New study details industry commitment to CCT

People ask me all the time, “How much money has the utility industry actually spent to deploy clean coal technologies and reduce emissions?”

According to a new study, the answer is $90 billion since 1990.

This huge expenditure in emission-reduction technologies has made today’s coal-based generating fleet 77 percent cleaner than it was in 1970, in terms of emissions currently regulated under existing Clean Air Act programs per unit of energy produced. At the same time, prices for making electricity from coal have remained stable at about a third of the cost of other base load fuels. Put simply, despite the vast sum the industry has spent on advanced technologies, the price of coal-generated electricity has remained steady.

These findings provide great hope for the future, and should help ease worries that deployment of carbon capture technologies will cause consumer electricity prices to skyrocket.

ACCCE CEO Steve Miller sums it up nicely: “This report conclusively shows that given realistic timeframes technology can solve our environmental challenges without negatively impacting consumers and the economy.”

Comments

[Drake]

How can the industry commit to something that doesn't exist? This seems like yet another smoke and mirrors, delay and obfuscate at all costs tactic by an industry deeply vested in the status quo.

Even if this were a viable technological research program (which is heavily disputed), its fruition is 15-20 years off. So, in the meantime, let's scale down brown power and scale up green.

[Peace]

Yes, but can you tell me just how many mountain tops you have decimated, and how many streams were filled since 1970?

[Stephen King]

Well, there is some truth here about almost anything being done in time, but the current 'clean' coal technology is very misleading. The truth is that many pollutants are removed from the coal before it is burned and from the final exhaust from burning that “clean” coal, but these by products (pollutants) just don't disappear.

The real truth is that they are stored elsewhere. They are a very dangerous and are in enormous volumes of toxic waste. It seems we can't do anything but store them. Talk about passing a big responsibility on to the next generations, this is truly a nasty one. How nasty? Just do a search on the Tennessee coal ash spill that happened in December 2008 – nasty, very dirty, and this is “clean coal?”

There is only one way to make coal truly clean - stop using coal!

Plus, we have to stop the construction of any coal burning power plants or other items (ships, etc,) no matter how close to completion they might be. If able, convert what we can to natural gas.

These steps will cost us a bit more now but the savings (money, environment, lives, etc.) for the future is well worth any additional costs today.

Please go to the site www.thisisreality.org and get more facts on what “clean” coal really is.

S. King

PS – and those how don’t believe in global warming being affected by man – I tend to agree in many ways but the real issue here is we have to stop using coal just to lessen the amount of pollution man makes. It may not increase warming but it does harm the world we live in – and that’s a fact, not a spin or misleading, just a plain and simple fact that we can do something good about.

[Monica from ACCCE]

Stephen King: We both know that energy is way more complex than that. In its 2007 Carbon Sequestration Atlas, the National Energy Technology Laboratory reported that North America has enough storage capacity at our current rate of production for more than 900 years worth of carbon dioxide. Also, we don't just have to put CO2 in the ground -- it can be injected into tanks of alternative fuel source algae.

Also, the U.S. Department of Energy found that generating electricity in 2025 using carbon-capture technology will be equal to today’s cost of new power generation without carbon capture. Read the study here.

And lastly, I want to remind you that we rely on coal today (about half of our electricity is produced by coal), and we’re going to need to rely on coal for the foreseeable future, both here in the U.S. and around the world.

[Monica from ACCCE]

Drake: This is an opinion, not a fact. During the America’s Power Factuality Tour, we’ve been traveling around the country talking to the people who are behind the production of cleaner electricity from coal. The second leg of our trip brought us to the Harriman Dispatching Center in Omaha, Neb., where 800 employees work around the clock to ensure smooth operations of Union Pacific’s entire operation. We also toured the Union Pacific Railroad Museum and got the scoop on America’s transportation history.

While our use of coal dates back decades, today’s operations and technologies are anything but dated. You can see for yourself—the 2009 Factuality Tour includes photos, videos and interviews of the people, places and technologies behind coal-based electricity. Factuality Tour

So in the meanwhile, we’re still going to need to rely on coal for the foreseeable future, both here in the U.S. and around the world. Clean coal technology research is going on all across the country. See for yourself here.

[Leonard]

The coal institute is remiss in its failure to fund various meteorological studies, such as Vortex 2 which is now being carried out. Long term meteorology is climatology, and since meteorology is not a developed science in the sense that one can control weather, or even predict it for more than very short term, any claim to knowing much of anything of climatology is totally illogical. For instance, it is just as likely that the warming of various areas causes the release of CO2 as it is caused by CO2. But the study of desertification, water runoff, the jet stream behavior, etc. are beyond the CO2/global warmists. As is the ultimate use of so-called renewables being counterproductive , speaking both economically and energy-wise

[Monica from ACCCE]

Leonard: Whoa, whoa, whoa! Before we delve into the world of meteorological studies, the coal industry has to take care of getting research and funding for clean coal technology first. With the right investments in technology, we can reduce greenhouse gas emissions and make the science of climate change irrelevant.