Bush environmental chairman is now coal cheerleader Rachel Oswald

Published: Wednesday April 1, 2009





Print This Email This You cant teach an old dog new tricks. That saying stands true for one former Bush official, who has tried to reinvent himself as an ally of clean, renewable energy proponents while still touting the virtues of clean coal.



Even though the hurdles to achieving carbon emissions capture on a mass scale have been well documented and even though no new nuclear power plant has been built in the U.S. in 30 years, James Connaughton, former chairman of the White House Council on Environmental Quality is preaching the virtues of clean coal and nuclear power as the best solutions to domestic energy needs.



Coal is clean now, proclaimed Connaughton, Tuesday night during the taping of the premier episode of PBSsPlanet Forward, where he was a guest panelist. He argued in favor of a host of energy alternatives to foreign oil but advocated the most in favor of building new coal and nuclear power plants.



As chairman of the Council on Environmental Quality, Connaughton argued in favor of aspirational goals for industries to reduce their green house gas emissions rather than binding commitments. A former lobbyist for utilities, mining and chemical companies, he has been criticized for weakening government standards on the amount of arsenic allowed in drinking water and, more generally, for advising President Bush to ignore calls for government-mandated reductions in industrial greenhouse gas emissions.



Connaughton now works in the private sector as executive vice president of Constellation Energy, a Fortune 500 company that sells electricity and natural gas.



Pollution control improvements made to coal plants as a result of The Clean Air Act, have made coal much cleaner as an energy source, Connaughton said, adding we shouldnt give it up as an option in the countys energy future.



Writing on the clean coal myth, The Washington Posts Steve Mufson says, The phrase clean coal is polluting the energy debate. The phrase is an oxymoron. We can come up with ways to clean up after coal - many of them very expensive and, in the case of coal's greenhouse gas emissions, untried. And we can use coal more efficiently than in the past. But coal itself is not clean and never will be. That is a matter of chemistry and geology.



Connaughtons promotion of coal during the shows filming did not go unchallenged. His co-panelist, L. Hunter Lovins, president of the nonprofit sustainability group, Natural Capitalism Solutions, objected to his painting of coal as an environmentally-friendly energy source.



I will never speak against research [into carbon sequestration of coal plant emissions], Lovins said. I dont think there is a future is in the commercialization of it.



Lovins said the U.S. would be best served by immediately putting resources into improving energy efficiency. She applauded the decision to assign $3.2 billion from the 2009 stimulus bill towards energy efficiency and conservation projects. Weatherizing preexisting buildings and reforming the nations energy grid should take precedence over developing new solar and wind technologies because the energy savings from efficiency gains will be more immediate, she said.



Connaughton, whose company does sell power produced from coal plants, said with half of the countrys electricity already being produced from coal, it is unavoidable that coal will play a long-term role in the U.S. energy future. When pressed, however, he did admit that no scientist has yet figured out a way to scale up carbon sequestration so it can be used to capture the emissions of coal plants.



Its going to take at least 10 to 15 years, he said of where the technology stands now.



Lovins pointed out that one of the positives of coal energy, its low price, goes away when you add in carbon capture technology, which doubles the price of it.



Connaughton responded that Moores Law, which describes the exponential increases in computer technology efficiency over time, would eventually bring the price of carbon capture down as it is already bringing down the cost of solar technology.



He also argued in favor of building more nuclear power plants, saying that they are the cleanest of all energy technologies and that the U.S. could reuse nuclear material as is done in France.



The shows third panelist, Shai Agassi, founder and CEO of Better Place, a company that is building the first national electric vehicle network in Israel, said if nuclear power was turned to as the solution to the planets energy needs, it would require the construction of a new nuclear power plant every 18 hours. While China has plans to build nuclear power plants, Agassi said the country had already decided to limit the number of plants to only 40 because of the countrys lack of uranium resources.



That wont be the backbone of our strategy, Agassi said of nuclear powers future in America.



Agassi argued in favor of solar technology, saying it was the only energy source that could scale up to meet all of the energy needs of the developing and industrial world.



Planet Forward, which focuses on climate change and energy policy with a large emphasis on viewer interaction through the Web, will begin airing on PBS in mid-April. It is filmed at the George Washington University and hosted by Frank Sesno, a professor of media affairs at the university.









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