{"id":13432,"date":"2016-07-29T08:25:42","date_gmt":"2016-07-29T14:25:42","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/lastbestnews.com\/site\/?p=13432"},"modified":"2016-07-29T08:25:42","modified_gmt":"2016-07-29T14:25:42","slug":"opinion-wyomings-clean-coal-plans-stir-false-hopes","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/montana-mint.com\/lastbestnews\/2016\/07\/opinion-wyomings-clean-coal-plans-stir-false-hopes\/","title":{"rendered":"Opinion: Wyoming’s ‘clean coal’ plans stir false hopes"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"thermal<\/a>It\u2019s no secret that the U.S. coal industry\u2019s hopes of revival by exporting its product to Asia via West Coast ports\u2014what Platts<\/a> has called an \u201cexport or die\u201d strategy\u2014have been dashed by the structural decline in global coal markets.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

That\u2019s why Wyoming Gov. Matt Mead\u2019s recent announcement<\/a> that a new \u201cclean coal\u201d technology partnership between his state and a Japanese consortium could open up plans for exports\u00a0of Powder River Basin coal only stirs up false hopes.<\/span><\/p>\n

The region\u2019s coal industry is on the ropes, and for good reason<\/span><\/a>, and efforts to rescue it through the dreams of an export market have failed. Export projects meant to support such a long-shot gamble\u2014including ones in Oakland<\/span><\/a> and the Seattle area<\/span><\/a>\u2014have either been cancelled or are close to being cancelled for environmental, policy and financial reasons.<\/span><\/p>\n

These projects will not be revived, mostly because they are simply not needed, as the Institute for Energy Economics and Financial Analysis<\/a> explained in a report<\/span><\/a> almost two years ago.<\/span><\/p>\n

Even if someone were to figure out a practical solution for reducing emissions from coal-fired electricity generation plants to acceptable levels\u2014the stated goal of the research project in Wyoming\u2014the Powder River Basin coal industry will remain hobbled by a host of other crippling environmental hazards that are inherent in transporting coal over long distances.<\/p>\n

Gov. Mead said he expects the program will involve cooperation between state-funded researchers at the University of Wyoming and the Japanese companies.
\n<\/span><\/p>\n

While \u201cclean coal\u201d research has been an important source of public revenue for a number of taxpayer-funded research programs, especially at the University of Wyoming and Ohio State University, these programs have not borne practical advances, even after many decades of work.\u00a0 (\u201cClean coal\u201d is actually a misleading description and an oxymoron\u2014it doesn\u2019t mean that the coal itself becomes cleaner, it means that polluting emissions caused by burning the coal are somehow being controlled to become less harmful.)
\n<\/span><\/p>\n

Notably, the coal industry itself has invested very little of its own money in these research projects. Peabody Energy (now in bankruptcy) contributed $2 million to fund the University of Wyoming\u2019s Peabody Energy Clean Coal Technology Laboratory in 2012, after $75 million in state money had been committed.<\/span><\/p>\n

\"CapreAir_Variable\"<\/a><\/div><\/div>Other jarring examples of public dollars squandered on \u201cclean coal\u201d research include an Ohio bond issue passed in 1985 that has proven monstrously self-perpetuating. While Ohio limits total outstanding \u201cclean coal\u201d bonds to $100 million at any given time, more bonds have been issued as others have been paid off. Total public debt issued for \u201cclean coal\u201d research in Ohio has exceeded $200 million over the past 30 years, to support more than 400 projects that have proven lucrative for universities and think tanks but have not achieved the stated goal of \u201cencouraging the use of Ohio coal.\u201d<\/p>\n

Attempts to implement \u201ccarbon capture and storage\u201d\u2014a way to reduce carbon dioxide emissions\u2014at coal plants in the U.S. have turned out to be little more than very costly experiments, leaving ratepayers holding the bag. Massive \u201cclean coal\u201d projects, including Southern Co.\u2019s ratepayer-subsidized Kemper experiment in Mississippi<\/span><\/a> and Duke Energy\u2019s failed Edwardsport project in Indiana<\/span><\/a> have been financial disasters.<\/span><\/p>\n

The federal government pulled the plug on its FutureGen<\/span><\/a> project last year after sinking a billion dollars into it to little effect<\/span><\/a>. AEP, the Ohio-based utility that consumes more coal than any other, ran a carbon capture and sequestration experiment for a while at its Huntington Plant in West Virginia but canceled the project in 2012 after concluding that the technology was commercially unviable.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

But what of Mead\u2019s pitch on Japan\u2019s \u201cclean coal\u201d dreams? Our research shows<\/span><\/a> Japan\u2019s electricity-generation market in the midst of a transition that suggests its current demand for coal will only decline.<\/span><\/p>\n

Japan\u2019s appetite for U.S. thermal coal is already minuscule. Data from the Energy Information Administration shows that Japan imported only 1.1 million tons of thermal coal in 2015, barely enough to power a single coal plant. Overall, East Asian nations, including South Korea, Japan, Singapore and China, accounted for only 16 percent of all U.S. thermal coal exports. Europe accounted for about 52 percent, Canada and Mexico nearly 18 percent, and India 9 percent.<\/span><\/p>\n

In fact, U.S. coal exports overall are have tanked over the past three years, as the chart here shows, and they show no sign of recovery. This is very likely an irreversible trend as less-polluting forms of energy continue to gain market share around the world.<\/span><\/p>\n

\u201cClean coal\u201d research will not reverse the fortunes of the industry, in Wyoming or anywhere else.\u00a0 The hundreds of millions of taxpayer dollars going into funding \u201cclean coal\u201d research would be much better invested in accelerating deployment of affordable renewable energy and to helping coal communities weather the inevitable economic transition.<\/span><\/p>\n

Sandy Buchanan is the executive director of the Institute for Energy Economics and Financial Analysis.<\/i><\/span><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

It\u2019s no secret that the U.S. coal industry\u2019s hopes of revival by exporting its product to Asia via West Coast ports\u2014what Platts has called an \u201cexport or die\u201d strategy\u2014have been dashed by the structural decline in global coal markets.\u00a0 That\u2019s why Wyoming Gov. Matt Mead\u2019s recent announcement that a new \u201cclean coal\u201d technology partnership between […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":119,"featured_media":13434,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3864],"tags":[4758,4759,4756,4757,1767],"class_list":["post-13432","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-opinion","tag-clean-coal","tag-ieefa","tag-matt-mead","tag-peabody-energy","tag-university-of-wyoming","prominence-category-featured"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/montana-mint.com\/lastbestnews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/13432","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/montana-mint.com\/lastbestnews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/montana-mint.com\/lastbestnews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/montana-mint.com\/lastbestnews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/119"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/montana-mint.com\/lastbestnews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=13432"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/montana-mint.com\/lastbestnews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/13432\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/montana-mint.com\/lastbestnews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/13434"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/montana-mint.com\/lastbestnews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=13432"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/montana-mint.com\/lastbestnews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=13432"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/montana-mint.com\/lastbestnews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=13432"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}