Edmund L. Andrews at the New York Times details legislation in the works in "Lawmakers Push for Big Subsidies for Coal Process":
Even as Congressional leaders draft legislation to reduce greenhouse gases linked to global warming, a powerful roster of Democrats and Republicans is pushing to subsidize coal as the king of alternative fuels.
Prodded by intense lobbying from the coal industry, lawmakers from coal states are proposing that taxpayers guarantee billions of dollars in construction loans for coal-to-liquid production plants, guarantee minimum prices for the new fuel, and guarantee big government purchases for the next 25 years.
With both House and Senate Democrats hoping to pass “energy independence” bills by mid-July, coal supporters argue that coal-based fuels are more American than gasoline and potentially greener than ethanol.
"More American than gasoline and potentially greener than ethanol." Hmmm... that hardly sounds like the basis for sound energy policy, does it?
Environmental groups are adamantly opposed, warning that coal-based diesel fuels would at best do little to slow global warming and at worst would produce almost twice as much of the greenhouse gases tied to global warming as petroleum.
[snip]
The political momentum to subsidize coal fuels is in odd juxtaposition to simultaneous efforts by Democrats to draft global-warming bills that would place new restrictions on coal-fired electric power plants.
The move reflects a tension, which many lawmakers gloss over, between slowing global warming and reducing dependence on foreign oil.
For those paying attention, it's pretty obvious that coal-to-liquids is an idea with serious problems. (See Matt Stoller's "Frustration on Global Warming" and David Robert's "Barack Obama is not serious about global warming" for progressive activist reactions.)
What do the scientist say?
More from Andrews article:
But no company has built a commercial-scale plant that also captures carbon, and experts caution that many obstacles lie ahead.
“At best, you’re going to tread water on the carbon issue, and you’re probably going to do worse,” said Howard Herzog, a principal research engineer at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and a co-author of “The Future of Coal,” a voluminous study published in March by M.I.T. “It goes against the whole grain of reducing carbon.”
The M.I.T. team expressed even more skepticism about the economic risks. It estimated that it would cost $70 billion to build enough plants to replace 10 percent of American gasoline consumption.
The study estimates that the construction costs for coal-to-liquid plants are almost four times higher than the costs for comparable petroleum refineries, and it argues that cost estimates for synthetic fuel plants in the past turned out to be “wildly optimistic.”
In a new report last week, the Energy Department estimated that a plant capable of making 50,000 barrels of liquefied coal a day — a tiny fraction of the nearly 9 million barrels in gasoline burned daily in the United States — would cost $4.5 billion.
That's a whole lot of money to spend for not much return. With that much money floating around, someone must be getting rich. Now, if someone is going to get rich... do you suppose they've already started lobbying Congress...
Where does the support come from?
More from Andrews article:
Coal companies are hardly alone in asking taxpayers to underwrite alternative fuels in the name of energy independence and reduced global warming. But the scale of proposed subsidies for coal could exceed those for any alternative fuel, including corn-based ethanol.
Among the proposed inducements winding through House and Senate committees: loan guarantees for six to 10 major coal-to-liquid plants, each likely to cost at least $3 billion; a tax credit of 51 cents for every gallon of coal-based fuel sold through 2020; automatic subsidies if oil prices drop below $40 a barrel; and permission for the Air Force to sign 25-year contracts for almost a billion gallons a year of coal-based jet fuel.
Coal companies have spent millions of dollars lobbying on the issue, and have marshaled allies in organized labor, the Air Force and fuel-burning industries like the airlines. Peabody Energy, the world’s biggest coal company, urged in a recent advertising campaign that people “imagine a world where our country runs on energy from Middle America instead of the Middle East.”
Representative Rick Boucher, a Virginia Democrat whose district is dominated by coal mining, is writing key sections of the House energy bill. In the Senate, champions of coal-to-liquid fuels include Barack Obama, the Illinois Democrat, Jim Bunning of Kentucky and Larry Craig of Wyoming, both Republicans.
President Bush has not weighed in on specific incentives, but he has often stressed the importance of coal as an alternative to foreign oil. In calling for a 20 percent cut in projected gasoline consumption by 2017, he has carefully referred to the need for “alternative” fuels rather than “renewable” fuels. Administration officials say that was specifically to make room for coal.
Why not renewable fuels? What are the other alternatives? Is coal the only option?
Better alternatives
There are many better alternatives to this corporate welfare--alternative that can help reduce America's energy dependence, start reducing our carbon foot-print, and produce high-paying technology-based jobs:
1. Invest that money in light rail, a smart electrical grid, energy efficiency, fuel efficiency, smart buildings, and the myriad of other American technologies to reduce energy consumption. For a top 10 list of good ideas, look no further than Al Gore's recent testimony to Congress.
2. Clean up coal first before giving the industry any subsidies: (a) require all coal-burning power plants to use the latest clean air technology, (b) solve the technical problem of carbon sequestration for CTL before approving any industry subsidies, not afterwards, and (c) end mountain-top removal forever more first.
3. What's the hurry to expand coal production today? Why not leave our coal reserves where they are for another 30-50 years? Let's wait until we figure out how to extract them without the devastating human, societal, and environmental damage caused by mountain top removal (MTR). The world may be all but out of oil by then, our coal will be worth even more, and maybe (just maybe) we'll have technology right to truly have clean coal.
Rep. Rahall, Sen. Obama, I believe in you. We can do better than this proposed legislation. Now, continue to do us proud--yes, on this issue, too. |
