So much for eliminating useless and wasteful programs:

For decades, the coal industry has supported quality high-paying jobs for American workers, and coal has provided an important domestic source of reliable, affordable energy. At the same time, coal-fired power plants are the largest contributor to U.S. greenhouse gas emissions and coal accounts for 40 percent of global emissions. Charting a path toward clean coal is essential to achieving my Administration’s goals of providing clean energy, supporting American jobs, and reducing emissions of carbon pollution. Rapid commercial development and deployment of clean coal technologies, particularly carbon capture and storage (CCS), will help position the United States as a leader in the global clean energy race.

…

To further this work and develop a comprehensive and coordinated Federal strategy to speed the commercial development and deployment of clean coal technologies, I hereby establish an Interagency Task Force on Carbon Capture and Storage (Task Force). You shall each designate a senior official from your respective agency to serve on the Task Force, which shall be Co Chaired by the designees from the Department of Energy and the Environmental Protection Agency.

There is nothing clean about coal. Aside from burning wood or feces, it is literally the most polluting, most dangerous energy source known to man. If the president wanted people to take his fiscal conservatism seriously he wouldn’t pump billions of dollars into the pet project of the coal industry. Further, every dollar spent doing the coal industry’s research into the myth of ‘clean coal’ is a dollar that could have been invested in clean energy research. Obama and his team are making some efforts to speed up the transition to a clean energy economy, while at the same time making other efforts to slow that transition down. It is counterproductive and wasteful, and I’m sure plenty of people in the administration know better. More pandering we can believe in, I guess.

President Obama spoke today at the GOP House Issues Conference. After his remarks, he took questions from several Republican members of Congress. In response to a question from Congresswoman Shelley Moore Capito of West Virginia, the president expanded on his praise of polluting energy sources in this week’s State of the Union Address.

On coal, President Obama said:

“For example, nobody has been a bigger promoter of clean coal technology than I am. Testament to that, I ended up being in a whole bunch of advertisements that you guys saw all the time about investing in ways for us to burn coal more cleanly.”

“We can’t operate the coal industry in the United States as if we’re still in the 1920s or the 1930s or the 1950s. We’ve got to be thinking what does that industry look like in the next hundred years. And it’s going to be different. And that means there’s going to be some transition. And that’s where I think a well-thought-through policy of incentivizing the new while recognizing that there’s going to be a transition process — and we’re not just suddenly putting the old out of business right away — that has to be something that both Republicans and Democrats should be able to embrace.”

On nuclear, President Obama said:

“I’ve said that I’m a promoter of nuclear energy, something that I think over the last three decades has been subject to a lot of partisan wrangling and ideological wrangling. I don’t think it makes sense.”

On energy policy in general, President Obama said:

“So if you look at the ideas that this caucus has, again with respect to energy, I’m for a lot of what you said you are for.”

The full exchange is below.

Update — JW Randolph at the Front Porch blog has the video.

Read the rest of this entry »

ClimateWire:

Three power plants owned by Southern Co. top the list of U.S. coal-fired sources of heat-trapping carbon dioxide emissions, according to rankings released today by an environmental group.

The Atlanta-based utility’s Plant Scherer in Georgia topped the list, emitting about 27 million tons of CO2 annually in 2007, according to the report (pdf) released today by Environment America. The James H. Miller Jr. Plant in Alabama was the No. 2 emitter, followed by Plant Bowen in Georgia.

27 million tons of CO2 in one year. As the chart on page 18 points out, that is the equivalent of about 4.8 million cars. What is that I keep hearing about clean coal?

The report is largely about the fact that most of the power plants in the United States are really really old, and thus, really really dirty. Consider this chart:

Here is the report:

document_gw_03 –

This is not a surprise, but I still don’t like the sound of it:

“The bill I’m trying to craft will be very pro-nuclear,” Mr. Graham offered. “We also have to utilize the coal we have and make it clean coal. I’m trying to combine energy independence with the renaissance of nuclear energy and controlling carbon.”

Well I guess misrepresenting the views of veterans is one way to celebrate Veterans Day. Just a few months after getting busted sending fraudulent letters claiming to be on behalf of veterans groups, the American Coalition for Clean Coal Electricity sent this email to their supporters yesterday:

With Veterans Day around the corner, we wanted to take a moment to reflect on all the military personnel who are involved in ensuring our country is protected.

Energy security is one issue that has become increasingly important to our veterans. In fact, national veterans groups Votevets and Operation Free are urging the government to become more energy independent and less reliant on foreign oil.

We can do this by using the abundant domestic fuels we already have. With more than 250 billion tons of recoverable coal reserves, the United States has more coal than the Middle East has oil.

We need to start putting our coal to use – and technologies such as hybrid-electric cars and cleaner, more efficient power plants are making it easier for us to do that.

One problem, VoteVets and Operation Free are completely at odds with ACCCE. Richard Smith at Vet Voice explains:

VoteVets and Operation FREE are not, have not and will never advocate the continued use of carbon based fuels. Such an action would be completely counter to the work we do, as so called “clean coal” only pushes us closer to inevitable catastrophic climate change and threatens our national security. For the ACCCE to hijack America’s Veterans who are working to ensure secure, clean American energy alternatives while simultaneously claiming to honor us on Veterans Day is an act of despicable hubris.

ACCCE has no shame whatsoever. Kudos to Vote Vets for the bold statement and rapid response on this.

Clean Coal is awesome:

It has been six years since a contractor from Delray Beach brought the black dusty residue to the province of Samaná, and three years since the ash was cleaned up. Several civil lawsuits and criminal cases later, just when everyone thought it was over, the other shoe has dropped.

A civil lawsuit filed Wednesday in Delaware charges that toxic levels of waste dumped at the Arroyo Barril port has made people nearby sick. After years of repeated miscarriages, women whose blood levels show abnormal levels of arsenic are giving birth to babies with cranial deformities, with organs outside their bodies or missing limbs.

…

The ash, a concentrated form of naturally occurring contaminants, is what is left over from burning coal for power. It usually contains arsenic, lead, cadmium, chromium and nickel. But as towns in Tennessee and Maryland clean up massive spills of the substance, the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency is poised to rule on whether it should be classified as hazardous — which would be a tremendous blow to influential power companies that have long lobbied against such a classification.

Learn more about clean coal.

NYT: Energy Firms Deeply Split on Bill to Battle Climate Change.

Nothing especially new here, but it is a shame they give Don Blankenship of Massey Energy the last word.  Blankenship, who never passes up an opportunity to say something stupid, doesn’t disappoint:

“A lot of coal-using utilities seem to be on the wrong side of this issue,” said Don L. Blankenship, the chief executive of Massey Energy, the largest producer of Appalachian coal, who has called climate legislation a hoax and a Ponzi scheme. “How can they be so confident that man is changing the world climate?”

Daniel Weiss of the Center for American Progress makes a point worth considering:

Some supporters of global warming legislation believe that the division in the once-monolithic oil and gas industry, as well as other splits among energy producers, could improve the prospects for the legislation.

“It’s much harder to pass clean-energy legislation when big oil and other energy interests are united in their opposition,” said Daniel J. Weiss, climate policy director at the liberal Center for American Progress. “The companies that recognize the economic benefits in the bill can help bring along their political supporters.”

All in all, a pretty good summary of the state of play, but nothing new.

Talking Points Memo:

The toxic leftovers from burning coal for power are sitting in nearly 600 sites in 35 states, according to a federal survey released Tuesday.Spills have occurred at 34 of those sites over the last decade.

Many of the spills were minor compared with the disaster that occurred at the Tennessee Valley Authority’s power plant in Kingston, Tenn., in December. That spill, which flooded hundreds of acres of land, damaged homes and killed fish in nearby rivers, is not included in the data, although it triggered the EPA’s March request of 61 power companies for information on how they manage coal combustion waste.

The survey is the most comprehensive list to date of coal ash storage sites and includes information submitted by 219 facilities.

Here is a summary of responses to the survey:

survey2 –

Full responses From Electric Utilities to the EPA information request letter can be found here.

Via Sierra Club:

The nation’s third largest utility, Duke Energy has announced it is terminating its membership in the American Coalition for Clean Coal Electricity, citing disagreement over clean energy legislation. “As the debate evolved, it became clear that there were some influential members who would never support climate legislation no matter what,” Duke spokesman Tom Williams told the press this morning. Duke has also withdrawn its membership in the National Association of Manufacturers for similar reasons; the NAM is currently running a misleading ad campaign against clean energy legislation.

In response, Bruce Nilles, Director of the Sierra Club’s Beyond Coal Campaign issued the following statement.

“The revelations from Duke Energy should not be surprising. It is clear that ACCCE does not have the best interests of the American public at heart. Their only goal is to preserve the dirty status quo for coal, and they will do whatever it takes to keep things that way.

“ACCCE’s idea of fixing the clean energy jobs bill is to kill it or weaken it until it becomes ineffective. The front group has actively been fighting the legislation using any means necessary, including contracting with groups with questionable ethical histories and admitted forgery scandals, like Bonner & Associates and astroturf firms like Lincoln Strategies. The defection of Duke Energy is a clear sign that this front group has gone too far—even for energy companies like Duke that are heavily invested in coal and are attempting to build even more polluting coal plants.

“We cannot let groups like ACCCE, NAM or the US Chamber of Commerce hold America back from passing a clean energy jobs bill that will benefit everyone. Our clean energy economy should not be sacrificed to the extreme coal interests. We look forward to seeing whether other companies who consider the public interest part of their mission will resign from or at least condemn groups like ACCCE, the National Association of Manufacturers, and the US Chamber of Commerce for their efforts to kill clean energy jobs.”

Turns out, Duke Energy was not the first company to leave the American Coalition for Clean Coal Electricity.

Pete Altman at NRDC Switchboard makes a great catch:

We noticed that when ACCCE rolled out in April 2008, Alcoa was listed as a major member.Now, Alcoa is nowhere to be found on the ACCCE Web site.

Following up, I sent the following set of questions to an Alcoa communications staffer:

Is Alcoa still a member of the American Coalition for Clean for Electricity?

If not:

- When did you end your membership?
- Did you release a statement?
- Why did you end your membership?

Although, they didn’t respond to the last question, here is Alcoa’s response (via email):

We are no longer a member. We did not issue any statements at the time (a few months ago). We also didn’t announce when we joined.

In addition to Alcoa, three other companies that were originally members (PDF) of ACCCE are no longer listed on the website.

• Express Marine
• FirstEnergy
• Western Farmers Electric Cooperative

I have already heard back from FirstEnergy, which is also no longer a member of ACCCE (via email):

FirstEnergy is not a member of ACCCE. As part of our reorganization in March of 2009 to conserve assets, we cancelled our memberships in several utility coalitions, including ACCCE. No public statement was issued as a result of these membership cancellations.

I am currently seeking verification of the membership status of both Express Marine and the Western Farmers Electric Cooperative.