Legalectric

Like the photo above, the future of IGCC, the future of coal, presents a bleak landscape. IGCC goes down in flames at every turn, but still they persist in promoting it. A new “report” is out, charging ahead despite the overwhelming evidence against IGCC (will download and post directly soon, but it won’t cooperate, so it might be a while):

GLOBAL WARMING AND THE FUTURE OF COAL

And with the report came a dog and pony show with none other than David Hawkins, NRDC, carrying the coal industry’s coal:

The Path to Carbon Capture and Storage

Here’s a blurb from their press release entitled, really, “Using Coal Responsibly:”

Both Berlin and Hawkins underscored the urgency of finding policies that could capture carbon at new coal plants for environmental reasons. Hawkins claimed that by 2030 the emissions from just-planned new coal plants alone could exceed the CO₂ emissions of all human coal use to date by 25 percent.

Ummmmm, hello! That PRESUMES new coal plants. And “finding policies?” Policies don’t capture carbon, people do! Equipment does! And then, it has to do something with it, capturing just doesn’t do it folks, that’s just one third of the “Capture, Transport, Store” story.

And then there’s the cost… by now y’all know I HATE IT WHEN THEY LIE ABOUT COST. Here’s their chart, found on p. 27, and the red is the cost from the record of Mesaba

Here’s the graph of costs taken directly from the Dept. of Commerce’s Amit testimony:

Here’s my summary of the Commerce cost info including estimated transmission and estimated CSS cost:

That Future of Coal p. 27 cost graph… what a load of crap… I’ve asked them to correct their numbers.
Repeat after me: NO NEW COAL PLANTS…

NO NEW COAL PLANTS…

NO NEW COAL PLANTS…

Folks, don’t be worried about the “future of coal.” Don’t waste even one more second thinking and writing about the “future of coal” and don’t waste one speck of ink or one byte on the “future of coal.” How ’bout focusing on the “future of earth” or the “future of humanity.” grrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrr