Big Coal's Campaign of Lies

The hurdles to carbon sequestration have done nothing to stop the industry from selling the public on the myth of clean coal. Around the same time that the Energy Department killed FutureGen, a coal-industry front group called the American Coalition for Clean Coal Electricity launched a $35 million media campaign to clean up coal's image. The ads, produced by R&R Partners, the same Las Vegas agency that came up with the "What Happens Here, Stays Here" campaign, use the iconography of cool modern technology — jets, Mac computers, scientists in clean white lab coats — to re-brand coal as a wholesome energy source, as comforting and deeply American as a cheeseburger.

The trouble with "clean coal," however, is that it's just an advertising slogan. The industry's front group touts the fact that some pollutants from typical coal plants have fallen by two-thirds since 1970, even while the use of coal to generate electricity has tripled. What they don't tell you is that the industry fought the laws that mandated many of those reductions — and that a big coal plant emits as much carbon pollution each year as a million SUVs. According to the Union of Concerned Scientists, annual emissions from a typical coal plant also include 10,000 tons of sulfur dioxide, the major cause of acid rain; 10,200 tons of nitrogen oxide, a major contributor to smog; 500 tons of small particles, which cause lung damage; 225 pounds of arsenic; 114 pounds of lead; and 170 pounds of mercury, which can cause birth defects.

Then there's the environmental impact of mining, especially in Appalachia, where "mountaintop removal" has already polluted 1,200 miles of streams and swallowed up entire communities. By the time the industry is finished, the EPA projects a loss of more than 1.4 million acres — an area the size of Delaware.

The industry's ad campaign is designed, in part, to generate support for the 65 new coal plants that are currently in development in the United States. But despite the PR blitz, public sentiment is beginning to turn against coal. Big banks like Morgan Stanley and Citigroup are factoring future carbon costs into financing deals for coal plants, making it more expensive to borrow the billions needed to build them. James Hansen and Al Gore, as well as grass-roots environmental groups, are pushing for a moratorium on the construction of new coal plants that don't capture and store CO2. And Big Coal has suffered some landmark defeats. In June, a Superior Court judge in Georgia — hardly a green mecca — halted construction of a $2 billion coal plant unless it finds a way to limit CO2 pollution. And in Kansas, Gov. Kathleen Sebelius recently vetoed a Republican-approved air permit for a new coal plant. "Building additional coal plants now is likely to create a significant economic liability for Kansas in the future," she said, noting that renewable energy sources — especially wind — represent the state's engine of the future.

Indeed, by the time the coal industry expects to develop technologies to capture and bury CO2, virtually every form of renewable energy is likely to be cheaper than coal. And in the case of wind and large-scale solar, it's likely to be a lot cheaper — not to mention easier and quicker to build. "By the time the first carbon capture and storage project comes online, we can have 17,000 megawatts in operation," says Robert Fishman, the CEO of Ausra, a Silicon Valley startup that is building large-scale solar plants. "Solar thermal power is ready now, commercial scale, and cheaper now than carbon capture and storage will ever be."

To ward off the renewable future, Big Coal's strategy is to wrap itself in the electoral map. The swing states in this year's election — Ohio, Pennsylvania, West Virginia, Missouri — all burn a lot of coal. Not surprisingly, John McCain is already pandering to coal interests. In June, he appeared at a town-hall meeting in Missouri with the CEO of Peabody Energy to promise the industry $2 billion a year in public subsidies to accelerate "clean coal" technology. Barack Obama has not yet offered a similar deal, but he's unlikely to lay down any hard truths about coal between now and November 4th: Not only does he hail from the Big Coal state of Illinois, but Billy Vassiliadis, the CEO of the Las Vegas agency responsible for the "clean coal" ads, is on his Nevada steering committee.

The question, of course, is what happens after November 4th. When it's time to take another stab at global-warming legislation, Big Coal will lobby hard for loopholes and issue dire warnings about the fall of America if lawmakers mess with coal. But perhaps when George Bush heads back to his ranch in Texas, it will finally dawn on voters that we live in the 21st century, not the 19th. Maybe then we'll see Big Coal more clearly for what it is: not the engine of progress but the engine of our destruction.

[From Issue 1058 — August 7, 2008]