July 5
The U.S. Senate last week passed a version of the energy bill that is superior to the House’s, but that is faint praise. Neither version requires improvements in auto fuel efficiency or limits on the greenhouse gases emitted by power companies or manufacturers. They are both head-in-the-sand packages that will leave the United States vulnerable to oil shortages and price spikes while doing little to curb the global threat of climate change.
The Senate did approve a requirement that utilities get at least 10 percent of their power from renewable sources by 2020. It also passed a nonbinding resolution that calls for mandatory controls on carbon dioxide, the main greenhouse gas. While this is hailed as a break from the Bush administration policy of ignoring the threat of global warming and denying the need for any CO2 limits, it is unclear if the resolution will serve as a strong enough signal to power company executives who are now making decisions on new generating units. These plants will operate for decades and produce CO2that stays in the atmosphere for more than 100 years.
With natural gas prices shooting upward, those executives are going to be sorely tempted to build new plants to burn coal, which already accounts for more than 50 percent of all US power. But coal produces the most CO2 of all fossil fuels, not to mention mercury, sulfur dioxide and soot.
If power companies knew that Congress is committed to capping or taxing carbon emissions in the future, they might now opt for another energy source, or at least build plants that first gasify the coal before burning it, a process that simplifies the capture and storage of carbon dioxide. But gasification raises the cost of power from a coal plant by 20 percent.
Calculations like these are being weighed in Wisconsin, where the proposed expansion of a coal-burning plant in Oak Creek, a Milwaukee suburb, with two new conventional coal units would make it one of the biggest such facilities in the country. Originally the company wanted to include a gasification unit as well, but regulators rejected it in part because of the extra cost to consumers. A real cap on carbon enacted by Congress could have tipped the balance in this bellwether case in favor of gasification or other alternatives. But the Senate’s nonbinding resolution, in the face of the House’s and the administration’s rejection of carbon limits, is not likely to make decision-makers opt for more costly alternatives to conventional coal.
Nationwide, energy companies have plans for more than 100 new coal plants. The signal they continue to get from Washington — despite the Senate’s resolution — is a green light for an acceleration of this country’s production of greenhouse gases.