King Coal

I promised Dave Roberts last night that I would write a post about the evils of coal, so, yes, coal is evil. On the one hand, of course, coal emits enormous amounts of carbon dioxide. One politically popular notion is that we need to do away with this problem through a combination of carbon pricing and massive subsidies for "clean coal" efforts that will transform coal into a low carbon alternative. This is dumb. Carbon aside, coal is really terrible for the environment. The particulate emissions from coal plants have terrible health consequences -- in probability-adjusted terms it's probably worse than the risks of a nuclear meltdown. But the process of actually acquiring the coal is a whole other environmental disaster on top of that. If you spent a ton of money on subsidizing renewables, you'd have all this clean renewable energy. If you spent a ton of money subsidizing low-carbon coal schemes, you'd have sunk a ton of cash into a power source that's still bad for the environment and created a whole new series of issues about storage, etc., etc. It's a dumb idea.

I think people, in general, underrate the human capacity for change. There was a time when the Western way of life was dependent on long-distance wind-powered ships who required for their masts certain kinds of very tall, very straight pine trees that you had to get from the Baltic region. The strategic importance of pine trees was hard to overstate. So was the economic importance. Pine trees were vital. You couldn't possible get along without them. Until suddenly you could.

Photo by Flickr user LHoon used under a Creative Commons license

Comments

... because of coal.

Posted by mark | December 28, 2007 10:20 AM

The world ain't perfect and neither are our choices. Coal is cheap, we have lots of it, and it already powers 50% of our electricity. If NIMBY liberals keep opposing nuclear power, that percentage will stay the same or increase. Wind (which the NIMBY left also opposes -- at least when it threatens to intrude on their ocean views in Nantucket) and solar can't handle the load.

Also, there are technologies in the works that should ameliorate your concerns (however overblown) about coal; see, for example, Advanced Technology Ventures which was profiled recently in Forbes.

Posted by Fred | December 28, 2007 10:33 AM

Oh, shut the hell up, Fred. Wind power has lots of support from the left, and even the famous right-wing whipping boy, France, gets a huge portion of their power from nuclear.

And you didn't even explain why MattY was rwrong about coal, you just flipped out into an incoherent rant about how much you hate lefties. So poop or get off the pot-- you can start supporting wind power and explain how we can get more nuclear energy, or you can whine in futility. Which is it going to be?

Posted by Tyro | December 28, 2007 10:41 AM

It's my understanding (as an environmental economist) that clean coal technologies (e.g., IGCC w/carbon capture and storage) is really pretty clean in terms of primary and secondary particulates.

Posted by Barry | December 28, 2007 10:44 AM

Those pine trees (specifically the white pine, pinus strobus) were also one of the chief advantages of colonizing N. America. Pines over a certain diameter were "the King's", and could not be legally cut (though they frequently were). We get the term 'wind-fall' from this period, when a lucky colonist was rich in pine trees after a storm.

Posted by Ben Cronin | December 28, 2007 10:47 AM

Clean coal power plants are indeed a pretty clean form of power production. However so is nuclear fusion. Both are still theoretical as there aren't any clean coal power plants operating in the US at this time.

That still misses Matthew's second point which is that coal mining is an environmental disaster. We are blowing apart the state of West Virginia mountaintop by mountaintop just for the sake of coal.

Posted by Kent from Waco | December 28, 2007 10:51 AM

There's a kernel of usefulness in the bitching above: bloggy style consideration of the economic underpinnings (rather than the environmental, political, etc.) Coal is not so much cheap and easy to extract and burn as it is a cheap and easy way to pass off burdens (external costs, in econo-speak) onto someone or something else. And capital investment is relatively light. And so on. "Smart" doesn't enter into it.

Posted by rickhavoc | December 28, 2007 10:54 AM

Brilliant second paragraph there, Matthew. Pine trees as a metaphor for progress and technology. I sent it to someone as the "thought of the day."

Maybe you have the potential for elegant prose after all.

Haha, glad you didn't wreck it with a vicious typo.

Posted by owenz | December 28, 2007 10:57 AM

No, coal is not evil. Like every other energy source coal has to be evaluated through a cost / benefit analysis that balances the benefits to humanity of utilizing coal against the environmental and human costs. The electricity for my home and computer comes from my local AEP coal burning power plant, which also powers our local hospitals.
Buzz

Posted by Buzz | December 28, 2007 11:02 AM

owenz, was that a joke, or did you miss the typos?

Posted by theCoach | December 28, 2007 11:03 AM

And coal miners should then do...what exactly? What would you train them to do? When they are unemployed, will you (or your commenters here) shed a tear?
I'm always fascinated by how environmentalism trumps concern for the working classes among leftists.

Posted by but | December 28, 2007 11:08 AM

Tyro, in response to your little burst of petulance:

1) We should emulate France's embrace of nuclear power. Liberals and environmentalists in America have opposed attempts to expand our use of nuclear power unfortunately.

2) I'm all for wind power, but it won't be enough to replace coal.

3) You want to know how to get more nuclear power? You build more nuclear power plants. I'm all for that. Who's against it? See point #1.

Posted by Fred | December 28, 2007 11:11 AM

Thanks for bringing up that point, Kent from Waco. It is difficult to overstate the scale of externalization of costs being done by the energy companies operating in Appalachia. Not only are the hills (and their resident hardwood forests) being destroyed, a wasteland is left in their place that is only capable of hosting genetically engineered species of Asian grass, so all future potential of the land in terms of forestry is squandered. Likewise, the surface water is covered with blasted apart mountains and the groundwater system is devastated by several megatons of annual blasting.

But the real kicker is that there are now hundreds of slurry impoundments being held up by earthen dams containing hundreds of millions or billions of gallons of slurry, a byproduct of washing coal. The way the coal companies are organized, the individual subsidiaries responsible for the maintenance of these toxic lakes often intentionally go under, leaving the burden on the state and the residents. A different kind of coal-production related dam collapsed in the seventies killing over a hundred people along Buffalo Creek. A slurry impoundment in Martin County, Kentucky broke about five years ago, releasing an incredible amount of pollutant into the Ohio River watershed. One impoundment is being built on Brushy Fork off the Coal River in WV that is higher than the Hoover Dam. If it breaks, now or fifty years from now (because it's not going away), it will endanger 3000 people who will be in the path of 8 billion gallons of slurry.

I will go ahead and end this rant now, but I would like people to be aware, when discussing "clean coal" technology, about the extraction techniques that will be utilized.

Posted by oljb | December 28, 2007 11:12 AM

But "Wind Turbine Engineer's Daughter" just doesn't have the same ring to it.

Posted by anon | December 28, 2007 11:17 AM

Some time within the next 300 years, nearly all of the extractable or mineable fossil fuels will be exploited. The inner logic of development dictates that human beings will continue to mine the resource of coal and extract oil into the future no matter what else occurs. However, the combustion of the entire reservoir of geologically sequestered hydrocarbons will destroy the environment. So the question becomes, what is the alternative for the material.

I suggest that recyclable plastic will become the primary building material for residential, commercial, and monumental construction. Where you see metal and wood, in 300 years, it will be plastic.

Posted by wetzel | December 28, 2007 11:20 AM

Like every other energy source coal has to be evaluated through a cost / benefit analysis

Buzz, if you had actually read the post, you would have realized that MattY is arguing that the cost/benefit analysis of coal makes coal a poor choice. If you have an argument to the contrary, make it. Otherwise, you're just (ahem) blowing smoke.

Posted by Tyro | December 28, 2007 11:29 AM

When they are unemployed, will you (or your commenters here) shed a tear?

When they are living in a toxic wasteland, will you shed a tear? Of course, not, because Slagheap, West Virginia and Flat Mountain, Kentucky are where other people live, not you.

I'm always fascinated by how environmentalism trumps concern for the working classes among leftists.

I'm always fascinated by the glee of rightards skipping along the Yellow Brick Road with their strawmen.

Posted by pseudonymous in nc | December 28, 2007 11:30 AM

This whole argument seems predicated on the idea that we have a choice. Right now coal makes up over 70% of American electric supply. Shifting away from that requires a generational shift (just as the shift away from wind-powered ships).

The issue is not the goodness or badness of coal. It is a part of energy future and how do we: 1) mitigate all its environmental impacts until we can; 2) replace it.

Posted by notchris | December 28, 2007 11:36 AM

Does anyone really understand how STUPID our policy is concerning renewable energy?

I bet you all think that the main beneficiary of all of the aid we give to people to produce wind and solar power goes to the people who produce wind and solar power.

Well, it just shows how STUPID you are.

All together now.

The laws that give lots of federal money to increase solar power and wind power goes to
a) the people who do the actual work
or
b) lawyers and accountants who don't produce a thing?

It would make sense if we told people that we will give you $.03 per KWH if you produce the electricity with wind or solar.

However, what we do is give them a tax credit of $.03 per KWH.

What is the difference between giving somebody money and giving them a tax credit?

Matt: you are a pretty rich guy and you pay $10,000 in federal taxes each year.

So if you produce 100,000 kwh of electricity then you will get a tax credit of $9,000. It will save you $9,000 in taxes.

But if you produce 1,000,000 kwh of electricity then you will get a tax credit of $90,000 and you will save $10,000 in taxes.

Now, I am a really rich corporation and I pay $100,000,000 in taxes. I hire a bunch of lawyers and accountants and we make the IRS think that I produced the electricity. So, I save $90,000 in taxes. I pay Matt $20,000 and I pay the lawyers $20,000.

So the net effect is that the person who does the real work gets screwed while the lawyers and accountants get rich and the big corporation benefits.

$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$
If we changed the law from giving tax credits to giving actual cash then the system would be far more efficient but the Republicans would scream that we were raising taxes (which is bad) and we are increasing government spending (which is bad).

On the other hand, we would produce more energy for the same price (which is good) and we would reduce the size of my bonus (which is really BAD

Posted by neil wilson | December 28, 2007 11:36 AM

I am sick and tired of liberals like Matt Yglesias suggesting we go back in time and prevent the industrial revolution which helped a lot of people by making them not use coal back then.

Posted by El Cid | December 28, 2007 11:45 AM

It would be nice, El Cid, if that's what Matt actually suggested.

As for externalities, here in Maine downwind from all that lovely clean coal, we have to shake down smelt and other fish before we eat them, like the old thermometers, and once all the mercury's down in the tail, be careful not to eat that end.

Posted by Davis X. Machina | December 28, 2007 11:51 AM

If commenter "but" knew anything about the situation he laments, he'd know that the mountaintop-removal coal miners themselves aren't really hurting- they are mostly out-of-state workers who live in hotels or make long commutes from other communities, get paid well and will find a different job when coal production ends, probably back where they came from. The people who you should be concerned about are the 98% of people in the coalfields who are not coal miners, do not benefit economically from coal production, and whose equity in their homes is being destroyed by blasting damage or by the fact that no one will by a house downstream from a slurry dam.

Coal mining isn't what it used to be. My grandfather was a coal miner, as were many ancestors on both sides of my family, in a time when there were hundreds of thousands of people risking life and limb mining coal in West Virginia for a pittance. That isn't the case anymore. The miners are complicit in the destruction they are causing, and we really shouldn't care one iota about whether than can continue to bring home a fat salary funded by their employers having externalized billions of dollars worth of costs onto their temporary neighbors.

Posted by oljb | December 28, 2007 12:08 PM

I never liked the one-dimensional focus on greenhouse gases in recent years. Carbon is so far down the list in terms of immediacy of environmental impact that it has always seemed to be more cost-effective to address the problems of habitat devastation, air quality, and the safety of drinking water first. In many industrialized countries, I'd say these issues are mostly covered well enough by government policy to shift focus to greenhouse emissions. America, however, is busy rolling back environmental protections on air and water quality, so I think we Americans should focus on undoing Bush's damage first before really condemning him for doing nothing about climate change.

I guess someone needs to put together a Maslow's hierarchy of needs for environmental issues to drive the point home. Just of the top of my head, health and welfare concerns > quality of life > sustainability > impact on species other than homo sapien > long term impact of a cumulative process, the effects which aren't precisely known.

Posted by Shane | December 28, 2007 12:19 PM

If you want a reminder of "externalities" of coal mining, West Virginia University Press just released "Monongah," about the coal mine disaster in 1907 that killed at least 362 men (more likely 500+). Coal mining practices have changed a lot since then, but disasters occur all the time, from Sago to Crandall Canyon, and happy endings like Quecreek are not the norm. Not a huge factor compared to particulates and mercury and impoundments, and people die in all industries (uranium has to be mined, too), but it's still a nasty business.

Posted by Muskrat | December 28, 2007 12:28 PM

"Buzz, if you had actually read the post, you would have realized that MattY is arguing that the cost/benefit analysis of coal makes coal a poor choice."

But Matt's cost/benefit analysis amounts to..."Well, somehow we'll find something to replace coal".

Mike

Posted by MBunge | December 28, 2007 12:45 PM

It's true the hallmark of our species is adaptability, but we need incentives, too.

For one, so-called "clean coal" is probably even less practical than nuclear energy, as Lee Raymond eloquently pointed out recently.

"A one gigawatt coal-fired power plant, to get rid of all the CO2, I think is it 50,000 barrels a day, 150,000 barrels a day of supercritical CO2 will have to be injected into the ground. To get to your point, if you tried to inject all the supercritical CO2 that came from all the coal-fired power plants you end up moving more and liquids than the oil and gas industry moves today, just for CO2."

And as the price of oil rises and the price of pure carbon (coal) stays low, the financial incentive to build coal plants increaases, with disastrous consequences.

http://www.voxeu.org/index.php?q=node/835

We (as a species) need a carbon tax...now.

Posted by Kit Stolz | December 28, 2007 1:08 PM

I dunno. What I got from Matthew's argument is that we can keep using coal until "suddenly" we don't.

Posted by Al | December 28, 2007 1:09 PM

I dunno. What I got from Matthew's argument is that we can keep using coal until "suddenly" we don't.

What happened was they found something better than long tall Baltic pines to propel their ships. Better in this case meant faster and more reliable. Better in our case is going to mean not so damaging to the environment. Market pressures forced the changes from sailing to steam ships. Once everone admits that we are fucking up our nest--which should be over the next few years--the pressure to change from carbon burning will be similarly strong, if not more so, considering the costs involved in not changing.

Posted by cw | December 28, 2007 2:00 PM

Right now we are in a bind because we have gotten rid of most oil-fired power plants as too expensive. Coal generated power percentage actually increased since the 70s and the Lefty-Environmental rage against nuke power prevented us from building a new plant for over 30 years. Many of the best potential sites for nukes were sold off by utiities when they deregulated.
We have unchecked mass imigration and high birthrates of the immigrants, and their spawn legal or illegal - that is the main driver why American population is to go from 300 million today to 363 million in 2030, to 420 million by 2050 (more people than China had in the mid-19th century).
All those new electricity consumers!

We will - even if we magically were able to grind the faces of the Lefty-Environmentalist obstructionists to wind power, hydro, and nukes under the jackboots of fascist dictatorship and end their blockage of energy development - not be able to get the capital and resources to build enough nuke power plants to satisfy the masses of 3rd Worlders pouring in, let alone reduce coal usage current in the grid to supply the 300 million we already have.

That leaves coal, ending mass immigration, or a dramatically reduced 3rd world existence for Americans to lower energy use.

I have big doubts about clean coal. There is a lake in Africa that erupted CO2 (lake Nyos) in a rural area. The CO2 it released was the equivalent of 5 months production of ONE large coal fired plant. A blanket of CO2 heavier than air spread out. It killed every living animal, even bugs, worms, and fish - over a 10 square mile area - including 1,800 rural villagers and 4-5,000 of their livestock. CO2 sequestration would also require burning 40% more coal to make the same amount of electricity because substantial energy would be used collecting, separating out CO2, then injecting the gas underground in reserviors - but the idea of up to 100 million people in America living on top of highly pressurized CO2 reserviors 50-180 times bigger than the Lake Nyos event - one earthquake or terrorist bomb away from a disaster 1,000 times worse than Bhopal - scares me.

Long term, I see the global solution to global warming is not "exciting alternative energy sources" - but is reducing people to sustainable levels - only 3 billion or so on the planet, not the 6.7 billion we have now or the 12.9 billion projected at the end of this century.

And America almost completely ending immigration and accepting refugees - even if such refugees will "suffer and be persecuted" in their native shitholes. Only immigrants that have skills we want, or nations that have sustainable population levels where Americans with skills swap positions. No more "family and clan reunifications" that have disgorged whole Somali and Hmong and Yemeni villages into America. Or chain migrated whole Mexican towns across our Borders.

That will offer continuing high standards of living, and allow us to have up to 10-15% of our energy usage be from "exciting alternative energy sources" and allow nuclear to methodically replace coal in a non-rushed manner that is safe and prudent and does not expose Americans to the risks of a rush job done in a life and death energy crisis.

Posted by Chris Ford | December 28, 2007 2:16 PM

Who cares, given that one dude who always comes back to rant in comments about how soon we'll all be machine people and none of this matters anyway because with our awesome cybernaut bodies we'll breathe coal for fun and then laugh at the poor meat people some more?

Posted by El Cid | December 28, 2007 3:04 PM

Who cares, given that one dude who always comes back to rant in comments about how soon we'll all be machine people and none of this matters anyway because with our awesome cybernaut bodies we'll breathe coal for fun and then laugh at the poor meat people some more?

Posted by El Cid | December 28, 2007 3:07 PM

I am sick and tired of liberals like Matt Yglesias suggesting we go back in time and prevent the industrial revolution which helped a lot of people by making them not use coal back then.

Snark, perhaps, but that raises an important question: China and Inda want to industrialise nationwide, and coal -- in China's case, mostly lignite -- is historically the engine of first-stage industrialisation.

Persuading them that they aren't entitled to industrialise in the same, dirty way Europe and the US did is not going to be easy. James Fallows' smog photos are a testament to the pea-soupers that engulf Chinese cities.

Posted by pseudonymous in nc | December 28, 2007 3:08 PM

@el cid
And we can always count on Chris ford inserting his ugly, ugly racism into every conversation.

@pseudo in nc
I've spent some time in china in the winter (about an hour outside Beijing) and the place smells like a campfire from all the coal smoke. It gave me headaches. At the same time, the per capita energy usage is very low even by European standards. Small cars, houses heated by space heaters, fluorescent lights, small living spaces, etc. Any American politician asking Americans to live that efficiently would be laughed out of office. Who are we to tell anyone how to correctly consume energy.

Posted by Ben | December 28, 2007 3:30 PM

Chris Ford,
I'm not sure I follow the logic of clamping down on immigration in order to slow the consupmtion of fossil fuels. Surely what happens outside US borders matters in global energy markets?
How about instead of using the crisis to indulge our xenophobia, we tax the shit out of energy companies and pour the funds into research on more efficient forms of electricity production. Better technology plus more expensive coal/oil will result in the adoption of other forms of generation more quickly, and abate the destruction of my own little "native shithole" a mere 6 hour drive southwest of DC.

Posted by oljb | December 28, 2007 3:45 PM

Not wanting to interupt this here very serious like conversation, but I feel compelled to confess that I often find meself hankerin for the feel of a long tall baltic against me caloused palms. Call it nostalgia, call it a vision of better days to aft, but I'm tellin ye that there's no coal-fiered feeling similar to that engendered by the occasion of a stout breeze siezing hold of yer vessel; the whip-crack of the sails o'erhead, the sudden lurch of the deck beneathe your feet, the eager gleam of manly purpose sparking in the blue eye of the handsom laddie at yer side, all signifyin the promise of a rollikin careen through the chilly bosoms of the mother-sea.

Posted by Ol' One Eye | December 28, 2007 4:19 PM

Tyro wrote

"Buzz, if you had actually read the post, you would have realized that MattY is arguing that the cost/benefit analysis of coal makes coal a poor choice. If you have an argument to the contrary, make it. Otherwise, you're just (ahem) blowing smoke."
Posted by Tyro | December 28, 2007 11:29 AM

Tyro,
I don't consider stating "coal is evil" to be the beginning of a cost/ benefit analysis.
If this is supposed to be an intelligent discussion there would have to be a time frame established for our cost/ benefit analysis.
Right now my electricity comes from an AEP coal burning plant.
If this shuts down tomorrow or next year where do I get my electricity?
I admire some things about the Amish but I am not willing to adopt their way of life.
Buzz

Posted by Buzz | December 28, 2007 4:41 PM

oljb - Stopping energy usage by a monstrously large projected number of immigrants and spawn thereof is discussed in an American context of what we need in America to ensure adequate, safe energy supply given our present standard of living.
The aspiring immigrants, blocked, would not simply burn equivalent carbon if they remain in their overpopulated, tropical lands but use far less to raise their beans, feed their donkey and 6 kids.
The problem is not with people in 1st World countries with stable native populations burning less and less fossil each year, it is with those 1st World countries taking in so many 3rd World people that overall energy demand goes up. Just as it does in overpopulated lands where numbers couble every 40 years - no matter how little per capita the newest billion people use each..

The notion that we will find solutions to adequate energy if the 3rd World continues to pour into America if only we take the R&D away from private companies and give it to Gov't bureaucrats to dole out, is fatuous. Just as they have with the 445 billion spent on the "war to find a cure for cancer" or the 180 billion "war to stop illegal drugs". It is only credible for true believers that governments know best...

Truth is the last "exciting high tech energy solution" was discovery 65 years ago that nuclear energy could be used to make commercial energy. All the other solutions - windmills, steam from solar power, geothermal biomass, ethanol - have been around for centuries or milennia in various applications.
All the exciting exotic new technologies first proposed 30-40 years ago are still mostly uneconomic, unreliable sources not available 24/7, not scalable up to a mass economy level.

You either lower American's energy use with no more immigration, or you accept a lower standard of living. Consider "exciting new high tech conservation devices". If every American went with new, flourescent lights and "banned" old lightbulbs - that makes room for 330,000 new Juans, Shakiras and Abullahs to come here with no reduction in fossil use. Or a 1/5 of 1% drop in coal burning.

Posted by Chris Ford | December 28, 2007 4:42 PM

Shorter Chris ford:

I should be able to five my hummer and run all the lights in my house, but don't let the brown people have any resources (or standard of living or education or rights or . . .).

Posted by Ben | December 28, 2007 5:08 PM

Ford,
I don't think that taxing energy for R&D necessarily suggestst that bureaucrats themselves will do the research. The government can hand out funds to private firms to do the research if they can do a better job. It's not like that's unprecedented in our purportedly free-market system. After all, it's not like military bureacrats (soldiers) are actually getting all the war funds that have been set aside for operations in Iraq. But whether it's government labs or "private" labs, the money is not being spent on that technology that needs to be. I think you'll see the bias toward fossil fuels reduced if it costs more to use them, and another form of power emerges that becomes more efficient to utilize. The energy tax could be increased as high as necessary until this occurs.

Also, on a less serious note, since you have to be joking, I think we'll surpass your projected result of curtailing energy consumption in the US if we not only end immigration, but also deport every white American to Antarctica (try wiring an igloo to use electricity! No more drain on the energy market...), and force every remaining American woman who already has one child to get an abortion during every subsequent pregnancy. Or, even better, every American could drink cyanide-laced kool-aid on July 4th this summer. That would be another way to end mining.

Posted by oljb | December 28, 2007 5:39 PM

Arrggg. That Chris Ford, he's a bleedin xenophobe, he is. Makes me blood boil, me mother being o spanish decent and all. Appraise me or yer earthly address, Chris Ford, and I'll give ye an immigrant bashin ye won't soon ferget, ye racist clot.

Posted by ol' one eye | December 28, 2007 5:58 PM