U.S. coal politics

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{{#Badges: Front groups|CoalSwarm}} Since the presidency of George W. Bush began in January 2001, coal-fired power generation has enjoyed a resurgence in the United States. Following a massive and consistent decline in new coal-fired power plant projects that had taken place since the late 1970's, the Bush administration, along with other federal and state legislators - faced with rising oil costs, caused by Chinese economic growth and war in the Middle East - have actively promoted coal as a low-cost energy alternative.[1]

However, the substantial rise in concern about climate change that has occurred in American public debate in the last few years[2] - especially in the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina, and Al Gore's receipt of the Nobel Peace Prize for his work on climate change - has caused a growing segment of the American population to view coal-fired power plants as increasingly problematic.[3][4] Alongside this change in public discourse, the growing power of the anti-coal movement - both in the U.S. and internationally, especially in the U.K. and Australia - has increased the political cost of coal-fired plants, and spurred further shifts in public opinion.[5][6][7]

In an effort to counter this trend, a number of coal producing and consuming companies in the U.S. have recently launched a high-profile marketing campaign, aimed at convincing the American public that coal-fired power can be environmentally sustainable.[1][8][9] However, many leading environmentalists have 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 puts it: "Coal can't be clean."[11]

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 they 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 emit (per ton of coal consumed). Furthermore, 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 relatively pristine, new emissions are very strictly regulated. These regulations both imposed unprecedented restrictions on areas in which new coal-fired plants could be built, and required the installation of pollution controls during the construction of new coal-fired plants; in 1980, the utility industry spent $1.8 billion on pollution controls.[13]

The costs associated with these new regulations were a major factor in the steep decline in construction of new coal-fired power plants during the 1980's; by the late 80's, the construction of new coal-fired power plants had slowed to a near-standstill. Between 1988 and 2001, net electricity generated by coal-fired plants increased by 22.2%; this was a significant decline of coal-fired power production since its heyday between 1971 and 1985, during which period net electricity from coal-fired plants increased by 96.6%. (By way of comparison, net electricity generated by natural gas-fired plants increased by 119.5% between 1988 and 2001, compared with a decline in natural gas-fired power production of 21.9% between 1971 and 1985.)[14]

During the 2000 presidential campaign, coal industry executives placed their bets on George W. Bush, in the hopes that his campaign promises to force coal-fired power plants to reduce carbon emissions would disappear after his election. 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 and Southern Company gave hundreds of thousands more. Also, during the 2000 elections, Peabody Energy, Burlington Northern, and Southern Company formed Americans for Balanced Energy Choices, which started a multimillion-dollar advertising campaign designed to counter the influence of environmental groups and promote coal energy.[1]

The coal industry's wager on supporting Bush was highly successful. In his first few months as president, Bush abandoned his campaign promise to force coal-fired plants to reduce carbon emissions, appointed Irl Engelhardt (chairman of Peabody Energy) as an energy advisor to his transition team, and appointed former coal industry lobbyist J. Steven Griles as deputy secretary of the Department of the Interior.[1](Griles remained deputy secretary of the interior until Dec. 2004; in 2007, he pled guilty to obstruction of justice in the Jack Abramoff lobbying scandal, and was sentenced to ten months in prison.) Especially since 2003, Bush's budget cuts for the Environmental Protection Agency (which, amidst uncontrolled expansions in military spending, have declined from $8.1 billion in the 2002 budget to $7.1 billion in the proposed 2009 budget) have dramatically impacted that agency'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 172 criminal investigators, which was below 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 any meaningful global climate change plans from being adopted at the December 2007 United Nations Climate Change Conference in Bali, Indonesia.[21]

The coal boom

This changed regulatory environment under the Bush Administration - combined with rising and volatile oil and 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,[22] while the price of natural gas fluctuated wildly and unpredictably during that same period[23]) - resulted in a dramatic expansion in planned coal-fired power plant construction in the U.S. Between 1992 and 2006, the total capacity of all newly constructed U.S. coal-fired power plants was approximately 8,500 megawatts.[24] However, soon after Bush's presidency began - and especially after the Iraq War caused a sudden spike in crude oil prices - energy utilities began submitting an increasing number of proposals for new coal-fired power plants, many of which were met with approval as potential means for the U.S. to increase its independence from foreign oil imports. 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 currently permitted, near construction, or under construction; a further 76 plants, with a total capacity of 48,440 megawatts, were in various stages of the development process.[25] This total capacity of 71,680 megawatts represents a 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."[26][27][28][29]

Growing environmental backlash

In recent years, a growing proportion of Americans have begun to view global climate change with increasing concern. According to a Yale University study, in 2007 56% of Americans considered global warming to be a very serious problem, compared with 40% in 2004; also, in 2007, 68% of Americans thought that global warming was something that people can control, and 62% agreed that the U.S. needs more laws to enforce energy efficiency. Furthermore, the poll found that 76% of Americans say that they trust scientists at major universities on environmental issues, compared with only 38% who say that they trust President Bush. Finally, pollsters reported that that 86% of Americans think that it is a good idea to increase funding for renewable energy research.[2]

A major factor in this shift in public opinion was 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. A 2006 Zogby poll showed that 74% of Americans said that they were more convinced that global warming was a reality then than they were in 2004, and that 68% thought that global climate change was partly responsible for causing the hurricane.[30] This shift was further bolstered in October 2007, when former U.S. Vice-President Al Gore and the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change were co-awarded the Nobel Peace Prize for their campaign for governmental action on climate change.

This shift in public opinion has bolstered 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, and, when asked what type of energy they would prefer their utility to use to power their house, only 3% opted for coal-fired power.[31] (This shift in U.S. public opinion against coal-fired power plants is strongly statistically supported: the 2.12 billion metric tons of carbon dioxide emitted by U.S. coal-fired power plants in 2006 represented 36.1% of total U.S. carbon dioxide emissions, and 7.8% of all global carbon dioxide emissions for that year.[32])

Combined with a growing grassroots movement against the construction of new coal-fired power plants, this shift in public opinion has forced many policy-makers and utilities 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. Public opinion appears to support 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]

Coal industry response: "clean coal" marketing campaign

In 2000, in an effort to increase 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.[33] An incomplete list of ABEC's members:[34][33][35][36][37]

In 2001-2002, ABEC ran several commercials, which ran over 1,000 times in the Washington, D.C., area. The ads argued that over 50% of U.S. electricity comes from coal (which is no longer the case), and 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[38]).[39]

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][40] 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, and promoted coal energy to legislators.[41] On January 21, ABEC sponsored a CNN Democratic presidential debate, at which no questions about global warming were asked.[42]

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 "ground zero" of the overall struggle over U.S. political responses to global climate change. On the one side of these battles are some of the world's biggest corporations; on the other side are a number of major environmental organization, alongside a coalition of smaller, grassroots groups. While the flood of project cancellations in 2007 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 greater 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.

Resources

References

  1. ↑ Jump up to: 1.0 1.1 1.2 1.3 "Coal Scores With Wager on Bush Belief", Washington Post, March 25, 2001.
  2. ↑ Jump up to: 2.0 2.1 "Yale Center for Environmental Law & Policy 2007 Environment Survey", Yale Center for Environmental Law & Policy website, March 7, 2007.
  3. ↑ Jump up to: 3.0 3.1 "Iowans Want Energy Conservation Before New Coal Plants", Environment News Service, December 21, 2007.
  4. ↑ Jump up to: 4.0 4.1 "Kansans Support Decision to Nix Coal Plants, Want Focus on Wind Energy", Lawrence Journal-World, January 4, 2008.
  5. ↑ Jump up to: 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. ↑ Jump up to: 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. ↑ United States Spot Price FOB Weighted by Estimated Import Volume 1978-2008, Energy Information Administration website, accessed February 2008.
  23. ↑ U.S. Natural Gas Wellhead Price 1973-2007, Energy Information Administration website, accessed February 2008.
  24. ↑ 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).
  25. ↑ "Tracking New Coal-Fired Power Plants", National Energy Technology Laboratory, October 10, 2007, page 6 (PDF).
  26. ↑ "Six Ways to Invest In the Coming Coal Boom", MSN Money, January 24, 2006.
  27. ↑ "Railroads Fueled By Coal's Boom", Dallas Morning News, June 30, 2007.
  28. ↑ "Colorado Coal: Boom Yields Four Straight Record Years and $80,000 Miners", Colorado Business News, April 1, 2005.
  29. ↑ "Coal Boom Carries High Price As Accidents Rise", Deseret Morning News, August 13, 2007.
  30. ↑ "Americans Link Hurricane Katrina and Heat Wave to Global Warming", Zogby International website, August 21, 2006.
  31. ↑ "A Post Fossil-Fuel America", Clean Energy Action website, October 18, 2007.
  32. ↑ "U.S. Carbon Dioxide Emissions from Energy Sources 2006", U.S. Department of Energy's Energy Information Administration, May 2007.
  33. ↑ Jump up to: 33.0 33.1 Largest Gas & Electric Utilities, Fortune website, accessed February 2008.
  34. ↑ "ABEC Supporters", Americans for Balanced Energy Choices website, accessed February 2008.
  35. ↑ Largest Railroads, Fortune website, accessed February 2008.
  36. ↑ "Cooperative Businesses in the United States", National Cooperative Month Planning Committee, October 2005 (PDF).
  37. ↑ "Overview of the United States Coal Mining Industry", Weir International, December 2006.
  38. ↑ "Renewables - Global Status Report - 2006 Update", Renewable Energy Policy Network for the 21st Century, accessed February 2008 (PDF).
  39. ↑ "About ABEC", archived version dated August 30, 2004.
  40. ↑ "Coal Group Seeks PR Firms," O'Dwyer's PR Daily (sub req'd), September 26, 2007.
  41. ↑ Lump of Coal a Good Thing, Group Believes, The Hill, December 19, 2007.
  42. ↑ "No Questions On Global Warming Asked At CNN’s Coal Industry-Sponsored Presidential Debates", Think Progress blog, January 22, 2008.

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