A lot has been written about the problems with Clean Coal and the fact that the purported environmental benefits are, in reality, essentially non-existent. I will not re-hash those discussions here except to outline them briefly. The fundamental problem with the claims of Clean Coal is that the power plants still emit carbon. The must capture this and then store it underground. In theory this works. However, it is technology that has never been used on a large scale and no one is quite sure how permanent the storage is. Furthermore, no one is sure what such large levels of carbon in the bedrock will do to the chemical makeup of the soil. Based on these reasons alone Clean Coal should be approached with skepticism, but there are far more condemning reasons why it is not the future of energy in this country.
The fundamental problems with using coal to power America lie much further upstream than power plants. The real problems with coal can only be seen by looking at coal from a lifecycle perspective. While burning coal has plenty of problems, the truly problematic aspects of coal lie in its removal from the earth. Clean coal does not address these problems. Clean coal only addresses the downstream emissions problems and ignores the upstream production.
The upstream impacts include both environmental problems and damages to human health. It is up to you to decide which is a bigger problem but either one, taken individually, is a reason to put an end to coal mining in this country. Together they are and overwhelming indictment of the industry.
The first, human health impacts have been recognized by anecdotal knowledge and personal stores of miners forced out of the business by black lung and other diseases for years. All of this anecdotal evidence was finally quantified by a recent study from West Virginia University that measured the human impacts of mining and compared it to the economic revenue that mining brings in (the study can be found here). What it found was shocking. From 1997-2005 West Virginia counties dependent upon coal mining have had an average of 10,000 excess deaths annually. The study links these excess deaths to both the poverty levels in the region as well as the increased exposure to pollution and environmental damage created by mining activities. Those are 10,000 deaths each year so the country can have cheap electricity.
Valuating these deaths, as well as the additional health care costs caused by the pollution and environmental degradation, the study estimated the total health costs of coal mining at around 42 billion dollars. This was the most conservative estimate produced by the study. Some estimates ranged as high as 80 billion dollars. When compared to the 8 billion dollars a year that the coal mining industry brought to the region and it is easy to see why Appalachia is America’s very own third world country.
Based on standard economic indicators these regions are worse off than nearly anywhere in the country. They have the highest poverty levels, highest unemployment levels and lowest income levels. This new study now indicates that they have some of the highest health costs as well. The people who work in these mines are not dumb – they realize the health risks, but they have nothing else. The primacy of coal and the $60,000 salaries mining offers effectively stifle the development of any other economic opportunities. Yet, it is clear based on the anecdotal evidence and this new research, it simply is not worth it. The people in these communities are literally dying so that America can have cheap energy.
It is not just the health impacts that condemn coal however. The environmentally impacts of mining are just as devastating. The most popular, and least expensive, means of mining is not the traditional underground shaft operations. Instead, it is industrial strength excavation. Commonly called mountaintop removal. Companies use large quantities of dynamite to blow the tops off mountains so that they can go in with heavy machinery and scoop the coal out.
This has been shown to be the most destructive type of land use change in the country. It is immense in scale and essentially irreversible. The mountains are blown apart and the remains are dumped in the surrounding streambeds. From 1992-2002 over 1200 miles of streams were buried in West Virginia. This may not seem like a huge deal but it means that 1200 miles of ecosystems were destroyed. It means that downstream areas were poisoned with elevated levels of heavy metals (which have human as well as environmental impacts). It means that the mountains are being irreversibly changed to produce dirty power.
In the same period, over 380,467 acres of forestland were cleared by these mines; 380,467 acres of forest that had been sequestering carbon. Remember, land use changes account for 10% of global emissions. Not only is coal emitting carbon when it is burned but it also accounts for huge land use change emissions.
In the face of all of this evidence the question remains: why are we still promoting coal? The common answer is because it is cheap and the country needs cheap electricity. But by any measure of cost – economic (clean coal will cost four to five cents more per kilowatt hour than traditional coal, nuclear or wind power), social or environmental - coal is far from cheap. It has created a “land of sacrifice” in Appalachia where people are destroying their heritage and, quite literally, killing themselves to provide the rest of the country with dirty energy.
The obsessive focus on coal and clean coal as a future source of energy makes no sense. The Senate needs to recognize this and pass Waxman-Markey without concessions to the coal industry and without emphasizing clean coal as a long-term solution. Meanwhile, investment into renewable and non-coal sources of electricity needs to be increased. Then, maybe, Appalachia can move beyond a coal economy and begin to reach the quality of life enjoyed by the rest of the country.
