No new coal
T
he battle lines have been drawn. On the horizon lies a much warmer world with submerged island nations, greater storm intensities, tragically lower crop yields in Africa, more floods and droughts, and heightened competition for clean water. With this future and the large role played by coal combustion in climate change, should we allow any new coal-fired power plants to be constructed? On one side are the utilities that fear this is their last chance to gain approval for new coal plants—states or nations may soon pass laws banning coal. Utilities swear that the next generation of Old King Coal will be cleaner, be more efficient, and produce lower greenhouse gas emissions. They argue that coal contributes positively to energy security for countries with massive coal reserves (the U.S., Russia, China, India, and Australia). On the other side stand environmentalists, the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), and Secretary General of the UN Ban Ki-moon. Ki-moon said in an interview with the New York Times that climate change is the “defining challenge of our age” and nations should not wait any longer to cut greenhouse gas emissions. Coal is the pressure point today because it’s the most risky of all energy sources from both a climate and a health perspective. Many people feel that oil and gas emissions will eventually decline on their own—scarcity will cause oil and gas prices to rise so high that reductions seem ensured. More efficient forms of energy will gradually replace oil and gas in the marketplace. But coal is not scarce like oil. Rather, coal reserves are cheap and plentiful, especially in developing countries like China and India, which use coal to expand exponentially their economies (and emissions). One new coal-fired power plant comes on-line every week in either China or India, and the U.S. has 150 such power plants in various stages of planning. Yet, the IPCC tells us that to avoid climate catastrophe we must reduce emissions 80% by 2050. Is that even remotely possible? Climate change and energy security now loom large in the daily politic. Reliance on oil and gas exacerbates both problems. Nuclear energy helps to solve global warming, but it does little for energy security because uranium is scarce (Australia notwithstanding). Coal provides energy security in key countries but leaves little hope of controlling climate change. More than half of U.S. electricity comes from coal. Allowing construction of new coal-fired power plants today, with design lives of 50–75 years, renders futile any attempt at steeply reducing greenhouse gas emissions by 2050. James Hansen, the director of NASA’s Goddard Insti-
© 2008 American Chemical Society
tute for Space Studies and a climate expert, shook the firmament this past October with his recollection of freight trains and endless coal cars passing through his native town of Denison, Iowa. “If we cannot stop the building of more coal-fired power plants, those coal trains will be death trains—no less gruesome than if they were boxcars headed to crematoria, loaded with uncountable, irreplaceable species,” he said. It was an unfortunate analogy to the Holocaust. But people need reminding that humans are not the only species whose existence is jeopardized by runaway global warming. We are killing Mother Nature. The tide of opinion seems to be turning at the state level. Texas, Florida, and Minnesota have all denied permits for new coal-fired power plants in recent months. Most surprisingly, the conservative state of Kansas and the Kansas Department of Health and Environment rejected plans to build two 700 MW coal-fired power plants on the basis of the threat to public health and the environment. Inspired by the 2007 Supreme Court verdict that CO2 is a pollutant that can be regulated under the Clean Air Act, Kansas is now the vanguard of coal deniers. Amazingly, the Supreme Court’s decision is having a large impact even before the U.S. EPA promulgates its rules on how to regulate CO2. Compromise is possible. States could deny construction of new coal-based electrical generating stations unless utilities sequester CO2 within a prescribed period. Or states could insist on steep increases in renewable portfolio standards while approving only a limited number of new coal-fired plants. They might also allow one new coal-fired power plant for the retirement of every two inefficient old plants. Demand-side management could eliminate the need for most coal-fired plants while allowing the expedited use of “clean coal” at a few locations. Such was the compromise in Texas when 11 coal plants were planned but only 3 were rapidly approved. One thing is clear. Only energy conservation, efficiency, and renewables (ECER) contribute to solutions for both climate change and energy security. A safe future requires a much greater percentage of ECER in the global energy mix. Because combustion of coal emits twice as many greenhouse gases as any alternative energy resource, its very existence must be called into question. No new coal unless carbon is safely captured.
Jerald L. Schnoor Editor
[email protected] January 1, 2008 / Environmental Science & Technology ■
