In my previous post, I argued that if developing nations refuse to alter their escalating reliance on dirty coal, we're all screwed. If they are willing to consider more expensive (at least in the short-term) options, the question then becomes, which alternatives are fastest, cheapest, most practicable, and most sustainable?
"Clean coal" is one alternative. There are others. If you think China and India should focus emission reduction efforts primarily on cleaning up coal rather than shifting to renewables and efficiency, you need a good argument. You have to explain why clean coal is fastest, cheapest, most practicable, and most sustainable.
Here are some familiar but weak arguments in favor of clean coal:
- China and India have access to a bazillion tons of coal; it's the only fuel plentiful enough to satisfy their rising demand.
Irrelevant. There are virtually infinite amounts of sunlight and wind available; we could not possibly exhaust the energy coming up through the earth's crust; most analysts believe that negawatts could be found as fast as coal plants could be built. The issue is not how much of a particular electricity source is available, but how much electricity produced from that source costs.
- Coal is cheap.
Misleading. Dirty coal is cheap, and only if you exclude externalities from the equation. If you make coal clean -- i.e., add CO2 scrubbers or sequestration facilities -- you make it substantially more expensive. If you price in the externalities, you make it substantially more expensive. If you do both, you make it enormously more expensive. (And to be clear: clean coal is "clean" only vis-à-vis one of its externalities, CO2; other externalities include destruction of landscapes, mining accidents and deaths, particulate air pollution, water pollution, respiratory and nervous system health ailments, and intensive water use.) In short, coal's "cheapness" is an illusion. It might still be true that, externalities excluded, clean coal is less expensive than R&E, but it's never going to be "cheap" like unregulated coal is cheap. All the alternatives to dirty coal are more expensive.
Here are some familiar and plausible arguments in favor of clean coal:
- Sunk costs and inertia.
China and India don't feel like they have any time to waste; they are moving millions of people out of poverty. They know how to mine coal, build coal plants, and hook them up to growing cities. No one yet knows how to industrialize sustainably, with a network of distributed renewable power sources linked via a smart grid to carbon neutral buildings, electric vehicles, and electrified inter-city public transport. Switching over would mean, to use the venerable cliche, rebuilding the ship while it's sailing -- or in China's case, rebuilding the speedboat while it's zipping through the waves ... using an experimental new speedboat plan that no one has proven seaworthy.
- Path of least resistance.
Even if moving to R&E would yield a net economic benefit, it would be more difficult. It's one thing to slap scrubbers onto existing coal plants, or even to build different kinds of coal plants (IGCC). That fits in China's current social, political, and economic arrangements. It does not disturb the basic centralized hub-and-spoke electricity model. Moving to R&E means taking a holistic approach to electricity, diversifying and distributing supply while working aggressively on demand reduction. Such a program would require enormous investment of capital -- not just economic but political and social capital. It's ambitious in a way cleaning coal isn't.
- Political pragmatics.
Just as in America, lots of rich and powerful people in China and India made their fortunes on coal or the cheap power dirty coal provides. Just as in America, they will fight anything that weakens coal's grip on the economy. Just as in America, the path to lower emissions will be much less contentious if it doesn't go over coal's corpse.
- The possibility of carbon negative energy.
If developed and brought to scale, sequestration could serve long past the day when coal finally fades. If attached to biomass facilities burning, say, agricultural waste, CCS could yield carbon-negative power. All the biofuel caveats apply ... but still.
I agree with Jeremy and others that the arguments above, particularly the first two, put the burden of evidence on those who would spurn coal rather than clean it up. Such an enormous disruption of settled development paths requires compelling justification. I'll try to offer at least some of that justification in part three.
Ask Umbra on ditching dirty things
Comments
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justlou Posted 3:52 am
27 Nov 2007
In the US we have not even decided where the Futuregen plant will be built. How many years before it is running and we have the bugs worked out of it? What could we possibly expect out of India and China, two major ecological, demographic and economic basketcases?
Seriously, in dealing with coal, what if anything of any significant importance can be achieved in the next ten years? And realistically, when will it ever be achieved? I just don't see this happening in a world beginning to run short of other resources and teetering on a major economic downturn resulting from the consumer's well running dry at home.
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Sam Wells Posted 4:33 am
27 Nov 2007
The argument seem predicated on the misstatement that CO2 reduction technology is available today. Until it is, hundreds of new coal plants will be constructed each year...
Onward through the fog
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GreenEngineer Posted 4:44 am
27 Nov 2007
It seems that there might be a related argument about what policies the environmental community should endorse, specifically whether "kill coal now" or "no coal that isn't IGCC" is the appropriate position.
Although I hate coal, I favor the second position. First of all, as a more moderate position, it is likely to be perceived as more reasonable, less fringe, and more palatable. So it's more likely to be picked up and endorsed by a broader constituency.
Second, IGCC plants even without sequestration, are expensive, but they are an existing technology that could be scaled up. So building them gives the coal industry a way to continue to sell their product, but puts a much higher price on the electricity thus produced, leveling the playing field for alternatives.
Third, IGCC is much more easily retrofit for CO2 capture and any other effluent control system we might apply in the future.
Fourth, IGCC is much more efficient than any other way of using coal. It is my hope that eventually the Overton Window will shift such that shutting down coal plants is seen as a viable and worthwhile long-term goal. But we have ALOT of existing baseload production from coal, and R&E is going to be a long time scaling up to the point where those plants could be eliminated. If we start building IGCC plants now, then they will provide a future opportunity to shutter the old coals sooner than would otherwise be practical.
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GreenEngineer Posted 4:47 am
27 Nov 2007
If I replace a 30% efficient coal plant with a 60% efficient IGCC plant, or a 90% efficient IGCC + district heating plant, I have effectively reduced my CO2 production, same as if I had reduced my building's energy demand by an equivalent percentage. (We should, of course, do that too.)
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sunflower Posted 4:57 am
27 Nov 2007
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GreenEngineer Posted 5:07 am
27 Nov 2007
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Sean Casten Posted 5:15 am
27 Nov 2007
This is why the whole clean coal discussion is a policy issue rather than "only" an environmental issue. Absent gross distortions of economic logic, it simply doesn't make sense to build a clean coal facility. Notwithstanding the fact that the current system is already rife with gross distortions of economic logic, we really need to focus not on coal vs. gas, but rather whether or not we want to continue providing incentives to behaviors that - but for our regulatory paradigm - are both economically and environmentally irrational.
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GreenEngineer Posted 5:26 am
27 Nov 2007
I'm afraid I don't understand what you mean by this. Could you explain?
At any rate, my assumption is that the price of gas, like oil, is probably going to rise exponentially over the next couple of decades. Coal probably won't, unless we manage to force the industry to internalize all its costs (and at that point, we have won and can go home).
Absent gross distortions of economic logic, it simply doesn't make sense to build a clean coal facility.
What do you mean by a "clean coal" facility? Do you mean IGCC doesn't make sense, or are you applying that statement to the as-yet-unbuilt CO2 sequestering facility?
At any rate, the first three of the four "plausible" arguments presuppose that the gross economic distortions will continue. Which, I'm afraid, may be the political reality.
On the other hand, the possibility of carbon negative power (by burning biomass rather than coal in a carbon-capture facility) is pretty compelling. But highly, highly speculative, I admit.
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Sean Casten Posted 5:44 am
27 Nov 2007
I would also add to your first question that guessing on gas price rising exponentially is a dangerous bet. Gas is certainly volatile, but most of the smart money in the industry isn't betting on long-term movement up or down, if only because so many - from Amaranth to Calpine - have been burned by making bets on gas price movements.
Any clean coal facility doesn't make any economic sense. One with CO2 sequestration makes even less, requiring north of 17 cents/kWh to get satisfactory equity returns due both to higher capex and vastly penalized efficiency for all the parasitics to separate, pressurize and sequester the CO2.
On your last point about the political challenges to change the rules of the game, I am perhaps more optimistic. We had such a massive overbuild of our electric generation and distribution infrastructure in the mid 1900s that we have been able to steadily grow electricity demand without confronting the costs of the 1970s clean air act or effective moratorium on nukes post-3 mile island. This has created the illusion of cheap energy within our current F#(*ed up paradigm, but that illusion is now coming to an end as we exhaust the reserve margin in the system. I personally believe that this gives us a great political incentive to question the paradigm since the sustenance of that paradigm now requires massive increases in energy costs. And as many a regulator knows, if you're the elected official in charge when the energy costs go up, you get fired (see CA and MD for recent examples). Regulators are uniquely receptive right now to folks who tell them that they don't have to approve rate increases on their watch provided that they change some of the rules.
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bookerly Posted 7:23 am
27 Nov 2007
When people give costs, are these based on the United States? What are the components of the costs, and do we know if they apply to developing countries such as India and China? (or other developing countries!)
One advantage that coal has everywhere is a body of experienced people who know how to use it and run it. Do developing countries have the personnel infrastructure they would need for the newer technologies and how would they acquire them if they don't?
Good posting David!
patrick in Beijing
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Sean Casten Posted 8:00 am
27 Nov 2007
So the real question is how long the Chinese will tolerate really dirty coal before pressuring their government to start cleaning up. In the US, that move didn't start until the confluence of Rachel Carson, DDT, burning rivers and other events in the 60s/70s led to the Clean Air Act. Maybe a side benefit of globalization is that the Chinese citizenry push for modernization before a comparable environmental disaster occurs?
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bookerly Posted 2:12 pm
27 Nov 2007
I'm not sure the capital costs here should not be lower, if the parts and materials used in building the plants are made here. If they are imported, you are right.
There are standards, and then there are enforcement mechanisms. China is grappling as much with the second as the first.
Privatizing so many parts of the economy, then watching the growth explode has left many of the mechanisms chasing the growth. We see that in the problems with water cleanup. After a disaster, there are new mechanisms put into place. Beforehand, often times, local officials don't really know how to do this. They either have to copy from outside, or play it by ear, and the results are sometimes good and sometimes poor.
The government has ambitious targets for renewables, but growth is happening at an even greater rate. The Chinese government needs to create ten million new jobs each year (through it's policies, or stand back and allow the market to do so, and it is doing both). And it needs to deal with the poverty and living standards in the countryside and among the millions who have migrated to the cities.
The French just signed agreements to participate in building new nuclear plants. The Japanese to help upgrade technology related to energy conversion and efficiency. America?? I dunno... Seems to be absent from this front.
patrick in Beijing
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rsmith02 Posted 4:18 am
28 Nov 2007
Although I hate coal, I favor the second position. First of all, as a more moderate position, it is likely to be perceived as more reasonable, less fringe, and more palatable. So it's more likely to be picked up and endorsed by a broader constituency."
I would think that kill coal without sequestration is a better way to go. IGCC without storage is not really an improvement over a normal modern coal plant from a carbon perspective and a huge step backwards from natural gas. Emissions performance standards in California and Washington states are a fair way to level the playing field- we don't care what kind of plant you are but you have to emit less than 1100 lbs/MWH of carbon dioxide.
CO2 from IGCC and pulverized coal can both likely be sequestered- the former costs more now and the latter costs more later. From an air emissions standpoint IGCC is preferable, however.
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GreenEngineer Posted 4:29 am
28 Nov 2007
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