Saying Coal Can Be Clean Doesn't Make It So

The dirty truth behind clean coal

By Joshua Frank / February 28, 2010

If you've tuned in to the Winter Olympics this past week, you likely sat through repeated showings of a multimillion-dollar public relations campaign paid for by Big Coal regarding the potential laurels of "clean-coal" technology. The premise of the 30-second spot is simple: Coal can be clean and America needs to wean itself off of foreign crude and create jobs back home by tapping our nation's vast coal reserves.

Indeed, the effort to paint coal as environmentally friendly is not an easy endeavor, especially when the climate movement has picked up speed and lambasted the industry for contributing more than its fair share to the global warming dilemma.

Activists around the world have targeted coal for a number of reasons. First, coal is still plentiful (compared to gas and oil) so stopping its use will largely curtail carbon output down the road. Second, it is the dirtiest of all fossil fuels. Lastly, in the U.S. the fleet of coal-fired power plants is almost old enough to file for Medicare, so these aging plants are sitting ducks for closure efforts.

"NASA climate scientist James Hansen... has demonstrated two things in recent papers," writes environmental author and activist Bill McKibben about the need to axe coal. "One, that any concentration of carbon dioxide greater than 350 parts per million in the atmosphere is not compatible with the 'planet on which civilization developed and to which life on earth is adapted.' And two, that the world as a whole must stop burning coal by 2030 -- and the developed world well before that -- if we are to have any hope of ever getting the planet back down below that 350 number."

If this were a prize fight, Big Coal would be the battered boxer in the corner of the ring, shuffling away in an attempt to avoid the repeated jabs anti-coal warriors and scientists have been tossing its way. In 2009, not one new coal plant broke ground in the United States. Over 100 new plants were canceled or abandoned, largely due to the public's awareness that coal isn't the fuel of the future but a scourge of the past.

Clearly there is a reason for the coal industry's recent PR stunts. Big Coal is losing, and its best attempts to persuade the public about coal's green potential are failing miserably.

At the heart of "clean-coal" logic is the idea that carbon dioxide produced from burning coal can be captured and buried underground before it is ever released into the atmosphere where it will contribute to the earth's warming for centuries to come. Despite the fact that this technology, dubbed Carbon Capture and Storage (CCS), doesn't actually exist in any real capacity in the United States, it has not stopped the coal lobby from spreading the filthy myths.

Given the reality of climate change, Big Coal is banking on CCS to help it navigate its tenuous future, so much so that they are already touting the virtues of CCS to the public. Not surprisingly, the industry's pals in Washington, including virtually all the senators (Republican and Democrat alike) from coal-producing states, are going to bat for the beleaguered industry.

Certainly the effort to greenwash one of the most prolific and dirtiest energy sources on the planet does not come without a hefty price tag. The proposed Waxman-Markey climate bill, for example, is set to provide a whopping $60 billion in subsidies for "clean-coal" technologies. President Obama is on board and nary a word of opposition has peeped out of the Beltway. To put this amount of money in perspective, the coal industry itself, measured by its falling Wall Street stock, is only worth about $50 billion. The subsidies are a bailout by a different name.

Photo from London Permaculture.
In theory, in order for CCS to work, large underground geological formations would have to house this carbon dioxide. But according to a recent peer-reviewed article in the Society of Petroleum Engineers' publication, the CCS jig is up and the technology just doesn't seem feasible.

"Earlier published reports on the potential for sequestration fail to address the necessity of storing CO2 in a closed system," writes report author Professor Michael Economides in an editorial for the Casper, Wyoming, Star-Tribune. "Our calculations suggest that the volume of liquid or supercritical CO2 to be disposed cannot exceed more than about 1 percent of pore space. This will require from 5 to 20 times more underground reservoir volume than has been envisioned by many, including federal government laboratories, and it renders geologic sequestration of CO2 a profoundly non-feasible option for the management of CO2 emissions."

To put this in laymen's terms, the areas that would house carbon produced from coal plants will have to be much larger than originally predicted. So much so, in fact, that it makes CCS absolutely improbable. By Professor Economides' projections, a small 500 MW plant's underground CO2 reservoir would need to be the size of a small state like Vermont to even work.

"There is no need to research this subject any longer," adds Economides. "Let's try something else."

Let's take that a step further and add that we ought to bag the idea that coal can be clean altogether. The public investment in clean-coal technology is a fraud and will only serve as a life-support system for an industry that must be phased out completely over the course of the next two decades.

Putting billions of dollars behind a dead-end theory will not bring about the energy changes our country and climate so drastically need.

Source / TruthOut

The Rag Blog

[+/-] Read More...

[+/-] Summary only...

If the World Stopped Burning Coal, This Would Be 80% of the Solution to Climate Change

Paul Nolley, sophomore English and political psychology major, admires Beehive Designs artwork. Media Credit: Martha Warfel / Daily Vidette Photographer.
Beehive Design Collective share stories of activists
By Sam Schild / April 24, 2009

"Clean Coal Dirty Lie" is a sign held by a depiction of a bee, meant to represent an Appalachian person, in the Beehive Design Collective's newest collage drawing project: "The True Cost of Coal: Mountaintop Removal and the Fight For Our Future."

There was much happening on the quad in celebration of Earth day on Wednesday. But somewhere off the quad, the distant sound of bees could be heard. A buzzing could be heard all over campus coming from the activity room of the Bowling and Billiards Center.

While there were not actually any bees in the Bowling and Billiards center, the Beehive Design Collective were creating quite the buzz. With original activist artwork and a presentation related to their newest project, the Bees brought social and environmental activism in the form of giant mural collages.

The Beehive Collective is a group of traveling artists and activists. They go from location to location spreading the messages behind their "anti-copyright" images. This group of 16 Bees work collectively, "as horizontal and non hierarchically as possible," Tyler Bee said while giving a brief introduction about the Beehive Collective organization.

The Beehive Collective is a not for profit organization. Their collages tell stories that can serve as "an activist's cheat sheet," Tyler Bee said.

They take their artwork all over to tell their stories. They take the collages to organic fairs, protests, schools and many other locations, spreading the messages behind each meticulously created collage. Normally, there would be a whole swarm of "bees" with Tyler at an event like the one in the BBC, but for this particular presentation he was alone.

Based out of Machias, Maine, The Beehive Collective spends months, or more often years, creating gigantic murals of our smaller drawings.

"[We] collage and quilt smaller drawings together," Tyler Bee said. "All the little stories, little projects, little communities all do their parts to create this bigger picture," Tyler Bee continued, "[We try to] make sense of smaller stories to make a larger narrative." This is how the Bees' artwork relates to the world, on a theoretical level.

But, the Bees' artwork relates to the world on a literal level as well. Past Beehive Collective collages deal with important topics such as globalization, corporate colonization and human rights, to name a few. And with their latest piece, environmental justice can be added to the list of important issues the Beehive collective's artwork deals with.

In the collages there are no humans depicted, the only living beings in the Bees' artwork are plants and animals. The Bees use different animals to represent people. They ask groups of people which animal they identify most with, and then use that animal in their drawings to stand in for those people.

"[This way we] avoid really stupid stereotypes of people," Tyler Bee said, and also this is to serve as a reminder that humans are animals as well.

"The True Cost of Coal" is still unfinished, but even in its work-in-progress form it still struck awe into audience members.

"[The piece is] Really, really cool" Kyle Riley, a freshman history major, said.

The Bees' latest project and the object of Wednesday's presentation contained an extraordinary amount of detail. The approximately 5 foot by 12 foot canvas the piece was printed on contained countless individual scenes which each had its own little story.

Each of these scenes was interwoven and flowed seamlessly into the next scene. This makes it so one could find themselves looking at the other end of the collage just after starting to look at the fir end.

"It's refreshing to get some insight on this issue," Paul Nolley, a sophomore political science major, said.

Tyler Bee demonstrated how a piece of Beehive Collective artwork can serve as an "activist's cheat sheet" with the presentation he gave. He told the story of America and its relation to coal.

The collage is separated into five sections, and when it is folded so that only the outside two sections are showing, there is a pleasant picture of the world before coal burning began. Then, the picture "opens up to show how mountain top removal mining rips the environment apart."

Mountain top removal mining is the modern "mechanized" method of mining coal.

"If the mountain is a layer cake, the coal is the frosting in between layers," Tyler said.

The mountain is blown up and the coal is scooped out by a machine called a dragline. After each layer of coal is removed, the next layer of rock is blown up and dumped into the valleys in between the mountains.

"There are [at least] 500 mountains no longer in existence [in Appalachia because of mountain top removal mining]" Tyler Bee said.

Mountain top removal mining reduces the amount of manpower needed. Approximately 200 miners are needed using traditional, less environmentally damaging deep mining techniques. But with mountain top removal mining, only 12 people are needed to do the work that previously would have taken 200. Therefore, Tyler Bee said, when coal companies say "coal means jobs for America," it is a lie.

Mountain top removal is only the tip of the iceberg when it comes to discussing the true cost of coal. Burning coal is just as environmentally degrading, if not more.

"If the world stopped burning coal, this would be 80 percent of the solution to climate change," Tyler Bee said.

Source / Daily Vidette at Illinois State University

The Rag Blog

[+/-] Read More...

[+/-] Summary only...

'Rednecks' and Greens Beat Big Coal in Appalachia

A mountaintop removal coal mining operation near Blair, West Virginia. Photo by The National Memorial for the Mountains.
Mountaintop removal receives major setback:
Blair Mountain in West Virginia named to National Register of Historic Places

By Jeff Biggers / March 30, 2009

After 500 mountains in Appalachia have been blown to bits by mountaintop removal, one peak was most likely saved today: Blair Mountain in West Virginia, the site of the largest armed insurrection in the United States since the Civil War, was officially approved by the Keeper of the National Register of Historic Places to be placed on the National Register.

This is a huge victory, as the tide continues to turn in the movement to stop mountaintop removal in Appalachia.

Some consider it the Bunker Hill of the labor movement. But the great battle in 1921, when thousands of union coal miners and World War I veterans donned their uniforms and took up arms to liberate and unionize the last coal camps in southwestern West Virginia held hostage to ruthless outside coal companies, has emerged as one of the great symbols of Appalachia's fate today. Over the past several years, the Friends of Blair Mountain--an organization of community and labor activists, historians and environmentalists--have led an even more epic battle to save the sacred mountain site from a plan by coal companies to strip mine and destroy Blair Mountain through mountaintop removal operations.

The mountaintop removal war might soon be over. The Rednecks won. According to the National Registry Federal Program regulations:

"If a property contains surface coal resources and is listed in the National Register, certain provisions of the Surface Mining and Control Act of 1977 require consideration of a property's historic values in the determination on issuance of a surface coal mining permit."

"Redneck" was the name given to the progressive miners, as William Blizzard recalled in his wonderful memoir, When Miners March, as they wore red bandannas around their necks to distinguish themselves from others. As the battle raged, and even bombs dropped, President Warren Harding was forced to intervene with military troops.

President Barack Obama needs to intervene against mountaintop removal today. As three million pounds of ammonium nitrate fuel oil are detonated daily in an assault on Appalachia today, raining toxic dust on the inhabitants and devastating watersheds as part of the brutal mountaintop removal operations, it's time for the federal government to stop this egregious violation of human rights in the mountains.

Cecil Roberts, the president of the United Mine Workers of America, and a great West Virginia coal mining native, should take note of the haunting parallels in history: While over 500 mountains have been destroyed, the once strong union movement has been gutted by highly mechanized strip mining operations, and now only 500-700 United Mine Worker members are employed on mountaintop removal sites in West Virginia.

Let's repeat that: There are roughly 700 UMWA members employed at mountaintop removal sites in West Virginia today.

It's time for Cecil Roberts and the United Mine Workers to stand up for the mountains, the historic Appalachian communities, and the economy, and demand an end to mountaintop removal, and a return to more responsible mining.

Ken Ward at the Coal Tattoo blog recently looked at Roberts and mountaintop removal.

And to learn about other endangered American mountains, go here.

Denise Giardina, the nationally acclaimed novelist from the coalfields of West Virginia, and author of the epic novel, Storming Heaven, once wrote:

"In the hundred odd years since the coal industry came to this part of West Virginia, land has been taken, miners have been worked to death, streams have been polluted, piles of waste have accumulated, children have grown up in poverty. But throughout all the hardships, the hunger, the black lung disease and other illness, and the scarring of the land, the mountains have essentially remained. They were symbols of permanence, strength, hope. No more. Nothing worse can be taken from mountain people than mountains. The resulting loss is destroying the soul of the people.

The destruction of the central Appalachian Mountains robs the region of topsoil, timber, of indigenous plants, of streams, and leaves behind floods, toxic brews of sludge laced with mercury, and flattened plains of inedible grass. But worst of all is the loss of the mountain landscape, those rugged crags that lift the spirits and touch the sky.

If one mountain were to be spared, one peak to bear mute witness to the devastation that has gone on all around, it might be thought that Blair Mountain would be such a summit. Blair Mountain, after all, has been the most dramatic witness to the struggle of legions of coal miners to be free."

If only William Blizzard, the author of When Miners March, were alive today to take part in this celebration. His father, Bill Blizzard, the hero of Blair Mountain, was tried and acquitted for treason. For more information, see: http://www.whenminersmarch.com/reviews.htm

Filmmaker Sasha Waters did a great documentary on the importance of Blair Mountain in her film, Razing Appalachia:



Source / The Huffington Post

Thanks to Carl Davidson / The Rag Blog

[+/-] Read More...

[+/-] Summary only...

Coal: Not Quite As Dirty Once You Burn It

What Is this "Clean Coal" Obama and McCain Support?
By Tara DePorte / October 31, 2008.

A look at whether "clean coal" is actually clean, how the technology works, and whether it is a climate crisis cure.

Both Presidential Candidates Obama and McCain have emphasized the need for Energy Reform as we face climate change, a sinking economy, and rising fuel costs. In a country where 85% of energy demands are from fossil fuels (oil, coal and gas), coal and "clean coal" are making a rhetoric comeback this election. However, the burning of coal has proven one of the leading human-based causes of global climate change due to resulting carbon dioxide emissions, let alone a diversity of air pollutants.

The Obama Energy Plan proposes to "develop and deploy clean coal technology." McCain's energy plan, "The Lexington Project," commits to "$2 billion annually to advancing clean coal technologies." As the candidates talk about "clean coal," alternative energy, and energy independence, what's the science behind the plans? In this article we'll look into one of the more environmentally controversial options that has been put forth by the two candidates and try to help you decide how much of our nation's energy plan we wanted devoted to "clean coal".

Coal and its byproducts are everywhere -- in plastics, tar, fertilizer, steel and as the energy source for major industries such as paper and cement. In the U.S., however, over 90% of coal is used for electricity generation, resulting in 83% of carbon dioxide emission from the power sector. Coal is burned in power plants to create steam, thereby powering turbines and generating both electricity and a diversity of harmful air pollutants. No matter how you look at it, there isn't much clean about coal. The extraction and burning of coal is considered the dirtiest of all fossil fuels, including oil and gas. So, what is this new, innovative and so-called "clean coal"?

Unfortunately, no one has discovered a new form of coal -- the black rock composed of carbon or hydrocarbons that is intensively mined throughout the world. The dangerous misnomers "clean coal" or "clean coal technology" are not about finding a cleaner form of fuel, instead they describe the reduction of air pollution from coal-burning power plants. For instance, some "clean coal technology" works to boost power plant efficiency in converting coal to energy, others physically filter emissions before release, and others are being developed to capture emissions upon release from the plants.

With each of these much less-than-perfect technologies, there's a diversity of research and development, money and time, and effectiveness in curbing coal's environmental and health impacts. Below you will find a sampling of "clean coal technologies" and some insights into their pros and cons:



Cleaning up the power plants: Scrubber and Increased Efficiency: Since the 80's, the U.S. Department of Energy (DOE) has been working to decrease particulate emissions, mercury, sulfur and nitrogen from coal-burning plants -- all materials that contribute greatly to air and water pollution. "Scrubbers" are brushes and filters that are installed in smoke flues of coal-burning facilities, which physically remove some emissions' components. The reduction of these emissions has shown some success due to increased scrubber technology, where smoke stacks have increased cleaning or screening mechanisms on them, and some other "clean coal technology" methods. Unfortunately, greenhouse gases such as carbon dioxide have proven to be more difficult, energy and cost intensive to reduce at the source.

Gasification: Integrated gasification combined cycle or IGCC gets to the coal before it's burned. According to the DOE, the process uses steam and hot pressurized air or oxygen to force coal particles apart, thereby resulting in carbon monoxide and hydrogen. This mix is cleaned and burned to make electricity with subsequent heat being used for powering steam turbines. Some good things about IGCC are that there is a biproduct of hydrogen that can be used in developing hydrogen fuel cells. Additionally, the process of gasification can also be used for biomass and other "renewables" technology. Alternatively, gasification technology is still quite expensive and not considered economically viable on mass scales.

Carbon sequestration or Carbon Capture and Storage (CCS): The basics of CCS are to capture carbon out of the air and to put it somewhere else. The methodology behind, and storage sites, vary and include underground storage, ocean storage, creating carbonate rock out of the carbon dioxide and others.

In a 2008 interview with Klaus Lackner, Columbia University Ewing-Worzel Professor of Geophysics and one of the foremost CCS scientists remarked, "The challenge is capture, not storage." He continued, "Our goal is to take a process that takes 100,000 years and compress it into 30 minutes." One of the good things about CCS is that it can help clean up the mess that we've gotten ourselves into in terms of carbon emissions already in the air. Many do question the long-term effectiveness and safety of storing this carbon in systems that aren't used to having it there. Furthermore, although leaps and bounds have been made in past years in capturing CO2 from the air, the process is still costly and many estimate that the technology will not be ready for large-scale capture for many years to come.

With goals of zero-emissions coal power plants, the U.S. has spent over $2.5 billion since 2001 in research and development for "clean coal technology." Unfortunately, none of the options on the table actually help coal--as a whole--become any cleaner. A misnomer at best, "clean coal technology" is key to the cleanup of existing coal-powered facilities, but it's a long shot from the clean energy bill of health. There are some promising technologies being tested and applied within the "clean coal technology" umbrella, such as those addressing "end of the pipe" issues with the burning of the most abundant of fossil fuels.

However, few address the issues of coal extraction and its' environmental and health impacts and none are currently viable at a mass scale. Perhaps if the Presidential Candidates start referring to it as "not quite as dirty once you burn it coal technology," voters would have a better idea of what to expect in the upcoming new energy plans.

Source / Alternet

Thanks to Diane Stirling-Stevens / The Rag Blog

[+/-] Read More...

[+/-] Summary only...

Chasing The Clean Coal Dragon : A DNC Lobby Adventure

'Clean coal' is in an experimental stage and at best hypothetical
August 26, 2008

DENVER -- Greetings from from the Mile High City! It's a beautiful day here in Denver. The DNC is in full swing, and excitement is in the air...

... and the dirty energy lobbyists are walking the streets. Literally.

For those of you who haven't heard of them, the American Coalition for Clean Coal Electricity (ACCCE) is a coal industry front group. They're the ones with the pretty ads on CNN. They even brought you the Democratic debate at the end of January.

They virtually greet Denver visitors with a series of ads at the airport, and they're rolling around town with their mobile billboard.

We've even heard that they're handing out pieces of "coal"... painted green.

If you're easily convinced by such silly swag, I have a bridge to sell you.

You see, here's the background story. When coal industry lobbyists say "clean coal", they're mainly talking about carbon capture and storage (CCS), which, in reality, is only in the experimental stages, and a hypothetical success at best:

A study by the Massachusetts Institute of Technology called The Future of Coal, published last year, suggests that the first commercial CCS plants won't be on stream until 2030 at the earliest. Thomas Kuhn of the Edison Electric Institute, which represents most US power generators, half of whose fuel is coal, takes a similar line. In September [2007], he told a House Select Committee that commercial deployment of CCS for emissions from large coal-burning power stations will require 25 years of R&D and cost about $20 billion.

[...]

The most detailed published assessment [pdf], by Peter Viebahn of the German Aerospace Center in Stuttgart, estimates that at best CCS will reduce greenhouse gas emissions from coal-fired power stations by little more than two-thirds. That compares with life-cycle emissions for most renewable energy technologies that are 1 to 4 per cent of those from burning coal.

We are unlikely to give up burning coal any time soon, and CCS could eventually have an important part to play by allowing coal to be used without doing unacceptable damage to the global climate. But that isn't going to happen tomorrow. And as to the dream of coal becoming a zero-emissions source of power - forget it.

So, it's fitting that the ACCCE is handing out bits of fictitious fuel. Although we still haven't scored any, Devilstower and I had a chance to chat with several of the ACCCE representatives.

What we learned in our hour-long interview can, unfortunately, be easily condensed into a few paragraphs. I'll let Devilstower take over from here.

Thanks, Page. Our interview rambled over several topics, and there's no doubt that the coal lobbyists are personable guys who know how to make their argument -- after all, that's their job. But when it comes to a few areas, their answers are a lot less than satisfying. (note: while I've tagged my bits and those from Page, I've lumped all the clean coal lobbyists together as "CC," not out of disrespect, but because I can't distinguish their voices on my high quality $9 recorder).

DT: Let's go back to that sign in the airport, which says that "the next president" can count on clean coal to protect the environment and keep the economy strong. But is the next president going to be able to count on clean coal in the next four or even eight years?

CC: We're going to be closer, yes.

DT: But being closer doesn't really help the next president protect the environment or the economy.

CC: We never said that. This is not an answer for the very next president.

DT: That's what the sign says.

CC: It's certainly an issue for whoever is the next president to start working on it.

Page: But you're saying our next president won't have to choose between a clean environment and the economy. That's a huge statement. And very clever.

CC: The issue is simply this. In this country, you could stop using coal tomorrow, but it won't make a dent in global CO2 and it'll greatly raise energy prices. You'll have to build nuclear plants, which will take years, or use natural gas, which would be very costly.

If you stopped using coal tomorrow, this country would shut down.

DT: I don't think anyone's proposing that we turn all the plants off overnight, but that existing 51% of our electrical grid that you're talking about is not "clean coal." It's coal, but it's not clean.

CC: It has to start somewhere.

And that's where the argument becomes circular. Clean Coal would be a great boon to the country if it existed, but it doesn't. Clean coal is a hypothetical fuel, something that might be possible, in a decade or two, with the investment of several billion dollars.

So, while the clean coal lobby presses the idea of their fuel as an inexpensive solution to both maintaining a strong economy and protecting the environment, what they're really pushing is a choice. We can choose to invest our funds in sources of clean electricity that exist right now, today, or we can invest in carbon capture in the hopes that someday, decades from now, it might work. The proposal really ends up having all the downside of investing in fusion (the power source of the future, and always will be) and little of fusion's upside (low overall environmental impact).

The question we're left with is how we handle the power sources we have today, the ones that are powered by not-clean-coal. And the clean coal they talk about is one alternative that's not on the table.

When we got around to talking about the fate of existing plants, we got closer to the real agenda of the clean coal lobby.

CC: Kansas is a prime example. The big story missed in that whole fiasco was that when that plant was cancelled, six wind projects went with it, because the wind developers were going to use the transmission infrastructure from that coal plant.

And that kept the old plants in service, because they can't take them off line to build a new plant with modern technology. When that got stopped, it insured one thing—that the old plants continued to chug along. They had to to keep the lights on.

Page: So you're saying that it's the environmentalists' fault, basically?

CC: Are we saying it's anybody's fault? Absolutely not.

Page: But the Sierra Club's opposition means that people are going to go without electricity or be stuck with old plants?

CC: There needs to be a give and take. When your policy says "no, not under any circumstances," that obviously becomes very contentious.

Page: So Kathleen Sebelius was a real inhibitor to any progress? That's the issue here?

CC: No, not at all, but that's only one instance. We can pick incidents all over the United States right now where they put up legal challenges.

And now we're back to another circular argument: we can't eliminate old coal plants, because there's opposition to building new coal plants. The assumption here is that only coal can replace coal, and while these new plants are certainly cleaner than those they replace in the sense of lowering many other emissions, they make no effort at carbon capture. None. The proposed new plants are not clean coal plants.

The real goal is to promote the building of new plants, clean or not. What they're handing out is a perfect example of what they're doing: plain old coal, with a coat of green paint.

Source / Plutoniam Page and Devilstower / Daily Kos

The Rag Blog

[+/-] Read More...

[+/-] Summary only...