Coal: Our Nation’s Workhorse
by Marian Hopkins, Business Roundtable on 12.11.07
What a week it has been for folks who follow energy and the environment. In the span of just five days, the United Nations opened its
While I could write several posts providing details and opinions on each of these events, I’d like to stray off course a bit and look at an issue that is intrinsically linked to all of them –coal – the natural resource that is likely powering the very monitor you are reading from right now. The use of coal solicits a wide-range of passionate opinions, but unless you’ve found some miraculous way to ‘live off the grid,’ you cannot deny that it is a vital energy source and essential for the quality of life we’ve all come to expect.
But what role will coal play in the 21st century? In 2006, nearly half of the country’s 4.1 trillion kilowatthours of electricity used coal as its source of energy. Worldwide, coal will continue to play an important role in driving economic development, improving standards of living and alleviating poverty. So the question ultimately leads to how can we continue to use this abundant source of energy in the most efficient and climate friendly way, while maintaining and improving our quality of life?
The answer to this question may be easier than you think. In the past twenty years the U.S. government and the coal and electric power industry has invested more than $6 billion developing and testing “clean coal technologies” in power plants and factories around the country. This investment has led to a number of innovations like coal to liquids and a IGCC is a clean coal technology that turns coal into gas at extremely high temperatures which is then moved through pollutant-removal equipment before the gas is burned in gas turbines that drive electric generators. This process results in lower emissions of sulfur dioxide, particulates and mercury. More importantly, many believe that IGCC is now ready to capture and store carbon dioxide. But even without carbon capture, IGCC is more efficient which means that IGCC plants release less carbon while producing the same amount of energy.
Business Roundtable member,
No matter where you are on the political spectrum, everyone agrees that we must find ways to create energy more efficiently and with less of an environmental impact. Coal is still the most abundant form of energy available and it will play an important role in securing our energy future and addressing climate change. With continued investment and innovation, coal can be a driver of the climate change solution.
Although the IGCC is a step in the right direction, improving the efficiency of large de-centralized power plants, it still throws away a significant amount of energy. Right now the aggregate efficiency of US power plants is abysmal, about 30%.
[from EIA Annual Energy Review 2003, Sec 8.3 Diagram 5]
That means to generate electricity in the US, we throw away 2.3 times as much energy as we use! Imagine buying a 30 pack and pouring 21 cans on the floor.
An IGCC coal plant might improve that efficiency to 59% at best. But by capturing the waste heat from a plant -- cogeneration or "combined heat and power" -- you can get efficiencies of 75% to 90%. But to do that you need to build smaller plants located closer to where the energy can be used.
And since these will not likely be built by the big power companies, do not expect them to be aggressively promoted or lobbied for. So expect to hear about more "clean coal" and other large-scale solutions. But the better answer is smaller, simpler, less expensive, and ready to roll much sooner.
no more coal power plants should be built until we have a way of storing the co2.
that would be an easy answer.
This industry-backed piece seems to be arguing that we shouldn't worry about our most environmentally problematic energy source because there's this new technology that might start making it all better in a few years. That's a very dangerous argument, first because of all the damage that will be caused in the meantime, and second because we have no guarantee that IGCC will work in practice and at scale as predicted in this essay.
We need to cut back on coal energy use now, and we need start employing alternative energy sources that we have now. If IGCC can compete with wind, various hydro, geothermal, (maybe even nuclear), and solar, then great, but it's dangerous to just trust the industry and wait and see.
Please god enough with the "clean coal" hype.
Building new coal plants is simply a sign that we lack imagination and courage to create non-fossil fuel alternatives.
Treehugger is now officially co-opted by the industries they were advocating alternatives to. Hope the buyout by the Discovery Channel was worth it.
=== Editor's response follows ===
Hopefully our readers have noticed that Sierra Club also has recently become a regular guest poster on TreeHugger, as well as American Rivers. Union of Concerned Scientists long has been a guest poster with us.
By encouraging the the occasional voice of industry, there is increased likelihood that leaders of industry, in turn, will read your comments and learn from them (you).
I am stealing Cradle to Cradle's ideas, but...
This is more eco-efficiency than eco-effectiveness. It is less of the bad stuff, rather than all of the good stuff. While it could be an important stepping stone in the fight against global warming, it should not be seen as a long term solution. It should be equivalent to the hand-crank car. Does its job, but hardly ideal.
"Clean" coal is still way more destructive to the environment than other types of energy. This does not even discuss the process of obtaining coal which in the US includes includes large amounts of pollutants being dumped in rivers. GE is a huge investor in this technology... Just something to think about.
To me coal is a weapon of mass destruction. It is the dirtiest, most lethal fuel on the planet and no matter how cheap or abundant it is it should still be banned. In fact, coal's supposed "cheapest" status is phony because they're not paying the price for the damage and death they cause. When will coal be held accountable?
If any terrorist organization had wrecked the havoc that coal has on the citizens of the world through its destructive mining and mountain top removal, through it's poisoning of the air and water via mercury and through the airborne warfare the coal industry conducts on us all through their nonstop pollution and greenhouse gas leadership, we would declare war against that organization. Well coal has caused far more terror for far longer than Osama Bin Laden could ever dream of.
At the very least, the coal industry spokespeople sound very much like the cigarette industry spokesman. Even with the facts and the numbers proving them wrong, the industry spokespeople will say whatever they have to in order to protect their client's profits even as they kill people to get it.
As for the myth of "clean coal," I'd say it's every bit as real and embraceable as "healthy cancer" and "evil Jesus."
If clean coal is as real as its proponents claim, then the coal fired electric plants should be forced to employ that technology at every existing facility immediately and they should not be allowed to open another plant anywhere until they stop physically assaulting people with their product.
Cheap, abundant energy is not an acceptable excuse for the daily, lethal damage coal causes on people and on our planet.
Coal kills, and the coal industry needs to be held accountable for that.
More important than that we need to ban coal fired electric plants today. China opens a new coal fired electric plant every single week. There are over 1000 coal fired electric plants due to be built over the next five years.
If we don't stop those plants and the coal pushers then we don't have a very good chance of stopping the very worst impacts of global warming.
The benefits from banning coal today far outweigh the benefits that cheap electricity will give us for five more years.
To me coal is a weapon of mass destruction. It is the dirtiest, most lethal fuel on the planet and no matter how cheap or abundant it is it should still be banned. In fact, coal's supposed "cheapest" status is phony because they're not paying the price for the damage and death they cause. When will coal be held accountable?
If any terrorist organization had wrecked the havoc that coal has on the citizens of the world through its destructive mining and mountain top removal, through it's poisoning of the air and water via mercury and through the airborne warfare the coal industry conducts on us all through their nonstop pollution and greenhouse gas leadership, we would declare war against that organization. Well coal has caused far more terror for far longer than Osama Bin Laden could ever dream of.
At the very least, the coal industry spokespeople sound very much like the cigarette industry spokesman. Even with the facts and the numbers proving them wrong, the industry spokespeople will say whatever they have to in order to protect their client's profits even as they kill people to get it.
As for the myth of "clean coal," I'd say it's every bit as real and embraceable as "healthy cancer" and "evil Jesus."
If clean coal is as real as its proponents claim, then the coal fired electric plants should be forced to employ that technology at every existing facility immediately and they should not be allowed to open another plant anywhere until they stop physically assaulting people with their product.
Cheap, abundant energy is not an acceptable excuse for the daily, lethal damage coal causes on people and on our planet.
Coal kills, and the coal industry needs to be held accountable for that.
More important than that we need to ban coal fired electric plants today. China opens a new coal fired electric plant every single week. There are over 1000 coal fired electric plants due to be built over the next five years.
If we don't stop those plants and the coal pushers then we don't have a very good chance of stopping the very worst impacts of global warming.
The benefits from banning coal today far outweigh the benefits that cheap electricity will give us for five more years.
Coal will come online in a much bigger way, we should just try and make it as clean as possible. We have a large supply, And it's coal that will probably delay for a very long time the expansion of nuclear power, which will not be cost-effective until coal is a lot scarcer. I think that's a good thing. The risks of nuclear to life and property are way too high.
It will take far less capital and poitical arm-twisting to put clean coal in place than nuclear, and maybe in a century, when technology is better and the American energy hog is finally extinct, we can have a sane conversation about nuclear.
'coal – the natural resource that is likely powering the very monitor you are reading from right now.'
---Not quite. Mine is powered by sun and wind exclusively. And yes, I am 100% sure of that.
'unless you’ve found some miraculous way to ‘live off the grid,’ you cannot deny that it is a vital energy source and essential for the quality of life we’ve all come to expect.'
---What a coincidence, I do 'live off the grid' and for your information there is nothing miraculous about it. No I am not rich. No I did not spend a fortune to live off grid. No it wasn't difficult. And no I am not some 'miraculous' genius. Anyone with two functioning neurons between his ears can order up the renewable energy system parts from any number of renewable energy internet stores and hook them up overnight. But your wording is quite intriguing: 'unless...., you cannot deny...' So I guess based on your wording I can easily deny it. As if argumentative reason, argumentative right and wrong, depends on whether the individual doing the arguing has found some 'miraculous' way to 'live off the grid.' But yeah, I do live off the grid, and yeah I am going to deny that coal is vital and essential. And no, I don't have to live off the grid to be able to deny that it is vital and essential.
'But what role will coal play in the 21st century?'
---A decreasing role. And with society getting ever more serious about global warming and serious about stopping it, an ever faster dimishing role.
'Worldwide, coal will continue to play an important role in driving economic development, improving standards of living and alleviating poverty.'
---Well, that is one way of looking at it. Here is another: continued unfettered use of coal diminishes economic development by stunting growth of advanced alternative and renewable energy technologies and the industries and infrastructures that feed and support such energy technologies. If society replaced all coal energy with these advanced energy technologies, there would be MORE jobs, BETTER jobs and MORE and BETTER development everywhere. Coal causes more health and environmental problems around the world than all other energy sources combined. Getting rid of coal extraction and coal energy production arguably does more to improve global standards of living than keeping it. Poverty is not going to be alleviated with coal; the third world poor are much more likely to get out of poverty with technologies that enable them to get away from use of dirty, polluting coal burning that affects their health and well-being, such as solar ovens, decentralized small-scale wind and PV and micro-hydro, etc. Coal does nothing for the poor except making them poorer.
'So the question ultimately leads to how can we continue to use this abundant source of energy in the most efficient and climate friendly way, while maintaining and improving our quality of life?'
---No, the question ultimately leads to how and how quickly society can make the transition to a clean and healthy alternative and renewable energy based future. A future which will eliminate the use of fossil fuels, especially the use of coal, and move toward an energy system that does much more for economic prosperity, enhanced standards of living, and the elimination of poverty then coal could ever, in its most deluded dreams, hope to do.
'This investment has led to a number of innovations like coal to liquids and a prototype intended to create the world's first zero-emissions fossil fuel plant.'
---Coal to liquids will do more damage to the environment than gasoline. It produces roughly double the CO2 emissions of gasoline. It is not a solution to the world's environmental problems; it is a technology that will WORSEN those problems EXPONENTIALLY. Coal to liquids has absolutely no place anywhere under any circumstances. Arguing for its use is the antithesis of environmental responsibility. It so happens that the only plant manufacturing the stuff (South African) is the world's greatest point source of CO2, and you are arguing that we should set up a bunch of these plants elsewhere in the world? How can you seriously come to TH and argue your green credentials and then have the gall to bring up liquid coals?
As for the FutureGen prototype that will magically solve coal's problems, it would be better to label it 'hypothetical prototype'. I also have a 'hypothetical prototype' car that runs on wishful thinking; trust me, it works - all you have to do is repeat over and over that it works to anyone who will listen and eventually someone will believe you. And I'll give you my car today, not over a decade from now, for less than $1.5 billion. For your info, 'The primary goal for FutureGen is to validate the technical feasibility and the economic viability of zero emissions energy from coal...' It's not a done deal. If this small prototype even ever gets built.
'let’s look at one of the most promising technologies already in use today, a technology known as Integrated Gasification Combined Cycle – or IGCC.'
---Let's do look at it. It is more efficient that normal coal plants since it tries to use waste heat. But according to several US states, it really doesn't do very much to reduce CO2 emissions for the same amount of electricity produced. As someone else mentioned, to really get significant efficiencies (and CO2 reductions) most of the waste heat would have to be channeled to space heating buildings located nearby. This means building smaller plants located close to important areas requiring significant space heating - like urban areas or industrial centers. And the big coal plant companies aren't going to do this because costs go up considerably. Here is the real reason IGCC is picking up pace: because coal plant energy companies are worried about the future implementation of carbon taxes or carbon credits and it is easier - and MUCH MUCH cheaper - to capture CO2 for storage underground than with traditional coal plants. If carbon credits appear, they simply have no choice but to go with IGCC because traditional plants will break their bottom line. But this assumes that carbon sequestration is feasible, and that has yet to be proven. And will take a long time to prove, and even longer to practicably implement. And even when implementation is possible, plants will have to be located in areas where there are suitable underground formations for CO2 storage nearby - restricting the number of siting locations and almost ensuring that any IGCC plants built are LARGE and far away from urban areas. Meaning that these plants won't be doing much to reduce their CO2 emissions until sequestration begins - IF it ever begins. So yes, IGCC is an improvement, but this does little to change the fact that coal energy remains by far the most unacceptable source of pollution and global warming in the energy industry.
'Coal is still the most abundant form of energy available and it will play an important role in securing our energy future and addressing climate change.'
---Coal is not the most abundant form of energy available. That honor goes to solar energy. I am not sure what comes second - maybe wave energy or geothermal or wind. I am pretty sure that even nuclear energy is more 'abundant'. I would agree with you though that of the FOSSIL fuels, it is both the most abundant and the filthiest. And there is no absolute need for it to play an important role in securing any country's enegy future, much less that of rich countries such as the US and the EU which can afford to make a relatively quick transition to clean safe renewables. I would say the opposite. Continued reliance on coal energy almost ensures that all countries everywhere will have to spend more and more resources, including energy, (resources that could have been used for improving standards of living but won't be) in dealing with the negative consequences of global warming, in large part brought about by continued use of coal.
'With continued investment and innovation, coal can be a driver of the climate change solution.'
---Yes with continued investment and innovation coal could possibly, theoretically, be a part of the solution. But today and for the long foreseeable future it is one of the very key contributors to global warming - and many other environmental problems. So I'll make you a deal: stop construction of any new coal plants and close down all operational coal plants and when the day arrives that coal is part of the solution rather than part of the problem, you will have my full support in starting operations again. Because as long as coal energy continues ripping apart the stability of regional ecosystems and the global environment, it deserves to be vehemently vilified and opposed by anyone who cares about the environment and the well-being of society.
I have one question for TH: Does this organization, the Business Roundtable, provide TH with any kind of funding, direct or indirect? Please be honest.
==== Ed. response follows ====
No funding of any kind comes to TreeHugger from Business Roundtable. BR was invited to guest post here in the same way that Sierra Club was invited to guest post.
The debate this post has enabled can be left to the op. ed .pages of media conglomerate owned papers or be held behind the doors of Congressional hearing rooms. Or, we can hear what proponents and opponents have to say right here.
Which would you prefer?
You've got to be kidding me! what is this doing on TreeHugger? You guys have officially jumped the shark.
Would this lessen the cost of the fund that assist coal miners who get black lung? Now I'm all for taking care of sick coal miners, but lets stop making coal miners sick.
And let's stop spending money on a finite resource. I don't care if we have enough coal to last us 1,000 years, lets leave it where it is.
I hate the fact that people try to downplay coal's destructive nature. We need to rid of it completely. Clean coal is crap and is not coming anytime soon! Meanwhile pollution, lung disease, birth defects are all way up due to environmental poisoning with coal playing a major role. As well Greenland is melting. All our politician's are sleeping, or sleeping with the enemy. I believe living off the grid or decentralizing wind, geothermal and solar are the key. Solar panels on every roof (I was surprised to find out that solar panels still make economical sense even in upstate NY), small wind turbines in neighbourhoods. However, doing this means having to educate the people plus showing everyone how to get the tax breaks. Education, education and education. Another big hurdle has been city and neighbourhood bylaws, and homeowner associations inhibiting these alternative energies due to aesthetics. We need to stop that and make some sort of law that guides the proper use and installation of these devices.
I myself am trying to educate people and most are interested only for a minute. It erks me. As well, the HOAs are ignorant fools that need their power stripped away when it comes to installing solar etc. Does anyone have any suggestions to get around these problems?
Long term, Coal is not a solution, short to medium term cleaner coal is a good solution. It also depends on how the power is used. Combined Cycle Gas Generation with steam production for building heating or to run industrial processes is pretty efficient but still has lots of downsides. Coal is very polluting to mine and the after effects are permanent. Just drive through Pennsylvania Coal Country and its possible to still see piles of mine waste, remains of coal processing plants and if you look closer ground water contamination and in some cases underground fires.
However, if the power plant is being used to power a railway electrification project, light rail or trolleybus line the carbon calculus changes because there is a replacement of oil burned in internal combustion engines which could even result in a net carbon savings via displacement. For instance lets say a smallish very high efficiency coal plant is built and part of its output runs a railway electrification project its net carbon footprint would be:
Power Plant Emissions - (carbon emissions displaced from automobile trafic whose occupatnts are now taking commuter rail to work + emissions displaced from converting the line to electrification + displaced emissions from truck hauled freight now being hauled electricaly) = net emissions from project.
Needless to say, if the plant is not displacing carbon emissions in this way its net impact will be greater.
And at the end of the day, we will not see coal fired anything because wind, solar, (some) biofuel and wave power is completely carbon neutral.
How much of the radiation that contaminates many of the surrounding neighbors to the coal power plants will be captured? ... and what do you do with the uranium, mercury, and thorium once you have collected it? ...I've got an idea, lets build a bomb!!
As much as I want the cleanest energy possible, I do enjoy the electricity that powers my computer and illuminates the room. The Red Chinese are building 33 new nuclear power plants and supposedly build a new dirty coal power plant every 3 days. They admit that 750,000 Chinese die every year due to their own generated polution. I have lived in South Korea for over two years and can say Korea is infinitely dirtier than America and when the wind blows that yellow polution/dirt from China it burns my eyes and my throat feels like I just smoked a pack of cigaretes. Many Koreans wear surgical masks when they go out doors. So, lets allow our electrical generation to keep up with demand till we create cleaner energy. As for wind mills, I believe I just read that the environmental Nazi's have stopped a wind mill farm in Texas and we all know we can't have a wind mill farm where it interupts the Honorable Senator from Mass. view of the bay.
David -- you omitted one carbon source in your calculation -- transportation of fuel. People forget about how much fuel (usually diesel) it takes to transport fuel for ANY energy source from it's source (the mine, oil field, refinery, etc) to the power plant or gas station.
For example, I live nearby a major railway line that has mile+ long trains with 100+ hoppers filled to the brim with COAL traveling on it every single day, usually a half dozen or more trains a day. All this coal is going to coal-powered plants South of me, and it comes from Montana or somewhere, a thousand or more miles away. Once the hoppers are dumped, they of course have to return to the coal mine. I just hope they are full of something at least part of the way back up there, but I doubt it.
Now with regards to the trains dragging this coal from mine to plant, that's a LOT of diesel fuel. Yes, freight trains are a lot more efficient than their coal-burning predecessors, but it's still a Carbon source.
Same thing holds true for the diesel and gasoline that powers the trains, trucks, and passenger vehicles. That petroleum is *generally* sourced halfway across the world, or at best, hundreds of miles from the refineries. It is sometimes piped, but usually it's put on a tanker ship and lugged across the ocean (Carbon source). Then it's refined (Carbon source), then it's trucked to fuel stations (Carbon source). Then it enters your equation... So as you can see, you neglected a significant portion of the "well to wheel" equation.
People are generally quite concerned with the fuel economy of their cars but don't consider how much Carbon is emitted just getting that fuel into their tank. I personally always try to fill up at a particular gas station that sources all of its petroleum in Texas (as I live in Fort Worth, it's essentially "local" for me). Compare this with your local Exxon or Shell that drilled a hole somewhere in the Middle East or Africa, put it on a tanker and burned a few million gallons of diesel to get it here... The cost of getting the Texas crude to the Texas refinery is WAY less than the cost of getting the Saudi oil to the same refinery.
Clean coal is more of a joke than hybrid cars. It's a weak stopgap, where what we need is a total conversion to Carbon-free power and transportation. Hopefully the Nanosolar Powersheets will be available soon and we can stop having to pay $10 per WATT!!! for PV systems. When the average Joe can get a PV system installed for $15K that powers 90% of his home for CHEAPER than current electricity rates, then we won't NEED coal any more! That will make it easier for the citizens to get the dirty coal plants shut down once and for all.
Cheers, great discussion!
THE MYTH OF CLEAN COAL IS NOW DEAD
Last Wednesday, January 30, 2008 the Bush Administration and the DOE rightfully and finally pulled their support for the so called FutureGen Clean Coal project and in so doing pulled the rug out from under the fairytale of clean coal. It was a scam from the get go.
First the costs doubled from $900 billion to $1.8 billion and everyone knew they were headed to $2 billion per coal-fired plant, minimum. And that's for technology that at this point is merely vaporware. It's never been proven on any real coal-fired electric plant.
So stick a fork in coal the way Wall Street did yesterday when three of the biggest investment banks pledged to stick to a set of "Carbon Principles" when lending money for new electric plant construction. In a nutshell, those principles will eliminate coal from the energy mix because coal and the people who get rich from selling coal have NO principles. They take NO responsibility for the damage they've already done and they have NO credibility when it comes to the subject of their product's contributions to global warming.
Let's stop wasting precious time and money on Killer Coal and get on board the renewable train that has already left the station.
Read more about it on my blog at www.creativegreenius.com