Renewables Vs. Coal – Can't We All Just Get Along?
Frequent contributor Sonny Carri wrote a long and eloquent comment about the coal industry, which I summarize here:
Let’s work to get them on board, not be an adversary. Change requires coming together, not schism.
Very thoughtful stuff as always, Sonny. In response, let me say that I honestly don’t see change without push-back; I see entrenched interests that are braced for the fight of a lifetime, and I doubt there is any sincere interest in “coming together” whatsoever. It’s funny you mention this, as we’ve had numerous internal discussions about not positioning the HyPEG as a replacement for coal, so as not to create any more enmity than possible. After going ’round and ’round on the subject, I just don’t see this. It’s not that I’m a combative person by nature; I’m not. It’s just this: The coal industry may be evil (or whatever you would call “profits first, people a distant second”), but they’re most definitely not idiots. In fact, big energy has hired some of the brightest minds on the planet — and guess whom they’re gunning for?
As I may have told you, I moderated a panel at the AltCarExpo out here in CA, and I stayed on the floor both days, talking ultimately with hundreds of people. Most telling to me were conversations I had with expatriated Europeans about electric vehicles, several of whom told me, “Sorry, not for me. As long as your power here in the US is so heavily rooted in coal — and even worse, nuclear — EVs really aren’t green at all.” Now that’s not completely correct, but it sure does show the difference between the Europeans — who are working hard to clean up the energy business — and us in the US, who, while we may we working hard, have yet to make much progress.
Let’s just call a spade a spade, and get everyone to pay the true cost of his power source. I don’t want subsidies for hydrokinetics; I just want coal to pay the true cost of ripping up our planet and poisoning our people. Once that’s in place, I’m happy to just let the chips fall where they may.
Yes. Thoughtful commentary. One of the distractions is the recent fascination with a ‘carbon tax’. Since almost everything we do involves electricity, why the specialization of the tax? Just put all governmental operations into a consumption tax paid at the cash register. That’s where people make decisions, not in board rooms or exchanges. The corporate decisions are simply after-effects of profit potentials, which come from consumers.
If you want to get people to come together, first find the common denominator, and that is consumption.
The idea of an ‘alternative car’ should also be changed to ‘alternatives to cars’. Most of the driving we do is in support of our purchasing. Most of our purchasing is unnecessary for the survival of the human race.
We have no coal in Sweden and are lucky with our el coming from about 50/50 hydro/nuclear. But our big power company Vattenfall are making a lot of coal el in Denmark-Polen-Germany-Holland. Vattenfall is an enthusiastic clean coal apostle of CCS. Now that George Olah has updated his Methanol Economy I am advocating of CCR (R as Recycling).
In my view CCS is only a temporary solution. Scaling it up into billions of tons of CO2 pumped into the erth’s crust is ridiculous and dangerous.
Nature is recycling CO2 since billions of years enabling life on earth. We can recycle CO2 industrially according to Olahs proposed Methanol Economy. It must come.
CCS vs CCR has a parallell in the nuclear industry’s wastes. To dig them underground for a hundred thousand years is as ridiculous as CCS. Naturally we will process them to new nuclear fuel in future Generation IV power plants.
Let us look at what runs the free will economic system. It is not greed. It is the carefully thought out plans of what will give me, you, our company, and/or our country the best return for the less expense. Granted some have done and are doing wrong by others by looking after their bottom line. But most are not.
Coal is a good bussiness(not an evil one), even though it has done some harmfull things. Big oil has the same rap. New age energy will fall under the same
You may have noticed that the coal interests are denying that carbon dioxide is a pollutant and, instead, are stating that in increase in carbon dioxide is desirable because it expedites plant growth. They do not even mention global warming.
At the same time, SOME (not all) fundamentalists are insisting that global warming is not real. It seems to me that those of us who are concerned about global warming are failing to put forth our position as effectively as we could.
Although the majority of scientists do believe that global warming is a problem and that the carbon dioxide we are releasing greatly contributes to it, I doubt that many scientists are 100% certain. We should be admitting that there is not 100% certainty and pointing out that even if the risk were, say, only 10%, the results would be so catastrophic that even a 10% risk would be unacceptable. Who would be willing to accept a 10% risk of annihilating one billion of the world’s people, or driving two billion of the world’s people into poverty?
To summarize, we need to reformulate our arguments against the unrestricted release of carbon dioxide and point out that in view of the dire consequences which would occur with global warming, even a small risk would be unacceptable.
Excellent points, Frank; I completely agree. I think this is where the most rational minds are at this point. But as I’ve said, the actual probability that manmade CO2 is causing GW is (ironically) moot, since CO2 is WITHOUT DOUBT causing the acidification of the oceans with enormous long-term environmental damage.
Craig,
can you briefly summarise acidification of the oceans figures and facts since the behaviour of CO2 in water is completely different from excess in air? If i dont ask someone will….
Best
Gary
Very few theories in the sciences are so well regarded that there is a virtual 100% certainty applied to them. The litmus test needs to be something life threatening, as in the loss of a year’s salary. Very few will go to the wall if that level of indemnification is the definition of surety.
Being involved in professional management for a very long time, I am comfortable saying that it is not the messenger’s lack of skill that generally prevents the listener from understanding the information being conveyed. If you choose to walk in that space, I recommend self-flagellation as more quickly achieving your desired results. In an adult world, sometimes the only solution to comprehension is a big old fashioned spanking.
As long as I can remember (yes, I know, not long), negative externalities have been blamed for disproportionate economics. Someone then of course chimes in that we simply need to include such factors. Uh-huh. The best you can hope for is that every once in a while government will actually do its job and level the playing field. It is one of the areas that the free market is helpless.
I’m all for brilliant people devising brilliant solutions, and I will be among the first to congratulate them. At the moment, CCR and CCS have no practical future. Doesn’t mean we don’t work on it. Just means we can’t professionally plan for this to be one of the tools in our box.
I as well went to Santa Monica and listened to some of the panels. Without getting specific, I was disappointed in how self-serving some of the panelists chose to be. There were some who clearly owned up to the depths of the challenge we face. My kudos to them. They were in the minority. Only in blunt, I’m not having fun here, honesty can we solve perhaps the greatest problem that ever faced humanity.