U.S. Miners' Union: Gore's Pledge On Coal "Shortsighted"

http://news.yahoo.com/s/nm/20070709/us_nm/concert_coal_dc_1

NEW YORK (Reuters) - America's main coal mining union said on Monday that former Vice President Al Gore's Live Earth concert pledge to fight for a ban on new coal-fired power plants was "short-sighted."

Gore urged fans at the concerts held around the world on July 7 to commit to a seven-point pledge to cut carbon emissions and to lobby governments and employers to do more to save the planet.

The third point on the pledge states: "To fight for a moratorium on the construction of any new generating facility that burns coal without the capacity to safely trap and store the CO2."

Approximately 50 percent of current U.S. electricity is generated by coal-burning plants.

Phil Smith, a spokesman for the United Mine Workers of America (UMWA), said the union had no official comment on the pledge, but that it supported the concept of carbon capture and sequestration.

"We believe it is the way to go, but we also believe a moratorium on any new plant is somewhat short-sighted as it could be years before the technology is developed, while the need for power is now," Smith said.

The technology to successfully capture the carbon dioxide in plant emissions has not yet been practically developed, Smith said.

"You are not going to be able to stop burning coal to generate electricity. And if you do not build new plants in the next 10 to 15 years, you will be relying on current plants," he said. Smith said current plants were much cleaner than plants built in the 1970s and 1980s.
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What else can we expect them to say? And if I am not mistaken it is not 10 to 15 years until that technology will be available. Companies just do not want to take responsibility for actually doing the right thing because they always use the same excuse: it isn't economically feasible for their balance sheets. Yeah, nevermind the planet.

I would then say that if they agree with sequestering carbon that they get a move on in getting this technology out there now, and that WE get a move on in demanding it. There is NO REASON other than GREED for it to not be available now.

However, even in light of that, I do have concerns about sequestering carbon in regards to the cost of doing so being passed onto customers and the enforcement of the sequestering of the carbon. Who would oversee that it is done properly? Another government agency? Also, can sequestering the carbon hurt underground water supplies, and how long would it stay underground depending on the depth it is buried at and can that then in the long run hurt the environment as well, and just where would it be buried? In other words, what are the pros to this process as a balance of taking it from air to soil besides the obvious?

So even though I don't think it is feasible to state that we cannot have this technology out here within the next three years, I hope Mr. Gore and others will be answering the questions about this process that need answering in order to assure people that this process will indeed be effective. And these are the conversations we need to be having now in light of Live Earth bringing this to our consciousness, especially if we signed the pledge. We should then carry through on that signature and seek out the knowledge we need to know to make these decisions now. But will we now have these conversations seriously? Or will people just revert back to the way they were on July 6th in expecting someone else to do it for them?

Dept. Of Energy:

http://www.fossil.energy.gov/programs/sequestration/capture/

Carbon Capture Research

USGS

http://edcintl.cr.usgs.gov/carbonoverview.html

Carbon Sequestration

MIT Report Regarding Gasification techniques and the future of coal

http://web.mit.edu/newsoffice/2007/coal-report.html

Of course, my other concern is that by instituting this process on a grand scale much more clean, efficient, and safe energies such as solar will be forgotten. I sure hope I am wrong because to me solar energy is the way to go for a cleaner safer future.

They may not want to outfit their plants, but I really can't believe that the technology isn't there.

it's stoneage tech. Sorry if you lose some jobs, but those guys could be put to much better use building wind farms. Maybe they can put some on top of the mountains they completely destroy

and they are, like oil companies, dinosaurs who are on the way out.

America's future is alternative energy and renewable energy and coal miners and coal companies are standing in the way.

Msongs
www.msongs.com/political-shirts.htm

Gore is right, Obama is wrong. Relative to the size of the industry the number of people directly involved in extraction is minuscule and falling. Mechanisms can be created to minimize transition costs, but the future of energy must be a green one.

and gore is an advocate of carbon sequestration

Also coal plants exist in areas that may not geologically suitable for such plans. Building them near such areas would mean that you would lose even more energy in transmission losses.

You can put solar almost anywhere. Obama IS a coal whore. Not pandering to the coal lobby would not lose him the state of Illinois and it would take hell freezing over for IL to go red. Where did you get that Gore is pro-coal? I assume you watched the same Senate hearings I did.

coal plants that do this will lose 20 to 40 percent
efficiency.
The idea is that eventually, we will no longer need coal,
but there may be some areas where there is no substitute for
a source of high quality heat or steam, or where
alternative sources are not yet available.
even the biggest proponents of wind are only predicting
20 or 30 percent of our demand can be met from
that in the next 20 years or so. I'd like to think
we can do better, but to just assume we can
is naive.
appropriate geologic formations for sequestration
are wide spread, it turns out, and the technology
is available. testing and study in specific
regions is needed.
alternatives going forward may include deep
geothermal, which is also coming along, but
needs more testing.

I honestly see sequestration as simply a transitional phase to mitigating the amount of CO2 in the atmosphere until better, cleaner, and safer technologies come to the fore in the next few years and relegate the coal industry to the dustbin of history where it belongs. And Mr. Gore has also spoken out against liquid coal and the tar sands of Alberta that are also very dirty and wasteful. Personally, I think we should limit the amount of new coal plants built period, and use our resources to bring forth other alternate energies. I'm tired of politicians and their cronies telling me what kind of energy I am going to use. How is that allowing the free market to decide when the people in it don't have the choices because they don't have the lobbies, the clout, and the money? Solar is on the cusp of greatness and holds great potential but it is not mentioned nearly as much by politicians as coal and nuclear, and that has to change in order for us to see any real progress in mitigating the effects of this crisis.

until I heard Gore talking about it specifically.
I am sure he feels that it is only a temporary measure,
but nevertheless, we are in a planetary emergency,
and we need to have as wide a range of viable options
as possible.
As progressives, we also need to be able to do
a little more for working people in unions
than to just say to them, "go get a job
at a windmill."
This transition has to be managed, and we need
maximum buy in. We need to create as many winners
as possible, and shape the options to create
as large a constituency as possible.
Coal miners know better than any one else that
their jobs are dirty, dangerous, and for most
young folk, undesirable. As alternatives
get going, there will be greater awareness of
new possibilities for jobs -
anti coal activists indeed need to raise their
voices, but not just to be negative.

we need to advocate positive changes in
utility rate structures, toward peak power pricing,
Feed in tariffs to encourage alternatives,
such as is done in Europe.
And, we need a moratorium on new
coal plants as Gore advocates, until
sequestration is ready.

Furthermore, this sequestration business probably won't even work.

And further-yet-more...

We should ban *professional* coal mining.

Let's make it a weekend sport. It'd be nice. You know how Americans are so keen on getting out in nature and all.

Ah, the great outdoors... Nothing like a little recreational coal mining to get the blood going.

Yeah, let's put coal mining on a strict hobby basis.

It will instantly become a forgotten technology, and our planet will thank us for it.

It's not all that efficient. You'd need about 50,000 square miles of solar cells to supply all of the power needs of the US alone, not even factoring in the vast energy storage capacity you would need to build. Even if you build a solar roof onto every American home, it wouldn't be close to break-even.

But even according to Silicon Valley it sure has potential and I agree with them on that. I do not believe we have even scratched the surface of what we can do with photovoltaics, and I think their time has come. Hopefully we will see great advances in the near future.

Those solar panels on the roof of the Google building don't come even close to satisfying their power requirements. It's done as a PR move, and as a tax write-off. As for not scratching the surface, we've been building PV panels for a hundred years now, and we've never really exceeded 15% efficiency in the field. Saying we haven't scratched the surface of PV is rather like saying we're just getting started with internal combustion, and someday we'll be able to build a motor that goes 250 miles on an ounce of kerosene.

The amount of unused space on factory roofs and homes alone is vast. With sufficient tax incentives we could put up millions of panels in less a decade. Also solar is incrementally improving every year both in efficiency and cost.

Be realistic. The available options are coal, oil, gas, biomass, nuclear, hydro, wind, and solar. The first four all produce CO2. Solar power is insanely expensive per kilowatt, unreliable, and requires large areas for production. Wind requires large investment, large amounts of area, and has a low yield, though better than solar. Hydro power is best, but there are a very limited number of sites where you can build a large dam.

Realistically, the only practical and eco-friendly power supplies are nuclear, hydro, and wind. Of those, only hydro and nuclear are high-yield, and capable of producing 24/7.

Furthermore, where do you expect those solar panels to come from? Even a few percent of our power demands would vastly outstrip out capacity for production, not to mention the amount of raw materials that would have to be mined for production.

From the mining of uranium to the building of huge plants which expends much in CO2 to the obvious risks involved, it should be nothing but a minute part of the solution. Solar on the other hand which is free of air emissions WILL become cheaper in the next few years as it is mass produced and more people become aware of its safe clean benefits. It is time for a change for our planet and that means shuffling off the dirty dangerous sources of energy of the past that have led us here, nuclear being one of them.

http://www.saveourenvironment.org/Coal-to-Liquids.pdf

The usual lobbies trying desperately to do anything to not have to move into the future. This is why I have questions about sequestration, and actually believe we should be pushing alternate energies more than this. That process to me in context is like desalination being seen as a "solution" to water shortages. It is only a bandaid allowing us to continue wasting it at the same pace. We don't just need to sequester it, we need to become morally aware to not spew it in the first place. Only through alternate technologies coming to the forefront where they finally belong to replace the old and dirty ways of the past will we really move into the 21st century.

:kick:

The put them to work building and maintaining windmills.

http://www.ases.org/

Which includes Mr. Gore as he just finished having 33 panels installed on the roof of his home.