NCC's plan to increase coal use would raise CO2 emissions: NRDC

NCC's plan to increase coal use would raise CO2 emissions: NRDC

New York (Platts)--30Mar2006

The Natural Resource Defense Council claims a report by the National Coal
Council on how to maximize the country's coal supply is way off base.

NRDC said the report makes "unsupportable claims about the economic benefits
of the coal industry" and called it "a recipe for accelerating global
warming."

NRDC released a reader's guide to NCC's report Coal: America's Energy Future
on Wednesday. In the guide, NRDC said many of the suggestions in NCC's March
22 report would substantially raise carbon dioxide emissions, thereby
increasing global warming.

NRDC said that NCC's call for coal use to increase 1.3 billion short tons by
2025 in conjunction with the Energy Information Administration's forecast of
1.6 billion st by the same year would increase CO2 emissions by 2.6 billion
st.

The NCC report also said that 30% of the CO2 could be used for enhanced oil
recovery resulting in an incremental production of 2.9 million barrels/day.
However, NRDC said oil recovery would release 360 million st of CO2.

"It's reckless to put the country on a path that would increase CO2
emissions," NRDC said.

NRDC also disagrees with the economic claims in the report. The NCC report
said that $500 billion in capital costs could be used to build coal conversion
plants. But according to NRDC, that figure is not treated as a cost to the
economy, but as an economic stimulus.

"NCC completely ignores the economic costs incurred to produce the energy,"
NRDC said.

NRDC also takes issue with NCC's assumption that large scale coal utilization
could increase equilibrium prices for basic materials and services used to
produce Btus from coal.

"Their economic analysis doesn't stand up to scrutiny," Daniel Lashof, science
director and deputy director of NRDC's climate center, told Platts. "What NCC
has done is assume that you can get all that energy, dump it on the economy
and it will lower energy prices without any other effects."

Smart investments in energy efficiencies that can reduce demand at a fraction
of the cost, while reducing global warming are needed, NRDC said.

The country should be looking at ways to stabilize per capita electricity
consumption through cost-effective energy efficiency programs. According to
NRDC, this would reduce electricity consumption in 2025 by 10% and reduce CO2
emissions by at least 310 million st.

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