The coal question has become something of a litmus test in the whole energy-policy debate. You can’t live with it–and reduce emissions of greenhouse gases; you can’t live without it–and still have an economy. The U.S. government’s relaunch this week of FutureGen, its scaled-down “clean coal” research project, puts the issue smack in the middle of the agenda.
But is “clean coal”—capturing and storing carbon dioxide from coal plants—the answer?
Greenpeace doesn’t think so. In a big report published this week, the environmental group says that carbon capture and storage is an expensive, inefficient pipe dream that—if it ever does come to fruition—will arrive too late to save the planet. Greenpeace (and plenty of folks in the industry) doubts clean coal plants will be a reality before 2030. For Greenpeace, which also opposes nuclear power, the global push for “clean coal” is just a smokescreen to keep fossil fuels at the top of the heap for decades to come.
That raised eyebrows from the folks at Planet Gore:
So the U.S. (and China, and Russia) are sitting on mountains and mountains of coal, but we shouldn’t figure out how to burn it cleanly, because doing so would burn too much coal . . . cleanly? Gotcha. Thanks.
Actually, Greenpeace aside, there are plenty of climate-change crusaders from Al Gore to Sir Nicholas Stern who throw their weight behind clean coal as part of the answer to global warming. One of the biggest climate-change worriers and at the same time biggest clean-coal proponents is Ross Garnaut, climate-change adviser to the Australian government.
If the U.S. has a coal fetish—it gets 50% of its electricity from coal—Australia has a serious monkey on its back. More than 80% of its electricity comes from coal, plus it is feverishly exporting the stuff to places like China. Australia is a perfect example of how environmental evangelism doesn’t have to be at odds with a future for coal. The country, a recent signatory of the Kyoto Protocol, has suddenly become a climate-change cheerleader, yet figuring out how to keep coal viable is a national obsession. Dr. Garnaut said this week, after the Greenpeace report came out, that clean coal will be a reality in just over a decade and will be fundamental to fighting global warming.
The Australian government just announced more funding for clean coal. Enviros there want a big push to make it a commercial reality as soon as possible. Even Columbia University’s James Hansen, a big critic of coal, recently wrote a letter to Australian Prime Minister Kevin Rudd urging him to make sure any coal burned in the future is clean coal. Australia’s government, meanwhile, is offering clean-coal technology to their biggest coal customer, China.
But the sticky point is the same—whether it’s in 2020 or 2030, commercially-viable clean coal plants will take a long time to become a reality. Even then, they will be more expensive—and probably less efficient—than current coal-fired plants, which means even more power stations will be needed to make the same amount of juice. And permanently storing carbon requires a whole different bag of tricks than just capturing it at the plants.
EC readers, is clean coal the answer or just an expensive distraction?