BOUCHER'S GIFT TO COAL-FIRED PLANTS
Rep. Rick Boucher worked a provision into a climate change bill to help finance commercial deployment of carbon capture and storage technology.
He failed in his effort last year to pass legislation to institute a small fee on electricity generated by coal, oil or natural gas that would fund research and implementation of carbon capture and sequestration technology. But while recently brokering a compromise that helped move massive climate change legislation in Congress, weakening it in the process, he got the proposal inserted into the bill.
Boucher's proposal would create a multibillion-dollar fund that would finance an independent corporation's efforts to oversee the development and deployment of large-scale carbon capture and storage technologies.
As Boucher explained it last year, funding an independent corporation is necessary because power companies, as regulated utilities, have difficulties convincing regulators to allow them to raise rates to recover investments in unproven technology.
The fee to generate this money would be nominal, about 50 cents a month for the average electricity customer.
Boucher believes that the widespread commercial application of the technology will be necessary to make significant reductions in greenhouse gas emissions while maintaining necessary energy generation levels.
Perhaps. But there are significant roadblocks. For one, the techniques used to separate carbon dioxide emissions are energy intensive. That means that much of the electricity generated by coal-fired plants will be diverted to that process, making the plants far less efficient -- and more expensive to operate.
A U.S. Department of Energy study found the added costs could double the retail price of electricity.
The storage process could also create the potential for man-made disasters.
Literally hundreds of millions of tons of carbon dioxide -- a lethal gas when concentrated -- would need to be diverted and stored. Researchers are looking at ways of storing it underground or underwater.
Leaks could be catastrophic, as proven by the natural eruption of a cloud of CO2 from a volcanic lake in Camaroon in 1986 that suffocated 1,700 people.
Beyond that, however, there's another question that needs to be asked about Boucher's proposal in the large context of this climate change legislation: Why should coal be singled out for this fund? Why not, if the goal of the legislation is to reduce carbon emissions, create a fund with broader goals than reducing emissions from just one source?
Such a fund could help speed development of renewable energy sources and a more reliable electric grid.
There's no good reason to play favorites with coal and many good reasons to question whether carbon capture and storage will ever be affordable and safe enough for widespread use.
