Some Clean Coal Facts and Fiction on CNBC

onJun 23, 2008 @ 11:50 PDT

CNBC‘s Mark Haines asks: “How Realistic is Clean Coal,” and Haines does a great job off the top by pointing out that his guest, Steve Miller of the American Coalition for Clean Coal Electricity (ACCCE), is funded by the coal industry.

This type of disclosure is important, as it provides viewers with some valuable context when hearing what Mr. Miller has to say. As Miller states on the show, his organization ACCCE is funded by:

“The coal producers, railroads and other transporters, generators… we got them all, manufacturers as well.”

That’s the fact, and now for the fiction.

Things get rather strange quickly when Haines asks Miller: “How far away are we from mass use of clean coal” to which Miller replies:

“The clean coal technologies for carbon capture and sequestration are probably 10 to 15 years away for widespread commercial use.” (my emphasis)

Really? A 10 to 15 year outlook for CCS on a widespread commercial use?

Where are those numbers coming from? The earliest possibility for deployment of CCS on a large commercial scale is not expected before 2030 and the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) does not expect CCS to be commercially viable until at least 2050.

Nor does Oil-giant Shell who “doesn’t foresee CCS being in widespread use until 2050.”

In fact, the head of one of the largest coal-to-electricity companies in the world, Jim Rogers, CEO of Duke Energy, recently stated that:

“CCS as a magical technology that solves the carbon problem for coal plants is oversold…I think there is a lot to learn, and it is going to take us a lot longer for us to figure it out than a lot of us think”.

So where is Miller coming up with these numbers? I’ve put the question to Mr. Miller and I will let you know what I hear back.

Cross-posted on our affiliate site Coal is Dirty.

UPDATE: Steve Gates at the American Coalition for Clean Coal Electricity got back to me and said that Mr. Miller got his numbers from a report done by the Coal Utilization Research Council and the Electric Power Research Institute called the CURC–EPRI Technology Roadmap:

“The goal of the CURC–EPRI Roadmap is to have, by 2025, new combustion and gasification based systems operating with carbon capture with an efficiency between 39% to 46% and a cost of electricity between 37 and 39 $/MW-hr. By 2025, the incremental cost to transport and sequester the CO2 is projected to be between 2 and 7 $/MW-hr.”

By Kevin Grandia

Kevin is a contributor and strategic adviser to DeSmogBlog.

He runs the digital marketing agency Spake Media House. Named a “Green Hero” by Rolling Stone Magazine and one of the “Top 50 Tweeters” on climate change and environment issues, Kevin has appeared in major news media outlets around the world for his work on digital campaigning.

Kevin has been involved in the public policy arena in both the United States and Canada for more than a decade. For five years he was the managing editor of DeSmogBlog.com. In this role, Kevin’s research into the “climate denial industry” and the right-wing think tank networks was featured in news media articles around the world. He is most well known for his ground-breaking research into David and Charles Koch’s massive financial investments in the Republican and tea party networks.

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Prior to DeSmogBlog, Kevin worked in various political and government roles. He was Senior Advisor to the Minister of State for Multiculturalism and a Special Assistant to the Minister of State for Asia Pacific, Foreign Affairs for the Government of Canada. Kevin also worked in various roles in the British Columbia provincial government in the Office of the Premier and the Ministry of Health.

In 2008 Kevin co-founded a groundbreaking new online election tool called Vote for Environment which was later nominated for a World Summit Award in recognition of the world’s best e-Content and innovative ICT applications.

Kevin moved to Washington, DC in 2010 where he worked for two years as the Director of Online Strategy for Greenpeace USA and has since returned to his hometown of Vancouver, Canada.