New Coal Exports Are Bigger Threat Than Tar Sands Pipeline

"The planned Keystone XL oil pipeline has earned major national attention for the damage it would do to the climate. At the same time, another climate drama is playing out with much less attention as coal companies make plans to export huge quantities to Asia by way of Pacific Northwest ports. It’s pretty clear that both projects are environmental horror stories, but I’ve been wondering: which one is worse?

So, from the 'King Kong versus Godzilla' files, here’s my analysis of their carbon impacts. It turns out, coal exports are actually the bigger problem—and that’s really saying something.

The result surprised me: coal exports look to be an even bigger climate disaster than the pipeline. There are, in fact, quite a bit more direct emissions from burning the coal than from the oil. That’s true even when one counts the energy-intensive tar sands extraction and processing—and, of course, there are plenty of upstream emissions associated with coal mining that I’ve left out of the equation here. (In order to make a roughly direct comparison, I also omitted emissions associated with both products’ mining, refining, transportation, and so forth.) Clearly we can ill afford either one of these projects, but until we have a clear energy policy that respects climate science we’ll be wrestling with these kind of killer projects one at a time."

http://daily.sightline.org/2011/11/16/coal-exports-are-bigger-threat-than-tar-sands-pipeline/

First the Wishbone Hill project near Palmer http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/45300028/ns/local_news-anchorage_ak/t/wishbone-hill-mine-opponents-deliver-petitions-governors-office/

Second is Pac-Rim's proposal to dig up 11 miles of the Chuit River, a productive salmon spawning river in Western Cook Inlet. http://chuitna.org/chuitna-coal-strip-mine/



I'm not sure about Wishbone, but the plan for Chuitna is to sell the coal to China.


These are both terrible projects. Particularly Chuitna where Pac-Rim promises they will restore the stream and its salmon habitatt after they dig all the coal out. As if that can be done.

The oil pipeline is the tap on the keg. When discussing the impact it is always good to use not only the yearly numbers such as in the excellent OP, but also to bear in mind the full extent of what is in the keg waiting to be drained.

Athabasca Oil Sands

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Athabasca_Oil_Sands

...1.7 trillion barrels .. comparable in magnitude to the world's total proven reserves of conventional petroleum.

Using the authors numbers that comes to a total of 731 billion tons of direct emissions and 159 billion tons of upstream emissions.