Edwards not as green as you thought
Dem presidential candidate Chris Dodd has called for such a policy in blunt language: “The Dodd Plan requires all new plants to capture and sequester CO2. No exceptions.”Most enviros seem to think that John Edwards has also called for such a moratorium, and have lauded him for it.
Only he hasn’t.
Edwards would require that all new coal plants be compatible with sequestration — that they be IGCC plants, which make CO2 easier to separate and bury — but he would not require them to actually sequester their emissions.
Is this worth worrying about? Yes. As Big Coal author Jeff Goodell says, “There is a big difference — a rhetorical Grand Canyon — between supporting coal plants that are ‘compatible with’ CCS and actually requiring them to do it.”
The key thing to note is that IGCC plants emit 80-90% as much CO2 as old-school dirty coal plants (they are somewhat more efficient). An IGCC plant without sequestration is almost as bad as a dirty coal plant, from a climate-change perspective (though it emits less NOx, SOx, and mercury).
If we build a bunch of coal plants — whether they’re IGCC or not — we will be committing to sequestration (if we’re to have any hope of slowing global warming). It’s either that or shutting them down. So if President Edwards requires energy companies to build IGCC plants, he will have done very little to slow global warming. What he will have done is lock us into a policy path we’ve never rationally assessed or chosen.
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If Edwards is serious about climate change, he will follow Dodd and support a ban on coal plants that don’t have operating sequestration facilities.
Grist Magazine 9/10/07
http://gristmill.grist.org/story/2007/9/10/172519/037
