Last week I attended the Ceres Conference in Boston, where environmentalists, investors and corporations came together to discuss topics related to the intersection of green issues and business. One of the most interesting panels I attended was titled The Coal Conundrum: Too Abundant to Ignore, or Too Risky to Pursue?

The panel consisted of five speakers and included representatives from Sierra Club, Bank of America, and Powerspan (a company that develops clean coal technology). Discussion centered on the carbon dioxide emissions of coal-fired power plants, whether emissions could be economically reduced by “clean coal” technology or sequestration, and the probability and impact of a federal cap on emissions. Here are some of my thoughts on the seminar:

Based on its large worldwide reserves, coal is the single fossil fuel that could push the world over the edge into an era of unstable climate all by itself. But for electric utilities eyeing the construction of new coal-fired power plants, the promise of carbon sequestration technology is considered the solution to climate concerns and used to pacify opposition, in order to move full steam ahead with construction plans. Yet the main US carbon sequestration project – FutureGen – has been abandoned by the US Department of Energy due to enormous cost overruns.

General sentiment from the seminar was that pilot projects are good, because they show whether these technologies can be viable, but such projects have so far only proved the difficulty (both logistically and financially) of making coal clean. Therefore, utilities that move ahead with coal plants because of the seemingly inexpensive cost are betting their future on a hope and prayer that major innovations occur within a few short years. Not only are the costs of emissions compliance going to be steep, but the cost of constructing new coal-fired plants has tripled in the last decade. Financiers of coal activities – including Bank of America – are re-evaluating their exposure to coal because of these increased financial risks.

It wasn’t until the end of the seminar that someone commented on the front-end impact of coal – the process of extracted it and transporting it to electric generating facilities. Even if a viable way to harness coal power with minimal emissions is developed, coal mining has its own problems. The long term damage caused by strip mining and mountain top removal has displaced thousands of people, buried thousands of miles of streams under mine rubble, led to extensive flooding, and increased air pollution. These effects must also be addressed if coal can ever be called “clean.”

This entry was posted on Thursday, May 8th, 2008 at 2:30 pm and is filed under Environment, Chris. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.