Penn Watch

Bloomberg reports:

Presidential candidate Hillary Clinton proposed on Feb. 27 more research funds for new energy technology, including "clean" coal systems. The next day, Mark Penn, her top campaign strategist, had a different take on coal.

In an internal blog at his other job, as chief executive officer of public relations firm Burson-Marsteller, Penn wrote of how Burson worked "behind the scenes" for TXU Corp., a Texas company seeking to build power plants fueled by pulverized coal, which some environmentalists say would be major polluters.

More to the point, it seems to me, is that so-called "clean" coal is more-or-less a scam -- it's still got all those carbon emissions. It's a scam, however, that a lot of politicians adopt because they want to win votes in coal country. Certainly, it's the sort of scam a political consultant might tell you that you absolutely must adopt to stay politically viable. And if that consultant also just so happens to be on the payroll of coal companies well, then, I think you can see where a problem might arise.

Comments

Well, coal HAS gotten a hell of a lot cleaner, both because of remediation technology within power plants and, more importantly, the chemical content of the coal that goes into the fire (thank you railroad deregulation). I'm prepared to believe that further technological transformation is possible, though obviously it doesn't solve the Carbon Dioxide problem except by possibly making plants more efficient, rather than cleaner.

Posted by Marshall | May 24, 2007 9:18 AM

I'm not as suspicious of corporations as some, so I don't think that Penn's past is anything that is necessarily awful. Nevertheless, his presence doesn't appear to be doing anything helpful to the campaign. If he was let go, what exactly would the campaign lose? Most of her advisors are still pretty moderate, if memory serves me correctly, and unless he possesses some unheard of skill in polling, there are others who could do what Penn does. Besides that, I'd bet that the move would earn her a lot of good press in the liberal blogosphere.

Posted by Brian | May 24, 2007 9:41 AM

"I'm not as suspicious of corporations as some, so I don't think that Penn's past is anything that is necessarily awful."

One can be "not as suspicious of corporations as some" while still thinking Penn's union busting work is pretty damn awful...

Posted by Petey | May 24, 2007 9:44 AM

I would note that only a portion of coal's environmental impact is from what goes into the air. Whether coal is "clean", dirty or filthy when it burns, the effect of mining practices won't be mitigated by coal quality. Over the past decade vast swaths of the Central Appalachian mountains and forests have been irrevocably obliterated by mountaintop removal coal mining, displacing dozens of communities and threatening thousands of people with questionably constructed coal-slurry ponds. I'd encourage people to take this into account when doing any cost-benefit analysis of coal as an energy source. Only taking emissions into account tremendously underestimates the costs.

Posted by oljb | May 24, 2007 10:23 AM

"it's still got all those carbon emissions."

If you are worried about carbon emissions (but not so much that you won't stop exhaling), you should read up a little on integrated gasification combined cycle (IGCC) technology.

More generally, if liberals claim they want us to be more energy independent but then say they are against coal (where we are the Saudi Arabia of producers) and nuclear, then they are not being serious.

Posted by Fred | May 24, 2007 10:54 AM

Tis true that we are inventing (or designing, depending upon your view of the current status of the technology) carbon capture processes. And it doesn't take IGCC to make it work. CCS (carbon capture and sequestration) will work on pulverized coal planst as well it will work on IGCC.

Still, the main coal effort at the moment is to dramatically increase efficiency. The newest plants to be sited have expected efficencies of around 38%, vs 33% for the existing fleet. That is a significant improvement.

CCS will reduce both efficency and output, thereby increasing the cost of the energy, but it should still cost less than energy from high efficiency gas plants. And lord knows we have more coal than gas.

Until we reduce consumption, I don't see any alternatives to coal or nuclear on the horizon. Wind will help, solar will help, biomass will help (but still emit CO2), biofuels will help - but reducing consumption is the most beneficial action we could take.

How, of course, is a whole nuther kettle of fish.

Jake

Posted by Jake - but not the one | May 24, 2007 1:38 PM

"Clean coal" still has all the carbon emissions unless it's accompanied by sequestration.

(And no, sequestration does not work "just as well" for pulverized coal plants. Matter of fact, nobody's figured out how to make it work w/ pulverized coal plants.)

Problem is, "clean coal" is already way more expensive than dirty coal. Once you add the additional (huge) expense of sequestration, it's enormously expensive -- far more expensive than wind, solar, or cogen.

The choice is not nuclear or coal. The choice is massive, centralized power plants with horribly inefficient distribution and consumption, or distributed renewable generation with smarter, more efficient distribution and consumption. We don't need nuclear or coal.

Posted by Realish | May 24, 2007 1:59 PM

Realish,

Until someone breaks down exactly how they expect to satisfy all of our energy needs with renewable sources, I'll have to assume this is simply bunk. From my understanding, there is simply no way renewables can fulfill all of our energy needs. From my perspective, nuclear is the only plausible solution. (And maybe coal with carbon sequestration if its cost-effective)

Posted by mpowell | May 24, 2007 2:39 PM

Mpowell, our "energy needs" are not static or immutable. We can reduce them through efficiency and conservation. We can also make the energy we do generate do a lot more work.

Right now, if the full net costs of energy delivered are tallied, cogen and wind are cheaper than nuclear power and solar is close. The nuclear industry is moribund, while there's a flurry of venture capital investment, entrepreneurialism, and technological advancement around renewables and efficiency. Within 10 years -- the very earliest a nuke plant could be up and running -- renewables will be decisively cheaper.

Has anyone ever "broken down" exactly how nuclear power is going to satisfy our needs? How it's going to overcome the reticence of investors, handle the waste, prevent the proliferation, find the immense amounts of energy, uranium, and water it requires? Why accept this enormously problematic child of the defense industry at face value while adopting a pose of hard-headed skepticism toward renewables? It doesn't square with the facts, but even as a purely gestural, cultural stance, it makes no sense to me.

Posted by Realish | May 24, 2007 3:08 PM

More generally, if liberals claim they want us to be more energy independent but then say they are against coal (where we are the Saudi Arabia of producers) and nuclear, then they are not being serious.

I do not say that I want us to be more energy independent.

Posted by Matthew Yglesias | May 24, 2007 3:09 PM

Wasn't the TXU deal the one that Tom Friedman lauded in a column a few weeks back because TXU had worked with the environmentalists to cut back on the # of coal plants?

Why yes, yes it was.

"Eventually, the private equity group agreed to cut the number of new TXU coal plants from 11 to 3, to support a U.S. cap on greenhouse gas emissions and to commit TXU to plowing $400 million into energy-efficiency programs and doubling its purchase of wind power."

Worth acknowledging, no?

Posted by Frank Bruno | May 24, 2007 3:39 PM

Realish, clean coal is expensive, but not as expensive as high efficiency gas. There is plenty of room to add the costs of CCS and still be competetive with gas - and depending upon the effectiveness of the CCS, less polluting.

As for CCS and pulverized coal plants, yes, no one has one in place. Then again, there are no (to my knowledge) IGCC plants with CCS either. The point is that once the CO2 is in the exhaust gas stream, it's all the same process. The difference is how much you capture from the gasifier and how much from the turbine. In total and per ton of coal input, it's the same amount of CO2 you have to capture from a pulverized coal plant. The one thing that IGCC has going for it, at least in an oxygen blown system, is a lot less N2 to handle, which makes the capture part of CCS much easier. None the less, the carbon combusted as CH4 is NOT captured in an IGCC plant, where it would be in a pulverized coal plant.

After all that, THEN you have to find a place to sink the CO2, and THAT is a major problem.

Here is a link to an EPA report on IGCC with some comparative data to ultra super critical pulverized coal plants.

EPA IGCC Report

Jake

Posted by Jake - but not the one | May 26, 2007 5:42 PM