Negotiating the decline of West Virginia coal

by: Clem Guttata

Wed Jul 08, 2009 at 15:59:10 PM EDT

While some ask if Waxman Markley is worth it, doing nothing is frightfully expensive ("Dependence on Big Oil, Dirty Coal Could Cost U.S. $30 Trillion By 2030").

Political Will

Thankfully, the negative cycles dictated by chemistry and physics are starting to be counter-acted by virtuous cycles of human action. The passage of Waxman Markey by the House of Representatives is already bearing fruit abroad. Just as United States inaction slowed international action the past eight years of the Bush administration, other countries are now ready to follow our positive lead.

Now that Democrats hold a 60-vote majority in the Senate, the odds of passing climate change legislation increase further. (Not all 60 Democratic Senators will vote for the bill, but it will be very difficult for a Democratic Sen. to filibuster a major piece of the party's agenda.)

Even if a version of Waxman Markey fails to become law this year, the days of unfettered expansion of the coal industry are over. The United State Environmental Protection Agency now has authority to regulate greenhouse gases as an endangerment to public health.

King Coal: Dead of Alive?

There's a great deal of debate over what the impact of Waxman Markey will be on the coal industry. On one side you have Rep. Boucher (D-VA) pushing the bill and the United Mine Workers saying "the future of coal will be intact" the bill provides the coal industry everything it needs to succeed (edit per UMWA clarification). On another side, you have one analyst saying "coal use in 2020 would drop by more than 25% compared to 2005 levels". In between, Rep. Rahall (D-WV) says the bill provides lots of great things for coal, but not quite enough.

Near as I can tell, the difference in opinion all comes down to shades of optimism around carbon capture and sequestration (CCS) technology. As Ken Ward, Jr. recently asked, "Without CCS, is coal facing 'valley of death'?"

Can CCS save West Virginia Coal?

There is good reason to be skeptical about carbon-capture and sequestration as a savior for West Virginia coal. First of all, it is an unproven technology with serious technological hurdles (emphasis mine):

1. Cost: Coal plants with CCS are very expensive today. The total extra cost for this process, including geological storage in sealed underground sites, is currently quite high, $30 to $80 a ton of carbon dioxide, according to the Department of Energy's Office of Fossil Energy, "Carbon Sequestration R&D Overview." And that is on top of the cost of new coal plants, which have become very expensive. In the future, it seems rather unlikely that CCS would be a low-cost solution. [snip] Energy efficiency along with lots of low-carbon generation sources beat that easily now or will very soon.

2. Timing: The world does not even have a single large-scale (300+ MW) coal plant with CCS anywhere in the world. [snip] As Howard Herzog of MIT's Laboratory for Energy and the Environment said in Feburary "How can we expect to build hundreds of these plants when we're having so much trouble building the first one?"

3. Scale: We need to put in place a dozen or so clean energy "stabilization wedges" by mid-century to avoid catastrophic climate outcomes - see "Is 450 ppm (or less) politically possible? Part 1." For CCS to be even one of those would require a flow of CO2 into the ground equal to the current flow of oil out of the ground. That would require, by itself, re-creating the equivalent of the planet's entire oil delivery infrastructure, no mean feat.

4. Permanence and transparency: If Putin's Russia said it was sequestering 100 million tons of CO2 in the ground permanently, and wanted other countries to pay it billions of dollars to do so, would anyone trust them? No. The potential for fraud and bribery are simply too enormous. But would anyone trust China? Would anyone trust a U.S. utility, for that matter? We need to set up some sort of international regime for certifying, monitoring, verifying, and inspecting geologic repositories of carbon - like the U.N. weapons inspections systems. The problem is, this country hasn't been able to certify a single storage facility for a high-level radioactive waste after two decades of trying and nobody knows how to monitor and verify underground CO2 storage. It could take a decade just to set up this system.

The House version of the Waxman Markey bill throws a lot of money--tens of billions of dollars--at those problems, but that doesn't make them solvable. Even more to the point, there is no guarantee that money spent on developing CCS technology will reach West Virginians.

This brings me to a key point, my greatest fear for West Virginia with the current bill:

We can easily fall into a horrible worst-case scenario--the West Virginia coal industry limps along for another decade while billions are spent in other parts of the country in the failed development of carbon-capture and sequestration. Meanwhile, the false hope of extended viability of coal leaves West Virginia paralyzed by the dazzling sparkles of twilight twinkling off of King Coal's crown.

There's got to be a better way.

Negotiating the decline of West Virginia coal

The climate change legislation in front of the Senate is a golden opportunity for West Virginia to negotiate the terms of the decline of our coal industry.

Instead of trying to increase incentives and investments to help the coal industry, Sens. Byrd and Rockefeller should work on incentives and investments that will help Appalachians make the difficult transition away from a carbon-based economy. We need a hand-up for the people of Appalachia, not another hand-out for coal companies.

Sens. Byrd and Rockefeller have both been tireless champions of diversifying the West Virginia economy. They are responsible for helping to develop tens of thousands of quality West Virginia jobs (private employers like Toyota and Hino Trucks; countless public agencies; and numerous research centers). They both intimately know the value of developing all sectors of the West Virginia economy.

Now is the time for West Virginia to start developing a significant alternative energy economy.

A Greener West Virginia Economy

As much as I'd like to see the Appalachian region follow the lead of another historical coal-producing powerhouse (Wales) and set a target for energy self-sufficiency with renewables in 20 year, I'd settle for West Virginia to move to the position of having a vibrant and growing alternative energy economy (not our current small and shrinking one).

We can solve the climate crisis. The key technologies and key solutions are well known. One way or another, major change is coming to West Virginia. The question that remains is:

Will West Virginia seize the moment to negotiate the transition away from coal on its own terms?

We've got smart, hard-working people working for us up in Washington. They know better than I do what the right kinds of details are to get into the climate change legislation. I've talked about a few suggestions in the diaries "responsibly end mountain top removal" and "A model of coalfield development in the other Virginia."

We know clean energy policies create jobs. West Virginia is going to be hit particularly hard with the transition away from coal. Let's make sure West Virginia gets its fair share of those new jobs.

West Virginia is in a fortunate position for a small state--we enjoy significant political power in the United State Congress. Now is a critical time for Sens. Rockefeller and Byrd to wield that power for the benefit of West Virginians.

Flickr photo credits: Alaska Day 3 by Matt Bernius, Interior of a Coal Mine in W. Va. by modashell, and NIOSH Robert C Byrd building by rmcgervey.

What I'd like to know about coal and energy independence

by: Clem Guttata

Sat Jul 04, 2009 at 15:12:24 PM EDT

So, here's what I'd like to hear them explain:

If coal is such an important national asset to secure American energy independence, why haven't they put a ban on all coal exports yet?

A little bit of math on the numbers from the Energy Information Administration (see: Coal Overview, Including Imports and Exports, Most Recent Months and Years-to-Date, and Years 1973 - Present), tells me that from 1973 through April, 2009 we exported 15% of all the coal we produced in the United States.

In the most recent 28 months that data is available, we exported 5.9% of the coal we produced. Another way of looking at it is, at that rate we spend the first three weeks of production each year for coal to send to other countries, then we start mining coal to power electric plants here.

It's bad enough that people, communities, and our environment are suffering for the benefit of cheap electricity in the United States. It's even worse we're doing all this to ourselves so a few coal company owners can make a quick buck selling off the fruits of hard coal miner labor overseas.

Flickr image credit: Mike Quick