For two years, a major coal burning utility company, American Electric Power (AEP), has run a pilot program to limit carbon emissions from a coal fired plant using a carbon sequestration technology (i.e., carbon emissions that are pumped underground). The US government has helped foot the bill by paying 50% of AEP’s costs. AEP had intended to convert an existing 31 year old coal burning plant in West Virgina to begin using this carbon sequestration on a larger scale. Now it has canceled the project even though the Federal government is still willing to pay one half of the conversion costs. Why? Well, here’ is what AEP officials are saying — “officially”:
The technology had been heralded as the quickest solution to help the coal industry weather tougher federal limits on greenhouse gas emissions. But Congressional inaction on climate change diminished the incentives that had spurred A.E.P. to take the leap.
The federal Department of Energy had pledged to cover half the cost, but A.E.P. said it was unwilling to spend the remainder in a political climate that had changed strikingly since it began the project.
“We are placing the project on hold until economic and policy conditions create a viable path forward,” said Michael G. Morris, chairman of American Electric Power, based in Columbus, Ohio, one of the largest operators of coal-fired generating plants in the United States. […]
The decision could set back for years efforts to learn how best to capture carbon emissions that result from burning fossil fuels and then inject them deep under-ground to keep them from accumulating in the atmosphere and heating the planet. The procedure, formally known as carbon capture and sequestration or C.C.S., offers the best current technology for taming greenhouse-gas emissions from traditional fuels burned at existing plants.
Shorter corporate coal burning plant owner:
Hey, Republicans control the House so we don’t have to worry about limiting carbon emissions anymore. They don’t believe in Climate Change, and will probably cut any funding making us limit carbon emissions from coal plants anyway, so Nyah, nyah, nah Nyah nyah! Come back in 2013 if you Democrats recapture the House. Excuse me, I gotta take this call from Karl Rove. Something about setting up a direct deposit for contributions to the PAC for his liberty-expanding organization, American Crossroads. It’s all about our freedums baby!
Chalk up another victory for “persons” who’ve always believed that our greatest freedom is the freedom to pollute our environment so said “persons” don’t have ever be held accountable for the consequences of burning fossil fuels, consequences like — oh, I don’t know — extreme weather events, the extinction of sea life including fish people eat, famines caused by droughts and floods, increased spread of diseases, heat waves, sea level rises, wildfires and respiratory problems such as asthma in children, the elderly and those with lungs in general. Bad shit, in other words.
One more item for which we can “thank” the tea party numnuts and their arrogant blowhard-in-chief, Eric Cantor. And it comes just in time for debt-ceiling-pocalypse. By the way, that’s not just me shooting off my big mouth and casting aspersions on all those “patriotic” Republicans. The Obama administration is saying the exact same thing, albeit with somewhat less colorful language:
President Obama spent his first year in office pushing a goal of an 80 percent reduction in climate-altering emissions by 2050, a target that could be met only with widespread adoption of carbon-capture and storage at coal plants around the country. […]
[A]ll such efforts collapsed last year with the Republican takeover of the House and the continuing softness in the economy, which killed any appetite for far-reaching environmental measures.
A senior Obama administration official said that the A.E.P. decision was a direct result of the political stalemate.
“This is what happens when you don’t get a climate bill,” the official said, insisting on anonymity to discuss a corporate decision that had not yet been publicly announced.
Look, I know that this coal sequestration technology (so-called “clean coal”) wasn’t the ideal solution to eliminating carbon emissions from coal fired plants run by corporations like AEP, but it was a helluva lot better than doing nothing whatsoever. We don’t live in an ideal world, and these utilities and the coal mining corporations that provide coal for these plants were not about to suddenly change direction on using coal for making electricity. Nor are renewable energy solutions at the stage yet where they can replace coal plants with clean, non-carbon emitting energy.
So, yes, this decision to abandon “clean coal” is a serious setback for any hope we had of cutting carbon emissions over the next 40 years. We now have to hope that China, Europe or some other country funds the research and provides the venture capital for breakthrough alternative energy technologies, because as long as the Insane Asylum Ward of the GOP has any power to obstruct, delay or destroy the development of Federal/private ventures in America to develop new and cleaner sources of energy we as a nation and as individuals are screwed.*
* As if you didn’t know that already.
About the only effective way to capture or sequestrate carbon emissions arising out of coal burning is to leave the coal in the ground in the first place! It makes no sense to turn carbon into CO2 (by burning) and then try to put the CO2 back into the ground. Clean coal is an oxymoron which probably even a GOPmoron can capture.
About the only way to reduce CO2 emissions sustainably and cost effectively is to generate a wind, solar, and hydro powered network wide enough to overcome local and diurnal variations and intermittencies in power availability – that and smart grids to improve the intermittencies of power demand and the efficiency of power distribution and consumption.
Frank would be fine by me except …
our coal plants aren’t going away anytime soon. I wish they would but if wishes were fishes …
in the meantime, anything that limits carbon emissions in the US is, as I said above, better than nothing.
Often I don’t have anything to add to your posts, but I want to tell you that your posts are the main reason I keep coming back to this site. I like Martin too (often don’t agree with him, especially lately, but like reading his stuff nonetheless) but your posts are well-researched, detailed, and very solid.
Thanks.
Thanks, In appreciate that.
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"But I will not let myself be reduced to silence."In July, the EPA deferred for three years the release of the greenhouse gas rule for all bioenergy or piogenic power sources.
Summary of Public Comments and Responses gives you an idea of who (what corporations) commented and where the issues are.
New Source Review gives the whole regulatory history of the regulation of new power sources.
The Supreme Court has ruled that the regulatory power over greenhouse gases rests with EPA, not the courts, in a suit, American Electric Power v. Connecticut.
The Institute of Southern Studies coverage, Supreme Court unanimously rejects climate lawsuit against power companies provides the background:
The EPA still has the power to regulate greenhouse gases despite the political pressure. And it is plodding its way to a final regulation that will or will not occur in a different political climate depending on what happens in Congressional elections next year.
States that are downwind of coal-fired power plants will continue their pressure. Already acid rain from Ohio Valley power plants has put the Southern Appalachian ecology under stress, including the Great Smoky Mountains National Park. The state of North Carolina, which depends on the tourism industry, will continue to pursue remedies.
Carbon sequestration is an illusion, as most have pointed out, and is only being pursued as a hedging option against renewables not being able to bring costs down. Meanwhile the deployment of renewable energy in the US is proceeding faster than the deployment of other sources. And that might figure into AEP’s decision as well. At some point renewable sources become so attractive that even stick-in-the-mud corporations abandon legacy coal and nuclear plants for wind, solar, and geothermal.
In North Carolina, the Democratic governor Bev Perdue vetoed a bill from the Republican legislature to permit oil drilling off the NC coast in favor of pursuing wind farms, which are less complicated to permit.