The Reality Blog

Coal’s two cents

The coal industry loves to give their two cents on the yet undeveloped technology to capture and store carbon pollution from burning coal (CCS).

They say this technology is the answer to reducing carbon emissions, and while we wait for it to be developed, they say we should just go ahead and keep on burning dirty coal and building new dirty coal plants.

But when it comes to actually investing in this technology, two cents is all the coal industry is willing to give, literally.

According to a recent “60 Minutes” report and an analysis by The Center for American Progress, the coal industry’s investment in CCS technology amounts to a paltry two cents on every dollar of profit — or less.

“60 Minutes” interviewed Jim Rogers, the CEO of Duke Energy, a major producer of coal power:

Asked how much Duke Energy has invested in carbon sequestration technology so far,” Rogers said, “We have not invested any dollars in the technology, per say. We have spent a lot of time and money reviewing and analyzing the various technologies.”

The Center for American Progress analyzed investments by all 48 of the American Association for Clean Coal Electricity (ACCCE) member companies, including Duke, finding:

Like Duke, ACCCE’s other member companies are much more committed to the idea of clean coal than investing to make it a reality—as their research budgets demonstrate. An analysis of their investments found that they spent less than two cents in research on “clean coal” for every $1 of profit.

This year, ACCCE is gearing up to spend an incredible $40 million on ads and PR selling the idea of carbon capture to the American people.

Why is ACCCE spending so much money to sell the idea of a product that doesn’t exist and that they’re not even willing to truly invest in?

It’s all part of the clean coal smoke screen, to keep us burning dirty coal for as long as possible. Of course, if ACCCE has a different answer, we’d love to hear their two cents.

Things we don’t need any more of

Corporate executive bonuses, monthly bills, and income tax deadlines — all things that we have plenty of already. And according to the new Annual Energy Outlook report released by the US Department of Energy’s Energy Information Administration (EIA), there’s one more item we can add to the list: dirty coal-fired power plants.

There are dozens and dozens of new coal plants being proposed without technology to capture and store their carbon dioxide pollution. But the EIA’s latest Annual Energy Outlook finds we will need very few of them to meet our electricity demand in the next 10-20 years.

The report — which doesn’t even include the impacts from the recent economic recovery bill or any proposed policies for energy efficiency and new clean energy supplies — assumes only very limited additions of new coal plants over the next 20 years. What does this really mean? With the stimulus’ new investments and policies supporting our transition to clean energy currenty being considered in Washington, we could eliminate the need for those new coal plants entirely, and reduce our existing use of dirty coal.

The EIA outlook on electricity flies in the face of coal industry claims that dozens of new, dirty coal plants are immediately essential to meet our energy demand — claims they’ve made recently to justify efforts in Kansas and Michigan to build more coal plants that will spew global warming pollution into the air for decades to come.

Looks like the coal industry can stop worrying about fighting for new, dirty plants, and start investing in the technologies that will help generate electricity without releasing CO₂ — something we could actually use more of.

Coal industry spokesman “doesn’t know” if coal causes global warming

Joe Lucas, the spokesman for the American Coalition for Clean Coal Electricity (ACCCE) was just interviewed for a piece exploring the myth of “clean” coal. (You may remember ACCCE as the folks who spent over $10.5 million on energy lobbying.)

It seems that the spokesman who represents the industry that puts out more than one third of our CO₂ emissions — the leading cause of global warming — is having some trouble grasping reality.

Transcript:
Still the industry refuses to say its plants contribute to global warming.
[Question:] Can you just answer that yes or no? If you believe that burning coal causes global warming?
[Joe Lucas:] I don’t know, I’m not a scientist.

You don’t have to be a scientist to know that burning coal is a leading source of global warming pollution. (”GHG Emissions and Sinks 1990–2006,” US EPA 2008.)

But it certainly is hard to believe that while the industry has spent $10.5 million on lobbying, their spokesman isn’t better informed.

Watch the whole story.

UPDATE: Remember this gem? Cigarette executives testify before congress in 1994 that they “do not believe nicotine is addictive.” But you can’t blame these guys for their denial of obvious facts — after all, they are also not scientists.

Guess who’s #1?

A new report by the Center for Public Integrity finds explosive growth over the last five years in the number of lobbyists seeking to influence climate change legislation.

It turns out, the coal industry has been pretty busy lobbying for legislation friendly to the dirty status quo. In fact, they were #1 in these lobbying efforts.

According to the report, 770 companies and interest groups hired an estimated 2,340 lobbyists in the past year — with expenditures topping $90 million. Among all these groups, it’s no surprise that the American Coalition for Clean Coal Electricity (ACCCE) came in at #1:

ACCCE spent $10.5 million lobbying Capitol Hill on climate in 2008 — more than any other organization solely dedicated to the issue.

Good ‘ol ACCCE — spending money on lobbying almost as fast as their industry pumps carbon dioxide into the atmosphere. Now that the EPA is reconsidering regulating C0₂ emissions how do you think they feel about that chunk of change?

It seems they find it cheaper to market and lobby than actually investing in the development of a commercial-scale system of carbon capture and storage. Such a system still doesn’t exist for a single one of the more than 600 power plants in operation in the US, and until it does, claiming that coal is “clean” is just blowing a whole lot of smoke.