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U.S. coal politics

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During the presidency of George W. Bush, it appeared that coal-fired power generation was on the verge of a major resurgence in the United States. Following a massive and consistent decline in new coal-fired power plant projects that began in the late 1970's, the Bush administration, along with other federal and state legislators - faced with rising oil and volatile natural gas prices - actively promoted coal as a low-cost energy alternative. The political connections between the Bush administration and coal executives have been central to the promotion of coal power.[1]

However, the substantial increase in public concern about global warming that has occurred in the U.S. in the last few years[2] - especially in the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina, and of Al Gore's receipt of the 2007 Nobel Peace Prize for his work on climate change - caused a increasing amount of public opposition to new coal-fired power plants.[3][4] Alongside this shift in public opinion, the growing power of the anti-coal movement - both in the U.S. and internationally, especially in the U.K. and Australia - made coal-fired power projects more politically costly, and the publicity surrounding anti-coal campaigns in turn spurred further shifts in public opinion against coal-fired power.[5][6][7]

In an effort to counter this trend, many of the largest coal mining companies, electric utilities, and railroads in the U.S. launched a high-profile marketing campaign, aimed at convincing the American public that coal-fired power can be environmentally sustainable.[1][8][9] Leading environmentalists condemned this campaign as an example of "greenwashing": an attempt to use environmentalist rhetoric to disguise the inherently environmentally unsustainable nature of coal-fired power generation.[10] As the influential Australian environmental activist Tim Flannery put it: "Coal can't be clean."[11]

Contents

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Regulatory background

In 1970, the U.S. Congress amended and considerably strengthened the Clean Air Act of 1963, and created the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA).[12] In 1971, Congress established a set of New Source Performance Standards (NSPS), which were further strengthened in 1978; these standards set strict limits on the amounts of sulfur dioxide, nitrogen oxide, and particulate emissions that any new coal-fired power plant could legally emit (per ton of coal consumed). In addition, the Clean Air Act amendments of 1977 created three geographical classes (Class I, II, and III) that were used to classify existing air quality in the U.S.; in Class I regions, in which air quality is defined as relatively pristine, new emissions sources are very strictly regulated. These regulations thus necessitated the installation of pollution controls during the construction of new coal-fired plants; by 1980, the utility industry was spending $1.8 billion each year on pollution controls.[13]

The costs imposed by these new regulations were one cause of the steep decline in new coal-fired power plant projects that occurred during the 1980's; by the late 80's, the construction of new coal-fired power plants had slowed to a near-standstill. Another was the removal on the prohibition against using natural gas to fuel power plants, which led to a boom in power plants fired by natural gas. Between 1988 and 2001, net electricity generated by coal-fired plants increased by 22.2% (or 1.7% annually); this growth rate was significantly lower than the average 6.9% annual growth rate of coal-fired power production between 1971 and 1985. (By way of comparison, the growth rate of natural gas-fired power production averaged 9.2% per year between 1988 and 2001, compared with a growth rate of -1.6% per year between 1971 and 1985.)[14]

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Coal and the Bush Administration

Coal industry executives placed their bets on George W. Bush during the 2000 presidential campaign. Among others, Peabody Energy contributed $250,000 to the Republican National Committee in July 2000; West Virginia coal executive James "Buck" Harless gave $200,000 directly to Bush's campaign, while Peabody Energy and The Southern Company gave hundreds of thousands more. Also, during the 2000 elections, Peabody Energy, Burlington Northern, and The Southern Company founded Americans for Balanced Energy Choices, which kicked off a multimillion-dollar advertising campaign designed to promote coal energy and counter the influence of environmental groups.[1]

The coal industry's wager on Bush proved highly successful. In his first few months as president, Bush abandoned his campaign promise to force coal plants to reduce carbon emissions, appointed Irl Engelhardt (chairman of Peabody Energy) as an energy advisor to his transition team, and named former coal industry lobbyist J. Steven Griles Deputy Secretary of the Interior.[1](Griles resigned from this position in December 2004; in 2007, he pled guilty to obstruction of justice in the Jack Abramoff lobbying scandal, and was sentenced to ten months in prison.)

Bush also cut the budget of the Environmental Protection Agency from $8.1 billion in 2001 to $7.1 billion in 2008. These budget cuts dramatically limited the EPA's ability to enforce violations of the Clean Air Act: the number of civil suits by the EPA against polluters decreased by 70% between 2002 and 2006, and by late 2007 the EPA was employing only 172 criminal investigators, fewer than the legal minimum of 200 set by President George H.W. Bush. (Eric Schaeffer, the former head of the EPA's Office of Civil Enforcement, resigned in 2002 in protest of Bush's approach to environmental enforcement.)[15][16]

Perhaps most importantly, until 2007 President Bush refused - in the face of overwhelming scientific consensus[17] - to acknowledge that global climate change was caused by human activities. In June 2002, when the Bush Administration's Environmental Protection Agency stated that human activities were partly responsible for global climate change, Bush dismissed the report, calling it a product of "bureaucracy."[18] In October 2004, NASA scientist James Hansen strongly criticized the Bush Administration's approach to climate change policy, stating that "in my more than three decades in government, I have never seen anything approaching the degree to which information flow from scientists to the public has been screened and controlled as it is now."[19] In 2007, Bush began to acknowledge somewhat openly that global climate change was both a real phenomenon and was largely caused by human activities.[20] However, the Bush Administration continued to oppose mandatory limits on carbon emissions, and the U.S. delegation obstructed the adoption of any meaningful global climate change plans at the December 2007 United Nations Climate Change Conference in Bali, Indonesia.[21]

In late 2008, the Bush Administration began pressuring the Environmental Protection Agency to weaken pollution regulations for coal plants and allow them to increase emissions without adding controls. The new rules are tied to a plant's hourly emissions rate, and are intended to help extend the life span of older power plants without requiring them to install expensive pollution controls. Under the proposed regulations, even if a power plant's total yearly emissions increased, it would be considered to be running more cleanly if its hourly emissions were equal to or less than its historical maximum.[22]

A spokesman for the EPA said that the agency is committed to finalizing the rule by the time Bush leaves office in January 2009. Power companies have lobbied for weakened emissions regulations for many years, and the proposal was part of Vice President Dick Cheney's 2001 energy plan. The EPA is also considering another eleventh-hour rule that would permit more power plants to be built close to national parks and wilderness areas.[23]

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The coal boom

This considerably more coal-friendly regulatory environment under the Bush Administration - combined with rising oil prices and volatile natural gas prices (the U.S. price of a barrel of crude oil rose from $21.77 in Jan. 2001 to $88.41 in Jan. 2008,[24] while the price of natural gas fluctuated wildly and unpredictably during that same period[25]) - resulted in a dramatic expansion in utility plans for new coal-fired power plants.

Between 1992 and 2006, the capacity of all new U.S. coal-fired power plants totaled approximately 8,500 megawatts, a fairly modest amount of construction.[26] However, soon after Bush's presidency began - and especially after large increases in natural gas prices - energy utilities began submitting an increasing number of [proposals for new coal-fired power plants]. In October 2007, a report by the U.S. Department of Energy's National Energy Technology Laboratory found that 45 coal-fired plants, with a total capacity of 23,240 megawatts, were either under construction or had already been approved by regulators; a further 76 plants, with a total capacity of 48,440 megawatts, were in various stages of the development process.[27] This total potential capacity of 71,680 megawatts represented 743% increase over the total capacity of 8,500 megawatts of all plants built between 1992 and 2006. Financial advisors, reporters, and environmentalists alike began to speak of a new "coal boom."[28][29][30][31]

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Growing environmental backlash

However, during Bush's second presidential term, a rapidly growing proportion of the U.S. population began to view global climate change with increasing concern. According to a 2007 Yale University study, 56% of Americans considered global warming to be a very serious problem, compared with 40% in 2004; the 2007 poll also found that 68% of Americans agreed that global warming can be controlled by human actions. Furthermore, the study reported that that 86% of Americans thought that it was a good idea to increase funding for renewable energy research - and that 76% of Americans said that they trusted scientists at major universities on environmental issues, compared with 38% who said that they trusted President Bush.[2]

Hurricane Katrina - which killed 1,836 people and caused roughly $81.2 billion in damage when it hit coastal Louisiana and Mississippi in August 2005 - was a major factor in causing this shift in public opinion. According to a 2006 Zogby poll, 74% of Americans said that they were more convinced that global warming was a reality then than they had been in 2004, and 68% thought that global climate change was partly responsible for causing the hurricane.[32] This shift in public opinion was further bolstered in October 2007, when former U.S. Vice-President Al Gore was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize for his campaign in favor of governmental action to limit greenhouse gas emissions.

This shift in public opinion on climate change more generally has also translated into increasing support for the growing movement against coal-fired power plants in the U.S. An October 2007 poll by the Opinion Research Corporation found that 75% of Americans would support a five-year moratorium on new coal-fired power plants if it was accompanied by increased investment in renewable power research; when asked what type of energy they would prefer their utility to use to power their house, only 3% opted for coal-fired power.[33] (This increasing tendency to blame coal-fired power plants for contributing to global climate change is strongly scientifically supported: the 2.12 billion metric tons of carbon dioxide emitted by U.S. coal-fired power plants in 2006 represented 36.1% of U.S. carbon dioxide emissions, and 7.8% of global carbon dioxide emissions.[34])

Along with this shift in public opinion, campaigns organized by a growing grassroots movement against the construction of new coal-fired power plants has forced many corporations and politicians to abandon new coal-fired power projects.[5] Numerous environmental groups - such as the Sierra Club, Rainforest Action Network, Rising Tide, Clean Energy Action, Mountain Justice Summer, and Earth First!, as well as smaller local groups - have organized high profile protests and direct actions against new and existing coal-fired power plants.[5] The result has been a slough of recent plant cancellations: during 2007, 59 coal-fired power projects, with a total planned capacity of at least 28,364 megawatts, were cancelled or put on hold indefinitely. The general public has often strongly supported these cancellations: for instance, after the recent high-profile cancellation of Sunflower Energy's Holcomb Power Plant expansion by state environmental regulators in October 2007 due to concerns about global warming, a poll of Kansans found that 62% agreed with the decision to cancel the expansion.[4] Also, a recent poll of Iowans found that 80% thought that state regulators should focus on energy conservation and fuel efficiency, rather than approving new coal-fired power plants.[3]

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Coal industry response: "clean coal" marketing campaign

In 2000, in an effort to combat this erosion of public support for coal power, the Center for Energy and Economic Development (CEED) created Americans for Balanced Energy Choices (ABEC), a multimillion-dollar public relations campaign aimed at emphasizing the importance and downplaying the environmental impacts of coal-fired power production. CEED, which owns the domain name for ABEC's website, was founded by Peabody Energy, Arch Coal, Southern Company, and DTE Energy.[35] ABEC's members included:[36][35][37][38][39]

In 2006, these fifteen companies had total revenues of $146.5 billion.

In April 2008, ABEC changed its name to American Coalition for Clean Coal Electricity, listing 40 founding members from the "electricity generation, transportation, coal production, energy technology, and equipment manufacturing industries."[40]

In 2001-2002, ABEC ran several commercials over 1,000 times in the Washington, D.C., area. The ads claimed that the power industry had invested $50 billion in making coal "cleaner" (this figure can be compared with the total $3.5 billion U.S. investment in renewable energy in 2005).[41][42]

In 2007 - in a reaction to increasing public opposition to coal-fired power, and in an attempt to influence the 2008 U.S. presidential elections - ABEC increased its annual public relations and advertising budget from $8 million to $30 million, hired the advertising firm R&R Partners (whose CEO, Billy Vassiliadis, is also a Nevada advisor to the presidential campaign of Barack Obama), and launched a high-profile advertising campaign to coincide with the 2008 presidential primaries and general elections, spending $1.3 million on television, billboard, newspaper, and radio advertisements in Iowa, Nevada, and South Carolina over several months alone.[9][43] Teams of ABEC supporters - many of them paid - have canvassed outside presidential debates in several states.[9] On December 21, 2007, ABEC sent 30 campaigners dressed in Santa suits to the U.S. Capitol; the Santas delivered stockings full of coal-shaped chocolate to legislators, and promoted the benefits of coal energy.[44] On January 21, ABEC sponsored a CNN Democratic presidential debate - at which no questions about global warming were asked.[45]

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Ongoing struggle

As is apparent from ABEC's list of supporters, the ongoing political and legal battles over U.S. coal-fired power plants are currently a central front in the overall struggle over U.S. political responses to global climate change. On the one side of this battle are some of the world's biggest corporations; on the other side are a number of major environmental organizations, alongside a coalition of smaller, grassroots groups. While the flood of project cancellations in 2007 and 2008 is certainly good news to environmentalists, the 85 coal-fired power projects that are currently either moving forward or under construction represent at least 47,600 megawatts of capacity - which is still vastly more than the 8,500 megawatts of new coal plant capacity built between 1992 and 2006. The No New Coal movement has certainly won some important victories, but the "coal boom" is very much still alive and kicking.

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Gore Versus Obama Over Coal

In February 2009, The Bloomberg news agency reported the growing political fight between former US Vice President Al Gore and his Alliance for Climate Protection and President Obama over the isssue of clean coal.

As Bloomberg reported “The Gore-Obama split illustrates a growing debate in the U.S. as the new president attempts to deliver on his promise to reduce carbon dioxide emissions in the country 80 percent by 2050. Depending on who’s speaking, coal is either the villain or part of the solution.”

Al Gore's Alliance is pledging to spend $300 million over 3 years on adverts atttacking clean coal. In the adverts it is portraying clean coal as a mirage. One ad featured an actor playing a coal company executive says, “Don’t worry about climate change, leave that to us.”

Hitting back, pro-coal adverts are being aired by companies such as Peabody, Southern Co. of Atlanta and American Electric Power Company – and their adverts show excerpts from a speech Obama gave in September 2008: “Clean-coal technology is something that can make America energy-independent,” Obama says in the ad, which has run on cable channels such as CNN, Fox News and MSNBC.

The contradictions of clean coal were also becoming apparent in the Obama Administration. His Energy Secretary Steven Chu called coal his “worst nightmare” in 2007. However, at his Senate confirmation hearing in January 2009, Chu said the fuel is a “great natural resource” that the “the U.S., with its great technological leadership, should rise to the occasion to develop.” [46]

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Articles and Resources

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Related SourceWatch Articles

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References

  1. ↑ 1.0 1.1 1.2 1.3 "Coal Scores With Wager on Bush Belief", Washington Post, March 25, 2001.
  2. ↑ 2.0 2.1 "Yale Center for Environmental Law & Policy 2007 Environment Survey", Yale Center for Environmental Law & Policy website, March 7, 2007.
  3. ↑ 3.0 3.1 "Iowans Want Energy Conservation Before New Coal Plants", Environment News Service, December 21, 2007.
  4. ↑ 4.0 4.1 "Kansans Support Decision to Nix Coal Plants, Want Focus on Wind Energy", Lawrence Journal-World, January 4, 2008.
  5. ↑ 5.0 5.1 5.2 Nace, Ted. "Stopping Coal In Its Tracks", Orion, January/February 2008.
  6. ↑ "Fight Against Coal Plants Draws Diverse Partners", New York Times, October 20, 2007.
  7. ↑ "You're Getting Warmer", East Bay Express, December 5, 2007.
  8. ↑ "Spreading Misleading Messages", San Francisco Chronicle, November 3, 2004.
  9. ↑ 9.0 9.1 9.2 "Coal Industry Plugs Into the Campaign", Washington Post, January 18, 2008.
  10. ↑ "Greenwash of the Week: Coal Industry Buys Off CNN debates", Rainforest Action Network Understory blog, January 23, 2008.
  11. ↑ "Coal Can't Be Clean - Flannery", Melbourne Herald Sun, February 14, 2007.
  12. ↑ "Understanding the Clean Air Act", U.S. Environmental Protection Agency website, accessed January 2008.
  13. ↑ "The Clean Air Act, the Electric Utilities, and the Coal Market", Congressional Budget Office, April 1982, pp. 7-28.
  14. ↑ "Electricity Net Generation, 1949-2006", Energy Information Administration, Annual Energy Review 2006.
  15. ↑ "Bush's EPA Is Pursuing Fewer Polluters", Washington Post, September 30, 2007.
  16. ↑ FY 2009 EPA Budget in Brief, Environmental Protection Agency, February 2008, page v.
  17. ↑ Joint Statement of the Academies of Science of Brazil, Canada, China, France, Germany, India, Italy, Japan, Russia, the United Kingdom, and the United States, June 2005.
  18. ↑ Bush Disses Global Warming Report, CBS News website, June 4, 2002.
  19. ↑ NASA Scientist Rips Bush on Global Warming, MSNBC website, October 27, 2004.
  20. ↑ "In Bush's Final Year, The Agenda Gets Greener", Washington Post, December 29, 2007.
  21. ↑ "Climate Plan Looks Beyond Bush’s Tenure", New York Times, December 16, 2007.
  22. ↑ Siobhan Hughes, "EPA to Loosen Controls On Power-Plant Pollution," Wall Street Journal, October 27, 2008.
  23. ↑ Renee Schoof,"With time short, Bush pushes EPA to relax power-plant rule," McClatchy Newspapers, October 27, 2008.
  24. ↑ United States Spot Price FOB Weighted by Estimated Import Volume 1978-2008, Energy Information Administration website, accessed February 2008.
  25. ↑ U.S. Natural Gas Wellhead Price 1973-2007, Energy Information Administration website, accessed February 2008.
  26. ↑ U.S. Coal Capacity Additions and Annual Coal Consumption, in: "New Coal-Fired Generation Costs and Strategies", Cambridge Energy Research Associates, February 15, 2007, page 2 (PowerPoint file).
  27. ↑ "Tracking New Coal-Fired Power Plants", National Energy Technology Laboratory, October 10, 2007, page 6 (PDF).
  28. ↑ "Six Ways to Invest In the Coming Coal Boom", MSN Money, January 24, 2006.
  29. ↑ "Railroads Fueled By Coal's Boom", Dallas Morning News, June 30, 2007.
  30. ↑ "Colorado Coal: Boom Yields Four Straight Record Years and $80,000 Miners", Colorado Business News, April 1, 2005.
  31. ↑ "Coal Boom Carries High Price As Accidents Rise", Deseret Morning News, August 13, 2007.
  32. ↑ "Americans Link Hurricane Katrina and Heat Wave to Global Warming", Zogby International website, August 21, 2006.
  33. ↑ "A Post Fossil-Fuel America", Clean Energy Action website, October 18, 2007.
  34. ↑ "U.S. Carbon Dioxide Emissions from Energy Sources 2006", U.S. Department of Energy's Energy Information Administration, May 2007.
  35. ↑ 35.0 35.1 Largest Gas & Electric Utilities, Fortune website, accessed February 2008.
  36. ↑ "ABEC Supporters", Americans for Balanced Energy Choices website, accessed February 2008.
  37. ↑ Largest Railroads, Fortune website, accessed February 2008.
  38. ↑ "Cooperative Businesses in the United States", National Cooperative Month Planning Committee, October 2005 (PDF).
  39. ↑ "Overview of the United States Coal Mining Industry", Weir International, December 2006.
  40. ↑ "New Multi-Industry Coalition Aligns to Advocate Energy Security and Environmental Stewardship", Media Release, April 17, 2008.
  41. ↑ "Renewables - Global Status Report - 2006 Update", Renewable Energy Policy Network for the 21st Century, accessed February 2008 (PDF).
  42. ↑ "About ABEC", archived version dated August 30, 2004.
  43. ↑ "Coal Group Seeks PR Firms," O'Dwyer's PR Daily (sub req'd), September 26, 2007.
  44. ↑ Lump of Coal a Good Thing, Group Believes, The Hill, December 19, 2007.
  45. ↑ "No Questions On Global Warming Asked At CNN’s Coal Industry-Sponsored Presidential Debates", Think Progress blog, January 22, 2008.
  46. ↑ Daniel Whitten, "Clean-Coal Debate Pits Al Gore’s Group Against Obama, Peabody", Bloomberg, February 4, 2009
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