Dethroning Old King Coal

Mankind has done very well as a species. We have been to space, walked on the moon and discovered how to split the atom but we still depend on one of the oldest and dirtiest fossil fuels for energy.

It was reported that 1200 new coal plants are to be built with three – quarters of them to be located in China and India (no surprise there). Both China and India which are rising economic powerhouses with large populations to boot, have invested a lot in renewable technologies but have felt the need to return to the fossil fuel that has powered mankind for centuries.  Germany which is one of Europe’s brightest renewable energy stars has decided to phrase out its nuclear plants and replace them with coal.

Unlike Mitt Romney who during the first presidential debate declared his love for coal (despite saying coal plants kill people in 2003) I am not a fan of coal for a variety of reasons. The effects of coal mining on the environment are extremely damaging and coal is the dirtiest fossil fuel in terms of its carbon dioxide emissions. There is also the human risk involved with coal use as coal workers are prone to all kinds of respiratory diseases due to particulate and heavy metal exposure.

Coal mining effects on the environment can devastating         (Photo:Nitin Kirloskar)

So why then is coal making a very strong comeback despite fears by the UN that CO2 emissions are not being cut enough to stop climate change?

I guess the reasons why coal is still going strong are the same with why people are addicted to fast food.

1. Coal like most fast food is cheap and this is thanks to the global recession. The ongoing financial crisis has seen a fall in demand for products which results in reduced industrial activities. This then means that there is an oversupply of coal prompting governments to take advantage of this fact by building more coal plants.

2. Coal can be found almost everywhere. The same way you can find a fast food outlet with a five-minute walk in any direction is pretty much the same way you can find coal in almost any country. This limits the chances of a few countries controlling its price like OPEC does with crude oil.

3. Coal plants are cheaper and faster to build than nuclear power stations and most off-shore wind farms. You just pop them in a microwave for five minutes and voila, instant power. They are also more efficient than wind or solar which have to depend on site location to reduce intermittency issues.

A coal train in UK. Cheap prices have seen a resurgence in coal use (Photo:Callum Black)

A recent report by BP on the current energy reserves shows that our global coal reserves will last another 112 years compared to gas and oil which should last 63.6 years and 54.2 years respectively. This will mean that Old King Coal is going to be with us for quite a while.

So how do we deal with this situation?

The best way to live a healthy life is to cut out fast foods from your diet but in dire cases the next best thing is to make fast foods healthier. One way of doing this with coal is to avoid the use of lignite or brown coal which is the dirtiest of all coal (I guess it is like replacing vegetable oil with olive oil).

Another method which I am rooting for is called carbon capture and storage or CCS or short. This method takes all the carbon emissions from fossil fuel plants and pumps them into underground reservoirs. A rather interesting video about this technology can be seen below.

So what is the catch?

Well CCS  has not be commercial viable and is till very much in its infancy. Its use with coal plants would have led to extremely high electricity prices but advances in CCS technology has shown that power plants with CCS could compete with nuclear and renewables in the next decade.

Now since majority of the new coal plants are being constructed developing countries, it will make sense for them to be equipped with CCS. This might increase the operating costs of the power plant but this is likely to be offset by the cheap price of coal. I also believe that the best way of funding CCS advancement in developing nations is to have industrialized nations pay for them and used the carbon credits earned to offset their emissions. The UK has several CCS projects ongoing and has pledged £60 million to promote CCS in developing countries.

So sadly, coal like fast food is mankind’s energy guilty pleasure and just like fast food we need to find ways to make it healthier.

Frack the Promised Land: Matt Damon takes on Big Oil?

In December 2012 Matt Damon new flick “Promised Land” which is a drama about hydraulic fracturing will hit the cinemas in America but already the movie has come under attack from the oil lobby. The movie sees  Matt Damon playing a gas-company salesman trying to get citizens living in rural Pennsylvania to lease their lands to allow the fracking of shale deposits to release natural gas.

Promised Land is directed by the acclaimed director Gus Van Sant who has been twice Oscar nominated for Best Director (Good Will Hunting and Milk) and has a script written by John Krasinski and Matt Damon (who wrote, stared and wrote an Oscar for Goodwill Hunting). 

And this might be the reason why Big Oil is ticked off.

This is not the first movie to have environmental degradation as a theme in recent years. There was the award-winning smash hit documentary  An inconvenient Truth by Al Gore which highlighted the effects of climate change and we also have smaller but critical acclaimed documentaries like Age of Stupid and Gasland. Gasland in particular focused on the effects of fracking on local communities while Age of Stupid gave screen time to the oil pollution experienced in the Nigerian Niger-Delta region.

Theatrical poster with British legend Pete Postlethwaite (Spanner Films)

The Oil Industry as expected launched a series of attacks disproving the validity of the claims made by each movie with the Independent Petroleum Association of America establishing the Energy in Depth (EiD) campaign which aims to promote the benefits of fracking and has released Truthland to debunk the claims made by the Josh Fox who directed Gasland while the human contribution to climate change which featured in both An Inconvenient Truth and Age of Stupid have attacked by climate sceptics as being a myth.

In the case of Promised Land, the Independent Petroleum Association Of America and other energy companies have declared that they will launch a PR campaign  that will be “provid(ing) film reviewers with scientific studies, distribute leaflets to moviegoers and launching a “truth squad” initiative on Twitter and Facebook.”

The question one could ask is why is the Oil Lobby so scared of the arrival of Promised Land?

The answer is twofold: money and star power.

Like I mentioned earlier there have been several movies with environmental themes but their budgets have been relatively small. Promised Land has a budget of $15 million which is small by Hollywood standards but An Inconvenient Truth had a budget of $1 million while Age of Stupid producers turned to crowdfunding to finance their movie.

Now it’s a fact that the larger the budget, the more resources that will be spent in advertising. This will lead to more people seeing the movie and forming their opinions on what they have seen which will most likely be that fracking is bad.

The second reason why Big Oil is scared is because of the movie cast. Matt Damon is seen as a good guy in Hollywood who supports a variety of environmental and human right issues. He is also a very talented actor and scriptwriter so it will not be a shock to expect Promised Land to be nominated for an Oscar in 2013 and this will be the worst kind of publicity that fracking proponents will need.