A Heavy Global Industry

For years, one of the most valuable things to come out of the Earth has been coal. While it was once considered a dirty, inefficient energy source that wreaked havoc on the environment, it is now seen as an economically viable — and environmentally friendly — means of generating electricity.

Coal's global worth is well over $70 billion annually with estimates at 150 gigawatts installed capacity. Coal plants produce roughly 40% of world's electricity supply, more than oil and natural gas combined. It’s used in steelmaking; for manufacturing bricks; for powering ships and locomotives; heating space heaters and homes: in short, coal plays a role in many aspects of modern life.

With this lucrative image, coal has been one of the most heavily subsidized industries, with more than $20 billion a year in government subsidies and tax breaks.

Yet the recent spate of oil and natural gas drilling in North America has changed the entire equation. The U.S. is now exporting coal to other countries, which puts even more pressure on a sector that's always been heavily dependent on government support.. Just ask Michael Hartwell: he's CEO of Newcastle Coal Inc., a subsidiary of India-based Essel Mining, which supplies worldwide demand for metallurgical coal. "Because of the politics and economics of coal, the U.S. has to be a global provider in coal," Hartwell told The Financial Times. "There's no alternative, essentially."

Enter the Clean Coal Alliance, opened in October in New York City. The multi-stakeholder initiative brings together business, government, environmental and labor leaders from around the world with one simple goal: to promote clean coal technologies that can be integrated into existing infrastructure. They want this shared vision to create "market access."

Lest you think clean coal is a new thing; it's not. The idea that industry can use technology to improve its business — rather than continue to pollute — has dominated for over a century now. It's just that its never been tried on a global scale.

And yet the push to use the world's supply of coal in a clean way has already begun. According to The Financial Times, the natural gas boom in North America has pushed coal prices down almost 50% over the past year, leaving many U.S. companies struggling against international competitors with lower costs and higher margins. At the same time, finding clean ways to use coal has become increasingly important in order to meet environmental targets.

"The economic pressure for us to find greener solutions for using coal is greater than ever," said Hartwell. "We're not saying it doesn't have an impact on emissions. But coal will still be there as a primary energy source for many, many years to come." And so, he added, "why shouldn't we take the lowest-cost solution and make it cleaner?"

The key question is whether clean coal is actually possible. That answer depends on what you consider to be clean. In the past, much of the technology developed around this issue was designed to improve air quality in cities. Those technologies are not yet widespread.

But companies such as Japan’s Blue Planet Corporation have been working on a water-based solution: using supercritical water technology to improve energy efficiency in coal plants by 50%. The technology eliminates the pollution that comes with burning coal. And it's a key component in the Clean Coal Alliance.

"This is actually cheaper than upgrading an existing coal plant to cleaner-burning natural gas," said Blue Planet president and CEO, Ian Fisher. To put this another way, Fisher estimated that supercritical water technology could help get coal off the ground in places it was previously deemed economically infeasible.

There is plenty of room for optimism about clean coal as a growing solar industry, clean energy grid and continuing advances in engineering both on land and off, make it more difficult to burn coal. This movement is already taking place in China, where peak coal use has been steadily declining.

But the Clean Coal Alliance doesn’t display any illusions about how long that might take. "For a growing economy like ours, we're going to need clean coal," said Matthew Cardinale, vice president of policy at the Natural Resources Defense Council. "This is our life on Earth and we want to make sure it stays healthy and productive."

Title: Mining In Seattle's Climate Edge Is Becoming A Victim Of Its Success

The clean energy business is booming in Washington state and nationwide — but some of the largest companies in this field are likely to have nowhere else to go for their future growth as U.S. fossil fuel use continues to decline.

While the state’s clean energy sector booms, it’ll also be primarily propelled by an extraction method that likely won’t grow given the region’s own climate situation. In fact, according to data from the Pacific Northwest Regional Climate Office, this generation is on pace to see a 10-year windfall in precipitation that could mitigate some of the warming effects of burning fossil fuels globally.

As utilities shift their focus away from coal, natural gas and oil — thanks in part to government regulations — and are looking for new sources of power that don’t produce emissions, their interests aren't aligned with those who develop wind and solar farms. The production of these green power sources will likely be more climate-friendly, and could therefore replace the output of fossil fuel polluters.

"Overall, these new sources are just a drop in the bucket," said Jim Greenstein, director of the National Energy Technology Laboratory and director of the state's Climate Office. "But getting more economical fossil fuels out there like they can’t get out there today — it’s a bad idea."

Without a dramatic shift in extraction methods or policy, it’s hard to see this climate edge shrinking any time soon. A federally approved project could at least spur growth here locally.

Seattle’s city council approved an agreement with a subsidiary of Vancouver-based Goldwind International that would bring the company’s largest wind turbine — capable of generating 1.5 to 2 megawatts — to the city, with plans to produce at least 150 megawatts of wind power by 2020.

The agreement would allow the company's subsidiary, Seattle Energy Company, to purchase power produced by its turbines and sell back electricity directly to Puget Sound Energy under the terms of a 20-year contract with an estimated value of more than $10 million. The city council also signed off on these terms in late June. To date, the project has been approved by King County and Seattle City Council.

Conclusion

In order for the world to avoid catastrophe, the governments of the world must manage very rapidly to reduce fossil fuel usage. These are our babies and our grandchildren we are talking about. For example, today in Germany carbon dioxide emissions from burning coal amount to 9 percent of current German CO2 emissions — in other words a total of 128 million tons per annum even though Germany has an installed capacity of 357 million kW of nuclear energy, i.e.