Boo-Hoo Award: Consol Energy CEO Says Coal Has Become "Whipping Boy" For Greens - Reuters

[hatrack]

Brett Harvey, chief executive of Consol Energy Inc also suggested a surcharge on electricity use to help pay for development of technology that makes coal burn off less carbon dioxide and converts the fossil fuel into liquids and gas. "If you're not going to use coal anymore what are you going to use?" he said he asks anti-coal advocates. "Well, they respond to you: new technology, solar and wind.

"My response is: 'Well, how does that work? and they say: 'I don't know but we need to study it,"' Harvey said in an interview during this week's Reuters Environment Summit

EDIT

"There is a direct relationship between the use of coal and a healthy economy," he said. "When you quit using 50 percent of your electricity then we can talk. If you throttle back the use of coal and drive your base power costs up, you make all the products we make more expensive."

Asked how the industry viewed environmentalists' efforts to stop construction of new coal-fired power plants, which they blame for increasing greenhouse gas emissions, Harvey said: "Well, it's the whipping boy. "I think the whole mantra of the environmental groups is: don't waste energy and if you make everything more expensive the theory is you use less. That's the underlying basis of their argument, but it's not the nature of the American public or probably anyone in the world," Harvey said.

EDIT

http://www.planetark.org/dailynewsstory.cfm/newsid/44651/story.htm

Oh, and he's concerned for poor people. You see, it's really all about protecting low-income Americans!

[GliderGuider]

1. Well, he's right about one thing

Realistically, renewables won't be able to replace the amount of energy we're going to lose to oil and gas depletion over the next 25 years. We aren't going to build nukes fast enough to even keep the capacity we have as the old reactors hit end of life during the same time period. Most of the decent hydro sites are already in use, so building up new hydro capacity will be slow as well (I figure 30 years to double the world's hydro).

So let's see. Oil and gas declining, nuclear declining, hydro adding a bit, renewables busting a hump to get to where hydro is today...

The model I'm building for my next paper tells me that if we don't use coal, then by 2030 we will have only two thirds of the energy we have today. We're totally trapped. There is no other realistic energy source. Even conservation, helpful as it will be in rich societies, will not get the world out of this jam.

Barring a Deus Ex Machina, what we are going to see is a surge in coal use that will get us to 2020 (and it will be the old-fashioned kind, no fancy CCS or Clean Coal). That will be followed by a long accelerating coast through the climate chaos down the backside of Mt. Energy, shedding passengers as we go.

[phantom power]

2. There's something about this that isn't adding up for me...

The assumption of that model seems to be that it's much easier to build coal plants than nuke plants. If that is so, I don't really see why.

[NickB79]

3. Also, wouldn't the enaction of a carbon tax dramatically boost nuclear construction?

I can't believe that at least some of the more forward-thinking countries (but probably not the US) wouldn't enact some form of carbon taxation within the next few years as more fear of global warming sets in.

[GliderGuider]

4. The regulatory and public relations climate matters more than the atmospheric climate

People hate coal, but they're afraid of nukes. IMO it should be the other way around, but that battle has already been fought, and Greenpeace won.

[NickB79]

5. Hmmm, I wonder if introducing a new fear (climate change) can rewrite that

Give the public something even bigger to scare the crap out of them than nuclear power. Of course, by the time we see images of waves lapping at Santa's workshop and elves floating facedown in the ocean on TV, it will probably be too late to build much of a nuclear infrastructure to make a significant impact.

[Kolesar]

6. elves floating facedown

Truly disturbing

[GliderGuider]

7. The other thing that may intervene is the net oil export problem.

It would be hard for the USA to build nukes if two thirds of its oil requirement was history. You'd be too busy invading other countries for their oil and trying to keep your economy from disintegrating at the same time. Building nukes requires a solid, intact technical/industrial/economic infrastructure, all of which could be at risk within 15 to 20 years if net oil exports bite the big one.

[hatrack]

8. Good thing we'd never do something like invade another country to secure our oil supplies!

Whew! What a relief!