The Daedalus Column: Technological triumphs and challenges
Coal's a real power player
Andy Ho, Straits Times 3 May 08;
If or when CCS becomes commercially viable, should Singapore diversify into clean coal? Australia is the largest exporter of coal in the region, with Indonesia fast catching up, so stable supplies would seem to be assured.
If carbon emissions were our only concern, we should go with clean coal. But we would also have to be comfortable with the devastation that coal mining inflicts on the earth. If we were, we would be in good company.
LAST week, some members of the European Parliament started pushing for new financial incentives to jumpstart 'clean coal', or to turn the black stuff into clean gas.
Widely used technology to turn coal into gas can already remove 95 per cent of its sulphur dioxide, nitrogen oxide and ash impurities - but not carbon. Coal produces double the amount of carbon emissions per unit of electricity generated compared to natural gas. Some people have proposed trapping deep underground the carbon dioxide created when coal is gasified.
If successful, this carbon capture and storage (CCS) technology would result in zero carbon emissions when gasified coal is burnt to generate electricity. But forcing carbon dioxide deep underground under very high pressure is unproven technology, at least on an industrial scale. Turning coal into gas is proven technology but the problem there is economic: Gasified coal is not as efficient as natural gas in generating power.
The most widely used coal-to-gas technology - pulverised fuel plants - can achieve only 45 per cent efficiency converting coal energy into electricity. By comparison, gas turbines are 60 per cent efficient - and 25 per cent cheaper.
So utility companies prefer conventional coal, which is 20 per cent cheaper than gasified coal. The cheapest fossil fuel around, there is enough of it to last two more centuries - and there is no coal cartel. The United States has 27 per cent of the world's known reserves while Russia has 17 per cent, China 13 per cent and India 10 per cent.
With petroleum and natural gas prices rising - fuel costs have risen 151 per cent since 1996 - electricity companies in Italy, Germany, Britain and the Czech Republic are currently building 50 new coal-fired power plants that will run for the next 50 years - with or without CCS.
If or when CCS becomes commercially viable, should Singapore diversify into clean coal? Australia is the largest exporter of coal in the region, with Indonesia fast catching up, so stable supplies would seem to be assured.
If carbon emissions were our only concern, we should go with clean coal. But we would also have to be comfortable with the devastation that coal mining inflicts on the earth. If we were, we would be in good company. An interdisciplinary report from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology last year - The Future Of Coal - focused on the carbon issue and did not delve into coal mining's assault on the land at all.
Forget about the shaft coal mines seen in movies, with legions of soot-smudged men wielding picks emerging from them. In the US, where half - as well as in Australia, where three-quarters - of power comes from coal, massive-scale, open-pit, surface mining for coal is now the norm.
This method uses 7,000-tonne excavating behemoths called draglines. Requiring just a few operators, these can gouge out 200 tonnes, or 10 truckloads, of soil at one go from the sides of a deep valley of their own making. In some cases, explosives and draglines are used to amputate mountain tops; bulldozers would then push the loosened earth (with coal) down into the valleys below. Such methods make some of the biggest holes in the world. In the past few decades, these super-mines have come to dominate the industry in the US and Australia. China is adopting them too.
Besides the land, coal mining hurts people too. The black lung disease that shaft miners suffer from is well known but even non-miners living near mines can be exposed to dust from surface mining, truck and train loading facilities, chemicals used in coal cleaning that are discharged into surface waters, and so on.
In April, the American Journal of Public Health published a study of non-mining residents in West Virginia counties where coal is heavily mined. It found that the residents suffered a 70 per cent higher risk of kidney disease, 64 per cent higher risk of lung disease and 30 per cent increased risk of hypertension.
Yet, the US continues down this self-destructive path. Boston University's business ethicist James Post reasons that Americans can't assess holistically the economic, energy, ecological and health impact of coal. Moreover, there is just no stopping so wealthy an industry with so powerful a lobby in Washington DC.
Professor Post, who teaches corporate accountability, explains: 'The politics of coal is very complex and intense as lots of jobs and profits are at stake. Much of King Coal's political clout is attributable to the venerable 90-
year-old Senator Robert Byrd from West Virginia, who has unparalleled influence in DC and is unyielding in his determination to create economic advantage for his constituents. His influence affects the way every other energy policy interest has to play the game.'
Symbolically, coal is not just the least expensive US domestic energy source, it is also to be preferred to 'foreign oil' or 'Middle East oil', says Prof Post.
The fear of foreign domination abounds even though the reality is globalised trade in commodities, products and services. Substantively, Senator Byrd's influence translates into the protection of coal interests and the obscuring of other important considerations such as health-care costs and environmental harm.
'Against this backdrop, a multitude of union interests and dependent industries like power utilities creates a lobbying force of great significance,' adds Prof Post. It's not only that laws to rein in the industry's wanton rape of the land cannot be passed, but also that federal funds cannot be channelled into projects to optimise coal gasification, perfect CCS technology and so on.
Of course, West Virginians are economically better off with, rather than without, coal mining, which is why Mr Byrd fights so hard to protect these interests. So opposing coal out of a sense of pique with the industry may be unproductive. After all, even with huge reserves of its own, China imports Australian coal, which releases more energy when burnt than its own soft coal. What this trade shows is that while coal mining might harm Queensland's ecology, say, it is good for both economies, Prof Post notes.
In other words, economics trumps ecology. Higher oil and gas prices are making coal very attractive for power generation not only in Europe but also in China and India. According to the International Energy Agency's World Energy Outlook 2007 report, the two Asian giants will account for 80 per cent of the increase in coal use up to 2030, when coal usage will be double today's level.
Should industrial-scale CCS eventually work, it could raise coal power prices by 40 to 90 per cent. Thus, the economic case for clean coal seems quite weak. So don't expect dramatic changes - unless carbon emission cuts were mandated in the US and China, the world's biggest emitters. Coal is really a power player.
