A generation before David Brower started raising hell at the Sierra Club, a similarly militant scientist named Victor Ernest Shelford organized the Ecological Society of America, becoming its first president in 1916. Shelford stepped down from that position when the Ecological Society of America shied away from taking controversial stands. With a small group of other activist scientists, he formed the Committee for the Preservation of Natural Conditions (1917) and later the Ecologists Union (1946) with the objective of taking "direct action" to protect threatened areas.
For Shelford's Ecologists Union, "direct action" meant buying threatened areas. The approach proved wildly popular. Today, the Ecologists Union, renamed the Nature Conservancy, spends hundreds of millions of dollars every year putting land under protected status.
But for all its success, the Nature Conservancy is sitting on the sidelines as the biggest ecological catastrophe in human history -- runaway global warming -- threatens to undo all the progress that the organization has made in its history. That's tragic, because the Nature Conservancy has both the resources and the expertise to make a difference.
Until now, most efforts to stop global warming have targeted greenhouse gas emissions, in particular emissions from coal, the most carbon-intense and abundant fossil fuel. Some groups have stressed the need for carbon capture and storage technology; others have advocated phasing out coal plants. But another approach that deserves attention is to limit coal at the supply end by placing reserves into some kind of trust.
Logically, limiting coal at the source has one big advantage over controlling emissions. In terms of climate change, it's not the yearly releases of carbon dioxide that matter, but rather the ultimate amount of carbon dioxide to accumulate in the atmosphere. Merely slowing down emissions is irrelevant if those emissions end up being released over a longer period.
So why hasn't a "coal conservancy" strategy been developed? One possible reason is that the world's coal reserves may seem too massive for such an approach to make any difference. After all, conventional wisdom holds that the U.S. alone has a "250-year supply of coal." If that's true, then moving some coal reserves into trust status would be a fruitless game of Whack-a-Mole in which industry simply shifted to other locations.
At first glance, official reserve figures confirm the conventional wisdom. Such numbers largely originate from the World Energy Council, which provides the data used by other authorities including the International Energy Agency, the U.S. Energy Information Administration, and British Petroleum's "Statistical Review of World Energy." According to the WEC, the U.S. and Canada indeed have 249.3 billion metric tons of recoverable coal -- approximately a 250-year supply at the U.S.'s current rate of consumption of roughly 1 billion metric tons per year. The rest of the world consumes an additional 4 billion tons per year (China accounts for over half of that) and has another 600 billion metric tons of reserves.
A growing body of evidence, however, suggests that the WEC's estimates of worldwide coal reserves are too high. In 2004, after Germany undertook a close review of its hard coal reserves, official estimates showed an astonishing drop [PDF] from 23 billion tons to 183 million tons, a 99 percent reduction. Similarly, between 1980 and 2004 the United Kingdom reduced its "proved recoverable coal reserves" [PDF] from 45 billion tons to 220 million tons, another 99 percent downgrade.
In 2007, Energy Watch Group, a private research effort initiated by German member of parliament Hans-Josef Fell, completed an analysis of worldwide reserve figures [PDF]. The study concluded that "data quality of coal reserves and resources is poor, both on global and national levels."
A similar conclusion was reported by a blue ribbon panel [PDF] organized under the auspices of the National Research Council and funded by the Office of Surface Mining. The panel concluded that "it is not possible to confirm the often-quoted assertion that there is a sufficient supply of coal for the next 250 years," noting that "the data that are publicly available for such projections are outdated, fragmentary, or inaccurate."
A separate analysis by Cal Tech professor Dave Rutledge, borrowing techniques from peak oil analysis, also concluded that official reserve figures are overstated. Rutledge estimated that actual worldwide reserves are 382 billion metric tons, less than half the 847 billion metric tons figure reported by the World Energy Council.
Some climate activists have worried that reports of lowered reserves could encourage complacency on climate. But the implication of this new analysis is really the opposite. Despite the downward revisions, coal reserves are still large enough to push carbon dioxide levels into the danger zone. What changes with the new analysis is the possibility that taking some portion of reserves off the table could actually make a difference on climate change. In other words, the lower the reserves, the more a coal conservancy starts to make sense.
Currently, scores of coal projects in the United States are stymied due to financing problems, lawsuits, and other hangups. For developers who have assembled a package of coal rights only to be thwarted in developing those rights, a fall-back of "donate the coal, take the tax break, and run" might in some cases be a sensible financial strategy.
Private initiatives to place coal in trust status could also help spur a debate over the appropriate disposition of federal coal, which dominates much of coal production in the West, including the massive Powder River Basin mines that produce 37 percent of the nation's coal. Currently, federal policy encourages coal use by pricing leases very cheaply. From a climate perspective that encouragement is entirely counterproductive, but with the details hidden behind arcane and complex leasing arrangements, the entire issue has remained hidden from view. The attention to reserves that a coal conservancy might generate could lead to a fresh look at federal leasing policy.
A hint at what the federal government could do to protect the climate is shown in Bill Clinton's executive order creating the Grand Staircase-Escalante National Monument in 1996. At the time, few people realized that the area contained 11 billion tons of economically mineable coal, enough to provide a lifetime fuel supply for 165 coal plants of 500 megawatts each. Now this particular deposit of coal can never threaten to tip the planet into runaway warming.
As the recent "drill, baby, drill" hysteria shows, energy price spikes can lead to rapid loosening of environmental standards. One can imagine a time in the coming decades when regions of coal not currently being mined suddenly become the focus of intense development. For that reason, a smart climate protection strategy would involve placing those areas in trust before the pressure to develop them becomes intense.
Is it certain that a coal conservancy would make a difference? Of course not. But trying it would be a vastly safer and cheaper insurance policy than any of the Buck Rogers geoengineering schemes being floated. Strangely, there's no evidence that the approach has been even casually studied by those with the capability to make it happen.
Copenhagen, U.S.A. December 7
Comments
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phanly Posted 11:57 am
19 Nov 2008
For a 1000 year resource where use is growing at 7% per annum the resource is exhausted after about 65 years.
You can prove this yourself with an Excel spreadsheet if you know compounding interest formulae.
In simple terms usage rate doubles every 10 years at 7%. So even ignoring the year by year usage after 10,20,30,40,50,60,70 years at 7% growth the 1000 year resource has to get divided by 2,4,8,16,32,64,128 to determine the remaining life. So if we ignored all use for the first 70 years, then, after 70 years at 7% growth per annum, the 1000 year resource will only last 7.8 years. Once you factor in the actual year on year use, the resource was actually totally used up after about 64 years.
After 40 years, ignoring actual usage, a 250 year resource will only be good for 15.6 more years. Factor in the actual usage and the resource is gone before 40 years.
There is a crisis coming with oil, coal and a host of other resources so we need to replace virtually all our coal and oil fired generation within about 50 years anyway, particularly with the increasing usage of and China, India.
Cheers
Paul
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dobermanmacleod Posted 4:31 pm
19 Nov 2008
"The vast majority of new power stations in China and India will be coal-fired; not "may be coal-fired"; will be. So developing carbon capture and storage technology is not optional, it is literally of the essence." --"Breaking the Climate Deadlock," Tony Blair, June 26, 2008
"(The) coal-dominated energy mix cannot be substantially changed in the near future, thus making the control of greenhouse gas emissions rather difficult," the (Chinese goverment "White") paper said. China is dependent on coal for about two thirds of its energy use, causing it to rise quickly in recent years to now rank alongside the United States as one of the world's top two emitters of greenhouse gases." --"China says coal addiction makes climate change fight hard," AFP, 28 Oct '08
State-owned Coal India Ltd., part of a five-company consortium, is searching for coal mines in the United States, Canada, Australia and Indonesia to satisfy India's sharply rising demand for coal to feed its power plants. India already imports 50 million tons of coal every year, and its demand is projected to grow. --Somini Sengupta, Business Standard, 23 October 2008
Building new coal-power plants in Germany means the country will miss government targets to cut carbon-dioxide emissions, the environmental ministry said, countering earlier claims by Environment Minister Sigmar Gabriel. --Jeremy van Loon, Bloomberg, 17 October 2008
Last month, John Hutton, the former business secretary, told the Labour Party conference that "no coal . . . equals no lights. No power. No future." --Robin Pagnamenta, The Times, 8 October 2008
By the way, controlling those coal-fired emissions by CCS is impractical too:
Vaclav Smil, an energy expert at the University of Manitoba, has estimated that capturing and burying just 10 percent of the carbon dioxide emitted over a year from coal-fire plants at current rates would require moving volumes of compressed carbon dioxide greater than the total annual flow of oil worldwide -- a massive undertaking requiring decades and trillions of dollars. "Beware of the scale," he stressed."
"I'm going to tell you something I probably shouldn't: we may not be able to stop global warming. We need to begin curbing global greenhouse emissions right now, but more than a decade after the signing of the Kyoto Protocol, the world has utterly failed to do so. Unless the geopolitics of global warming change soon, the Hail Mary pass of geoengineering might become our best shot." --Bryan Walsh, Time Magazine, 17 March 2008
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dobermanmacleod Posted 4:49 pm
19 Nov 2008
The world has limitless supplies of coal, most located in nations friendly to the West. But coal is an abomination in the eyes of environmentalists because of its alleged contribution to global warming. Nevertheless, it will be a key ingredient in the world's energy future: India and China between them have 700 plants planned or under construction; the Government has sensibly authorised a new plant in Kent; and European countries plan to build 50 new coal stations in the next five years. --Irwin Stelzer, The Daily Telegraph, 6 August 2008
"A dramatic warning that "all is lost on global warming" unless the world finds a new clean coal technology in the next few years has been made by the UK energy minister, Malcolm Wicks...World demand for coal is projected to rise by 70% by 2030, an average annual rate of 2.2%, and the bulk of the rise will come from India and China. "China is a nation built on coal, so the idea that if we showed some kind of lead and we in Britain say no to coal and China will say 'OK we will follow' is just daft." --"Wicks: All is lost on global warming without clean coal," The Guardian, 8 Aug, '08
Abu Dhabi (largest of the seven UAE emirates) has announced that it will switch to coal-fired power plants. Dubai (the second largest) is already building four of them - with a combined output of 4,000 megawatts - as a first-phase investment in coal. Apart from the United Arab Emirates, Oman (widely regarded as "the next Dubai") has signed a contract with South Korea for the construction of several coal-fired plants. Beyond the Gulf, Egypt proposes to build its first coal-fired plant on the shores of the Red Sea. Russia has announced plans to build more than 30 coal-fired plants by 2011. --Neil Reynolds, The Globe and Mail, 18 July 2008
You know I could continue citing these type of quotes all day. Frankly, if you don't "get it" now, then I give up.
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Biodiversivist Posted 2:22 am
20 Nov 2008
Our government has the legal right to take private property (eminent domain) and our government, for those of you who have not noticed, is controlled largely by corporate interests. Even if you could get the government to declare Virginia mountain tops as sacred places never to be touched we would just see the endless warfare as we do with the ANWR.
It would be better to find technology that makes coal economically uncompetitive, assuming that is possible.
In the end, it all comes down to biodiversity. Poison Darts--Protecting the biodiversity of our world
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Billhook Posted 3:53 am
20 Nov 2008
is rather missing the point.
To gain sufficient political clout to achieve even a marginal effect just within the US, let alone in the other 80% of usage by the rest of the world, would consume massive civil society efforts.
As looming energy shortages bite, any politician trying to maintain those coal reserves' isolation would, quite predictably, be voted out.
Note that Obama, who is keen but practical, has not mentioned this patently unsustainable option.
Were this option to be applied succesfully, its main effect would be to raise world coal prices.
All well and good - say some of the dissidents of the planet's wealthiest state !
And if you're born into a poor country, or are particularly poor within the US - how do you feel about coal and coal-fired power becoming unaffordable ? Or when your child dies in surgery because the hospital has a blackout due to national fuel shortages ?
The point is, surely, that for all nations to co-operate in controlling GHGs effectively, without which we cannot succeed or even survive as a civilization, equity of the means applied is a prerequisite for the negotiations.
A proposal for pricing poor people out of the market is simply a non-starter - quite apart from being of pretty dubious morality.
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AlanMuller Posted 10:44 am
20 Nov 2008
But I'm uncomfortable with The Nature Conservancy as an example of how to do it. This org is infinitely corrupt and self-serving. Does it preserve land? Yes? But it does so by enabling the agendas of the corporations it sucks up to to get the land. A high price to pay and one that helps defeat many other agendas such as reducing pollution.
How about a public-sector program focused on transitioning the miners and the industry, while leaving the coal in the ground.....? Not easy, I know, but there is just no way to finesse this issue....
Alan Muller
Green Delaware
Director
Green Delaware
http://www.greendel.org
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