Coal CEO admits that ‘clean coal’ is a myth

http://reneweconomy.com.au/coal-ceo-admits-that-clean-coal-is-a-myth-69570/

by doener • 9 years ago

60 33 9 years ago

reneweconomy.com.au

65827• 9 years ago

It's odd how much utter nonsense you must embrace (at least publicly) to survive in so many companies in this world.

ouid7• 9 years ago

This is bullshit, there's lots of ways to make coal cleaner, including CO2 sequestration. It's just expensive.

blackguardx• 9 years ago

Are we closer to CO2 sequestration than a working fusion reactor?

njarboe3• 9 years ago

Both technologies can "work" right now (5-10 yr design and construction time). The trick is getting the economics to "work" within even an order of magnitude. Source: I'm a geologist and my dad is a plasma physicist researching fusion power.

Robotbeat• 9 years ago

Yes.

But I doubt CO2 capture and sequestration makes any sense with coal. Might work for really efficient natural gas plants which emit half the CO2 per thermal unit of energy and can be made nearly twice as efficient thermodynamically, meaning that for the same unit of electricity, you only need to sequester a third to a quarter of the CO2.

...but still would be incredibly expensive. You're going to be better off with solar, wind, geothermal, hydro, and nuclear in a broad mix with a few hours of grid storage to smooth things over.

castis4• 9 years ago

Clean enough to be a more viable solution over other forms of energy generation?

ouid7• 9 years ago

it is cheaper than practically all other forms of zero-carbon on-demand energy production, and a LOT cheaper than removing carbon dioxide from the atmosphere.

Compare the cost of exhaust sequestration for all of the fossil fuels and I'm sure you will find that coal is still the cheapest.

enraged_camel2• 9 years ago

You should read TFA:

""Carbon capture and sequestration does not work. It's a pseudonym for 'no coal,'" Murray said while waiting for a ride outside DOE headquarters. "It is neither practical nor economic, carbon capture and sequestration. It is just cover for the politicians, both Republicans and Democrats that say, 'Look what I did for coal,' knowing all the time that it doesn't help coal at all."

ouid7• 9 years ago

Why on earth would I read the article when the title is provably false?

Nevertheless, my point still stands. Even if it were cheap it would still be more expensive, and this coal CEO would be making the exact same claims.

It is, however, a very cheap way of removing carbon from the atmosphere.

It's just that the organization who is properly incentivized to remove carbon dioxide from the atmosphere is society, not coal companies. In this sense it is much cheaper to scrub exhaust, which is practically 100% carbon dioxide than to scrub the atmosphere.

It's irrelevant what the coal ceo thinks is cost effective, because he's not the one who benefits.

IncRnd2• 9 years ago

That's exactly what the article quoted from Murray. How does that make anything wrong or "bull"?

saimiam• 9 years ago

How cynical and self serving does one have to be to invent terms like "clean coal/diesel" and "clear skies act" instead of accepting that the world is ready for proper environmental stewardship?

I mean, even Philip Morris eventually started saying cigarettes cause lung cancer and kids are better off staying away from them...

notadoc• 9 years ago

Frank Luntz is kind of a modern wizard with coining friendlier terms for politicians to use

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Frank_Luntz#Use_of_language

You might recall the whole rephrasing "global warming" as "climate change" thing too

https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2003/mar/04/usnews.c...

triangleman• 9 years ago

Site is hugged to death. I am assuming by "clean coal" we are talking about CO2 being difficult to capture, rather than just cleaning the emissions of SO2, NOx, and particulates.

mrstone2• 9 years ago

Since when is a CEO of a coal company an authority on environmental impact? I suppose it's whatever fits someone's agenda. Reminds me of that video of the 'Weather Channel CEO admitting climate change is not real'. I don't see how this claim is any different. Let science answer the questions, not CEOs.

enraged_camel2• 9 years ago

Not all CEOs are empty suits. Some have to know a shit ton about their subject matter in order to make good decisions.

The remarkable thing about a coal CEO saying clean coal is bullshit is that it is seemingly against his own interest. CEOs rarely speak out publicly against their company's own product. It's the equivalent of Philip Morris eventually coming out and admitting that smoking causes cancer.

mrstone2• 9 years ago

I don't mean it fits the CEOs interests, but rather the people who spread this around.

IncRnd2• 9 years ago

It's the other way around. It is in his own interest to say this, not against his own interest. He clearly said that clean coal raises costs. That means that costs would be lower without clean coal. Lower costs are in his own best interest.

temp-dude-87844• 9 years ago

The quote's first appearance is in E&E News [1]:

[Robert] Murray yesterday commended President Trump's announcement that he would try to boost some coal exports, but he said that ultimately what the sector needs is for EPA to nix the endangerment finding.

[Energy Secretary Rick Perry] also has touted carbon capture and sequestration technologies for coal plants, even as he questions whether climate science is settled.

Murray said carbon capture won't help, either.

"Carbon capture and sequestration does not work. It's a pseudonym for 'no coal,'" Murray said while waiting for a ride outside DOE headquarters. "It is neither practical nor economic, carbon capture and sequestration. It is just cover for the politicians, both Republicans and Democrats that say, 'Look what I did for coal,' knowing all the time that it doesn't help coal at all."

Murray acknowledged that the legal fight over the endangerment finding would be "tough." He thinks that's because climate activists and renewable power producers want to keep making money off climate change.

"All these people will be jumping on this on the other side because it's all about money, but it is not about America. America needs reliable, low-cost electricity, and that is a mix of different fuels," he said.

Murray's stance refers to the 'endangerment finding', which holds that greenhouse gases are pollutants under the Clean Air Act -- a 2009 finding by the EPA after the 2007 Supreme Court case Massachusetts v. EPA. He disagrees with this interpretation -- particularly about carbon dioxide being classed a pollutant -- and is arguing that the decision should be reversed under the Trump administration, while pointing out that carbon capture and sequestration (CCS) is largely a phrase that has been hijacked by politicians to tout too-good-to-be-true solutions.

[1] https://www.eenews.net/stories/1060056858

codewithcheese• 9 years ago

This is all about timing. Murray want to do cheap coal plants to be as profitable as possible. Trump is the guy that can allow him to.

philipkglass• 9 years ago

“Carbon capture and sequestration does not work. It’s a pseudonym for ‘no coal,’” the CEO of Murray Energy, the country’s largest privately held coal-mining company, told E&E News.

...

“It is neither practical nor economic, carbon capture and sequestration,” he said last week. “It is just cover for the politicians, both Republicans and Democrats that say, ‘Look what I did for coal,’ knowing all the time that it doesn’t help coal at all.”

People saying "you can make clean coal power, it's just really expensive," are saying essentially the same thing as this article. Over 90% of American coal is burned in power plants. Coal's big selling point is (was) producing cheap electricity. Once you make it clean, it's no longer cheap; see last week's declaration of surrender for the Kemper clean coal plant. It was 3 years behind schedule, $5 billion over budget, and still unfinished:

https://arstechnica.com/business/2017/06/7-5-billion-kemper-...

It's just going to burn natural gas now.

If you can't build new dirty coal plants in the US, and new clean coal plants cost significantly more than other clean electricity sources, then coal output will slowly decline another ~90% from last year's lows. Metallurgical coal is still going to be used for a long time but companies like Murray Energy would be doomed.

xoa• 9 years ago

Exactly. One of the entire core values of having electrical infrastructure and equipment is to make energy sources perfectly fungible, abstracting generation details from usage. That in turn means that energy generation is always about economics and national strategy (which in turn often just boils back down to economics), the expense of any given method is the whole point. This often comes up with "peak resource" issues, which aren't generally about using up all of a given resource so much as using all that can be reached for a given price.

What we're really seeing are fossil fuel industries finally starting to have to actually compete under a real Free Market as society becomes less tolerant of letting them ignore their massive externalities. If coal is more expensive taking into account not being able to dump expensive pollution into the wider world, then it can and should go away. In fact that cost should have always been taken into account.

chris_va• 9 years ago

For those curious, this article somewhat oversimplifies the situation.

Coal is dying anyway.

"Clean coal" generally refers to coal => gasification => carbon capture. This is possible, just more expensive than burning raw coal, which itself is now more expensive than natural gas.

Mostly because of fracking, at least in the US, natural gas is much cheaper than buying coal. Compounding that, renewable energy creates high flexibility in peak demand, so plants designed to operate as baseload sources cannot amortize costs as effectively.

Additionally, HVDC lines are making regional proximity less important, so gas/coal locality plays less of a role in pricing.

The market is shifting to peaker plants, like natural gas, which have very low capital costs and can turn on/off quickly. This kills of coal and nuclear anyway, which have to run 24/7 to stay cost competitive.

Barring some energy storage miracle, we'll eventually end up with ~35% renewables, 15% hydro, 50% natural gas in the US, with HVDC interconnect.

(source: climate and energy R&D group)

xbmcuser• 9 years ago

With battery tech and solar panel efficiency improvements that we get every year I am of the opinion in 10-15 years even natural gas plants will not be competetive. I am talking about the tech articles we get every year but actual pannels and batteries that are delivered.

maxerickson• 9 years ago

I think it is pretty difficult to accurately project the adoption rates of those technologies (because most of the information we have is about adoption rates when they are marginally price competitive), but the current adoption rates don't have us with anywhere near enough solar deployed to stop using natural gas in 20 years.

I guess you are talking more about whether it is a competitive investment, but if we aren't fully on solar the faster construction time and easier siting of natural gas plants will drive some investment (siting mostly in terms of land area/MW).

Coal CEO admits that ‘clean coal’ is a myth

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