so-called clean coal

Debate: Roberts v. ‘clean coal’ flack Joe Lucas

In early April, the excellent investigative journalism show NOW on PBS ran an episode called “Can Coal be Earth-Friendly?“ In conjunction with the episode, NOW hosted an online debate between me and Joe Lucas, spokesflack for the American Coalition for Clean Coal Electricity (ACCCE). We were given a series of five questions. We each answered […]

Undecided reps on House panel hold key to climate bill

The authors of the House climate and energy bill will be courting undecideds over the next couple of weeks as they try to get their legislation passed by the House Energy and Environment Subcommittee. Reps. Henry Waxman (D-Calif.) and Ed Markey (D-Mass.) want to make these potential swing voters happy while preserving the integrity of […]

No ‘renewable’ nukes and coal for Indiana

Indiana renewable package: No can do.Photo: JayskIndiana lawmakers finished their legislative session Wednesday without passing a renewable electricity standard, which might be just as well. This was the plan that would have defined “renewable” so as to include “clean coal” and nuclear energy (as reported earlier on Grist). The plan would have required utilities in […]

Steven Chu doesn’t talk in sound bites

My oh my, how times have changed. For eight years, Washington was run by a crew that seemed to take delight in not sounding brainy, in being plain-spoken and “common-sensical.” Time after time, you’d see reporters banging their heads against the wall when President Bush or his minions would answer complex questions with non-answer answers […]

Indiana bill would define clean coal and nuclear energy as ‘renewable’

Indiana’s statehouse.Flickr: mattindy77The Indiana lawmakers are considering legislation that would define “clean coal” and nuclear-generated electricity as renewable energy. They’re also mulling bills that would define John “Cougar” Mellencamp as a jazz musician and categorize the pork tenderloin sandwich as a vegetable. Seriously, the energy change, being debated as part of a set of changes […]

The latest deceptive ad from the ‘clean’ coal front

The latest ad from the American Coalition for Clean Coal Electricity. Note that they don’t even bother mentioning the “clean” part until the logo at the very end.

Smart infrastructure, courts v. coal, and energy efficiency all over

• The Wall Street Journal has a long and fascinating piece that expands the "smart" conversation beyond the grid to discuss smart infrastructure generally, including smart transportation and smart water infrastructure. Turns out information technology can help out all sorts of places!

• Largely unnoticed by the media, EarthJustice won a big victory in court recently:

A federal court has ruled that the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency must close a loophole that -- for more than 25 years -- has made it easy for mining companies, coal ash dumps, and a host of other polluting industries to skip out on costly cleanups by declaring bankruptcy. The case concerned EPA's failure to issue "financial assurances" standards that ensure that polluting industries will always remain financially able to clean up dangerous spills and other contaminated sites.

• Homebuyers are starting to specifically request green, energy-saving features.

• PBS recently did an excellent hour-long documentary on "clean coal" called Dark Energy: The Clean Coal Controversy. You can watch the whole thing online at the linked site.

• This is pretty cool: the first zero-emission research station in the Arctic. Nice video:

FutureGen was 'nothing more than a public relations ploy,' House study finds

In a stunning new report [PDF], two House Committees demonstrate that the Bush administration was never serious about FutureGen NeverGen, the "centerpiece" of its effort to develop "clean coal" technology. Turns out centerpieces are largely decorative.

Climate Progress has previously documented that the coal industry itself has never taken seriously the development of the one technology that could save the industry from extinction in the face of humanity's urgent need slash CO2 emissions sharply and avoid its own self-destruction [see here].

Now we learn the same was true of the Bush Administration. We learn that they killed FutureGen even after Department of Energy staff explained the implications: "affordable coal fueled CCS plants would be delayed at least 10 years" deferring "widespread deployment of CCS" until after 2030.

That means the whole "clean coal" or carbon capture and storage (CCS) effort of the past decade was an intentional fraud by all parties concerned -- and nobody should be allowed to use the absence of demonstrated CCS technology today as an excuse for weakening near-term CO2 targets or for giving the coal industry another decade to (fatally) delay serious climate action.

As the shocking House press release reveals:

In an effort to kill the FutureGen project, top officials at the Department of Energy knowingly used inaccurate project cost figures and promoted an alternative plan that career staff repeatedly warned them would not work, according to a majority staff report to Science and Technology Committee Chairman Bart Gordon (D-TN) and Investigations and Oversight Subcommittee Chairman Brad Miller (D-NC).

FutureGen was a highly-touted initiative announced by President George W. Bush in February of 2003 to demonstrate that coal could be changed from an environmentally challenging energy resource into an environmentally benign one by sequestering carbon dioxide emissions and eliminating other pollutants.... It would have been the first plant of this type in the world. But in January of 2008, former Energy Secretary Samuel Bodman pulled the plug on the project, reconfiguring it as a privately funded initiative with limited government subsidies. To date, nothing has come of this new initiative.

"To knowingly abandon a program that held out the hope of making a real impact in the effort to reduce greenhouse gases from coal in favor of another program that held out no hope at all-not commercially and not to provide technological innovation to capture and sequester carbon-is inexcusable," said Gordon. "All we have to show for 'Plan B' is lost time and an abandoned global leadership role."

"DOE officials knew that they were manipulating the numbers, and that the 'restructured' FutureGen would not accomplish what had been planned, but they went ahead anyway," said Subcommittee Chairman Miller. "In the process, they lost the participation of China and India, which are some of the largest users of coal in the world. The damage to U.S. leadership on "clean coal" technology, and climate change generally, cannot be overstated."

I had thought, like many others, that the Bush administration was simply incompetent in its management of the program (see here). But this wasn't benign neglect, it was malign neglect.

The entire report [PDF] is worth reading if you can stomach the Administration's audacity (of hopelessness), but let me pull out some of the highlights:

‘Clean coal’ flack won’t say whether coal contributes to global warming

CNN aired a segment on Wednesday morning on the “clean coal” debate. Highlights include commentary from Sierra Club coal guy Bruce Nilles, footage from the big Capitol Power Plant protest on Monday, and a clip of the Coen brothers ad that debunks the notion of “clean coal.” But the real treat is Joe Lucas, vice […]