Shutting Down Dirty Coal: Free in the 1970s, $400 Billion Now. Go Figure.

The lead horse climate law now working its way through Congress contains a provision that hands over almost $400 billion in subsidies to the coal industry. That's according to this analysis of the Lieberman-Warner bill from Friends of the Earth. The subsidies are there to help the coal industry develop carbon sequestration technology to permanently bury emissions deep in the earth.

Thank goodness Lieberman-Warner is likely only a dry run, and there's still opportunity to fix it. $400 billion is a pretty hefty price tag if you consider that in the 1970s, the US was able to put a lid on the need for dirty coal for free.

Consider what Richard Rhodes, a Pulitzer-prize-winning author of 22 books, had to say just this past September at the Center for International Security and Cooperation at Stanford University. He gave a lecture called Energy Transitions: A Curious History, and in it he described what happened to energy demand in response to the oil embargo of 1973:

Orders for some 100 U.S. nuclear power plants were cancelled; but orders for 82 coal power plants were also cancelled—nearly 200,000 megawatts cancelled or deferred in all—because the oil embargo stimulated dramatic improvements in energy conservation in the U.S. that stalled a longstanding trend of increasing demand. “Who…would have predicted,” Al Weinberg would write, “that the total amount of energy used in 1986 would be only 74 quads, the same as in 1973?”

It seems, with our own recent history as our guide, that the way to end the pollution from dirty coal plants is well, to stop building dirty coal plants. How does it make sense to get behind the the idea of paying polluters huge sums of money to produce even more pollution, and hope that they spend it wisely and do indeed figure out how to permanently bury the stuff?

Let's remember TXU's plan to build 11 new coal-fired power plants in Texas, and how, under pressure, they cut a deal to only build three. (Some say all along they knew they didn't really need all 11.) And let's not forget this report -- Power to Save: An Alternative Path to Meet Electric Needs in Texas -- which found that:

A comprehensive effort to promote efficiency and other cost-saving demand reduction measures can meet Texas' electricity needs more reliably, at a lower cost and at a tremendous net economic benefit compared to building a new fleet of expensive and heavily polluting power plants.

The efficiency potential described in this report would provide $49 billion in economic benefits over the next 15 years, resulting in lower electricity bills for customers and reduced spending on electricity generation and transmission capacity by utilities.

Sounds like a much better deal. Let's see, $49 billion in benefits from one big state. Multiply that by 50 states, make some back-of-the-envelope adjustments here and there....wonder if we could create $400 billion of economic value by investing in a new energy economy rather than giving away $400 billion to modernize 19th century technology.

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