Coen Clean Coal Conference Call TRANSCRIPT
TRANSCRIPT, Coen Brothers Clean Coal Ad “Air Freshener” 02.26.09
Questions from the press reporters & bloggers
Joseph Romm, ClimateProgress.org: Hello yes. I need three sources of confusion cleared up. One, we just heard a great deal about the bad pollution consequences of coal, but I thought the Reality Coalition was focused on CO2. Relatedly, the ad focuses on dirt, on dirty air which is not CO2. My first question is: is the Reality Coalition focused on the CO2 emissions and is that why they are critical of coal? Or are they critical of coal because of all the pollution including all the non-CO2 pollution and mining problems?
BRIAN: We can take them one at a time. The –
Joseph Romm: Lemme just pose the other two. I’d like to know if because clean coal doesn’t exist, do you therefore support an effort to develop clean coal or are your members opposed to a major effort to develop clean coal? And third, if clean coal doesn’t exist, does that mean we can’t regulate, uh -– we shouldn’t have greenhouse gas regulations? Or does it mean that we will have greenhouse gas regulations and the result will be that we will shut down coal plants because clean coal does not exist?
BRIAN: Maybe I’ll take the first two, Bruce and you can take the third one? In terms of the reality coalition, where we stand -– when we first launched the campaign, you know, we were clearly focused on the huge amount of carbon pollution, greenhouse gas pollution that the coal plants were spewing out. I think that it’s clear that in order for coal to be truly clean, it would have to not only capture all that, but mitigate the other environmental impacts of this enterprise. So that would include all the stuff Bruce talked about with regard to mountain top removal and the impact of their overall – not only their waste, not only the way they produce it, but its ash waste as well. From our standpoint, coal has to clean up their act completely to be part of the clean energy future. But clearly their carbon pollution is the key part of that. In terms of do we support or oppose the development of clean coal technology, we have said from the beginning, look, if coal could do those things to become truly clean then they could be part of a clean energy future. But the fact is the industry themselves while they continue to ask for public dollars for research and development around carbon capture and sequestration technology, they don’t put their own money where their mouth is. They prefer – they’ve decided instead to spend money on advertising and lobbying to block progress rather than investing in seeing if this technology could work, and then actually deploying the technology. Because they know that actually deploying the technology would cost hundreds of millions of dollars.
BRUCE: FutureGen was a huge R&D project in Illinois, we did not oppose that project. It wasn’t using mountaintop removal coal, and it was not in the middle of a particularly pristine area. So that was a true demonstration project. And we have not opposed — we have called scientists to look at all the energy options in a responsible way. That said, we remain highly skeptical whether it can be done a) technically, and b) whether it makes any economic sense. Coal already – a new coal plant today is more expensive that many of the other clean energy sources such as wind power. Once you add in carbon capture and storage to the price, according to the experts, it approximately doubles from what is already a high price today. At that point it’s more expensive than solar, or around solar, and solar continues to come down in price. So we don’t support a major expansion because we don’t know whether it’s going to work. But we have not opposed investments , the key part here is the point that Brian made is that the coal industry itself has been very unwilling to put its record profits into determining whether or not it has a future in a carbon-constrained world. Instead, putting all that money lobby efforts and beating back efforts to actually do something responsible.
Turning to the question of if clean coal does not exist should we therefore not regulate carbon dioxide. From our view, we know that coal is a large contributor to global warming and we have a climate crisis. The first thing that you do is that you don’t dig the hole any deeper. So building new coal plants that emit carbon dioxide is an absurd idea. So the first thing is that you don’t build any new ones to make the problems worse. Secondly as we move foreword to regulate carbon dioxide consistent with science, it’s going to take somewhere — the schedule that for example Dr. Jim Hansen and the scientists at NASA say is that we have about twenty years to eliminate the emissions from coal. So we’re not saying shut down all existing coal plants. We’re saying, don’t build any new to make the problem worse. And begin the orderly retirement and implementation of the clean energy things we know work today, make some efficiency with wind, solar and geothermal that can begin the orderly retirement, and if ten years from now the coal industry has put its money up and thinks it can be part of a carbon-constrained world, we’re perfectly open to revisit that. But not at this point when what it’s proposing is to build very large new sources of carbon dioxide with no ability to make sure it does not exacerbate the problem and makes it worse.
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[...] that neither side is clear about what they mean when they say “clean coal”. (Although a conference call from Reality Coalition explaining the ad does go a little way into the [...]