From the November/December 2007, Volume XVIII, Number 6, E The Environmental Magazine, page 39, an article about the claims and the myth of clean coal:
THE MYTH OF CLEAN COAL
Can coal be clean? Congressman Nick Rahall (D-WV), who has proposed legislation to subsidize "clean coal," says it can. He thinks the answer to foreign oil dependence is right here at home, buried in West Virginia's ancient mountains. He envisions $35-a-barrel oil produced froma homegrown resource: abundant coal. With very little prompting, Rahal will tell you that with coal-to-liquid technology we can "revolutionize our way to a new energy era."
Greenhouse gas emissions won't be a problem, he says, because the new plants Rahall's legislation envisions would sequester the carbon dioxide (CO2) so it never reaches the atmosphere. The resulting liquid fuel, he says, will be cleaner than required by the Environmental Protection Agency's strong Tier II standards.
Sound good? There's more. Coal executives will tell you we have enough of this fossil fuel in the ground to last up to 450 years, though the National Academy of Sciences recently down-graded that to a mere 100 years. But the coal is all ours. "Imagine a world where our country runs on energy from Middle America instead of the Middle East," says Peabody Energy, the world's biggest coal company and a major player in the Southeast.
Coal state politicians have proposed a patchwork of bills that would, among other things, offer billions of dollars in loans for liquid coal plants, support research and insulate coal fuel from price shocks. But even with a very effective lobby, getting this legislation through Congress has so far proven difficult. What's going on? The money would be well spent if it helps us achieve clean energy independence, right?
Alas, the dirty secret is that "clean coal" is anything but. The process involves heating coal to 1,000 degrees Fahrenheit and mixing it with water to produce a gas, then converting the gas into diesel fuel. Although the industry-sponsored Coal-to-Liquids Coalition says that CO2 emissions from the entire production cycle of liquid coal are "equal to, or slightly below, those of conventional petroleum-derived fuels," its claims are based on a single federal study, now six years old.
Jim Presswood, federal energy advocate of the Natural Resources Defense Council (NRDC) says, "Liquid CO2 emissions are twice as much as emissions from conventional petroleum-derived fuels." He says that even if CO2 emissions are sequestered as part of the process, at best liquid coal would be 12 percent worse than the gasoline equivalent. As some environmentalists have put it, liquid coal can turn any hybrid Prius into a Hummer.
The Washington Post editorialized, "To wean the U.S. off of just one million barrels of the 21 million barrels of crude oil consumed daily, an estimated 120 million tons of coal would need to be mined each year.
The process requires vast amounts of water, particularly a concern in the parched West. And the price of a plant is estimated at $4 billion."
The technology to sequester carbon is largely theoretical, and the plants to liquify it are mostly in South Africa. But even if the process was perfected and burning coal produced zero emissions, liquid coal would still be far from clean.
There are many coal states, however, and their politicians will continue to advance their cause. Erich Pica, director of domestic campaigns at Friends of the Earth, says that several amendments that would be subsidized coal-to-liquid technology were stripped out of the Senate version of the energy bill, but supporters from both parties are very determined to put them back on the table. "It's an uphill fight for us," Pica says. "Supporters of coal-to-liquid have an aggressive, proactive agenda and many opportunities to get things done."
The flipside of the coal lobby's empty promises and ready cash (the Bush campaign secured $530,560 from coal companies and electric utilities in the 2000 cycle, reports EarthJustice) is the harsh reality of mountaintop removal mining. This now-standard practice in the Southeast coalfields is efficient only in delivering coal companies windfall profits. It has left an incalculable toll in shattered lives, permanently destroyed environments and polluted groundwater.
CONTACTS: Natural Resources Defense Council, (212) 727-2700, www.nddc.org; West Virginia Coal Association, (304) 342-4153, www.wvcoal.com.
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2 comments:
The myth that clean coal is a myth is very damaging.
IOf you want to fight global warming, support clean coal. Do some serious due diligence. Don't just parrot what others say.
Coal to liquids fuels are MUCH cleaner than anything known today in transportation fuels, and the CO2 can be sequestered with PROVEN technology, so that the result is MUCH better than current solutions.
After all, we don't say that installing hot and cold running water is the cause for extensive flooding whenever it is done? NO, there is a solution to that PROBLEM: Wash basins, sinks and sewage systems. That is the same with Coal to liquids. There is a solution for the CO2 problem, so IT NO LONGER IS A PROBLEM!!
Liquid coal made with carbon sequestration can be as clean or cleaner than conventional oil fuels. Carbon sequestration has already been proven at Kinder Morgan in TX where over 1 billion cu ft of co2 is captured daily and pumped underground for permanent storage. We only have 50 years max left on the oil supply according to the DOE experts - less according to the worlds leading geophysicists. There will be 9 billion mouths to feed, and mass economic chaos will ensue long before that when the shortages hit. We need to exercise every available option to prolong the world’s survival. Ethanol can only supply 10%. Electric for everything is not feasible. Biodiesel is similar to ethanol. Both will add to food shortages. There is a 200 year coal supply that can take up the slack while sources like hydro phonic algae are developed. Liquid coal can be made with recycled water, and the land can be redeveloped into farms, forests, and lakes with minimal environmental damage – I have seen the photos of redeveloped coalmines. It is also time to have public funding for liquid coal projects - like we do for ethanol and biodiesel. They are after all funded with tax dollars and are less efficient than CTL. Fair is Fair.
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