Coal

March 2011: The Union of Concerned Scientists have issued a report titled, “A Risky Proposition” which concludes that in the 1970s there was a massive over-investment in coal and nuclear plants without proper heed to the associated financial risks. This blind over-investment led to cancellation of 100 nuclear plants and 80 coal plants. But the money was already spent: hundreds of millions or even billions of dollars were wasted and electricity prices skyrocketed, municipal bonds defaulted and legal battles arose. Many people continue to think that coal is the cheapest and most plentiful electric fuel. “A Risky Proposition” expertly debunks these lingering misconceptions. link
(How Coal Works - USC informative page details how coal forms, the history and side-effects.future - link)
A Clean Air Task Force study quantifying the deaths and other health affects attributable to the fine particle pollution from power plants finds that over 13,000 deaths each year are attributable to U.S. power plants. While reducing in numbers, much more still needs to be done. link to interactive map for states here.

June 12 2013: European coal pollution causes 22,300 premature deaths a year. Burning coal also costs companies and governments billions of pounds in disease treatment and lost working days. These figures come from a Stuttgart University research study of the health impacts of burning coal to produce energy. Analysis of the emissions shows that air pollution from coal plants is now linked to more deaths than road traffic accidents in Poland, Romania, Bulgaria and the Czech Republic. Polish coal power plants were estimated to cause more than 5,000 premature deaths in 2010. Drax, Britain's largest coal-powered station, was said to be responsible for 4,450 life years lost. link

May 2012: Coal now just 36% of power in U.S. Power generation from coal is falling quickly. According to new figures from the U.S. Energy Information Administration, coal made up 36% of U.S. electricity in the first quarter of 2012, down from 44.6% in the first quarter of 2011. That stunning drop, which represented almost a 20% decline in coal generation over the last year, was primarily due to low natural gas prices. link
(As of April 2013 figure down to 32% - link)

Coal's decline in USA. In 2010, 44.9% of power generation was coal-based, natural gas had 23.8% of the market share, nuclear 19.6% and the rest was made up of hydro, renewables and other methods of power generation. Between 2010 to 2022, 48 gigawatts of coal will have been retired at 231 plants: that’s 14.1% of the total 339,000 megawatts of coal-fired power generation in 2010. All except 6 plants are more than 30 years old; the majority of plants are older than 50 years. link

November 2012: U.S. coal –fired generation looking at 33% reduction. According to the Union of Concerned Scientists, as much as 59GW of coal-fired production faces retirement in the next few years. That's in addition to an estimated 41GW off coal generation scheduled to shut or be converted to another fuel. The combined closure of 99GW of coal capacity would represent nearly one third of U.S. coal generation output. link

October 2011: Coal is doing more harm to the US economy than good. A new economic analysis has made a damming assessment of the costs of pollution from fossil fuel industries, and concludes that coal is doing more harm to the US economy than good – and that doesn't take into account its climate impact. link

February 2010: Coal-fired power on the way out? Analysis by Lester R. Brown, Earth Policy Institute. The past two years have witnessed the emergence of a powerful movement opposing the construction of new coal-fired power plants in the United States. Initially led by environmental groups, both national and local, it has since been joined by prominent national political leaders and many state governors. The principal reason for opposing coal plants is that they are changing the earth’s climate. There is also the effect of mercury emissions on health and the 23,600 U.S. deaths each year from power plant air pollution. Coal’s future is also suffering as Wall Street turns its back on the industry. link

August 2010: Old style coal plants expanding across US. Records show that more than 30 traditional coal plants (i.e. without carbon capture) have been built since 2008 or are under construction. Much lower than the previous 151 a few years ago, but still enough to provide 17,900MW of energy which would emit 25 million tons of greenhouse gases annually. It suggests the industry believes carbon regulation may not be a serious threat. Construction costs are, however, on the rise and could deliver increases in energy bills up to 30%. link
January 2010: In 2009, plans for 26 new coal-fired power plants were shelved - link

January 2011: Banks, climate & the Carbon Principles. In February 2008, three leading banks, Citi, JPMorgan Chase and Morgan Stanley, announced common coal power financing policies, known as the Carbon Principles. Heralded as a new path for the banking industry, the Carbon Principles were supposed to make it “tougher to finance conventional coal-fired plants in the U.S.” Today Rainforest Action Network examines the implementation and impact of these Principles, and the role that banks play in financing new coal plants – and the news is not good. Our research reveals that, while the broader economy has been shifting away from new coal power plants, the banks that have signed onto the Carbon Principles are continuing with business as usual in regards to financing coal. Burning coal is the nation's top source of air pollution and toxic mercury, and it is responsible for one third of the country's greenhouse gas emission, nearly 2 billion tons per year. link (Click here to see report)

World coal consumption by region, 1980-2010 (click to animate)

December 2012: IEA Coal Report 2012: Coal consumption booms amid rising climate concerns. In a report destined to frustrate advocates for global action on climate change, the Paris-based International Energy Agency projected that in five years' time, the amount of coal burned around the globe every year will increase by an additional 1.2 billion metric tons , an amount roughly equivalent to the current annual coal consumption of the U.S. and Russia combined. Virtually all of it the increase is attributable to rapid economic expansion in China and India. link

January 2013: Coal providing more than ever of world’s energy. Coal-fired power stations provide two-fifths of the world’s electricity, and there are ever more of them. In the doubling of the world’s electricity production over the past decade, two-thirds of the increase came from coal. At these rates, coal will vie with oil as the world’s largest source of primary energy within five years. By 2011 China’s coal demand had tripled, a rise from two-thirds of the energy America gets from oil to twice that amount. China’s domestic coal industry produces more primary energy than Middle Eastern oil does. link

January 2013: Coal use on the rise in Europe. A coal surge in Europe is making nonsense of EU environmental policies, which politicians like to claim are a model for the rest of the world. European countries had hoped gradually to squeeze dirty coal out of electricity generation. Instead, its market share has been growing. The EU aims to reduce carbon emissions to 80% of their 1990 levels by 2020. Thanks in part to the recession; by 2009 it was most of the way there, a bit more than 17% down on the 1990 level. In 2010, though, emissions began rising. Bloomberg calculates that carbon emissions from power plants rose around 3% in 2012, pushing total emissions 1% higher than they were in 2011. link

China now uses more coal than the United States, Europe and Japan combined. China’s frenetic construction of coal-fired of power plants has raised worries around the world about the effect on climate change. making it the world’s largest emitter of gases that are warming the planet. But largely missing in the hand-wringing is this: China has emerged in the past two years as the world’s leading builder of more efficient, less polluting coal power plants, mastering the technology and driving down the cost. After relying until recently on older technology, “China has since become the major world market for advanced coal-fired power plants with high-specification emission control systems,” the International Energy Agency said in a report a on April 20 2009. (Pictured: coal-fired plant at Dadong, Shanxi Province, China) link

August 2012: Washington DC appeals court strikes down key Obama-administration rule requiring coal-fired power plants to cut emissions. link
Cross-pollination rule rejected. A DC Court of Appeals sent the cross pollution rule back to the EPA for revision and ordered the agency to administer its existing Clean Air Interstate Rule - the Bush-era regulation. By the time the EPA revises the rule on cross-state pollution, which could take at least two years, the impact would be limited because more stringent mercury and air toxics rules will kick in by 2015 and force old, coal-fired plants to shut down, up to a total of 50GW. The EPA's Mercury and Air Toxics rule is being challenged in the same court that struck down the cross state rule. The National Association of Manufacturers and Chamber of Commerce have filed briefs asking the court to strike down the rule because it would drive up power prices. Some analysts contend that the mercury rule won't meet the same fate as the cross-state plan because the agency's authority to regulate mercury emissions is very clear. link

March 2012: EPA puts first greenhouse gas limits on new power plants. The EPA today proposed the nation's first Clean Air Act standard for carbon dioxide emissions from new power plants. Under the standard, greenhouse gas emissions of new coal-fired power plants would be reduced by about 50% over the life of the plants. This only applies built in the future, and does not apply to existing units already operating or units that will start construction over the next 12 months. The EPA was compelled to propose this standard for greenhouse gas emissions from new power plants not only by the U.S. Supreme Court ruling, but also by a settlement agreement with a coalition of states led by New York reached in March 2011. link

July 2011: EPA sets new standards for coal-burning plants. New standards have been issued for coal-burning power plants in 28 states that would sharply cut smokestack emissions that have polluted forests, farms, lakes and streams across the eastern United States for decades. The new regulations will take effect beginning in 2012, and would cut emissions of soot, smog and acid rain from hundreds of power plants by millions of tons at a cost to utilities of less than $1 billion a year. The E.P.A. said the cleaner air would prevent as many as 34,000 premature deaths, 15,000 nonfatal heart attacks and hundreds of thousands of cases of asthma and other respiratory ailments every year. link

March 2011: The EPA must act on coal ash within 90 days. (more on Coal Ash page) link

There are unseen problems with coal we know little or nothing about. According to ORNL (Oak Ridge National Laboratory) Americans living near coal-fired power plants are exposed to higher radiation doses than those living near nuclear power plants that meet government regulations. link Revealing is the TVA disclosure that in just one year, the plant’s byproducts included 45,000 pounds of arsenic, 49,000 pounds of lead, 1.4 million pounds of barium, 91,000 pounds of chromium and 140,000 pounds of manganese. Those metals can cause cancer, liver damage and neurological complications. more According to the American Lung Association, pollution from coal-fired power plants causes 23,600 premature deaths, 21,850 hospital admissions, 554,000 asthma attacks, and 38,200 heart attacks every year. The Center for Disease Control (CDC) estimates that 12,000 coal miners died from black lung disease between 1992 and 2002.

January 2012: Coal does more harm than good in Kentucky. Kentucky, the third-largest coal producer in the U.S., generates about 94% of its electricity from the resource and has some of the lowest electricity prices in the country. But according to a health impact study by the Kentucky Environmental Foundation that examines research on the impact of coal in Kentucky, the health costs came in at more than $62 million in 2007, and that’s just for asthma, which inflicts 1 in 10 Kentuckians and kills about 50 people in the state per year. Asthma rates for African Americans of high school age in Kentucky are at 22%. The report examines costs along the coal value chain, including mining, transportation and electricity generation. KEF cites a study from Public Health Reports that finds 2,347 to 2,889 yearly excess deaths from coal mining in Appalachia, costing the region an estimated $10 billion each year. link

May 2010: UCS - 3 dozen states are collectively hemorrhaging tens of billions of dollars annually on imported coal to generate electricity, according to a report released by the Union of Concerned Scientists (UCS). Residents in those states would be better served, the report concludes, if more money were spent in-state on local renewable energy technology and energy efficiency programs. The first-of-its-kind report, which ranks the 38 states that are net importers of domestic and foreign coal based on the most recent available data, found that 11 of them each spent more than $1 billion annually on imported coal in 2008. 63% of domestic coal comes from just three states: Wyoming, West Virginia and Kentucky. Foreign coal burned in U.S. coal plants mainly comes from Colombia. "Importing coal to produce electricity is a drain on state economies," said Jeff Deyette, the assistant director of energy research and analysis in UCS's Climate & Energy Program and a report co-author. "Ratepayer dollars are diverted out of state instead of spent locally on renewable energy projects and energy efficiency measures that would benefit residents directly." (More than 80% of the foreign coal imports in 2008 came from Colombia. The balance came from Venezuela and Indonesia and the United States still exports more coal than it imports.) link

November 2009: Tennessee authorizing new discharges of toxic heavy metals - one million gallons a day - into the same river devastated by the Kingston coal ash spill. - there are no federal laws prohibiting this pollution. "Coal-fired power plants around the country are installing scrubbers without proper controls to limit water pollution because the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency has failed to set national standards governing wastewater discharges from scrubber systems," environment groups said in a joint statement. This is simply transferring the toxic emissions from the air to the water supply. link (see more below under "Scrubbers)

Scrubbers clean coal - but move pollutants from air to the water instead.
June 2008: 'Scrubbers' provide a method of removing up to a tonne of CO2 each day from the air - roughly the equivalent amount produced by a transatlantic flight. Each device would cost around £100,000. (February 2009 conversion = $ 145,000) Scientists have stressed their invention does not provide a magic solution to the problem of CO2 emissions. Millions of the devices would need to be produced to capture all global emissions, and the problem of disposing of the CO2 once it has been trapped still remains. Scientists have previously been skeptical about the feasibility of air-capture devices, due to the large amounts of energy required to run them. link

October 2009: In 2006 Allegheny Energy in Pennsylvania decided to install scrubbers to clean the plant’s air emissions, environmentalists were overjoyed. The technology would spray water and chemicals through the plant’s chimneys, trapping more than 150,000 tons of pollutants each year before they escaped into the sky. But the cleaner air has come at a cost. Each day since the equipment was switched on in June 2009, the company has dumped tens of thousands of gallons of wastewater containing chemicals from the scrubbing process into the Monongahela River, which provides drinking water to 350,000 people and flows into Pittsburgh, 40 miles to the north. link

July 2011: Scrubbers are key weapons in the fight to reduce pollution at coal-fired power plants. However their life-span of 25 years is suspect. The Electric Power Research Institute, which is funded by utility companies, is investigating reports of "aggressive" corrosion in scrubbers across the nation. "Our findings, so far, show it's fairly widespread through the industry," said John Shingledecker, senior project manager in the research institute's fossil materials and repair program. Without a fix, corrosion threatens plant shutdowns and costly repairs, both of which could affect power bills. They were installed to help meet a federal mandate that coal-fired power plants cut 71% of their sulfur-dioxide emissions by 2014. link

To read more on Carbon Capture and Storage - link
For an exhaustive study of "How to Clean Coal" refer to the Natural Resources Defense Council's essay: link

According to the NRDC (Natural Resources Defense Council) relying on coal-derived liquid as an alternative to oil-based fuels could nearly double global warming pollution for every gallon of transportation fuel that is produced and used. The total emissions rate for oil and gas fuels is about 27 pounds of carbon dioxide per gallon, counting both production and use, while the estimated total emissions from coal-derived fuel is more like 50 pounds of CO2 per gallon. link

Liquefied coal – CTL – an alternative to oil? The liquefaction of coal is one concept that is being given new life due to higher petroleum prices. Currently it is cost-prohibitive and environmentally unfriendly. But according to a new study from the MIT, as early as 2015 and without a solid climate policy, coal-to-liquid (CTL) fuel may be economically viable in the US and China. CTL fuels have been in existence since the 1920s, and were used extensively by Germany in the 1940s. At the time, it produced about 90% of their national fuel needs. Then Middle Eastern oil became dirt cheap and CTL technology was largely abandoned. The only country that still uses it in a significant way is South Africa where it covers about 30% of their fuel needs.
The production of liquefied coal has a large carbon footprint, much larger than that of petroleum fuel production. One method of production is carbonization where the coal is coked at temperatures up to 1,380 F to produce coal tars rich in hydrocarbons. The coal tar is then further refined into fuels. The process produces a large amount of carbon dioxide emissions. If done without CCS technology, the life-cycle carbon footprint is about double that of crude oil. The study notes that the viability of CTL will by vary greatly on whether or not certain regions adopt prohibitive climate policies. If lower-carbon fuels are available, CTL would not be considered as an option. Liquefied coal may only be available in developing nations with lax environmental rules, and where low-carbon alternatives are not available. One of the study's authors, John Reilly, stated, "Various climate proposals have very different impacts on the allowances of regional CO2 emissions, which in turn have quite distinct implications on the prospects for CTL conversion. If climate policies are enforced, world demand for petroleum products would decrease, the price of crude oil would fall, and coal-to-liquid fuels would be much less competitive." link

Gasification is very energy-intensive, requiring high-temperature air, steam or oxygen to react with the organic material. Gasification breaks down coal into its basic chemical constituents using high temperature and pressure which leads to the release of large amounts of carbon dioxide. In addition, gasification is often inefficient, leaving behind significant amounts of solid waste. In theory coal gasification offers a versatile and clean way to convert coal into electricity. Because of this, carbon dioxide can be captured from a gas stream far more easily than from the smokestacks of a conventional coal plant. One significant challenge is the historically short lifespan of refractories, which are used to line and protect the inside of a gasifier. Currently, refractories have a lifespan of 12 to 16 months. The relining of a gasifier costs approximately $1 million and requires three to six weeks of downtime. link A clean burning plant would cost 20% more than a conventional coal-fired facility with the same capacity and almost four times as much as a similar-size generator fueled by natural gas. Environmentalists see the advantage that instead of emitting CO2 into the atmosphere, where it traps heat, the new design could one day extract the gas from the chemical reactor and then "sequester" it deep underground. link

June 2012: Expense rules out plant expansion. Only two IGCC (integrated gasification combined cycle) plants, are under construction in the U.S. out of more than three dozen proposed over the last decade. IGCC coal-gasification power plants are expensive, while dozens of similar facilities have been scrapped and some remaining projects may eliminate coal in favor of abundant, cheap natural gas. The power industry cited gasification technology as a way to save coal's role as the dominant fuel in electric generation as federal limits on CO2 emissions appeared imminent, but the technology was unable to gain traction in the face of high capital costs, carbon legislation delay and rising supplies of natural gas. IGCC plants face a host of issues starting with high construction costs. IGCC technology employs a chemical process that converts coal into a synthesis gas, using steam and pressure. The so-called "syngas" can be stripped of impurities, then burned in a gas turbine to produce electricity. IGCC also offers the ability to capture emissions, such as heat-trapping CO2 , for storage or other use. High construction costs and technical glitches dogged the nation's first three IGCC projects in the 1990s. Only two still run: TECO Energy's 250-megawatt Polk County IGCC in Florida and the 260-MW Wabash River Power Station in Indiana, operated by Duke Energy. link

US Subsidies to energy: According to The National Academy of Sciences the federal government invested $644 billion (in 2003 dollars) between 1950 and 2003 in efforts to promote and support energy development. Of this, only $60.6 billion or 18.7% went for R&D. It was dwarfed by tax incentives (43.7%) Also tax incentives comprised 87% of subsidies for natural gas. Federal market activities made up 75% of the subsidies for hydroelectric power. Tax incentives and R&D support each provided about one-third of the subsidies for coal.

September 2009: During the fiscal years 2002-2008 the United States handed out subsidies to fossil fuel industries to a tune of $72 billion. Of that, $2.3 billion went to carbon capture and storage; the rest went to oil and coal. link

Germany: After spending more than $200 billion in subsidies since the 1960s, the federal government decided in 2008 that they would be phased out by 2018 being too unaffordable. Economists and free-market lawmakers have long decried the subsidies as handouts to the politically influential coal industry and powerful trade unions. This year, for instance, Deutsche Steinkohle AG, the owner of the remaining eight mines, will receive more in government subsidies ($3.3 billion) than it will from selling coal ($2.9 billion).

$427 million. That's what the oil and coal industries spent during the first half of 2008 on lobbying and advertising. According to USA Today (April 27, 2009) "Fifty of the nation's largest electric utilities amped up spending on lobbyists by 30% late last year to influence the debate in Congress just underway on one of the biggest issues facing lawmakers: climate change."

Industry opposes clean energy. The Guardian recently ran an investigative piece finding that America's oil, gas and coal industry "has increased its lobbying budget by 50%, with key players spending $44.5m in the first three months of this year (2009) in an intense effort to cut off support for Barack Obama's plan to build a clean energy economy." link