Should Longview help China burn more coal?
Washington state is eager to get out of coal-fired power generation by 2025, or earlier if environmental groups get their way. Enabling China to fire up more of them seems to environmentalists like a policy contradiction.
“What I have to do is to see, at any rate, that I do not lend myself to the wrong which I condemn,” said Henry David Thoreau. A coalition of environmental groups is sounding downright Thoreauvian about a proposal to make Longview, Washington into a major coal port.
The Cowlitz County commissioners have approved a permit application for port development at Longview that would enable an Australian company to ship Wyoming coal across the Pacific to China.
The coal would be strip-mined in the Powder River Basin of Wyoming and Montana, hauled in mile-long trains through the Columbia River Gorge to Longview, and loaded onto bulk carriers for the trip east. Millennium Bulk Logistics, a subsidiary of Australia's Ambre Energy, would ship nearly 6 million tons a year through the port.
Climate Solutions, Columbia Riverkeeper, the Washington Environmental Council, and the Sierra Club, represented by Earthjustice, have appealed the permit decision to the state Shorelines Hearings Board. Their concerns go far beyond the potential impact on Longview or the Columbia River estuary (where port development would destroy habitat at the same time that the federal government, touting estuary restoration as a way to mitigate the damage done by Columbia River system dams, is spending millions to restore it).
China burns a lot of coal. In 2006, China surpassed the U.S. as the world's leading emitter of greenhouse gases. The combustion puts large and growing amounts of carbon dioxide into the atmosphere, contributing to climate change. Although the Chinese mine a lot of coal on their own, China doesn't have enough to meet its growing demand. We do. The United States has plenty of coal, some of it strip-mined cheaply in the Powder River Basin. That coal could be shipped to China at a profit.
The dispute over the coal port is “really about the geopolitics of climate,” says K.C. Golden, policy director of Climate Solutions. In the past, coal was a resource used regionally, but the market for it is becoming globalized. What is changing now is that “China's demand has exceeded its own supply,” says Earthjustice attorney Jan Hasselman. “The price point has changed so that it's economically viable to ship all that coal over to China.” Looking for markets in China is “a direct response to the fact that Americans are largely saying 'no' to coal-fired power plants.”
Indeed, while coal still generates roughly half the electricity used in this country, many American utilities are switching to natural gas. (Converting the Canadian-owned AltaVista coal plant in Centralia to natural gas by 2015 is on the Washington environmental community's new legislative agenda. The governor has been trying to negotiate a conversion by 2025.) As utility companies see carbon regulation or carbon taxes coming down the pike and face the cost of cleaning up their emissions to meet increasingly rigorous environmental standards, while natural gas prices drop, they're going to Plan B.
Where can coal producers find new markets? In Asia.
And where can it be loaded onto ships? Longview isn't the only place. Companies have already been looking at other sites. The Port of Tacoma has received inquiries from Ambre and others about shipping huge volumes of coal but has decided it's not interested. Tacoma has other options, but many smaller ports may try to take whatever they can get.
The Cowlitz County commissioners have said that the project will have no major environmental impact. Yet they considered only its immediate local effects, not its place in a chain of events that could accelerate climate change. Hasselman says that's a misreading of present law. The commissioners “only reached that conclusion by drawing a bubble around” this project, says Hasselman. However, “the existing legal infrastructure . . . does require some consideration of climate impacts.”
Coal shipments from Washington ports would be nothing new. Seattle and Tacoma both shipped coal in the late 19th century. For a couple of decades, coal mined in the Cascades was Seattle's leading export. Trains hauled the coal to the Seattle waterfront, where it was stored and then loaded onto steamers. Most of it was destined for San Francisco.
Longview was never a coal port, but it has long been an industrial one. Weyerhaeuser, which has shifted its operations from northwestern to southwestern Washington, ships logs and lumber through the port. Not so long ago, hundreds of workers made aluminum there. During World War II, Reynolds Metals built an aluminum plant at Longview — the region's second — to basically turn Columbia River hydropower into metal for Boeing aircraft. After the war, the aluminum smelter kept churning out metal for more than half a century. The plant shut down in 2001, as have most of the other plants that once made the Pacific Northwest the nation's center of aluminum production. The coal port would take over the old aluminum smelter site.
Loading coal would replace only a few of the 925 jobs that disappeared when the aluminum plant shut down. But in this economy, any job looks better than none at all. Environmentalists who oppose the coal port are well aware of this, and know that promises of pie-in-the-sky jobs in a new green economy won't suffice. “I think there is a real imperative to react to the need for jobs in that community,” Golden says. Nevertheless, a coal port is “not a good jobs strategy overall for America .... It's going to create a lot more jobs in China than it does here.”
But what are the alternatives? The real challenge, Golden suggests, isn't just stopping this one proposal. It's figuring out how “communities like Longview (can) confidently choose a different economic path.”
The environmentalists who oppose the Longview coal port think it's not enough for Washington to limit its own carbon output. They don't want the Columbia River to become a major conduit for the next stage of the fossil-fuel economy.
And yet, that's exactly what could happen. If all goes according to various private corporations' cumulative plans, the Columbia will become a two-way thoroughfare for huge shipments of fuel and energy industry equipment, with coal moving downstream and enormous cells for refining Alberta tar sands moving up. Canada's largest oil company, Imperial Oil, 70 percent of which is owned by ExxonMobil, wants to ship 207 huge modules for processing tar sands through the Northwest to Alberta.
The modules, manufactured in South Korea by Sun Jin Geotec, are shipped by freighter to the port of Vancouver, Washington, where they are unloaded, then loaded onto barges. They are pushed up the Columbia and Snake rivers, through the (heavily subsidized) lock systems at eight dams, to the port of Lewiston, Idaho, where they're unloaded again.
The plan is to reload them onto huge trucks. Filling the blacktop from shoulder to shoulder, traveling at night, the trucks would creep up Highway 12 through Lolo Pass into Montana, through Missoula, and then along two-lane highways to Sweetwater on the Canadian border. Opponents object to potential impacts along the highway transportation corridor, to the consumption of water and destruction of habitat in Alberta, and, not least, to the effect on climate of refining tar sands. This is an energy-intensive process that puts a lot of carbon into the air, and burning the end product in millions of gas tanks puts out a lot more. As opposition gathers steam, the transportation company still hasn't gotten permits to haul oversized loads along state highways, and modules are stacking up in Lewiston.
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Comments:
Posted Wed, Dec 15, 5:55 a.m. Inappropriate
The coal power controversy may have a game changer on the horizon. MBD Energy in Australia is working on a process to convert the CO2 byproduct from coal power generation into algae meal, biofuel and oxygen through algal synthesis. You can find out more here: http://www.mbdenergy.com/catalogue/c10.
We may do well to analyze the feasibility of retaining coal for our own use in the long term. "Buy local, generate local".
Posted Wed, Dec 15, 9:54 a.m. Inappropriate
The Oil Drum, a website on which I rely heavily for energy information, wrote several stories about Chinese coal consumption. It's quite amazing, and it demonstrates clearly that there is no CO2 solution that doesn't involve China's coal usage.
http://europe.theoildrum.com/node/7123
One of the most important tools in understanding the economics of fossil fuels is the resource pyramid. Not every lump of coal is created equal. There are different types (anthracite, bituminous, sub-bituminous, lignite) which create different amount of CO2 for each net BTU of energy creates ("net" means what is left after subtracting the energy used by the production process). There are other factors, such as depth and distance of the coal from market, that determine the quality of the resource.
The trouble with coal is not "running out", but depleting the resource at the top of the pyramid and moving down, which means that coal continues to be burned but at less net energy for the cost and the amount of CO2 put into the atmosphere. For that reason, policies that restrict the coal market, such as blocking exports through Longview, could have the opposite of the intended effect by forcing China to pursue lower quality resources.
Posted Wed, Dec 15, 1:03 p.m. Inappropriate
The other side of the coin is that China holds trillions of US Treasury debt which means we should be selling something to them in exchange for getting those dollars back.
However selling coal is to be a colony vs a renewable product is to be a partner in trade.
Posted Wed, Dec 15, 1:18 p.m. Inappropriate
In either scenario, whether we export our coal or not, algal synthesis, as proposed by MBD may make coal power very attractive in the coming years.
Posted Wed, Dec 15, 3:51 p.m. Inappropriate
According to the WTO, the global market for fossil fuels is huge and growing, with insatiable appetites in both developed and developing nations. Given the tendency for these resources to be concentrated and away from the big markets, the percent of all the coal, oil, and gas that's actually consumed in the countries of origin is likely to be small and decreasing. It would be an interesting number to know. So skirmishes at export docks and pipeline border crossings will need to increase, if nothing more than to get people to focus on the problem of exported carbon emissions. Out of sight shouldn't be out of mind. But clearly the answer to global warming will need to involve the users as well as the producers. Cheap carbon fuels are just too profitable at both ends of the supply line.
Posted Wed, Dec 15, 4:50 p.m. Inappropriate
Aren't we going to need that coal to recharge all of the electric cars on the horizon?
Posted Fri, Dec 17, 1 p.m. Inappropriate
Seattle witnesses at least one huge coal train a week rumbling through town on BNSF tracks en route to Robert's Bank, BC from the Powder River Basin. Not once have I heard an objection from Climate Solutions or other advocacy group about these coal trains and the purpose for which they are transporting coal THROUGH Seattle. Heck, I've never read a single thing about Robert's Bank in our local media or in an advocacy group newsletter.
China will continue to burn coal. Whether the coal is shipped from Longview or Roberts Bank or some other northwest port makes no difference to them. If there is the potential for harm to the Longview estuary, then a coal port will surface somewhere else. Maybe Longview doesn't make environmental sense, but you can be sure another port will be built.
British Columbia is a Western Climate Initiative partner, and arguably, a leader in the WCI. They are far down the carbon tax and cap and trade highway. Coincidentally, BC is the home to the largest coal exporting port in North America.
Washington, on the other hand, is having difficulty coming to grips with carbon legislation. Eric de Place stated In a Dec. 9 Sightline article that "Washington's leaders appear to be showing no interest in seeking legislative authority to join WCI's cap-and-trade program." Basically, Washington state government and business has shown little movement in this area. Will the presence or absence of a coal port have much of an impact Washington's position regarding the WCI? Doesn't seem to have an impact in BC.
A somewhat disconnected, but related thought relates to the James Fallow's article in the December 2010 The Atlantic, "Why the Future of Clean Energy is Dirty Coal." Fallow's proposition (and others in the carbon sequestration R & D field) is that China's swiftly moving energy consuming economy is the perfect place to learn about carbon sequestration because any analogous effort in this country would require enormous political backing and require long timelines. China cannot wait. In ten years, it has to provide power to 325 million people living in cities that do not exist today. Why not try out American technology where it can be tested in short order and brought back to the U.S.?
Given these factors, I still need to be convinced that a "no coal port" stance in Washington makes social, environmental and economic sense.
Posted Fri, Dec 17, 5:11 p.m. Inappropriate
TheOilDrum.com contributor (and Seattle resident) Jonathan Callahan posts graphics of the US coal production and coal exports on his www.mazamascience.com site.
US coal exports are currently a small proportion of total US production as can be seen in this graph from his site:
http://mazamascience.com/OilExport/output_en/Exports_BP_2010_coal_mtoe_US_MZM_NONE_auto_M.pdf
What is not shown in this graphic is that that majority of the coal exports in the past were metallurgical coal (37 million short tons) rather than steam coal (22 million short tons) (2009, http://www.nma.org/about/cea_page.asp). It would be my argument that steam coal used for electrical generation is much more difficult to justify as a legitimate export than higher quality metallurgical coal. Furthermore, most of these exports originate from the eastern US rather than the western US. So the export of steam coal from Western ports represents a dramatic change in the business model for US coal producers.
With coal exports rising 28.5% last year, we will see US coal producers looking to obtain a greater share of their profits from exports rather than domestic production. If this is allowed to proceed, it is likely that dirty coal will be entrenched in US money-machine politics and future regulation/prohibition become impractical to implement.
Dr. James Hansen at NASA Goddard Institute of Space Studies warns us that the only way to avoid cataclysmic effects of global warming is to halt the burning of coal and transition to renewables. We might be able to burn all our oil. We might be able to burn our natural gas. But we can't burn all our coal.
The North America west coast (California, Oregon, Washington, British Columbia) is one of the few bastions of science based policy making. It should be the goal of these forward looking governments to conspire to ban all exports of coal through western ports. We can't afford the trajectory that this port places us on.
Posted Fri, Dec 17, 5:28 p.m. Inappropriate
In response to bluesky, carbon-capture sequestration is in practice an impossibility. It would take an equivalent infrastructure as the entire US oil industry to transport and sequestor the CO2 from US coal plants.
Furthermore, with carbon sequestration having not been demonstrated on even a pilot-scale, we are decades away from meaningful implementation. Commercial lenders will not make the risky investment in unproven technology until it has been demonstrated at scale. A better solution is to increase efficiency of coal plant through ultra-super critical steam cycle (increased efficiency of ~50%) as Fallows indicates in his Atlantic article. And at the same time, build a national grid and transition to renewables.
The best way to move forward on the technologies that Fallows mentions is to make coal expensive. Cheap US Powder River coal just makes it easier for China to continue to use low-efficiency and dirty coal plants. To push technology, one needs to make coal expensive...not cheap.
Posted Fri, Feb 25, 7:56 a.m. Inappropriate
Hasselman has poor command of basic facts. "The primary constraint is transportation.... They can't ship this stuff to Texas” at a profit. “I don't even think they can ship it to California”
Wrong. Powder River coal has long served huge power plants in Texas, Illinois and Alabama. http://www.rmel.org/assets/0/72/82/96/9862/9938/556b2888-ef83-4e32-a8ce-72403bdc7d11.pdf And as mentioned, it's been shipped to China at a profit for some time via Vancouver, BC. So yes, if you don't build terminals here, they'll be built elsewhere.
Also not mentioned is that Powder River coal is low sulfur, much cleaner to burn than Eastern coal - or China's current coal reserves. China burning PRB coal is thus a net positive for carbon emissions. The key point, though, is basic economics: CONSTRAINING SUPPLY DOES NOT REDUCE DEMAND.
And ironically, forcing that coal to go through a longer route to Vancouver, BC or Mexico or even Texas (thanks to Panama canal widening) will increase, not decrease, total carbon emissions.
I've supported the good fight on other environmental issues, but this one is actually counterproductive. Be careful what you wish for.
p.s. both steam coal and met coal demand are rising, not just steam coal; Roberts Bank is exporting record amounts of met coal from the Eastern U.S.
Posted Fri, Feb 25, 8:07 a.m. Inappropriate
Correction, meant to say "net positive for overall emissions" above. Moving to low-sulfur coal avoids the devastating environmental effects - like acid rain - of high-sulfur coal. The way to improve China's carbon emissions is to encourage high-efficiency plants (which they're doing with their new plants) and international pressure to move off coal over time. But the reality is this: as with the U.S., under the most massive and aggressive imaginable alternative energy investment plan they'll still be burning coal for another 50 years. So we'd be absolute idiots not to compete for that business during that time, given our port projects (or lack of same) have zero impact on Chinese coal demand.
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