Climate Capitalism

A quick follow-up on my June 15th post.  Matthew Wald, of the New York Times reported that Dow Chemical and start-up Algenol Biofuels have teamed up to create ethanol from Algae growing in salt-water.   Dow is interested in finding an alternative to natural gas for plastic production.  The article discusses options for placing algae bio-reactors next to coal power plants which should clean up the coal and help to produce very pure CO2 that can be used for plastic production.

Read the full article:  http://www.nytimes.com/2009/06/29/business/energy-environment/29biofuel.html

A guest submission by our friends at: ProgressiveKid. This article was originally published on Oct, 29, 2008 at: http://www.pkonaledge.com/2008/10/29/clean-coals-dirty-little-secret/

By Sarah Lane, ProgressiveKid

Both President Obama and his former opponent John McCain endorsed “clean coal” as an important element of their energy plans. But “clean coal” is a fairy tale with a very bad ending, as in the Big Bad Wolf eats and digests Little Red Riding Hood and belches out a black cloud afterward. (continue reading…)

It wasn’t so much of a debate since the story ran as two separate interviews, but NPR’s Robert Siegel interviewed both former Vice President Al Gore and Joe Lucas, vice president for communications for the American Coalition for Clean Coal Electricity.

Robert Siegel gave Al Gore a series of softball questions, but I thought Gore did an excellent job delivering a clear message that subtly derided the green washing of the coal industry without shutting the door on any future possible uses for coal in a carbon-neutral economy.

During Joe Lucas’s segment, however, Siegel seemed to transform into more of a journalistic pit-bull (albeit in a very NPR sort of way.)  Siegel asked Lucas a very pointed question: Does a “clean coal” plant exist today where 90% of CO2 emissions are sequestered? Lucas response was to re-define “clean coal”. He continued with a very thin argument about how the evolution of clean coal was similar to the development of medical technology. “30 years ago when didn’t have MRI machines we didn’t argue we didn’t have medical technology,” Lucas reasoning went. As the interview progressed, (or regressed) Lucas started to sound Palin-esque, making a series folksy appeals to support his cause.  Lucas compare the “difference of opinion” about how clean, “clean coal” should be to his mother’s opinion about the cleanliness of his room.  Siegel did a very solid job of taking him to task and brought him back to hard number definitions.

You can hear both interviews on NPR at this link.

While I was happy to hear Robert Siegel earning his public radio salary today it was sobering to hear Gore’s claim industry has spent a quarter of a billion dollars promoting the idea of “Clean Coal” this year alone. This is not investment into the technology to help figure out how to make coal into a “clean” fuel source, but as Lucas explained to support the evolving feeling or perception about coal in the minds of the American public.

As if solving the climate crisis wasn’t hard enough already… it should be a good time to be a PR firm.