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Coal plans go up in smoke
Juliette Jowit, Guardian
Environmentalists in the US have halted a huge new wave of coal-fired power stations. What lessons can Europe learn from them?
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One day, historians might speculate that it was the ambition of the companies that sought to profit by building coal-fired power stations that triggered the beginning of the end for humans' most polluting habit.

Four years ago, campaigners in the US raised concerns over plans to build 150 coal-fired power stations nationwide. Today, nearly half those plans have been defeated in the courts or abandoned, while half of the remaining proposals are being actively opposed. Just 14 of the 150 plants are being developed, and environmental lawyers are all still pursuing them.

... In a few years, the backlash against coal power in America has become the country's biggest-ever environmental campaign, transforming the nation's awareness of climate change and inspiring political leaders to take firmer action after years of doubt and delay. Plants have been defeated in at least 30 of the 50 states, uniting those with already strong environmental records, such as California, with more conservative areas, such as the southern and central states.

The success of the US campaign is also now inspiring a global wave of protests, many in Europe, against similar schemes that plan to build coal-fired generators before carbon capture technology exists
(3 September 2008)

Nasa scientist appears in court to fan the flames of coal power station row
Michael McCarthy, The Independent
The Nasa scientist who first drew attention to global warming 20 years ago appeared in a British court yesterday as a key witness in support of climate change activists charged with damaging a power station.

Professor James Hansen gave evidence at Maidstone Crown Court in the case of six Greenpeace members who scaled a 630ft chimney at the Kingsnorth plant in Hoo, Kent, last October in protest against plans to build new coal-fired units there...

...Yesterday, Prof Hansen, who has spoken out against the Bush administration's stance on global warming, said Britain had a responsibility to take a lead on limiting climate change because it was responsible – owing to its long industrial past – for much of the CO2 already in the atmosphere. Phasing out coal-burning power stations was crucial in tackling global warming, he told the court.
(4 September 2008)

The world spends $300 billion subsidizing fossil fuels
thedailygreen.com
The world is spending $300 billion every year to subsidize fossil fuels that pollute the air, wreck the climate ... and run the world's economy.

So what if we, as taxpayers, stopped spending $300 billion on coal, oil and natural gas, and started spending it instead on wind, sun and water?

That's the question at the heart of a new report from the United Nations Environment Program, which concludes that eliminating fuel subsidies would not only reduce greenhouse gas emissions, but might just inspire new economic growth. (Further, it concludes that fossil fuels subsidies sold as a way to help the poor keep the lights on actually do more to help the rich.)

“In the final analysis many fossil fuel subsidies are introduced for political reasons but are simply propping up and perpetuating inefficiencies in the global economy – they are thus part of the market failure that is climate change,” UNEP Executive Director Achim Steiner said...
(27 August 2008)

Heinberg on New Coal Technologies
Richard Heinberg, MuseLetter 197 via Global Public Media
For coal, the future of both extraction and consumption depends on new technology. If successfully deployed, innovative technologies could enable the use of coal that is unminable by gasifying it underground; reduce coal's carbon emissions; or allow coal to take the place of natural gas or petroleum. Without them, coal simply may not have much of a future. Are these technologies close to development? Are they economical? Will they work?

The technologies discussed in this chapter go by some rather unwieldy names, and so we shall call them by their customary acronyms: Coal-to-Liquids (CTL), Underground Coal Gasification (UCG), Integrated Gasification Combined Cycle (IGCC), and Carbon Capture and Storage (CCS).

Many energy experts believe that these technologies may largely define the world's energy path for the next few decades.

...Conclusions

Given plenty of cheap available energy, technology can work wonders. It is understandable that our society has fetishized technology, given the spectacular societal changes it has wrought in the past century. In the last twenty years alone, computers, cell phones, and a suite of other digital communications technologies have created industries and fortunes, altered our habits, and morphed our vocabulary. The evolution of computers has been subject to Moore's Law, according to which processor speed, memory capacity, and even the resolution of digital cameras are expected to double every two years. It is tempting to extrapolate these rapid developments in communication technologies to the fields of transportation and energy production. But in these areas technological change is slower and more expensive, and more obviously dependent on continued consumption of non-renewable resources such as oil, natural gas, coal, and iron ore.

Each of the coal technologies surveyed here holds promise for addressing one problem or another. None of them is a magic bullet that can overcome long-term production declines of either coal or other fossil fuels due to the depletion of high-grade resources; nor can any of them, even if successfully deployed, truly make coal environmentally benign. All are expensive in economic terms; only IGCC, with its greater efficiencies, avoids also imposing new energy costs on society.

Time will tell which if any of these technologies is deployed on a large scale. Meanwhile, one truism remains: Investing in new coal technologies means increasing our societal dependence on coal, and therefore exacerbating our collective vulnerability to inevitable coal supply problems.
(2 September 2008)
For the full text see http://www.energybulletin.net/node/46479