As we reported Monday morning, the Bush administration is on the verge of issuing a rule that will make it even easier for mountaintop-removal mining companies to dump toxic crap in the streams of Appalachia. (They do it now, it's just illegal, albeit never enforced.)
You can read Jeff Biggers for more on why this atrocity needs to be vigorously fought and leave a public comment on the proposed change.
I wanted to pivot off this to make a point I've been meaning to make forever, ever since reading this month-old Reuters story. In it, mining companies whine that if a Va. court ruling -- which said that the Army Corps of Engineers had not taken the Clean Water Act into account when issuing mining permits -- is allowed to stand, the cost of Appalachian coal will soar:
Jim Thompson, editor of industry newsletter Coal & Energy Price Report, said a restrictive ruling would probably drive up costs for any miner with surface operations in Central Appalachia.
He also warned that higher coal prices could lead to increased electricity prices and a potential for brownouts.
Be afraid!
The point I want to make: coal is much more vulnerable than people think. Greens tend to think of Big Coal as an enormous, deeply rooted, heavy lobbying juggernaut. But it isn't -- it's an industry perched precariously on a rotting foundation.
Already, new coal plants are already just barely economically competitive. Grid parity, even given the current skein of perverse subsidies and regulations, is in sight for wind and solar thermal. Here's the difference though: virtually everything that could happen, or is likely to happen, will make coal less economical; the reverse is true for renewables.
Things that could make new coal less attractive:
- carbon regulations or cap-and-trade
- requirements that new plants be IGCC and/or IGCC+CCS
- stronger enforcement of current mining rules
- new mining rules
- strong enforcement of current waste-disposal rules
- new waste-disposal rules
- strong enforcement of current air pollution rules
- new air pollution rules
- rising construction costs
- rising transportation costs
Things that could make solar and wind more attractive:
- carbon regulations or cap-and-trade
- new tax credits or gov't investments
- new state or national RPSs
- economies of scale
- new efficiencies in production/manufacture/installation
- technological advancements
- grid improvements
As Al Gore is fond of saying, the more coal plants we build, the more expensive they get; the more solar plants we build, the cheaper they get.
This is why Big Coal is squawking so loud lately. It is panicking. It's in a delicate position, facing dangers on every side. Its historical moment is almost certainly ending. It is frantically putting off its own denouement.
No reason to stop fighting, but a reason to take some heart that things aren't as bad as they can occasionally look.
Do we need nuclear and coal plants for baseload power?
To unlock wind power, put a price on carbon
Another coal plant bites the dust
Comments
View as Flat
vakibs Posted 9:25 pm
21 Oct 2008
Coal mining is a hazardous occupation, but it is protected by a large network of miner-unions.
People will keep burning coal until they get convinced that doing so is as yucky as open defecation.
If coal is not stopped voluntarily by the will of people, it will never be stopped. None of your fancy windmills or solar mirrors have a chance of shutting down coal plants.
This joke of CCS will never be constructed. It will be prohibitively expensive, and coal plants will never agree to tie that rock round their necks. So whenever we environmentalists speak of coal, we should remember that it is dirty-coal we are up against, and not some clean-coal from imagination-land. Dirty coal is cheap, and thus remain a dangerous opponent on the marketplace.
Let's think in terms of eco-dollars.
Permalink
rsmith02 Posted 6:56 am
22 Oct 2008
Not really. This is what the whole NSR fight is about- old plants aren't cheap when they have to be upgraded and trigger clean air requirements. That's what industry wants to get out of. Sooner or later these 30-50 year old plants have to be rebuilt or retired.
Carbon mandates can also add significant costs, especially if permits are auctioned and the plants aren't grandfathered in.
Capital costs for new coal plants are prohibitive, and IGCC even more so.
Permalink
mwildfire Posted 6:53 am
28 Oct 2008
I think the real risk is that Big Coal will get away with the sleight-of-hand it is attempting to pull off: to crow about how cheap coal is, and how clean it can be IF they use IGCC and CCS, and hope nobody sees that if they do use those things, then it's not cheap anymore. In fact, it's probably more expensive than solar or wind--which have no ongoing fuel costs, an enormous advantage. What the industry hopes to pull off, I think, is to hook in big government subsidies for coal liquefaction plants and relatively modern, relatively clean power plants, and then "discover" that sequestration is not practical after all--but shucks, the plants are already built, and they're too expensive to abandon now...
Permalink