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Lagniappe
The
Rising Price of Coal
By
Kelpie Wilson
As the global energy/climate crisis deepens, coal has become
the starkest symbol and most telling measure of our predicament.
Coal produces more carbon emissions than other energy sources
- more than twice that of natural gas per unit of energy output.
Consequently, coal-fired power plants are responsible for about
one-third of US emissions of carbon dioxide. Despite this,
we are mining and burning more coal than ever.
On March 18, the nonprofit Environmental Integrity Project
(EIP) released an analysis of EPA data showing that carbon
dioxide emissions from the electric power industry increased
by 2.9 percent in 2007 and have risen 5.9 percent since 2002.
Coal is the culprit.
According to an Associated Press report, the cause of last
year's increase was a combination of three factors: increased
electricity demand; a shortage of hydroelectric power, leading
to greater reliance on coal, and the reduced efficiency of
aging coal-burning power plants.
While utilities around the nation have plans to construct
more than 100 new coal-fired power plants, public concern over
global warming and toxic pollution has put the brakes on many
of them. Last year in Texas, public interest groups prevented
TXU Energy from going ahead on eight new coal-fired plants
that would have increased the state's emissions by 24 percent,
according to the EIP report.
But as
demand for electricity rises and cleaner fuels like natural
gas get scarcer and more expensive, the relentless
pressure to burn coal fuels delusions such as "clean coal."
"Clean coal" is
a combination of two technologies, one of which is expensive
and the other completely unproven.
The expensive one is coal gasification, and it is a genuinely
cleaner way of burning coal. It involves baking coal to drive
off gasses that aren't much dirtier than natural gas, and the
gasses then are burned for power production. This technology
costs a minimum of 20 percent more than a conventional pulverized
coal plant, which is why only two such plants exist in the
United States.
The other
part of the "clean coal" scheme involves
carbon capture and storage. This technology is not proven and
the potential costs are enormous. A US Department of Energy
pilot project called FutureGen was recently canceled with the
DOE citing soaring cost projections among its reasons for ending
the project.
But even
if the "clean coal" idea were workable,
the realities of the coal fuel cycle ensure that coal can never
be truly clean.
At the
Public Interest Environmental Law Conference in Eugene, Oregon,
in early March, a panel of citizen activists talked
about the front and back ends of coal use: mining and waste
disposal. Teri Blanton, of Kentuckians for the Commonwealth
spoke about the heartbreak of mountaintop removal coal mining
in Appalachia. The mining technique is dynamiting hundreds
of thousand of acres of biologically diverse forest ecosystems
to get at the coal underneath, and dumping the waste into streams.
Blanton told the story of one of her neighbors who lost his
land to a mining company. "When I say he lost his land," she
said, "I mean he literally lost his land. One day he found
that his land was just gone, blasted away to nothing."
According to the group Appalachian Voices, more than 800
square miles of mountains have already been destroyed by mountaintop
removal and if the blasting continues unabated it will devastate
an area the size of Delaware by 2010.
Coal mining also uses great quantities of water and pollutes
streams in the process. Slurries of waste laden with toxic
heavy metals are leaching into streams and river systems. Earthen
impoundments that hold back the sludge are unstable and threaten
communities. A sludge dam breach in 2000 in Martin County,
Kentucky, dumped more than 300 million gallons of toxic sludge,
killing virtually all aquatic life for 70 miles downstream
of the spill.
Brad Bartlett
of the Energy Minerals Law Center talked about the post-combustion
end of coal. Air pollution controls at
existing coal plants capture 125 million tons of pollutants,
amounting to "the largest solid waste stream in the US," according
to Bartlett. He said that it is not formally regulated as hazardous
waste despite the presence of heavy metals and other toxins.
Some of it is used to make building materials and roads, but
the rest is just landfilled.
When you think of Alaska, you usually think of oil, not coal,
but Vanessa Salinas of Alaskans for Responsible Mining said
that Alaska also has huge amounts of coal - about one-eighth
of the world's coal reserves and half of US coal reserves.
Currently there is only one operating coal mine in Alaska,
but BHP Billiton, the largest mining company in the world,
is conducting an extensive coal exploration program and four
new strip mines are being proposed.
Alaskans should be more concerned than most people, Salinas
said, because global warming impacts are being felt more strongly
in the Arctic than anywhere else. On February 26, the tiny
village of Kivalina sued two dozen oil, power and coal companies
over their greenhouse gas emissions that contribute to global
warming. Melting sea ice is exposing the village to erosion
from storm waves and surges.
Coal burning also threatens Alaska's famed fishing industry.
Coal is notorious for its mercury pollution, and older marine
fish are showing increasing levels of mercury. Salinas blamed
coal burning pollution from Asia and noted that most of the
coal mined in Alaska would be shipped to Asia. In this way
Alaskans would poison their own fishing industry.
Salinas
has worked with Native Alaskans to stop these coal mines.
She said Native people have told her that they feel
coal functions as "the liver of the world" and it
should be left in the ground. Coal as the "liver" of
the world is not a bad metaphor. Coal is not just another mineral;
it is biological. It is the remains of ancient life. The liver
cleanses toxins from the body, and coal, if left in the ground,
keeps our climate cool and our air and water clean.
While Alaskan coal is destined to be shipped to Asia, it
looks like Appalachian and even Wyoming coal will increasingly
be shipped to Europe. Recent reports in The New York Times
and The Washington Post describe a spike in global coal consumption.
With the falling dollar value, American coal is now a bargain
for overseas buyers; however, that is in the context of an
overall price rise that is unprecedented. Spot market coal
prices have risen by 50 percent or more in recent months. Coal
consumption worldwide has increased by 30 percent over the
last six years.
American electricity consumers are used to hearing that coal
is much cheaper than renewable alternatives like solar and
wind, but that might not be true for long. Consumers haven't
seen the impact of expensive coal yet because most utilities
lock in coal supplies with long-term contracts. Electricity
rates will begin to shoot upwards when those contracts expire
in the years ahead.
There is no chance that prices will come back down again
either, because Peak Coal, like Peak Oil, is fast approaching.
Journalist David Strahan, in a January 17 article for New Scientist,
has documented what's known about coal reserves. He concludes
that the official figures, like the official figures for recoverable
oil reserves, have been vastly inflated.
On March
18, Standard & Poor's released a study concluding
that utilities and states with Renewable Portfolio Standards
need to do a better job of revealing how expensive their mandates
for renewable solar and wind power will be. By that same token,
utilities should be required to reveal all of the current and
future costs for dirty and increasingly expensive coal power.
Kelpie Wilson is
Truthout's environment editor. Trained as a mechanical
engineer, she embarked on a career as a forest protection
activist, then returned
to engineering as a technical writer for the solar power
industry. She is the
author of "Primal Tears," an eco-thriller about a hybrid human-bonobo
girl. Greg Bear, author of "Darwin's Radio," says: "'Primal
Tears' is primal storytelling, thoughtful and passionate. Kelpie Wilson wonderfully
expands our definitions of human and family. Read Leslie Thatcher's review
of Kelpie Wilson's novel "Primal Tears." Petroleumworld does not necessarily
share these views
Editor's
Note: This commentary was originally published by t r u t
h o u t, on 03/21/2007. Petroleumworld reprint this article
in the
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Petroleumworld News 03/29/08
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