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Obama Declares Support For 'Clean' Coal
Barack Obama has proclaimed his support for the US coal industry after running mate Joe Biden declared 'no coal plants here in America'
Although it's important to note that the exchange between Biden and the environmental campaigner is not as clear-cut as many reports have made it sound, it is the Obama campaign's response that warrants scrutiny. Barack Obama's campaign yesterday rushed to proclaim his support for "clean coal" technology after remarks by running mate Joe Biden cast doubts on Democratic friendliness to the coal industry.
In a videotaped exchange with an environmental campaigner in Ohio, Biden allowed Republicans to change the subject from the financial gloom that has put John McCain on the defensive this week.
Asked why he and Obama backed the expensive prospect of capturing and storing carbon dioxide emitted from coal-fired power plants, Biden told the campaigner: "We're not supporting clean coal ... No coal plants here in America."
Biden's comments contradict Obama's public promotion of "clean coal" as well as a more controversial scheme to turn coal into liquid fuel.
Environmentalists have chided Obama for supporting those ideas, but Biden's spontaneous remark could do the Democrats greater damage with voters in coal-producing states such as Ohio and Virginia.
"Senator Obama truly is a friend of the coal industry," Rick Boucher, a Democratic congressman from Virginia's coal country, told reporters. "His record ... and his position in terms of the coal industry's future give us confidence."
McCain did not challenge Obama's support for carbon capture and sequestration (CCS) at power plants, which is years from coming to fruition in the US.
But his fellow Republicans unveiled a Coalition to Protect Coal Jobs to accuse Biden of pandering to voters by criticising coal in Ohio while proudly telling Virginians he comes from a line of coal miners.
"[Democrats] are saying one thing in front of a large group, and when they actually are asked their true feelings, that's when we really hear the attacks on coal," Shelley Moore Capito, a Republican congresswoman from West Virginia, told reporters.
The Obama camp responded by condemning McCain for his resistance to renewable energy tax incentives that are slated for approval in Congress this week.
The US solar and wind industries rely on tax credits to continue growing, but those benefits were defeated by one vote last year after McCain withheld his backing.
Though the Republican touts his support for solar and wind power on the campaign trail, McCain voted to block the tax credits because they were paid for by the repeal of tax benefits for oil companies.
McCain has not spoken about this week's renewable-energy plan - which includes more than $1.5bn in new tax credits for CCS - but is considered a likely opponent, given that it also reverses some oil industry incentives.
Jeff Bingaman, chairman of the Senate energy committee, said the solar and wind credits likely would pass without McCain's vote but added that his "voiced opposition to it is obviously a concern".
Of serious concern to some US environmental campaigners is a plank in the clean-energy tax plan that reverses a 30-year-old ban on using government-owned land for private oil shale extraction.
Conservatives have long proposed taking oil shale from the ground in western US states to produce more domestic fuel. Like "clean coal" and coal-to-liquid fuel production, oil shale is still in its infancy and poses significant environmental threats.
"It requires technology we don't currently have," Craig Thompson, a college professor and former president of the Wyoming Wildlife Federation, said.
"It produces a fossil fuel that, at best, may delay by a few years a transition to sustainable energy resources that we're going to have to make anyway in the future."
Obama is generally supportive of the clean-energy tax credits, which were expected to clear the US Senate late yesterday.
24 Comments so far
Show AllWhat is next, Obama supports “clean” toxic waste? Is there anything left to differentiate Obama and McCain?
It is funny how these stories distract us from the candidates that want to clean up the environment isn’t it?
He also supports "safe nuclear power".
Since there is no possibility that we can do without coal as an energy source in the near future, doesn't it make sense to advocate for clean coal tecnology?
Yes, except that clean coal technology is found only in ….science fiction stories.
Wouldn’t it be easier to stop using, what is it?, twenty times more the energy per person than the human average? Combined with using existing clean energy sources?
Well I would say that there are scrubbers and other tecnology that can make coal burning cleaner, especially if we don't use Texas coal.
It would be easier to stop using it. What do you replace it with? Wind and solar won't do it.
Thomas,
Scrubbers only remove the sulfates. This is what causes acid rain. The only way to remove CO2 is to sequester it in underground saline aquifers, under the ocean or in depleted oil wells. Current coal fired electrical generating plants are not configured to do this. Therefore these plants must be retired and no new plants be built that can't sequester the CO2.
The only type of coal plant capable of CO2 sequestration is a combined cycle or Integrated Combined Cycle or IGCC plant. In an IGCC plant the coal is basically cooked so that the impurities like mercury, lead, radioactive radon, sulfates, carbon monoxide and unburned particulates can be captured. The remainder is syngas and this is what is burned. The CO2 is captured, compressed into liquid form and pumped into underground saline aquifers, the ocean floor or old oil wells. Its efficiency is typically 40% which makes it more efficient that old style coal fired generating plants that currently run at 30% efficiency.
The problems with IGCC are that it is expensive and therefore the utility industry will not abide by it until some form of carbon tax is put in place. Carbon sequestration on a large scale is also untested and the first plants to be put online will probably be around just before 2030 which makes it too late to address global warming. It is also not certain that when the CO2 was sequestered underground that it would stay there. The risk of a sudden release of CO2 on a town or city can have devastating consequences as the August 21, 1986 release of CO2 at Lake Nyos in Cameroon demonstrated. Then nearby villages lived near this volcanic lake and on that date released a suffocating invisible cloud of CO2 that killed 1700 people and 3500 live stock. Such would be the risks with IGCC not to mention the almost moot effect on CO2 reduction targets if carbon sequestration doesn't work on the scale that we currently use coal.
It would be far better to increase residential home and office power efficiency first to reduce the use of electricity in order to shutdown these coal fired generating plants. Then we could phase in wind, solar and geothermal to offset the remainder of the shuttered coal plants for electrical generating capacity.
Thanks very much. Now I understand it a bit better.
"It would be far better to increase residential home and office power efficiency first to reduce the use of electricity in order to shutdown these coal fired generating plants. Then we could phase in wind, solar and geothermal to offset the remainder of the shuttered coal plants for electrical generating capacity."
Now that makes perfect sense.
Vast waste here in the US. And the BUSH team eliminated funding for weatherization!
Here's Scientific American's article on moving to a solar/wind/RE grid:
THE GRAND PLAN
http://www.sciam.com/article.cfm?id=a-solar-grand-plan
Great article Fossil Fooled! I skimmed through it and I printed out the rest for more comprehensive reading. Its all here and doable. It just requires political will and we can make that political will happen too.
You were right, see below.
Clean coal -- google some images of what a coal mine looks like and then talk to me about "clean coal". You still have to rape the earth to get the stuff out of the ground (I like how the articles calls them coal "producing" areas - as if it is manufactured). It poisons rivers and the air, destroys huge amounts of forests and areas of critical biomass, and sends men, women and children to early graves BEFORE it is ever even burned. Many indigenous peoples are at risk of losing their ways of life due to the rising demand for "clean coal" (but they are in South America, so I guess Obama doesn't give a ***k.)
Thomas More, if our so called "representatives" really wanted, USA could replace coal and nuclear in 5-10 years. Try putting 700 billion into that idea and see what happens. i will give you a hint (millions of good, living wage jobs; cheaper and much more reliable/decentralized energy prices)--just to name a few...
Replace it with what? I'd certainly be glad to put 700 billion into research in this area. It shouldn't go to bail out bottom feeders.
Here in WV the coal barons routinely spend money pasting "Clean Coal" and other oxymorons on billboards. My favorite is "Carbon Neutral Coal." Of course, there is no such thing as clean coal, especially given current mining practice which is to blow the tops off mountains and push the rubble into the valley, burying streams and destroying wide swaths of some of the USA's most diverse hardwood forests, leaving nothing behind but unstable loose packed moonscape-esque devastation dotted with massive toxic sludge ponds.
I had hoped Obama would be more principled than to pander to the lying coal profiteers who couldn't care less for future life on this planet.
For a reality check take a look at Ohio Valley Environmental Coalition's website and their mountaintop removal photo galleries: http://www.ohvec.org/
END MOUNTAIN TOP REMOVAL NOW ! www.wisecountyissues.com
At this point, I fully expect the next article I read to be "Obama supports McCain".
No matter the number of scrubbers put on, or the use of carbon sequestering, Coal can NEVER be clean. Digging it up from the ground, dumping the slag into rivers and streams and removing the tops of Mountains to get at it, is NOT clean.
Those folks living in West Virgina and finding their drinking water contaminated will hardly argue it "clean coal" that pollutes their supply.
This is just another Orwellian use of the language.
PK
http://www.hempevolution.org/ecology/ecology.htm
There is no reason for us to poison our own planet. Clean energy from Cannabis Hemp would totally solve this problem. Cannabis Hemp does not contain high levels of nitrogen or sulfur. If we burned Cannabis Hemp for electricity and gasoline we would stop releasing sulfur compounds. Because Cannabis Hemp grows very rapidly and is easily harvestable, we could produce all the energy and gasoline we needed from Cannabis Hemp. When that happens, we can start to rebuild our decaying forests and structures without fear that they will be destroyed again.
Obama's plan is pretty clear, and includes:
*Phasing out old style coal plants for more efficient ones and adding CCS.
*Improving and expanding nuclear.
*Using cap and trade to accomplish less fossil fuel use.
*Investing heavily in all types of alternates.
*Investing heavily in conservation, planning and efficiency.
It may not be to everyone's liking, but it beats the heck out of drill, drill, drill!
&YYY&
Efficiency of power usage is going to achieved by making it very expensive. There are no commercial clean coal technologies running anywhere today. FutureGen was scrapped. Far too expensive.
Given the rate of fall of income of the majority of mankind, expecially the incomes people of the Vanity'd States, whose currency, jobs, and prospects are in decline, getting enough food and water will be the main priority. The takeup of sustainable technology is slower than the decline in incomes. So clean coal is an unattainable fantasy. Solar energy power plants can be constructed and made available right now.
Other cheerful news was the discovery of methane pipes bubbling up from the Artic Ocean. If methane continues to increase in the atmosphere, an unstoppable increase in the accelaration of climate change will be noticeable within about a decade from now. Carbon emission reduction will then be achieved by an unwilling reduction in human population and prosperity, in other words, a reversal of Impact = Pop x Affluance x Technology. Technology will reduce partly because of oil and other resource depletions, but mainly because it is expensive. Resource depletion leads to greater expense. Climate catastrophes and destruction will lead to expense.
All conventional statements and policies put fowards by the conventional political bodies of today are rooted in a belief that normality will continue. They are only there to keep us occupied while climate change overcomes us. Obama will not bring change. Unwanted change is already on its way. Human survival will then depend on the peak effects of runaway climate change and their longevity. We have already started it.
I will begin with a statement that I do not agree with Obama on clean coal, or even possibly on Nuclear, but the fact remains that he must have those positions. Of course no one on this site wants clean coal or nuclear because of the environmental issues, and I am right there with all of you. The problem is that we, the Progressives, are a small minority. How many coal and nuclear workers would vote against Obama if we was 100% against those industries? Most of us here tend to speak from a soap box while not truly understanding the politics involved in winning an election.
“I have no doubt that we will be successful in harnessing the sun's energy... If sunbeams were weapons of war, we would have had solar energy centuries ago.”
--Sir George Porter
How many coal workers are there anyway? Coal mining is now done by blowing up a mountain and scooping out the coal with a gigantic machine....very few people involved.
'Clean' Coal sounds like 'No-Radiation' Nuclear Power or 'Non-Oily' Oil...or 'Non-Lethal' Weapons.