$20 Billion for "Clean Coal"?
by Khan Shoieb
Senators John Rockefeller IV (D-WV) and George Voinovich (R-OH) have
reportedly come out with a bill that would give massive subsidies to
the coal industry over the next decade and might be packaged into upcoming energy legislation in the Senate. According to CQ:
[The Senators] unveiled a bill that would create a
10-year, “self-financed” $20 billion program to deploy commercial-scale
carbon capture and sequestration technology…Voinovich said the bill would “jump-start”
carbon capture and sequestration development, which many experts say
will require a decade to become widely available. It would do so by
expanding federal loan guarantees for developing the technology, while
creating tax credits that increase according to the volume of carbon
sequestered.
Carbon capture and sequestration technology (CCS) is essentially the
practice of capturing carbon dioxide as it is being released from power
pants and other facilities and storing it underground, where it
theoretically won’t be able to damage the atmosphere. Thus the phrase
"clean coal"–a way of burning coal, a mineral that is associated with
a whole host of diseases, without all of the deleterious effects on our
atmosphere (it currently produces one-third of the United States’
greenhouse gas emissions).
But the phrase is misleading, and its false implications make it a
political winner across the spectrum. Indeed, both Democrats and
Republicans have come to embrace the prospect of "clean coal" because
it hints at an easy way out from out from a precarious situation. Coal,
which is the linchpin of economies around the world and here in the
U.S. is the source of half of our electricity, is a vital fossil fuel,
but also the dirtiest. A vision for a green economy in the next century
likely has a limited role for coal, but how do we transition away from
an industry that is so entrenched in our economy and Washington and
supplies so many jobs?
One can understand, then, why politicians, especially those like
Voinovich and Rockefeller who come from states with large coal
industries, would leap at the opportunity to dissolve this dilemma with
the notion of clean coal. But there are many more problems with the
prospect than politicians or industry advocates will let on, and just
looking at a few of these suggests that we ought to reconsider massive
government subsidies for this illusory project.
1. Clean coal technology cannot be retrofiitted
CSS technology cannot be applied to existing power plants. This means
that when the government hands out the $20 Billion to the coal industry
under this bill, it will all go toward the construction of new coal-fired
power plants, adding more carbon dioxide to the atmosphere while coal
industries pretend to experiment with CSS technology. What if it
doesn’t work and the coal industry simply stops making an effort? Then
we’ve just exacerbated our situation. Alas, the bill is the equivalent
of diving deeper into quicksand once you’ve found yourself in it in the
hopes of finding solid ground.
Consider also that the most optimistic estimates don’t see us having
clean coal power plants up and running in the U.S. for almost another
decade–meaning we have to see our environment erode for another ten
years before we find out if it even works? Will that be too late?
2. It’s far too expensive to sustain–which is why we need subsidies in the first place
The notion of clean coal technology being a reliable source of half of
our country’s energy in the future is a silly one. The reason that we
have been talking about this for years without seeing a single major
clean coal power plant in the U.S.–aside from a few demonstration
projects–is because the coal industry knows it is simply too expensive
to maintain and build. Indeed, the Department of Energy in 2008, under
the Bush administration, pulled its financial support for a project
called FutureGen, which was supposed to be the first clean coal plant
in the U.S., citing runaway costs. If something is too expensive for
the government, how is the private sector supposed to find the capital
to meaningfully sustain such projects?
3. Investing in clean coal technology will breed complacency
Putting our eggs in the clean coal basket–$20 billion worth of eggs,
to be exact–and waiting ten years to see if it can work will distract
us from what we really need to do, which is invest in newer, low-carbon
power sources. Even if clean coal does work, given what we do know
about the risks and the costs, the Voinovich-Rockefeller bill seems
more like a way of further entrenching a losing industry–it seems like
a step backward. Most experts acknowledge that even the rosiest
scenario requires alternative energy sources, so why waste our money?
The urgency of the situation demands putting in place incentives to
move away from dirty fossil fuels–cap and trade, etc.–and
investing heavily into a variety of new energy sources that will have
to form the backbone of a successful economy in the 22nd century.