The Oxymoron of Clean Coal (Joe Biden Had it Right Before He Had it Wrong.)

Sarah Palin and John McCain have always been for it. Joe Biden was sort of against it before he was for it and Barack Obama embraces it. To what am I referring? The alleged panacea of clean coal.

Doesn't it make you feel all warm and fuzzy? We can have our most polluting energy source, the one that gouges our land, dirties our air with particulates, poisons our water with mercury, and generates most of our greenhouse gas emissions because it's the cheapest, currently most abundant fuel source we have. Well hold on there, coal mavericks, you're mistaken. Coal is a non-renewable resource. Factor in the externalities of pollution and costs to human heath, and the so-called cheap fuel source skyrockets.

One of our most abundant energy source is geothermal energy. A 2006 Massachusetts Institute of Technology study concluded the United States is sitting on recoverable geothermal energy about 2 thousand times greater than our current annual consumption. What makes geothermal even more appealing is that's it's available day and night and can be used as a baseload energy source like coal or natural gas. We have prime hot spots in the West and Alaska that are relatively easy and cost-effective to access. Geothermal extraction can cause seismic disruptions but is far less detrimental than coal, including significantly lower carbon emissions. Let's not forget that the U.S. ranks fourth in solar capacity and second in wind, gosh darn it. The U.S. Department of Energy (DOE) estimates that, with the proper infrastructure and transmission capacity, wind could generate 20 percent of our energy by 2030.

Clean coal is a lie. The catch-all term is used by politicians and coal advocates alike to lull the American public into complacency: It's okay, we can build more coal plants, they're clean. They include technologies like flue gas treatment, carbon storage and capture and gasification. And while there's been a lot of talk about these efforts, there's been very little action because of the cost and other barriers to implementation. The DOE pulled out of its original clean coal agreement with FutureGen Alliance coalition of oil and coal companies earlier this year because of cost increases. (DOE is now soliciting loan guarantees for carbon sequestration proposals in conjunction with FutureGen. They won't announce them until the end of the year and nothing will be running until at least 2015.)

Let's mine a little more. One of the most popular components of "clean coal" technology is carbon sequestration. This involves capturing carbon dioxide from coal plants and pumping it deep into the ground. The pro-coal folks bandy this notion around a lot as a way for us to burn our coal and have it, too. Here's the deal, my fellow Americans, sequestering carbon doesn't solve our pollution problems. Coal-fired plants are the largest source of mercury contamination in the country. Their emissions cause acid rain, smog, water pollution, and depletion of our ozone layer.

Sequestration doesn't solve our energy problems, either. The lure of carbon sequestration encourages us to continue to get our power from dirty sources & consume rampantly. In actuality, sequestration requires more energy, new equipment, and new chemical reactions that, you betcha, create more pollution.

Netherland's Utrecht University is attempting to quantify these environmental trade-offs. They've discovered that captured CO2 has to be compressed to about 100 times atmospheric pressure, transported to a suitable underground reservoir and pumped into the ground. In order to cover the sequestration energy needs, a coal-fired power plant that sequesters its carbon ends up burning about 30 percent more coal than conventional plants.

We can't separate out one greenhouse gas and ignore the other pollutants that are generated in the process. Especially when we have no idea what will happen to the CO2 once it's buried (the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change predicts it'll stay in the ground for centuries.
Instead of pouring one more penny into making a dirty industry slightly cleaner by 2015, we should be funding infrastructure and technologies that will get us out of this carbon sinkhole and create sustainable jobs and build competitive advantage for America in the global marketplace.

According to a new study from climatologist Pushker Kharecha and James Hansen, the Director of NASA's Goddard Institute for Space Studies, phasing out coal is the one thing we can do to quickly alleviate our climate change quandary. Most of the rise in the carbon dioxide levels that contribute to climate change is the result of burning fossil fuels. (These fuels are the cause of about 80 percent of the atmospheric rise in CO2 since the pre-industrial era.) Carbon dioxide accounts for about half of the human-caused greenhouse gases in our atmosphere. But it could be kept below harmful levels if we phased out the emissions that come from coal-fired plants within the next few decades.

Kharecha and Hansen, of course, think that we should wean ourselves off non-renewable resources like crude oil and petroleum, as well, but because coal is still relatively cheap and abundant, that's their main target. The good scientists explored various scenarios, ran the numbers, and determined not only that the most important mitigation strategy was to phase out CO2 emissions from coal but that it's feasible using the technology we currently have or have within our grasp.

Yes, we can phase out coal. The naysayers that think this can't be done are mistaken. Brazil's sugarcane ethanol has put the country far ahead of the curve in terms of procuring domestic energy, and the country declared itself independent from foreign oil in 2007. Though Brazil has also boosted its domestic oil production, 90 percent of the new cars sold in Brazil this year are flexible fuel models (produced by General Motors and Ford, among others) that can be made to run on any combo of gasoline and ethanol for an extra $100.

Iceland used to get 100 percent of its energy needs met by imported oil and coal back in the 1970's. Today, they're 70 percent energy independent through the application of homegrown geothermal and hydroelectric power. (The island-nation also used to rank as one of the poorest nations in Europe. Now, the International Monetary Fund ranks it as one of the wealthiest.) Sweden's making the same strides--and also reaping economic benefit. In 2006, they announced they'd be fossil fuel and nuclear-free by 2020 which has sparked innovation in hydroelectric, geothermal and cellulosic biofuels. Norway is one of the leading producers of oil, but gets 98 percent of its electricity from hydro-power. Denmark gets over 18 percent of its energy from offshore. . .windmills, not drilling, baby.

The United States has far greater domestic energy resources than Scandinavia. So, in the future, when we all use jet-packs to fly around, hang out with clones of our cats and live half our lives in virtuosity, I'll support clean coal. Until then, I'd rather we spend our time, money and energy building bridges that actually get us somewhere. (Wink.)

This post was written by Simran Sethi with Merete Mueller. With thanks to usliberals.about.com for the image, and to the University of Kansas School of Journalism.

 

 

Comments

[sds2008]

I'm not completely sure about this, but I viewed both the debate (again), and the other video, and in both you could argue that (although he wasn't as clear in the debate), he could be saying that China will produce coal either way, we need to develop clean coal technology to send them, so they will polute less when they burn coal. On the other hand, he could have been intentionally vague, so as to appeal to those people who live in coal producing states.

[lelandpalmer]

Yes, there is such a thing as clean coal.

http://www.climate-change.ir/en/CO2%20Capture%20and%20Storage.pdf

Scientific American - Can We Bury Global Warming?

Quoting from the above article:

The third coal power approach, called
oxyfuel combustion, would perform all
the burning in oxygen instead of air. One
version would modify single-step combustion
by burning coal in oxygen, yielding
a fuel gas with no nitrogen, only CO2
and water vapor, which are easy to separate....

.....But biomass
power can do better: if carbon
capture equipment were added to these
facilities and the harvested biomass vegetation
were replanted, the net result
would be to scrub the air of CO2....

....UNDERGROUND STORAGE of carbon dioxide is being performed today at the In Salah gas project in the Algerian desert. The raw natural gas produced at this site by BP, Statoil and Sonatrach
contains too much CO2 for commercial use, so the excess is removed by chemical absorbers (two
pairs of stripper towers at center of plant), compressed and then injected under pressure into
a brine formation two kilometers below the surface. Subterranean injection proceeds at
a rate that is only about six times less than what would be required at a 1,000-megawatt coal
gasifi cation plant fi tted for CO2 capture and storage....

End quotes.

Hello Huffington Post - Ground Control to Major Tom, Come in Major Tom. Two fine, wonderful, insightful comments have disappeared, so far. Any idea what the trouble is?

[JuniorNorman]

Simran Sethi great article clean coal is a distraction. Please write an article about this;
http://www.getnitrogen.org/why/index.php
NITROGEN TIRE INFLATION Longer Tire Life – When it comes in contact with other materials, oxygen causes oxidation. Oxidation can make rubber brittle and cause it to lose tensile strength. In addition, at high temperatures and pressures, oxygen reacts and damages inner tire liners and belt packages; nitrogen does not oxidize rubber

[larry278]

Simran, the oxymoron: clean coal, reminds me of the emperor's new clothes. The adults will proclaim the wonders of "clean coal" till their dying gasps as they die of COPD, emphysema, black lung, asthma & new conditions humankind will discover that is related to the use of coal as a source of energy & heat. Perhaps, a wise child will alert humanity before humanity becomes extinct due to the use of coal. There is little reason to believe that Obama or McCain will see the peril of continuing to use coal to generate energy. Perhaps we may hope for a new generation of wiser, bolder, fearless leaders around 2018.

[m2c]

yep i agree.

any fuel that is carbon based is not going to be
good for us.

instead we really need to focus in on
truly CLEAN energy sources.

why dont we have solar panels on the top of every building?

[Sarah Smarsh - Huffpost Blogger]

Heat inside the earth>Coal
Wind>Coal
Sun>Coal
Geothermal­+Wind+Sun= :-D

[marcosweb]

here's a site that has a good article on the differences between the McCain & Obama Environmental platforms http://www.livinggreenmag.com/

[RedCraig]

TomBrentwood, if you want to be taken seriously, make a better argument than the empty slogans of true believers in a misguided cause. Renewables can only be considered practical when the world can operate on part-time energy sources.

[TomBrentwood]

Coal, clean or any other, is an obsolete energy source that is poison from the mining operations
to the toxics air pollutants they spew. Just like nuclear from mining to enrichment, to nuclear spent fuel waste.
Geothermal, solar, and wind will take us off the grid and eliminate the need for dirty coal and uranium
mines that poison the environment for generations.
Renewable energy is the real solution for minds that think clearly. Lets lead the world to the future and
export such renewable technology with common sense approaches like efficiency and conservation.

[Okeedokee]

Thanks Simran, for another well written, well supported article. Keep honoring our intelligence and giving us solid information so that we can be well informed and equipped with good data. "Clean coal" is another of those right wing manipulations of the language to confuse and mislead.

[MajorKong]

Not to mention the fact that they're blowing the tops off mountains in West Virginia to get at the coal.

[Simran Sethi - Huffpost Blogger]

MajorKong,
I'm not sure if you're familiar with the docs Sundance Channel has created but there's a really compelling story about mining within the "Pray" episode Here's a link to some of the YouTube stuff and you can get the whole ep on iTunes: http://www.youtube.com/results?search_query=big+ideas+for+a+small+planet+pray&search_type=&aq=f
Thanks for reading!

[RedCraig]

gladiatorpodolsky, in the US we're not so familiar with smokeless fuel, so information you can provide will be welcome. From a brief google excursion, it appears that this fuel is used in heating buildings but not for power generation because of its high cost. Apparently, coal and other feedstocks are partially burned and the fumes are concentrated into briquettes, something like coke.

A typical coal-fired power plant burns a long trainload of coal every day. If power plants switched to coke, one would expect that to drive costs out of sight, even compared to the least-effective of the alternatives.

Please bring us up to speed on this interesting subject.

[RedCraig]

The MIT article on geothermal is old news. For as long as I can remember, wet geothermal was practical and dry geothermal wasn't. Iceland gets a lot of energy from geothermal because she has plenty of the wet kind. The US has a lot of the dry kind but no one has successfully extracted it. That hasn't changed. MIT is guessing that the technology will be developed---always a dodgy bet at best---and if it is then MIT thinks geothermal will be cost-effective in forty to fifty years.

But this article is dead right about "clean coal." As we look into the future, we can only see three things that make sense: energy efficiency, windpower, and nuclear energy. With luck, solar energy, too. But untested nostrums like carbon sequestration and dry geothermal only distract people from real working solutions.

[Simran Sethi - Huffpost Blogger]

RedCraig, Can you post a link to the newer info so we can all learn more? Thanks!

[RedCraig]

Simran, I went to the article you linked, which included a link to the study. That article does plainly misrepresent the study's findings so perhaps that's why you were misled into thinking something new had been learned. I suspect that the college student who wrote the article didn't find what he wanted in the study so he changed the conclusions to suit his own beliefs and published his version, much like political groups do.

[ElBruce]

How can you be against clean coal? I bet you're against free lunch and money trees too.

But seriously, I think we should invest in EVERYTHING. Instead of just talking about alternative energy or independent energy, we should be talking about "diversified" energy policy. Put a few eggs in a lot of baskets, and then shuffle larger number of eggs into the baskets that work best. And the more baskets, the better. But don't abandon any of the baskets, because you never know when a new unintended consequence from one of the others is going to pop up.

[Simran Sethi - Huffpost Blogger]

I like that. . .many baskets. I am going to follow up with a post on exactly where our subsidies are going that I think will surprise you. Well, it surprised me. I am completely in favor of money trees.

[LADShaw]

Clean coal is a joke. But the PR seems to be working. I have spoken to a lot of people who think this is a great "alternative energy". America should focus on being the leader of solar, wind and other more green sustainable energy sources. This could lead to more jobs and place the US at the forefront of an energy revolution. Fossil fuels are an old energy source, which have proven themselves extremely harmful to our planet. Humans have made the shift to other forms of energy throughout our existence. How reliant are we on whale oil anymore? Yet, this was once a precious source of energy for most people in America. The sooner people realize that truly clean, sustainable sources of energy are the key to our future and will be less costly the more widely they are used, the sooner we can get off of the limited fossil fuel resources we are using to the detriment of the planet and potentially, our survival on it.

[Simran Sethi - Huffpost Blogger]

You nailed it. Thanks!