Plans for coal’s end have holes

By The News Virginian Staff

Published: November 18, 2008

Coal’s enemies, like Orcs bound for Gondor, are on the march. The state Commission on Climate Change has prepared a list of 100 recommendations for Gov. Timothy M. Kaine that, among other things, seek to end coal-fired power plants as now we know them, with the larger goal of slashing carbon emissions by 80 percent by 2050. Carbons warm Earth, some scientists say. Some attempts to halt that trend melt the mind.

There are rubs, and they are legion. First, and this is something environmentalists would prefer to forget, America happens to possess large supplies of coal, enough to last 250 years, according to federal estimates. Coal also is relatively inexpensive compared to, say, natural gas, the cost of which is steadily rising as demands surge past supply.

There are some 150 coal-fired plants nationwide and others planned or under construction. Environmentalists would prefer that number to be dramatically reduced. Zero sounds good. Except that the energy those facilities provide would have to come from somewhere else, and replacements would not come with a snap of the fingers.

Had those of radical mind more fully gained sway over Kaine’s commission, new coal plants in the commonwealth would have been prohibited until at least 2020, when it is hoped technology could be sufficiently developed to capture and store carbons. The bid to ban failed by a solitary vote, that one cast by commission Chairman L. Preston Bryant, Kaine’s secretary of natural resources.

Here, Bryant introduced by deciding vote the kind of reason some environmentalists disdain. Flaws cling like moss to the concept known to many as clean coal. Among the rages is a technology that turns coal to gas. This idea has promise – it is, for example, more adaptable to carbon capture – but it also has drawbacks. Coal gasification plants cost as much as 20 percent more to build than conventional pulverized coal plants. And industry experts say coal-to-gas technology is less reliable.

Retrofitting pulverized coal plants with carbon capture equipment is another option, except that some people – including researchers at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology – think it is not an option in the sense that matters, that of practicality.

“There is no operational experience with carbon capture from coal plants and certainly not with an integrated sequestration operation,” MIT said in a 192-page report released last year. “Given the technical uncertainty and the current absence of a carbon charge, there is no economic incentive for private firms to undertake such projects.”

Translation: Why spend money on this when we’re not even sure it will work?

Of course, there’s another niggling problem: Once captured, the carbon must be stored. But where to go with millions of barrels of carbon dioxide? And what of the environmental impact?

What to do about coal’s carbon problem is a question well worth asking. But the emissions cap the governor’s commission suggests provides not the incentive it intends, at least ostensibly, but another quandary, this dilemma a false one: What to do without coal?

MIT concluded that for the foreseeable future we cannot do without it. Coal’s rich supply and affordability make it a necessity as a power generator. Attempting by regulatory fiat to drive coal into oblivion – as some environmentalists and their political allies intend – would only cost energy producers and consumers more money at a time when that supply is greatly diminished already.