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.

No new dirty coal in the UK

Yesterday, the United Kingdom pledged not to allow the construction of any new dirty coal plants. Meaning, only plants that capture and store a portion of their carbon dioxide emissions can now be built. From the Guardian:

The energy and climate change secretary, Ed Miliband, said the new policy balanced three challenges: the need to ensure the security of the UK’s energy supply, the need to build a low-carbon economy and the need to slash greenhouse gas emissions.

Miliband imposed a new requirement that any new coal plant would be forced to demonstrate CCS from the start, with emissions equivalent to 300MW being trapped. He abandoned a previous proposal of allowing plants to be ‘CCS-ready’

“The era of new unabated coal has come to an end,” he said.

The American coal industry insists they are committed to CCS, but in Reality this is exactly the type of progress they have been fighting against. For all their talk about new, clean technology, not a single power-plant in America — or the UK — actually captures and stores it’s carbon pollution.

And despite increasing profits, the coal industry has yet to make a significant investment to develop the technology needed to actually make coal clean.

Instead, groups like ACCCE spend $45 million a year to keep talking about the new technology they haven’t yet demonstrated, perpetuate misleading information about the devastating impact of continuing to burn dirty coal, lobby Congress to block clean energy legislation, and fight to continue building new dirty coal plants — about which the the Chairman of the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission just said “We may not need any, ever.”

If ever there was an opportunity to be part of the solution, and actively play a part in promoting solutions to the climate crisis, this is it. Now that the UK has said a definitive “no” to new, dirty coal plants, it’s time for the coal industry to hear “London calling” — and answer.

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.

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.