Coal-Fired Power Plants: Big Loser On November 4th?
- Theo Spencer
- Senior Advocate, Climate Center, New York
- Blog | About
- Posted November 7, 2008 in Curbing Pollution , Health and the Environment , Solving Global Warming
President-Elect Barack Obama may never have said that he planned to "bankrupt" the coal industry. But that doesn't mean that he intends to let coal-fired power plants--one of the main causes of global warming--off the hook.
In fact, Obama energy advisor Jason Grumet told Bloomberg in mid-October that "Barack Obama will classify carbon dioxide as a dangerous pollutant that can be regulated should he win the presidential election on Nov. 4, opening the way for new rules on greenhouse gas emissions." According to the article, Obama "may use the 1990 Clean Air Act to set emissions limits on power plants and manufacturers ... President George W. Bush declined to curb CO2 emissions under the law even after the Supreme Court ruled in 2007 that the government may do so."
That's why it was amusing on Election Day to hear of the latest PR stunt from our friends at the American Coalition for Clean Coal Electricity (ACCCE).
ACCCE Honcho Joe Lucas put out a November 4th news release that reads as follows: "Today is Election Day and whichever candidate is elected, he will have a mandate to adopt policies that secure America's energy future using our most abundant energy resource - coal. 'If 'support for the use of coal for generating electricity' were on the ballot today, it would win by a landslide' ..." (emphasis in the original)
Other than the obvious reason for slicing and dicing of respondents until ACCCE found a group that would agree with them, we're not clear on why the "national" survey is limited to just 600 "elites" - are they back in favor now? -- defined as "adults with $80,000 or more in household income and a four-year college degree or more and a professional or managerial job title or a business owner and a high degree of involvement in politics and policy matters."
Didn't we just have an election that made a pretty good case for a more inclusive approach to decision making?
And since no one has suggested that coal is going away next week, we're not sure what Lucas thinks this means when he writes in the ACCCE release: "The poll shows that Americans are very optimistic about the future for coal. When asked the question 'do you believe coal is a fuel for America's future?' -- 69% of Americans agreed (compared to only 26% who disagreed)."
No doubt coal will still be around in 2009. But just look at what happens when you ask Americans what they really think about dirty coal power plants. Consider these findings of a September 2008 survey by the Civil Society Institute/Opinion Research Corporation of 1,000 U.S. adults - including all of us no-account non-elites!:
- Most Americans want the next President and Congress to achieve energy independence by relying on clean energy sources, rather than coal, oil and nuclear power plants. When asked what the new President and Congress should make "their number one energy-related priority for the nation" in 2009, about three out of five (59 percent) favor "promoting energy sources such as wind or solar, more conservation of energy, and hybrid or other highly fuel-efficient cars," compared to only about one in four (26 percent) who want a focus on "promoting energy sources such as more coal-fired power plants, oil from offshore drilling and nuclear power."
- Americans pick clean energy over coal and nuclear power. Two out of three Americans would ask for wind, solar and other renewable energy technologies if they could "tell your power or utility company where to get the power to run your house." By contrast, only 8 percent would pick nuclear power and just three percent would pick "coal-generated power."
- Wind and solar are seen as the future of energy for America. More than two out of three Americans now see coal (70 percent) and oil (67 percent) as the "power sources of yesterday." By contrast, solar and wind are seen as "power sources of tomorrow" by 92 percent and 88 percent of Americans, respectively.
If that all rings true to you, there's a good reason: It's a picture of reality. It's not some survey cooked up with loaded questions and a hand-picked audience guaranteed to deliver the results sought by the industry that paid for the ACCCE poll.
I'm not alone in thinking that the Joe Lucas survey results are suspect. As ThinkProgress pointed out this week:
"... all the PR spin in the world can't affect scientific reality. America's coal plants produce about 49 percent of U.S. electricity but account for 83 percent of power-sector emissions. And we need to reduce net emissions to zero as fast as humanly possible to preserve our civilization from catastrophic global warming ... No matter what actions Washington D.C. takes, the 80,000 people in the coal mining industry - 0.02% of the U.S. population - should be taken care of. These workers deserve better than they are getting today, as the union-busting coal barons ignore safety regulations and cut benefits. But make no mistake - the burning of coal is burning up the planet ... The saddest thing about the ACCCE campaign is not its facile dishonesty, but that we continue to have a political discourse that places more weight on perception than reality."
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Comments
Jim Bullis — Nov 7 2008 05:16 PM
If plug-in cars are widely accepted, it will be very hard to reduce the amount of coal used to produce electricity.
Plug-in cars will reduce use of foreign oil, but the unanticipated consequence will almost certainly be that personal transportation will simply shifted to coal as an energy source.
Any sort of limitation on coal, whether it be cap and trade or outright banning, will result in electrical costs that will be unsustainable politically.
A real solution to the problem is to make cars that actually need a lot less energy. Then oil usage will naturally diminish and so will the need for more coal as fuel.
As Congress considers funding for retooling to make high efficiency cars, we need to insist that high efficiency is not made into a shell game, where the public is tricked into thinking that "plug-in" means "efficient."
A way to get meaningful results would be to insist on a phased in requirement of 100 mpg, where if electric systems were used, the electric energy would be counted according to the heat energy needed to produce that electricity. On this basis an equivalent mpg for electric operation could be determined. (I realize that many are confused about this topic due to activities of promoters. However, if there is a serious intent to stop global warming, our thinking needs to get on track with real physics.) Then we could present a real challenge to the auto industry; it could even result in a big revitalization of that part of our economy.
I am hoping that NRDC might help to get such a requirement put in place.
Earl Killian — Nov 8 2008 07:20 PM
Jim Bullis, I think you points are incorrect.
The first change to the electric grid should be negawatts. This could reduce generation requirements in the U.S. by 690 TWh in 2020, 1156 TWh in 2030, 1489 TWh in 2040, and 1738 TWh in 2050. For comparison, coal in 2006 was 1991 TWh.
Second, on plug-ins, we'll need something like 20 TWh in 2020, 241 TWh in 2030, 731 TWh in 2040, and 1014 TWh in 2050. Note how the plug-in numbers are smaller than the negawatts.
Also, the additional power generation for plug-ins is not going to come from coal. There is relatively little coal capacity for dispatch U.S.; in contrast there is an enormous quantity of additional natural gas capacity for dispatch. When Pacific Northwest National Laboratory looked at it, they concluded that plug-ins would essentially be natural gas powered. PNL wrote, "up to 84% of U.S. cars, pickup trucks, and sport utility vehicles (SUVs) could be supported by the existing infrastructure, although the local percentages vary by region."
Jim Bullis — Nov 9 2008 02:46 PM
Response to Earl Killian: My physics books and engineering thermodynamics text book managed to get along without the "negawatts" terminology.
Of course, it is a catchy way to talk about using less energy, but without stating what action will cause such lesser use of energy, there is no meaning to the word.
And of course I know you are talking about a long list of things we might do to reduce use of electricity and if such reductions actually come about you think that an increased load from plug-in cars could be handled without exceeding the total status quo load of 2006. A few items on that list, I presume you mean the McKinsey study, are quite practical, but many seem fanciful imaginings. Even if that plan were to come about in entirety, surely you would not want the efforts to be wiped out by plug-in cars.
You could persuade me that realistic progress might come to pass if you added the qualification that the plug-in cars would be required to operate using 80% less energy than the present average US car, where use of energy would be based on the energy used to generate electricity.
On this standard, the Prius would need to be two to three times better, and the SUV would need to be six to eight times better. If the present mix of automobile sizes went forward, then an average 5 times improvement would get things done right.
Plugging in the present mix will not make this happen.
Of course if most roofs held solar panels of the size that now costs about $50,000, and the storage systems to level the electricity supply came about, then we could coast along with cars much like we have now that were modified to work as plug-ins.
Jim Bullis — Nov 9 2008 04:49 PM
The reason I am so concerned about how the presently discussed financial aid to Detroit could be used is explained by a plan published by GM, which can still be seen at:
http://fastlane.gmblogs.com/PDF/presentation-sm.pdf
It needs to be carefully read.
It seems quite clear that the GM intent is to continue building inefficient cars, but to make them plug-in so as to "shift" away from oil to the grid. It seems clear in their discussion that they are fully aware that coal will be the fuel that will replace the oil.
Notice that they avoid use of the word "efficient," though they must be aware that many people think "plug-in" or "electric" are words that automatically mean "efficient."
The writings here would suggest that such incorrect assumption are widely held.