U.S. Energy Secretary Steven Chu is really an
academic. But he's is learning the art of politics
while on the job. The Nobel-prize winning scientist,
who had once called coal his "worst nightmare,"
spoke to a largely pro-coal audience in West
Virginia.
Chu, who was tapped by President Obama to serve, has
never shied away from his belief that coal is
largely responsible for creating climate change. His
views have evolved, however, to the point where he
realizes that the nation - indeed the world - is not
going to just replace the preponderance of its
generation supplies overnight.
That's why he has subscribed to the White House's
position that the U.S. will become a leader in the
development of clean coal technologies and
specifically carbon capture and sequestration. With
financial assistance from the federal stimulus act,
the secretary said that as many as 10 projects could
be commercialized within 8-10 years and that
electric prices would only increase 10-20 percent
because of it.
He went on tell the audience in Charleston, WV that
the level of heat-trapping emissions has increased
by 40 percent since the start of the industrial
revolution. However, the White House has allocated
$3.4 billion to clean coal technologies that will
help keep coal relevant. Without that, it would lose
ground to higher-priced natural gas.
Climate change is "man-made" and "human fingerprints
are all over it," intoned Chu. But he then repeated
the administration's official position, saying that
"these new technologies will not only help fight
climate change, they will create jobs now and help
position the United States to lead the world in
clean coal technologies, which will only increase in
demand in the years ahead."
The energy secretary was joined on stage by U.S.
Senator Jay Rockefeller, D-WV, who has proposed
legislation to block for two years efforts by the
U.S. Environmental Protection Agency to write
regulations that would curb carbon dioxide emissions
- a right bestowed on it by the U.S. Supreme Court a
couple years ago. But while Rockefeller said that
such rules would likely be delayed, they could not
be stopped.
Rockefeller, who said he was in the business of
preserving jobs for coal miners, referred to EPA
regulations that are set to take effect early next
year as "harmful regulations." At the same time, he
said he was not one of those who believed that
global warming was a myth and then went on to urge
those who espouse such thinking to quit "burying
their heads in the sand."
"I agree with the science of climate change,"
Rockefeller told the audience. "Greenhouse gas
emissions are not healthy for the earth. It will not
go away if we ignore the issue. There will be some
additional regulations within a couple years."
Commercializing Technologies
With the EPA's newfound authority, it holds the
bargaining power. And it is under pressure from
green groups and some Democratic lawmakers to
exercise its rights and to enact tougher
restrictions on carbon emissions. Others, though,
think it is simply trying to use its authority as a
lever to force Congress to write its own rules.
As it stands now, power plants and other factories
that emit 25,000 tons or more of carbon dioxide a
year will operate under the new rules. If such
facilities are modernized, or if new ones are built,
they would then be required to install "best
available technologies." EPA estimates that 10,000
plants would be affected -- units that produce about
85 percent of all emissions.
An earlier but similar rulemaking also requires the
formation of a registry to force the same industrial
concerns to not just tabulate their heat-trapping
emissions but to also consider ways to reduce them.
In effect, what gets measured gets managed. That, in
turn, would make it more feasible to enact national
policy that would require cuts in those releases and
could facilitate the implementation of a
cap-and-trade system.
While the U.S. Senate seems unable to muster the
super-majority needed to pass a climate change bill,
it does seem poised to block EPA's latest
rulemaking. The U.S. House, by comparison, has
passed an energy bill that would enact a
cap-and-trade program that sets emission limits for
carbon. Industries that exceed those requirements
could then acquire credits and either bank them or
sell them to those that are unable to meet those
goals.
Supporters of cap-and-trade that include the Obama
administration say it will work. The best example of
just how effective the strategy can be is the
program used to reduce sulfur dioxide, or acid rain.
Since the measure was enacted as part of the Clean
Air Act of 1990, such pollutants have fallen by 50
percent from 1980 levels while the benefits of the
program are four-to-five times greater than the
costs.
But Secretary Chu focused his talk on carbon capture
and sequestration. He pointed to the 10-megawatt
trial by American Electric Power at its Mountaineer
plant in WV - a project that got $334 million in
federal funds. If it is successful at burying the
carbon, the utility will then try a 200-megawatt
project in Oklahoma. And if that works, proponents
say that the technology that uses chilled ammonia
could be commercialized by 2015.
Making carbon capture and sequestration commercially
viable and widely deployable may be crucial to the
future of coal, says Charles McElwee, a West
Virginia-based attorney, and Gary Spitznogle of AEP.
West Virginia, they say, is dependent on such
progress; it has the fourth largest recoverable coal
reserves in the country and it generates 97 percent
of its electricity from coal.
With such forces coming at him, Secretary Chu has
pulled back from his earlier views on coal. Now, the
secretary is part of an administration that is
committed to reducing carbon emissions while also
commercializing the technologies to enable such
progress.
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