Read my lips: NO NEW COAL!
September 23rd, 2008
So Obama/Biden and McCain/Palin are in a pissing contest trying to see who can do the most spectacular flip-flop and double talk about coal.
An ABC headline says:
It’s on msnbc too:
… and the article has him praising coal gasification:
“This is yet another false attack from a dishonorable campaign,” said Biden spokesman David Wade. “Sen. McCain knows that Sen. Obama and Sen. Biden support clean coal technology. Sen. Biden’s point is that China is building coal plants with outdated technology every day, and the United States needs to lead by developing clean coal technologies.”
“If Senator McCain is so committed to clean coal,” Wade wondered, “then why hasn’t he joined Senators Obama and Biden in announcing their support for the bipartisan energy proposal before the Senate today that would invest billions in clean coal projects? He should explain why his support for tax breaks for big oil outweighs his support for clean coal.”
Earth to Biden, your state of Delaware knows enough to reject, REJECT, coal gasification, in favor of the first offshore wind project in the US, paired with gas for dispatchability. You can read the PSC Order and the PSC staff report explaining why right here:
So I guess it’s time to send another email to the Obama campaign — Jeff Blodgett, are you listening to this coal crap?
WSJ notices coal in flames
July 25th, 2007
 
Coal continues to go up in flames, proposed coal plants, that is… and given the Wall Street Journal’s noticed, page A1 no less, maybe they’re figuring it out that coal is not acceptable. We’ll keep holding their lumps to the fire.
Here’s the WSJ article:
Coal’s Doubters Block New Wave Of Power Plants
By REBECCA SMITH
Wall Street Journal
July 25, 2007; Page A1
From coast to coast, plans for a new generation of coal-fired power plants are falling by the wayside as states conclude that conventional coal plants are too dirty to build and the cost of cleaner plants is too high.
If significant numbers of new coal plants don’t get built in the U.S. in coming years, it will put pressure on officials to clear the path for other power sources, including nuclear power, or trim the nation’s electricity demand, which is expected to grow 1.8% this year. In a time of rising energy costs, officials also worry about the long-term consequences of their decisions, including higher prices or the potential for shortages.
—-
LUMPS FOR COAL
• Dwindling Fleet: A neew generation of power plants is stalling due to concerns over their fuel: coal.
• Cheap and Dirty: Coal is plentiful in the U.S. but is a major source of emissions that contribute to global warming.
• The Long Term: Blocked plants could prompt power officials to try to quell consumption or advance other sources.
—-
As recently as May, U.S. power companies had announced intentions to build as many as 150 new generating plants fueled by coal, which currently supplies about half the nation’s electricity. One reason for the surge of interest in coal was concern over the higher price of natural gas, which has driven up electricity prices in many places. Coal appeared capable of softening the impact since the U.S. has deep coal reserves and prices are low.
But as plans for this fleet of new coal-powered plants move forward, an increasing number are being canceled or development slowed. Coal plants have come under fire because coal is a big source of carbon dioxide, the main gas blamed for global warming, in a time when climate change has become a hot-button political issue.
An early sign of the changing momentum was contained in the $32 billion private-equity deal earlier this year to buy TXU Corp. To gain support for the deal, the buyers decided to trim eight of 11 coal plants TXU had proposed in Texas. Recent reversals in Florida, North Carolina, Oregon and other states have shown coal’s future prospects are dimming. Nearly two dozen coal projects have been canceled since early 2006, according to the National Energy Technology Laboratory in Pittsburgh, a division of the Department of Energy.
It’s hard to say how many proposed plants will never be built. Some projects suffer public deaths when permits are denied. Many more simply wither away, lost in the multiyear process of obtaining permits, fending off court challenges and garnering financing.
In the wake of the fading coal proposals, and others that are expected to follow, Citigroup downgraded the stocks of coal-mining companies last week, noting that “prophesies of a new wave of coal-fired generation have vaporized.” On Monday, Steve Leer, chief executive of Arch Coal Inc., said some of the power plants he had expected to be built “may get stalled due to the uncertainty over climate concerns.”
For now, coal companies haven’t taken steps to ratchet back production or big projects because of coal-plant delays. They believe that in a time of global energy concerns, U.S. coal supplies will be seen as too important to dismiss. The U.S. has the world’s largest coal reserves and is sometimes called “the Saudi Arabia of coal” by energy-industry observers.
“It would be quite foolish and quite unthinkable not to have coal play an important role,” says investor Wilbur Ross, who has increased his coal holdings and is nonexecutive chairman of International Coal Group Inc. He predicts cleaner-coal technology will improve enough to become viable.
Roadblocks for coal put greater attention on other sources. The U.S. power industry is exploring building more nuclear power plants. But those plans are several years away, and nuclear power currently provides only about a fifth of U.S. needs. Other sources, like wind, don’t provide around-the-clock energy, while solar is relatively expensive and isn’t yet capable of producing large amounts of electricity.
That puts the focus on natural gas. “Gas is the bridge fuel” that will step in if coal stumbles, says Marc Spitzer, a member of the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission, regulator of the nation’s wholesale gas and electricity markets.
Currently, clean-burning gas provides roughly a fifth of the nation’s power needs. But the nation’s gas production has been flat, and other industries are increasingly using it as a fuel or raw material. Mr. Spitzer says that the nation needs more facilities to accept liquefied natural gas, which is gas cooled into a liquid that can be imported from overseas.
The rapid shift away from coal shows how quickly and powerfully environmental concerns, and the costs associated with eradicating them, have changed matters for the power industry. One place where sentiment has swung sharply against coal is Florida. Climate change is getting more attention there because the mean elevation is only 100 feet above sea level, so melting ice caps would eat away at both its Atlantic and Gulf of Mexico coasts.
In mid-July, Florida Gov. Charlie Crist convened a climate-change summit to explore ways the state could improve its environmental profile. In June, he signed into law a bill that authorizes the Florida Public Service Commission to give priority to renewable energy and conservation programs before approving construction of conventional coal-fired power plants.
The law was bolstered by a recent report from the nonprofit American Council for an Energy Efficient Economy that found Florida could reduce its need for electricity from conventional sources, like gas and coal, by 29% within 15 years if it implemented aggressive energy efficiency measures.
On the eve of the governor’s summit, backers of a major power-plant proposal said they would suspend development activities for an 800-megawatt coal-fired plant proposed by four city-owned utilities including the one serving the state capital, Tallahassee. (One megawatt can power 500 to 1,000 homes.) The backers cited environmental issues.
That decision followed the rejection by the utility commission of a proposal by Florida Power & Light Co., a unit of FPL Group Inc., to build a 1,960-megawatt coal plant in Glades County, Fla. The commission found that the plant was cost effective in fewer than half the scenarios examined. One reason for its poor showing is uncertainty about the future cost to curb carbon dioxide pollution. Coal plants emit more than twice as much carbon dioxide per unit of electricity produced as natural-gas-fired plants, but there’s no cheap, easy way to capture and dispose of the greenhouse gas.
Even proposals to build so-called “clean coal” plants have been met with skepticism. This new technology, which primarily involves converting coal into a combustible gas for electricity generation, has been touted as a solution to coal’s global-warming problems.
A hearing judge at the Minnesota Public Utilities Commission is urging commissioners to reject a plan for Northern States Power Co., a unit of Xcel Energy Inc., Minneapolis, to buy about 8% of its electricity from a coal-gasification power plant that was proposed by Excelsior Energy Inc., Minnetonka, Minn. The judge concluded the 600-megawatt Excelsior plant wouldn’t be a good deal for consumers.
The judge concluded it would cost an extra $472.3 million, in 2011 dollars, to make the power plant capable of capturing about 30% of its carbon dioxide emissions, and another $635.4 million to build a pipeline to move the greenhouse gas to the nearest deep geologic storage in Alberta, Canada. Thus, $1.1 billion in pollution controls had the potential to inflate the cost of power coming from the plant by $50 a megawatt hour, making electricity from Excelsior twice as costly as power from many older coal-fired plants that simply vent their carbon dioxide. The recommendation will be considered by the commission on Aug. 2.
In the West, Washington has followed California in prohibiting utilities from entering into arrangements to obtain electricity from plants that aren’t as clean as modern gas-burning plants. The intent is to discourage construction of conventional coal-fired plants anywhere in the region.
In January, Oregon utility regulators blocked PacifiCorp., a unit of Berkshire Hathaway Inc., from a plan to charge Oregon consumers for part of the cost of building new coal plants outside the state, saying Oregonians didn’t need the power.
Even in states where coal projects are going forward, they are happening more often with a nod to environmental concerns. Xcel Energy, through its Public Service of Colorado unit, has agreed to obtain 775 megawatts worth of wind power to supplement the power that will come from a 750 megawatt coal plant it is building near Pueblo, Colo. It also has agreed to install more pollution controls at existing units, and to cut energy demand by more than 300 megawatts in coming years.
“It will change their portfolio in a fundamental way,” says Vickie Patton, senior attorney for environmental group Environmental Defense in Colorado.
Rising construction costs are another reason that the future looks murky for big coal burners. Duke Energy Inc. created a stir eight months ago when it announced that the expected cost of a new twin-unit power plant in North Carolina had ballooned to about $3 billion, up 50% from about 18 months earlier. That run up in cost and other factors compelled the North Carolina Utilities Commission to nix one of the two proposed units.
The coal industry is looking for ways to make its product more palatable. Earlier this week, Peabody Energy and ConocoPhillips said they are exploring the possibility of constructing a coal-gasification plant at a mine in Illinois, Indiana or Kentucky that would convert coal into 50 billion to 70 billion cubic feet of pipeline-quality synthetic gas a year. It said it would have its analysis completed in early 2008. It would be cost competitive at $5 to $6 per million British thermal units, which is less than today’s prices.Â
Walton’s Bill Grant and “low carbon coal”
May 14th, 2007
Bill Grant, Midwest director of the Izaak Walton League, a national conservation organization, had this to say: “We can ignore this reality until it’s too late to avert the worst effects of global warming, or we can lead by example at home and implement low-carbon coal technologies and carbon capture.”
Low-carbon coal? Say what???? Really, I’m not making this up. This was in a Neal St. Anthony STrib column this weekend… I cannot believe. The full article is below. But this is no suprise given that Bill Grant was at the Sawmill in Grand Rapid, ostensibly to speak on “Conservation” per the program, but instead, like the others present, was promoting IGCC – coal gasification near the site Excelsior Energy has proposed for the Mesaba Project:
To let the Izaak Walton League know what you think, click on “CONTACT” at the bottom of their home page… and since that doesn’t work, I guess you’ve got to call STAFF and BOARD OF DIRECTORS. Here’s the contact info for Bill Grant in the Midwest Office:
Izaak Walton League – Midwest Office (MWO)
1619 Dayton Ave Suite 202
St. Paul, MN 55104
(651) 649-1446
To look up your IWLA chapter, CLICK HERE
Neal St. Anthony: ‘Clean coal’ possible, experts say, but needs federal help
By Neal St. Anthony, Star Tribune
Last update: May 11, 2007 – 9:47 PM
Xcel Energy CEO Dick Kelly says the Minnesota-based utility will be a national leader in the pursuit of “clean coal” — including a proposed plant in Colorado that will divert carbon emissions to underground burial. But it’s going to need help.“We’re first going after conservation from residential and business customers because we need to slow the growth in electricity usage,” Kelly said in an interview this week. “Then we’re going after carbon-free sources of energy such as wind, hydro, solar and natural gas. But we’ve got to eventually get to ‘clean coal.’ And we can’t do it alone.”
Kelly’s comments followed the release of a study by a coalition of utilities, state regulators and environmental groups that criticized the federal government’s feeble commitment to the challenge of reducing CO2 emissions from coal, America’s most abundant boiler fuel for power plants.
The report of the Coal Gasification Work Group, shepherded by the nonprofit Great Plains Institute of North Dakota, is significant because it has eight states from the heartland acknowledging the threat of global warming and the importance of U.S. leadership in fixing the problem.
Xcel has pledged several million dollars this year and is looking for other investors in a next-generation Colorado plant of up to 600 megawatts that would use integrated gasification combined cycle technology that can capture 90 percent or more of the CO2 and mercury emissions. The company hopes the technology can be adapted to existing plants.
Boosting efficiency
The “clean-coal” technology uses a chemical process to convert coal into a gas. It is burned in a modified combustion turbine to generate electricity, increasing the efficiency of the plant and reducing emissions. The captured CO2 can be stored underground or piped to depleted oil wells for storage and to aid in the extraction of hard-to-get oil.
A 1970s-vintage gasification plant in North Dakota already is capturing thousands of tons daily of CO2 for injection into an oil field in Saskatchewan, Canada. But integrating the technologies for widespread use is going to require the Bush administration to do more than talk about clean coal, critics say. The Great Plains report said federal spending on related research and development has declined over the past several years.
“Early adopters of these technologies face greater risks, especially with low-rank coals,” said Charlie Bullinger, senior engineer with Great River Energy of Elk River, Minn. “That’s why we’re encouraging an expansion of federal incentives to reduce the risk.”
President Bush has pointed to clean coal as a partial solution to America’s energy issues, including conversion of coal to liquid fuels, and approved some research funding. But the administration has barely acknowledged global warming despite mounting scientific evidence and even calls by industrialists for American leadership in “green technologies.”
Beyond wind and hydro
“We’re doing a lot with wind and some with hydro,” said Mike Gregerson, a retired Xcel engineer who was a technical adviser to the Great Plains group. “Down the road the feds are going to [limit carbon emissions], we feel, but the technology won’t be proven yet.
“The U.S. needs to get going,” he said. “My history in the utility industry says if you encourage the utility industry now, they’ll get to where they need to go.”
Xcel, under Kelly already the largest U.S. seller of wind-generated electricity, has joined with several other leading utilities calling on the industry to lead globally in carbon-avoidance. Kelly said Xcel will need industry and government partners to prove that large-scale coal gasification paired with carbon sequestration can work over the next decade.
“We need to invest in this technology and we can fix this,” said Kelly. “We do need some help from the government.”
Bill Grant, Midwest director of the Izaak Walton League, a national conservation organization, had this to say: “We can ignore this reality until it’s too late to avert the worst effects of global warming, or we can lead by example at home and implement low-carbon coal technologies and carbon capture.”
Neal St. Anthony • 612-673-7144 • nstanthony@startribune.com
Coal is NOT clean
March 1st, 2007
In today’s St. PPP:
Coal-burning power plants are the biggest producers of greenhouse gases that cause global warming. Yet, federal and state governments are funding new coal gasification plants, such as the Mesaba Energy Project in Taconite, Minn. The project proposes to use “clean” coal technology that will have lower CO2 emissions than traditional plants, but there are no good examples to prove that assertion. Gov. Tim Pawlenty has agreed to have the state help fund Mesaba, increasing not just property taxes but also our contribution of greenhouse gases and our exposure to airborne and water pollutants — mercury, sulfur dioxide, soot particles, etc. Water used to cool the plants will eventually be dumped into the Mississippi, from which many of us get our drinking water, and increased particulate matter in the air will exacerbate respiratory conditions. “Clean” coal is antiquated technology gussied up with dubious promises.
MONIQUE DUBOS
Minneapolis
Environmental Groups clash over support for clean coal plants
February 8th, 2007
Here’s a revised version of the other Inside Washington article:
ENVIRONMENTAL GROUPS CLASH OVER SUPPORT FOR CLEAN COAL PLANTS
Date: February 9, 2007 –Environmental groups are split over their stance on power plants that use advanced coal technologies with local environmental groups accusing national groups of supporting integrated gasification combined cycle (IGCC) technology because they recently received grant money to do so. However, the national groups vigorously deny those accusations.
National groups including the Clean Air Task Force (CATF) and the Natural Resources Defense Council (NRDC) last year received first-time grant money from the Chicago-based Joyce Foundation to support clean coal technology with carbon sequestration. The grants marked a shift from traditional money available to environmental groups, which is generally used for litigation and education efforts. That is setting the stage for a potential ideological divide among traditionally aligned environmental organizations, with local groups that oppose all new coal-fired generation levying accusations at the groups that received the grant money.
But CATF and NRDC strongly defend their positions and say they have not changed since winning the Joyce Foundation grants. CATF supports specific IGCC projects in the Midwest, while NRDC does not address individual plants. It opposes conventional coal plants and promotes advanced coal technology as long as it sequesters carbon dioxide (CO2).
IGCC gasifies the coal before burning it, making it easier to capture conventional pollutants and allowing for the potential CO2 sequestration. But because no full-scale IGCC plants have come online, there is much debate over the efficiency and affordability of the power generated from the plants, and whether sequestration is ultimately possible (see related story).
Smaller, local activist organizations and some sources at Greenpeace — all groups that do not receive the Joyce Foundation funding — complain that the national groups are motivated in part by the grant money.
“They are literally getting paid to promote coal gasification,†charges a member of a local environmental group.
A Joyce Foundation source argues that NRDC and CATF’s positions have not changed due to the grants. The foundation began a $7 million initiative in 2005 to push industry to embrace IGCC technology and awarded $3 million in 2006 to environmental groups to specifically promote clean coal technologies. CATF received $787,500 and NRDC got $437,500.
CATF admits carbon capture and storage still has a long way to go to fill in the technology gaps. “It will take eight to 10 years of serious testing on a large scale, but we won’t get there unless we have the CO2 in order to test the formation,†the CATF source says. The goal is to be able to do large-scale CO2 sequestration — on the scale of up to 100 percent of the CO2 from 50 IGCC plants for 50 years — by 2030. The source says the Illinois valley has the potential for that kind of storage.
CATF is supporting proposals by the ERORA Group to build a 770-megawatt (mw) IGCC facility in Illinois.
In an e-mail to an Illinois environmental activist, CATF touts benefits of the proposed IGCC plant there, saying the plant’s design includes “the technology needed to capture CO2. As carbon capture ready plants go, this one is about as ready as you get. To get full CO2 capture, ‘all’ that is needed is a water shift reaction and some turbine modifications, plus equipment to compress the CO2. I use the term ‘all’ with some hesitation because these items are not cheap,†the CATF e-mail says.
Separately, NRDC is not supporting this or any individual plant. NRDC says it pushes for IGCC because of the limited leverage groups have to address proposed coal-fired power plants under the Clean Air Act and that IGCC is a critical component of their overall legal strategy because it is currently the cleanest way to burn coal to produce electricity.
As part of that strategy, NRDC sued EPA last year over a determination that regulators did not need to consider IGCC when conducting best available technology (BACT) reviews for new coal plants. NRDC and EPA recently reached a proposed settlement that would allow — but not require — regulators to consider IGCC as BACT.
The NRDC source notes, “We’re not supporting any particular plant. We’re saying . . . [industry] should use the best available technology.†Additionally, the source notes the group supports a diversified energy mix. “We have never wavered in our support for renewable energy. But at the end of the day, the Clean Air Act offers very little authority to block a plant by arguing a no-build option.â€
IGCC supporters also believe that the technology will also eventually allow for the capture and sequestration of CO2, which they consider a necessary step to tackle global warming.
But Greenpeace and the local groups point out that geologic storage of CO2 is a complete unknown. NRDC and CATF “say this is good because we can capture carbon, but the analysis of the cost of sequestration is such that nobody would do it,†says a source with Valley Watch, a Midwest environmental group.
Instead, these groups are urging that new generation be shifted away from coal and that resources be used to develop wind and solar generation as well as to modernize the electricity grid.
But an industry source says the no-coal position is not viable or realistic because coal is safe and abundant. However, the source is also skeptical about IGCC’s viability.
Source: Inside EPA via InsideEPA.com
Date: February 9, 2007
Issue: Vol. 28, No. 6
© Inside Washington Publishers