Twitter
StumbleUpon
Facebook
Delicious
Digg
Newsvine
Google
Yahoo
TechnoratiCoal Wins Big in Senate Stimulus Package
CHARLESTON, W.Va. - Coal supporters have managed to tuck more than $4.6 billion in money for the industry into a Senate version of the economic stimulus package.
![[A flock of geese fly past a smokestack at the Jeffery Energy Center coal power plant near Emmitt, Kan. Saturday, Jan. 10, 2009. (AP Photo/Charlie Riedel)]](http://www.commondreams.org/files/article_images/coalpowerplant.jpg "coalpowerplant.jpg")
The Senate Appropriations Committee approved the legislation with several coal projects pushed by Sen. Robert C. Byrd, D-W.Va.
The Senate funding is nearly double the $2.6 billion included in a current House version of the legislation, meant to help boost the sagging economy across the country.
Details were still emerging Tuesday evening, but among the coal provisions outlined in a Byrd news release and a committee statement:
- $2 billion for "near-zero emissions" power plants designed to capture and sequester carbon dioxide.
- $1 billion for the Department of Energy's Clean Coal Power Initiative.
- $1.6 billion for carbon capture at industrial plants.
"Clean, carbon-neutral coal can be a 'green' energy," Byrd said. "As Congress strives to develop a national energy policy that will break our dependence on foreign oil, it is crucial to ensure that coal, burned in more efficient ways, is part of our nation's diverse energy mix for the future." Byrd added, "These investments will help to bolster West Virginia's economic future."
The economic stimulus bill will now be sent to the Senate floor for debate and votes by the full Senate.
Sen. Jay Rockefeller, D-W.Va., has also been working behind the scenes to get as much money as possible into the stimulus package for what supporters call "clean coal" programs.
Last year, Rockefeller managed to get $2.8 billion for the coal industry into the massive Wall Street bailout.
Most of that money was aimed at encouraging power producers to limit greenhouse gas emissions. However, the bill also aimed to promote turning coal into liquid fuel, a move that could double greenhouse gas emissions from vehicle fuels.
During his campaign, President Barack Obama promised to invest $150 billion over 10 years on a variety of energy programs, and to launch public/private partnerships to build five commercial-scale coal-fired power plants that capture carbon dioxide emissions.
However, environmental groups are concerned that Congress will not put tight enough restrictions on "clean coal" projects - requirements that they actually limit their greenhouse gas emissions and do so now, rather than much later. Also, some citizen groups, especially those opposing mountaintop removal in Appalachia, argue there is no such thing as "clean coal," whether greenhouse emissions are captured or not.
10 Comments so far
Show Allbillrowe ... I am in support of development funds to attempt to reduce coal burning pollutants and CO2 emissions. Maybe they can,maybe not, but the potential justifies the effort. In any case, any realistic analysis will show coal burning along with other fossil fuels will be a large part of our energy generation for forseeable future despite the negative effects. gotta be real...
No one wants to hear this but, the only hope for a liveable planet is to leave the coal and the oil in the ground.
Well, that's what WV gets for voting for such coal puppets. Unfortunately, until we allow other technologies capable of producing electricity to actually compete with coal by removing those big government subsidies, all we're gonna get is Big Coal propaganda about coal somehow being the only way to create electricity ! While we're on the subject of electricity, why not just throw in some more porky subsidies for nuclear projects and let's a major energy war between coal and nuclear. And get me some popcorn and beer to go along with the show.
how about something to trap all those mercury emissions?
this whole bullshit 'green' movement only focuses on carbon emissions
without addressing the whole issue.
Oh, boy, here we go again. The Senate-- or Byrd's committee, at the least-- re-establishes itself as the dog that can't be taught new tricks.
"Clean coal" has been a boondoggle and a Chimera for decades, at least since the early 1980s when former Ohio Gov. Richard Celeste, a Democrat, got a $100-million bond issue for clean coal technology. That money disappeared down a rabbit hole of corruption.
As for Sen. Byrd of West Virginia, his state is a third world country despite all the pork he has obtained over the years.
-30-
These schemes to sequester the CO2 from coal burning power plants seems technologically, pretty far-fetched. A large, 2-3 MW coal burning power plant burns almost a half-ton of coal per second. Coal is mostly pure carbon, so this produces about 1.8 tons of CO2 per second. You have to separate this from the stack gases, compress it, sent down a high pressure pipeline it to an appropriate injection wells in a depleted oil/gas fields or saline formations with capacity to handle the production of the plant over a large portion of it's life. Every step of the process is expensive. The job of finding a suitable subsurface reservoir and development of the injection wells, (even if existing old wells can be worked-over), will probably cost much more than the plant itself.
The proposed "Future Gen" demonstration plant for this technology has been a story of exploding cost increases as soon as they moved beyond a basic conceptual design. And this would only be a small 275 mw plant. I was to be funded 76% DOE and 24% industry. When DOE's share reached 1.33 billion, they canceled the project.
So the 2 billion will revive this project - a single, dinky 275 mw plant that probably won't be operating before 2020.
---USAn---
There is and never will be any such thing as "clean" coal.
You can't make the process of burning dirt clean.
It's like saying to your kids, "go wash up in the mud."
"Between the idea
And the reality
Between the motion
And the act
Falls the shadow"
"There is and never will be any such thing as "clean" coal."
Obama disagrees with you.
I am disappointed in Byrd; support of the destruction of land and water can not be good for the people of his state( a national sacrifice zone).