that the coal-grown Appalachian region in West Virginia is a potential boom-town for wind power:

If Senator Barack Obama ever needs a living symbol of change we can believe in, and a hopeful way to transcend the dirty politics of our failed energy policies, he should go and see the future of renewable energy in the Coal River Valley in West Virginia."

The environmental impacts of so-called "clean coal" show that it is far from clean, in fact it is downright filthy. Unless, of course, you don't mind a little Mercury in your breast milk or a slight case of black lung.

While the rest of the world is well down the path of a clean, renewable energy revolution, our most environmentally-friendly presumptive Presidential candidate is still touting a dirty, job-killing, planet-warming energy source as an integral part of our future and our children's future.

It doesn't need to be this way. Does it?

Follow Kevin Grandia on Twitter: www.twitter.com/kgrandia

Comments

[research]

it's just lip service.

It will take about ten years to replace all coal with wind and solar.

Wind is already cheaper to build then coal and faster to install.

No more coal plants should be built.

any and all cola subsides should immediately be transfered to wind and solar.

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/users/profile/research

[Scarabus]

Imagine how different the picture would be if Dick Cheney and friends were invested in renewable energy rather than oil. Not least, no war in Iraq.

Which reminds me...

Why has there been no storm of protest from progressives about the oil administration's having shut down solar energy research on public lands--putatively (and outrageously!) because of environmental concerns--while simultaneously pushing oil-drilling on those same lands?

[rwe]

Southern Illinois (you know the state Barack was present in for 8 years while continously campaigning for other offices) Has the mother load of coal , it is the Saudi Arabia of coal.And his constituents are a little peaved at his horrible energy policies (among other policies)

[markie1111]

so the future also contains "CME Warnings" where everything shuts down????

[MysticInd]

I appreciated all your facts in your piece... Great JoB

Clean Coal is expensive and not developed...just paper. And Barack has been praising it from day one and he got their monla too.

It's why he wasn't my man in the beginning and now with his move to the center; voting for FISA; doing that political lying s*** is enough for me to keep on wondering what type of world we live in.

[philipwitak]

quoting james hansen, director of the NASA Goddard Institute for Space Studies and leading climate change authority:

"Coal is central to solution of the climate problem. Coal is not only the main cause of excess CO2 in the air today; it has the greatest potential for future emissions (Fig. 2a). Due to coal’s dominance, [any] solution to global warming must include phase-out of coal use except where CO2 is captured and sequestered."

:: snip ::

"...climate change...can be avoided only if coal emissions (but not necessarily coal use) are identified for prompt phase-out...a strategy based on 20%, 50%, or 80% CO2 emission reduction is doomed to failure, because it would allow substantial coal emissions to continue indefinitely. Once CO2 emissions are in the air, they cannot be retrieved. The only practical solution...avoid coal emissions."

:: snip ::

"Choices among alternative energy sources...are national matters. But [the] decision to phase out coal use unless the CO2 is captured is a global imperative, if we are to preserve the wonders of nature, our coastlines, and our social and economic well being."

hansen currently believes that mankind has no more than one or two years to act, decisively, or we risk "handing our children a problem that is out of their control."

anthropogenic climate change is quickly becoming the defining issue of our lives, whether we like it or not. mr. 'change we can believe in' better get with the program. fast.

[Mildmannered]

Kevin:

What are the most promising “clean coal” and carbon capture and sequestration (CCS) technologies?

[markie1111]

i have said this before, there will come a time when humanity will shake it's head and say you used oil for locomotion and heat??? kinda as stupid as depriving the oceans of whales for lamp oil. .. that said... emissions sequestering into oil fields is going to be substantial.