Kevin Grandia

Clean Coal Facts and Fiction on CNBC

acccce steve miller cnbc.jpg

CNBC's Mark Haines asks: "How Realistic is Clean Coal," and Haines does a great job off the top by pointing out that his guest, Steve Miller of the American Coalition for Clean Coal Electricity (ACCCE), is funded by the coal industry.

This type of disclosure is important, as it provides viewers with some valuable context when hearing what Mr. Miller has to say. As Miller states on the show, his organization ACCCE is funded by:

"The coal producers, railroads and other transporters, generators... we got them all, manufacturers as well."

That's the fact, and now for the fiction.

Things get rather strange quickly when Haines asks Miller: "How far away are we from mass use of clean coal" to which Miller replies:

"The clean coal technologies for carbon capture and sequestration are probably 10 to 15 years away for widespread commercial use." (my emphasis)

Really? A 10 to 15 year outlook for CCS on a widespread commercial use?

Where are those numbers coming from? The earliest possibility for deployment of CCS on a large commercial scale is not expected before 2030 and the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) does not expect CCS to be commercially viable until at least 2050.

Nor does Oil-giant Shell who "doesn't foresee CCS being in widespread use until 2050."

In fact, the head of one of the largest coal-to-electricity companies in the world, Jim Rogers, CEO of Duke Energy, recently stated that:

“CCS as a magical technology that solves the carbon problem for coal plants is oversold…I think there is a lot to learn, and it is going to take us a lot longer for us to figure it out than a lot of us think”.

So where is Miller coming up with these numbers? I've put the question to Mr. Miller and I will let you know what I hear back.

UPDATE: Steve Gates at the American Coalition for Clean Coal Electricity got back to me and said that Mr. Miller got his numbers from a report done by the Coal Utilization Research Council and the Electric Power Research Institute called the CURC-EPRI Technology Roadmap:

"The goal of the CURC-EPRI Roadmap is to have, by 2025, new combustion and gasification based systems operating with carbon capture with an efficiency between 39% to 46% and a cost of electricity between 37 and 39 $/MW-hr. By 2025, the incremental cost to transport and sequester the CO2 is projected to be between 2 and 7 $/MW-hr."

» by Kevin Grandia | 1 comment | Printer-friendly version

Coal vs what???

Submitted by Steve Nabazas (not verified) on Wed, 07/01/2009 - 04:16.
I am not going to argue the problems of coal. It is dirty, coal companies have a horrible disrespect for human life and the environment. I grew up surrounded by dying coal miners and strip mines. However, unlike in my youth, virtually no one uses it other than power companies. So why is coal the big bad guy? Have you seen a beach with a oil rig? Have you ever examined the policies of oil pipeline companies? Coal as an alternative to wind, solar or hydro is a no brainer. However, when people burn wood they have a tendency to go for birch, oak, maple or other high btu wood. It is supposed to be cleaner than coal, yet most people do not take moisture into account and burn just as dirty as anthracite. Perfect conditions do not exist in that alternative. Nuclear, do you want to vacation at Chernoble? I would really like to first get away from oil. Coal, for better or worse, ships and stores better. So long as we have no way to deal with nuclear waste, it is no short term alternative. God Bless battery technology, but how do you dispose of them. And it is a component of most solar systems. Wind is great unless you have the tower blow down on your home. Hydro seems to have the best of all worlds. Once you move water, you create energy. Solar is great for heating water. We just wasted over 4,000 lives for oil and ruined countless more. The 9/11 families can't get the government to release the information on our "allies" the Saudis and their involvement. The price of oil cannot be calculated just at the pump without taking into consideration our defense budget and the entire security system at airports and ports. Once we create heat, we need to draw as much work from it as possible. The only really clean systems are hydro and wind and only hydro is really practical in states that have lots of water, only wind in the western states. I think we need to make a plan to get out of this and the first thing we need to eliminate is as much oil consumption as possible. The coal industry is dying a natural death, but if I have a fire in the winter, I get more BTU's from coal than from wood. And until people learn how to burn wood. It isn't that much cleaner. Dump oil first.
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