Dirty Money
News: As coal plants win the right to burn dirtier and dirtier, the administration is subsidizing coal as the “clean fuel” of the future.
May 26, 2005
|
|
Early in his first term, President George W. Bush attended a roundtable discussion with employers of National Guard and Reservists in Charleston, West Virginia. When the question of energy security came up, Bush, who had been introduced by William B. Raney, president of the West Virginia Coal Association, told the audience, "It is up to all of us to remind folks that we can safely mine coal and we can cleanly burn it with the right technology. We've got to do it, we've got to sell the country on that.”
Well, it seems he has. As analysts predict the price of oil could soon top $100 a barrel, coal -- cheap, abundant and politically powerful in the United States -- is enjoying a huge comeback. More than 100 new coal-fired power plants have been proposed across the country, and the federal government is predicting a 25 percent increase in the amount of U.S. energy derived from coal by 2025. “The coal industry is trying to rush the gates before the United States gets its act together on climate change and regulating carbon emissions,” says Dave Hamilton, director of global warming and energy programs at the Sierra Club. “Even if just 72 new plants are built, the U.S. alone will wipe out half the progress the rest of the world makes through the Kyoto protocols.”
But not to worry, the administration argues: Sure, it's rolled back clean-air regulations, but it’s also proudly promoting a program that will give away billions of dollars to subsidize the development of clean energy. As the President announced with much fanfare in presenting his National Energy Policy in May 17, 2001, "More than half of the electricity generated in America today comes from coal. If we weren't blessed with this natural resource, we would face even greater [energy] shortages and higher prices today. Yet, coal presents an environmental challenge. So our plan funds research into new, clean coal technologies." There’s just one catch: The money isn’t going to wind or solar power. It’s going directly to…. coal. As coal plants win the right to burn dirtier and dirtier, the administration is pitching coal as the “clean fuel” of the future.
In fact, technological advances have made it possible to drastically reduce coal’s toxic emissions—and even the greenhouse gases coal plants spew: Many scientists believe that eventually, virtually all the carbon dioxide emitted at power plants could be captured and stored underground. Even the Bush Administration, while denying that CO2 is harmful, has touted its $1 billion FutureGen plan, which would use public and private money to build a zero-carbon power plant. (The project is still in the early planning stages.)
But the bulk of the $250 million a year the Administration has been handing out in “clean-coal” subsidies doesn’t do anything like that. Most are aimed at getting companies to develop technologies that will reduce sulfur dioxide and nitrogen oxide emissions. And the General Accounting Office, the independent research arm of Congress, has repeatedly found this “Clean Coal Technology Program” wasteful and mismanaged. A 2001 report, for example, found eight clean coal projects suffering “serious delays and financial problems” and two of them in bankruptcy. Subsidized technologies, it reported, had limited potential for widespread use or weren’t economically viable. And of those that were successful, the GAO found they might well have succeeded in the marketplace--without any government assistance.
Perhaps most importantly, the new technologies are doing little to actually “clean” coal. The Energy Department's own evaluations of clean-coal projects have shown that many new "clean coal" technologies are actually 40 percent less effective in removing sulfur dioxide emissions than the more conventional smokestack "scrubbers"—the technology required under the laws the administration has so diligently weakened. Bottom line: Many of the subsidies “have been not just disappointments but abuses,” says John Walke, Clean Air director for the Natural Resources Defense Council, who argues that the most effective way to promote clean coal is to penalize polluters and let the marketplace do the rest.
Indeed, the coal subsidies seem odd for an administration whose hands-off regulatory philosophy relies so heavily on its faith in market forces. Of course, power companies will happily accept government subsidies to make half-baked efforts to come up with new ways of doing what existing technology can already more do more effectively. But new or old, pollution-control technologies cost money -- and the Bush Administration’s regulatory rollbacks – and most importantly, its refusal to regulate carbon dioxide emissions -- have eliminated any incentive for power plants to invest in them.
Daphne Eviatar is a New York-based journalist. Her work has appeared in the New York Times, the New York Times Magazine, Newsweek International, The Nation and other publications. She is a 2005 fellow of the Alicia Patterson Foundation.
Photo: AP/Wideworld Photos
