Coal Industry's ACCCE mixes apples (coal) with oranges (wind)

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Over at the Clean Coal Front Group Soapbox (er, blog), ACCCE Vice President of Communications Joe Lucas has a new postย entitled:

All New Technologies Take Time toย Develop

He basically claims that wind and solar power projects take an indefinite amount of time to become fully operational for commercial use, and therefore we shouldnโ€™t be criticizing him and the โ€œclean coalโ€ industry for how long it will take carbon capture and sequestration (CCS) to become commerciallyย feasible.

Simply put, his post is flat-outย disingenous.

Hereโ€™s Lucasโ€™ย post:

A favorite sound bite from critics of the coal industry is that CCT and carbon sequestration arenโ€™t viable energy solutions because they will take too long to develop. When pressed for an alternative, these critics repeat a mantra of their own: more wind, more solar.

And theyโ€™re right. Weโ€™re going to need every resource weโ€™ve got to meet our future energy needs โ€“ wind and solar included. But just like clean coal technology, these renewables also need time for development. As weโ€™ve discussed here before, weโ€™re a long way from mass implementation of wind and solar power โ€“ there are still some kinks to workย out.

Just this week it was announced that Oregon regulators have approved construction of a new wind farm that developers say could be the worldโ€™s largest. The only problem? They donโ€™t know when it will beย operational.

As we said, these things take time.

I contacted Jรฉrรดme Guillet, a wind energy expert, who has written multiple articles for the reality-based blogosphere. He had this to say about Mr. Lucasโ€™ย post:

[Since Lucas is] referring to that big Oregon windfarm that just got its permits, heโ€™s chosen the wrong target. The longest part is usually the part before obtaining the permits – choosing the site, making wind measurements, asking for all the authorisations and permits, getting access to the land, etcโ€ฆ Once you have the permits, youโ€™re usually less than a year or two from construction, which itself takes 6-12 months.

The article to which Lucas links is behind a subscription wall, so we have to do our own search for news about the Oregon wind farms. The wind farm is scheduled to go online in about two years, which goes along with Guilletโ€™sย statement.

Guilletย continues:

So weโ€™re talking a couple of years, a delay that could certainly be shortened if it were a real priority, because the project is, by then, designed, the technology is available and the construction is fairly simple. Comparing that to CCS which is not an industrially proven technology, where youโ€™re talking about an unknown number of years before people will actually look at investing money into commercial projects, let alone build them, is patently silly.

Basically, if there are (or had been) any uncertainties with the Oregon project, they would have nothing to do with technical uncertainties; they would have to do with business logisticsย uncertainties.

Guillet nails it. Lucasโ€™ assertions are silly. In fact, they are wrong. He insults his readersโ€™ intelligence by assuming weโ€™ll fall for his claims, have no ability to do internet searches, read other blogs, and thinkย critically.

Cross posted on Coal isย Dirty.

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