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.
