The great sucking sound from the coal lobby
Posted June 25, 2007 in Solving Global Warming
David Roberts in the Gristmill makes a good observation today about the coal industries often simultaneous claims that coal is the only solution (regardless of the problem) and all that next generation coal needs to work is lots and lots of subsidies. The only upside of this is that the coal industry seems to have finally, if indirectly, being acknowledging the reality of global warming in their requests for massive subsidies for CO2 capture and sequestration. The downside is that as Congress debates HR6 and other bills that will direct many billions of dollars, the coal industry isn't just going for some of it, they're going for all of it.
Carbon sequestration is a critical technology. It should be required on all new coal plants whether the plants produce electricity, fuels, or chemicals. And there should be some federal research support for the sequestration technology. But whatever energy spending bill eventually passes and DOE's budget, which is also currently being developed, must be balanced. Energy efficiency should get the largest chunk followed by zero and low-carbon renewable energy, and lastly by sequestration and other efforts to make dirty fuels less polluting.
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Dave — Aug 19 2007 04:36 PM
Actually, coal may not be the enemy. In fact, coal may be the nearterm answer to reducing our carbon footprint. Check out this thread:
http://www.gm-volt.com/volt-discussion?forum=1&topic=46&page=1
The bottom line is that electric vehicles (or plug-in hybrids running in electric mode) produce only 1/3 the CO2 of a gas engine car. This is possible because modern big coal burning power plants are vastly more efficient than a gas engine, and electric distribution and storage is inherantly efficient.
So even though coal looks dirty, it's a hell of a lot more clean than oil.
And once we convert to electric vehicles, we can really start to explore energy alternatives.
So, at least in the near term, I think coal is our friend, not our enemy.
Nathanael Greene — Aug 20 2007 11:03 AM
Thanks for joining the conversation, Dave. While I agree with your general point about the promise of electric vehicles, I strongly disagree that coal as used today is a solution for anything. This post of mine (http://switchboard.nrdc.org/blogs/ngreene/new_nrdc_study_on_plugin_hybri.html) links to the study we did with EPRI on environmental benefits of plug-ins. The electric grid as a whole is better than oil, but coal just marginally so. And of course electric power for transportation faces technical and consumer acceptance challenges that are at least as big as other advanced alternatives such as cellulosic biofuels. Bottom line we shouldn't assume that any technology is a panacea. We need lots of them to work and all of them to be a lot better than coal or oil.