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'Clean Coal' Bottom Feeders: Chu Hands Out $1 Billion in Big Coal Welfare, Durbin Hands Out Cigars
The demise of the climate and clean energy bill be damned! Welcome to Meredosia, Illinois, catfish capital of the world!
And now, home to the next installment of bottom-feeding Big Coal welfare -- a check for nearly $1 billion to retrofit a decrepit old plant from Energy Secretary Steven Chu for FutureGen 2.0, our nation's scandalous "clean coal" boondoggle.
As his prairie state's schools go down the drain in the current budget crisis, US Sen. Dick Durbin (D-IL) is passing out cigars for the welfare check, and ludicrously claiming that FutureGen 2.0 will create more than 30,000 jobs in the next ten years.
30,000 jobs in ten years? Why does the normally liberal Democrat Durbin turn into such a snake oil salesman when it comes to dirty coal?
Here's a reality check: Durbin admits that this new boondoggle version of the completely illusory FutureGen carbon capture and storage chimera will result in only 700 construction jobs and 50 permanent jobs.
Wow, $1 billion for 700 construction jobs and 50 long-term jobs -- most likely for out-of-state job seekers? Durbin just needs to stand at the entrance of the nearby Peabody coal-fired plant -- the Prairie State Energy Campus -- and check out the employee license plates (transients from Missouri, Texas, Wyoming). This $4.4 billion boondoggle of a coal-fired plant will spew 12 million tons of CO2 when it is completed, and raise local electricity rates.
And for a prohibitively expensive "clean coal" experimental plant that everyone knows will not be commercially viable for decades -- and still result in increased devastating coal mining?
With or without oxy-combustion or the most fanciful of "clean coal" technologies, the reality is that coal will continue to kill--over 1,000 coal miners still die annually from black lung disease. Coal slurry continues to poison community watersheds; coal ash dumps remain toxic time bombs; and strip mining and mountaintop removal operations continue to lead to the largest forced displacement of American citizens since the 19th century.
Even in Durbin's Illinois corn fields, American farmers are losing their fertile farm lands and their historic farm homesteads to longwall mining.
In truth, FutureGen 2.0 is just the new scheme in the long-time FutureGen soap opera; instead of completely capturing carbon dioxide emissions by turning coal into hyrdrocarbon gas, the next plan is to feed oxygen and burn coal into pure CO2, pipe that 170 miles across the corn fields to Mattoon, and then bury it into leaky storage holes.
Even Council on Environmental Quality chief Nancy Sutley had to make a quip about the stark lack of reality when it comes to "clean coal" sloganeering at last month's National Environmental Justice Advisory Committee (NEJAC).
And Secretary Chu -- what about that $1.4 billion down payment check for "clean coal" jingles in Mattoon, Illinois last year? Gone fishing?
Meanwhile, Peabody Energy, one of the FutureGen welfare queens, just experienced the death of another coal miner in Illinois in a violation-ridden mine -- and they just announced Peabody's launch of the world's largest strip mines in Mongolia... to solve world poverty.
Talk about bottom-feeding snake oil salesmen.
Oh, my dear friend Sen. Dick Durbin: When are we going to be in the forefront of the clean energy movement and truly jumpstart our impoverished coalfield and rural community economies with sustainable green jobs and industries?
When will the Big Coal welfare ever end?
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14 Comments so far
Show AllWhen will the Big Coal welfare ever end?
When the demand for its replacement goes high enough. We have nuclear energy and then there's solar and wind. Which replacement can replace coal? The wind's pretty good out here in MN but we have plenty of sunny days too. Try them all?
Shawn,
It will end when enough attention is paid to, and resources assigned to developing a cheap, clean alternative to coal-based electricity--
http://vortexengine.ca
Nothing but this technology will be able to stop King CONG (Coal, Oil, Nuclear, Gas) anytime soon.
That is an interesting idea. Nevertheless, solar and wind are known, commercially available technologies satisfying approximately 30 percent of electrical demand in Germany and Spain, countries that have made the investment.
What we lack is not 'newer,' cleaner technologies, but the political intelligence and will to break the chains of political corruption which runs this corporate kingdom.
At least I can put solar panels on my house. I can't put a vortex engine in my backyard.
That is an interesting idea. Nevertheless, solar and wind are known, commercially available technologies satisfying approximately 30 percent of electrical demand in Germany and Spain, countries that have made the investment.
What we lack is not 'newer,' cleaner technologies, but the political intelligence and will to break the chains of political corruption which runs this corporate kingdom.
At least I can put solar panels on my house. I can't put a vortex engine in my backyard.
No, not in one back yard, but a relatively small community of say 5,000 could put it in their's. In West Virginia, where the mountaintop removal occurs, mining could be stopped altogether, and AVEs built on one or more of the "flattened" mountains. The resultant power could be exported directly to east coast cities. The AVEs could be plugged in to the existing grid, or new transmission capacity could be built.
The investment per KW of capacity would be about 25% of what a "clean-coal" plant would cost--even less when figuring in "clean coal's" CO2 transportation and storage costs.
Don't get me wrong. I think Jeff Biggers is trying to do an extremely difficult and vital service for humanity.
Mr. Biggers asks "Why does the normally liberal Democrat Durbin turn into such a snake oil salesman when it comes to dirty coal?"
If Jeff Biggers can't see that it is NOT a case of Durbin turning into something he has not always been (despite Durbin's typical "liberal" play-acting), that is - primarily a corporate tool (which Durbin openly admitted on Bill Moyer's Journal and people mistakenly assumed it was an expression of outrage), then Mr. Biggers needs to seriously re-evaluate his own inability to see the democrats as a whole for what they are.
The democrats are almost entirely the republican's enablers.
Just because the Cyclops is right-handed does not mean you should not watch out for its left hand.
Please remove the blinders (made of sentimentality) from your eyes.
Welcome to politics and the actions of multi-headed blood suckers.
This is stupid and criminal. Here's why:
As Jeff Biggers points out, we are talking only 700 construction jobs and 50 long-term jobs - after paying out a billion dollars. The possibilities of what can be done with a billion dollars should involve something more sensible - and that should have been elementary, if jobs were a primary consideration.
More than that, according to the Bloomberg story cited here (linked),
"The FutureGen 2.0 project will revamp a 200-megawatt unit at Ameren’s plant in Meredosia, Illinois".
So, what would be the difference in emissions between this "FutureGen 2.0 project" and that from the existing plant? It cannot be more than 50% (for the sake of argument), and coal power plants are among the biggest emitters of CO2 per kWh of electricity delivered.
The same reduction in emissions (or better) should be possible to obtain through conservation (increasing efficiencies of appliances, buildings, etc.) or through renewable power or a combination. But doing it this way adds to the momentum of transition, whereas throwing money at retrofitting a coal power plant (and calling it a 2.0 project! yeah, right!) is regressive. Instead of retrofitting, the focus should have been on replacing this 200-MW through conservation and renewable power, even if the latter would cost a bit more. But this kind of a distortion of priorities is a direct result of capitalist vested interests (that won't hesitate to take money from the government, while calling everybody else a socialist).
Demand side management - focusing on conservation, so as to reduce the demand - is receiving so little attention, even here on CD. It's like trying to keep a leaky tank topped up using a new hose, or multiple new hoses, instead of trying to plug the leaks first. A great deal of the existing demand can be pruned down, so that renewable energy can meet an increasing share of the overall demand. It would be insane to build ***additional*** renewable energy capacity to keep on powering wasteful consumption.
nero plays
rome burns
"Clean Coal" doesn't exist.
The real problem here is the assumption that the federal gov't can actually "fix" problems.
Comments about what $1 bilion could really do reflect that concept that if we just spent smarter it would be OK.
I don't think the gov't has "spent smarter" since the 1930's and that was not always the case even then. Once the pattern is established all the logic falls and is replaced by "where's mine?" or, in the case of bureaucrats and congress critters, "how can I help my friends and feel like a big shot with other people's money?".
>>cassandra wrote: Comments about what $1 bilion could really do reflect that concept that if we just spent smarter it would be OK.
You haven't said why it is impossible to spend smarter. Other countries have done it.
Alcyon: I don't know why we can't spend smarter. But we don't. Our system is completely dysfunctional and that's what we have to deal with. Pouring more money into this cess pool is simply foolish.
My suppositions of why--the propaganda here has been enormous. Peole have been dumbed down, tricked out and tribalized. The media tells people what to think. I just saw a piece of DW TV news (German newscast in English) In Germany it is considered shameful to be in debt and indicates weakness of character. Germans, in total, own 27 million credit cards for 82 million people; we have 576(596?) million cards. Here we laugh at and punish savers. (punish with the lowest interest rates in history, desparately trying to force those savings into consumption or the stock market.) The ruling elite DOES NOT WANT money invested in us.
Cough, cough, cough... excuse me, we are having ANOTHER "code orange " air quality day, another record setting "heat advisory day" and another coal plant being built nearby.There is nothing clean about any aspect of coal!! From mountain top Removal to the "coal ash waste ponds", this hydrocarbon is public enemy #1!!! Please come to DC 9/18- 9/20 and show your disgust for current coal policies. visit www.appalachiarising.org for more details.