by Dave Hawkins
In his recent blog, David Sassoon calls President
Obama’s creation of a task force for a Carbon Capture and Storage Strategy a
big victory for the coal industry. Let me offer a few thoughts on why I
believe this task force actually is a step forward for all of us who want to
put an end to investments in new polluting coal plants, increase our reliance
on energy efficiency and renewable energy, and prevent disastrous climate
disruption.
Our
community uses several tactics to block new polluting coal plants. We
intervene in permit proceedings and bring lawsuits to challenge coal plant
permits. NRDC has actively used this tactic, joining the outstanding
efforts by the Sierra Club and others. Another tactic, that NRDC also has
pursued, is advocacy with Wall Street investors to convince them that
investments in new polluting coal plants are a bad bet. A third is
advocacy for performance standards that would make it legally impossible for
new polluting coal plants to be built. NRDC worked hard to get such a law
enacted in California
and is seeking such standards in federal legislation. A fourth is to
create a broad consensus that no new coal plant should be built unless it
captures its carbon.
This last
approach, which NRDC has pursued as well, is controversial in our community
because it does not call for an absolute bar on new coal plants regardless of
environmental performance and it lends legitimacy to carbon capture and storage
(CCS) technology. I certainly understand the controversy—after all, if
the coal industry seems to be supporting CCS, there is good reason to suspect
something nefarious. And Mike Brune is right that the coal industry has a
perfect record in speaking with a forked tongue on CCS—claiming that it is an
essential technology, arguing that it is not ready, and then working to block
any policy that would require it to be used. But the coal industry’s
duplicity should not keep us from assessing for ourselves whether CCS can help
us stave off climate destruction and increase our use of cleaner energy.
As a
community, we have achieved great success in blocking new coal plants one by
one but we need a comprehensive coal policy as well. Showing CCS is an
available tool helps us to convince policymakers that they should oppose
construction of coal plants that do not capture their carbon. Is such a
policy as attractive to many in our community as a law that says no more coal
plants, period? No. But we need to ask ourselves—what are the
realistic odds of getting Congress or any significant coal-using state to adopt
a “no new coal, period” policy in the next handful of
years? I have fought the coal industry for 40 years and in my
judgment the odds of a total ban on new coal plants are not large.
But we do
have in our grasp the adoption of policies that will bar the construction of
new coal plants unless the plant operates CCS. Securing the votes to get
these policies enacted will require convincing some members of Congress that
coal plants with CCS could in fact be built. I know that this is objectionable
to many in our community but which is a better outcome: leaving the door open
to building new coal plants with no CO2 controls at all or leaving it open only
to coal plants with CCS?
Right now,
the coal industry uses the claim that CCS is not ready as a weapon to fight
mandatory CO2 requirements. Those of us who talk to members of Congress
know that these claims are influential in far too many offices. The Obama
CCS task force is a way to take that argument away from the coal industry.
Some in our
community seem to fear that if we admit that CCS might become a tool in the
climate protection toolbox that we will lose the battles to deploy truly clean
resources like efficiency and renewables and to end atrocities like
mountain-top removal (MTR). With respect, I think that view is a
mistake. What CCS will do, in addition to cutting carbon pollution, is to
internalize one cost of coal use that is currently ignored. That is a
huge step forward in ending the distorted market that has allowed coal to
dominate electricity production until now. A policy requiring new coal
plants to use CCS dramatically improves the economic competitiveness of cleaner
alternatives overnight. It is true that CCS will not stop
MTR; neither will SO2 scrubbers, NOx controls, mercury controls, or
baghouses. But that has never caused us to oppose those vital
life-saving control measures in the past. To fight MTR we need to take it
on directly, as many are doing brilliantly. NRDC is proud of its work to
end this scourge and we won’t stop until MTR is history. As NRDC’s
President Frances Beinecke makes clear in her recent blog, supporting CCS does not
mean condoning the damages that coal, as it is mined and used today, inflicts
on us all.
CCS may
also be an additional tool to cut carbon emissions from existing plants. We all want to use efficiency and renewables (and, more controversially,
natural gas) to back out coal and carbon pollution from the more than 300GW of
existing coal plants. But that won’t happen without strong
policies. The reality is that we have not yet made the sale with critical
members of Congress that a coal-free energy system is feasible in the near term. However, we can make the sale that CCS can become a real option, with a serious
effort and supporting policies. Our community should not be afraid of
having an additional tool to go
after emissions from existing coal plants. If CCS is shown to be feasible
for existing coal plants it will become harder and harder for those plants to
justify operating without it. That helps level the playing field for
alternatives to coal.
Nor is CCS
just about coal. CCS may also turn out
to be something we need to get more rapid reductions in greenhouse gas
pollution. We all know we should have started a serious climate
protection program decades ago. Instead, our “leaders” have let
carbon pollution build up at an accelerating rate with a lot more in the
pipeline. Most of us fear that we are in for some disastrous impacts just
due to what is already in the atmosphere along with the added amounts we cannot
prevent in the next few decades. We may well need to pull CO2 out of the
air by applying CCS to sustainably produced biomass. Using the politics
of coal to prove out CCS so it is available for broader applications may be
seen in a decade or so as a smart move.
The energy
penalty projected for first-generation CCS systems is a legitimate
concern. But we need not worry about a
future of massive deployment of high energy penalty CCS systems. If CCS designs do not achieve substantially
better efficiencies than the first versions, other low-carbon options will win
in the marketplace.
What about
the risk that CCS subsidies will enable coal to crowd out superior energy
choices? Well, the key feature of the CCS subsidy provisions in the House
and Senate climate bills is that payment is tied to actual capture and disposal
of CO2. This is a huge change from past subsidies, including those in the
stimulus bill, where the payment is not tied to actual tons of pollution
avoided. While our community still may not like these CCS subsidies, keep
in mind that they are part of a package that will put in place a steadily tightening
cap on carbon pollution and a CO2 performance standard for new coal
plants. That is a radically different policy environment than the status
quo—one that will dramatically increase the prospects for efficiency and
renewables. So whether you think, as NRDC does, that pay-for-performance
CCS subsidies are an appropriate hedging strategy or that it’s just the price
to pay to get the US off the dime on cutting carbon pollution, the odds are
that CCS can play a positive role in helping us achieve our goals of moving the
U.S. and the world to a cleaner energy future.
Related Links:
Click It and Stick It to King Coal’s Dirty Bankers
Collateral Damage of Clean Coal
Earthquake wake-up call in Chicago
