Da Aff Peak Coal

UMKC SDI 2008 LouGie Lab

Reactors Negative Peak Coal

Peak Coal Answers Peak Coal Answers..........................................................................................................................................................1 No coal peak....................................................................................................................................................................2 Inherency – no new coal plants.......................................................................................................................................3 Inherency – no new coal plants.......................................................................................................................................4 A2: Warming adv – peak coal takes it out......................................................................................................................5

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UMKC SDI 2008 LouGie Lab

Reactors Negative Peak Coal

No coal peak The DOE concludes that we have 200 years of coal reserves Cathy Booth Thomas. “Is Coal Golden?” Time Oct. 02, 2006 http://www.time.com/time/magazine/article/0,9171,1541270,00.html?iid=chix-sphere Over the next 25 years, the Department of Energy predicts the use of coal will provide an increasing portion of our power--up to nearly 60%, from 52%. Convened by the Secretary of Energy, the National Coal Council (McCall is a member) has laid out an aggressive energy plan using coal over the next two decades. Coal production is expected to soar from 1.1 billion tons a year to 1.8 billion--mostly from the West, especially Wyoming's Powder River Basin. New transmission lines, like the $6 billion Frontier Line, will carry electricity from the coalfields of Wyoming to consumers in California. Peabody Energy, the nation's largest coal company, with 2005 sales of $4.6 billion, up 28%, and earnings of $423 million, up 140%, is in acquisition mode worldwide. The Bush Administration has put down its own $2 billion bet, largely by pursuing FutureGen, a next-generation coal- fired plant promising near zero pollution emissions--all in the hope of making the nation less oil dependent. The U.S. is, after all, the Saudi Arabia of coal. We have more than 200 years of coal reserves at our current burn rate. There are 440 coal-fired plants across the nation, with proposals to build 153 more in 42 states over the next decade, at a cost of $137 billion, to provide electricity to 93 million homes and support our energy-guzzling lifestyles.

Their arguments about bias are wrong – coal reserves are well known and accurately surveyed Dave Rutledge, Chair for the Division of Engineering and Applied Science at Caltech. “The Coal Question and Climate Change,” The Oil Drum, 6/25 2007 http://www.theoildrum.com/node/2697 Oil reserves are rightly viewed skeptically at The Oil Drum, in large part because of fraud by the OPEC countries. Coal reserves are compiled by the national geological surveys, and unlike oil reserves, they are honest. However, recently Dr. Werner Zittel and Jorg Schindler and their Energy Watch Group have written an important paper “Coal: Resources and Future Production” that shows that there are major problems with the reliability of coal reserves, and indicates that the reserves may be too high. Coal is different from oil,

and much of the intuition that we may have developed about oil from nights pondering TOD posts is wrong for coal. Finding oil is hard, and we have not found it all yet. In contrast, people knew where the coal was a century ago. Once oil is found, it is likely to be produced quickly, so much so that discovery history is routinely used to predict future production. On the other hand, there are large coal fields that are almost undeveloped. As an example, Montana has larger coal reserves than Europe, Africa, or South America, but it is producing less than 0.1% of that coal each year. Our estimate of future coal production depends a lot on whether we think that the people of Montana will get into serious coal production. Finally, in contrast to the situation for oil, the world market for coal is only partially developed. Most coal is consumed in the country it is produced in, and there are large differences in prices, even in the same country. For this reason, we will analyze production on a regional basis. I will apply the techniques to coal that are routinely used here for oil, and consider the consequences for future climate change. People who are interested in more details can get the spreadsheets with the raw data at my web site, with lots of additional figures and source links.

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UMKC SDI 2008 LouGie Lab

Reactors Negative Peak Coal

Inherency – no new coal plants No new coal plants – legal setbacks and local opposition means that plans for over 100 plants have been scrapped Lester R. Brown, founder of the Earth Policy Institute, dubbed “one of the world's most influential thinkers” by the Washington Post and the recipient of 23 honorary degrees, a MacArthur Fellowship, the 1987 UN Environment Prize, the 1989 World Wide Fund for Nature Gold Medal, and the 1994 Blue Planet Prize, the Presidential Medal of Italy, the Borgström Prize by the Royal Swedish Academy of Agriculture and Forestry. “U.S. Moving Toward Ban on New Coal-Fired Power Plants,” Earth Policy Institute 2/14/08 http://www.earthpolicy.org/Updates/2008/Update70.htm In a report compiled in early 2007, the U.S. Department of Energy listed 151 coal-fired power plants in the planning stages and talked about a resurgence in coal-fired electricity. But during 2007, 59 proposed U.S. coal-fired power plants were either refused licenses by state governments or quietly abandoned. In addition to the 59 plants that were dropped, close to 50 more coal plants are being contested in the courts, and the remaining plants will likely be challenged as they reach the permitting stage. What began as a few local ripples of resistance to coal-fired power is quickly evolving into a national tidal wave of grassroots opposition from environmental, health, farm, and community organizations and a fast-growing number of state governments. The public at large is turning against coal. In a September 2007 national poll by the Opinion Research Corporation about which electricity source people would prefer, only 3 percent chose coal. One of the first major coal industry setbacks came in early 2007, when environmental groups convinced Texas-based utility TXU to reduce the number of planned coal-fired power plants in Texas from 11 to 3. And now even those 3 proposed plants may be challenged. Meanwhile, the energy focus within the Texas state government is shifting to wind power. The state is planning 23,000 megawatts of new wind-generating capacity (equal to 23 coal-fired power plants). In May, Florida’s Public Service Commission refused to license a huge $5.7-billion, 1,960-megawatt coal plant because the utility could not prove that building the plant would be cheaper than investing in conservation, efficiency, and renewable energy sources. This argument by Earthjustice, a non-profit environmental legal group, combined with widely expressed public opposition to any more coal-fired power plants in Florida, led to the quiet withdrawal of four other proposals for coal plants in the state. Republican Governor Charlie Crist, who is keenly aware of Florida’s vulnerability to rising seas, is actively opposing new coal plants and has announced that the state plans to build the world’s largest solar-thermal power plant. The principal reason for opposing new coal plants is the mounting concern about climate change. Another emerging reason is soaring construction costs. And then there are intensifying health concerns about mercury emissions and the 23,600 U.S. deaths per year from power plant air pollution. (See data.)

No new coal plants – local opposition Lester R. Brown, founder of the Earth Policy Institute, dubbed “one of the world's most influential thinkers” by the Washington Post and the recipient of 23 honorary degrees, a MacArthur Fellowship, the 1987 UN Environment Prize, the 1989 World Wide Fund for Nature Gold Medal, and the 1994 Blue Planet Prize, the Presidential Medal of Italy, the Borgström Prize by the Royal Swedish Academy of Agriculture and Forestry. “U.S. Moving Toward Ban on New Coal-Fired Power Plants,” Earth Policy Institute 2/14/08 http://www.earthpolicy.org/Updates/2008/Update70.htm The Sierra Club, the national leader on this issue, is working with hundreds of local groups to mount legal challenges in state after state. Other national groups that are actively involved include the Rainforest Action Network, the Natural Resources Defense Council, and Environmental Defense. Information on the grassroots momentum to oppose coal plants is tracked on the Web site Coal Moratorium NOW! States that are working to reduce carbon emissions are banding together to

discourage other states from building new coal plants simply because it would cancel their own carbon reduction efforts. In late 2006, for instance, the attorneys general of California, Wisconsin, New York, and several other northeastern states wrote to Kansas health officials urging them to deny permits for two new coal power plants of 700 megawatts each. The permits were subsequently denied, citing that carbon dioxide is an air pollutant and should be regulated, as determined in an April 2007 Supreme Court ruling. And in a letter on January 22, 2008, a similar grouping of states urged South Carolina’s Department of Health and Environmental Control to refuse a permit for the proposed 600-megawatt Pee Dee coal plant.

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UMKC SDI 2008 LouGie Lab

Reactors Negative Peak Coal

Inherency – no new coal plants No new coal plants – no support from Wall Street Lester R. Brown, founder of the Earth Policy Institute, dubbed “one of the world's most influential thinkers” by the Washington Post and the recipient of 23 honorary degrees, a MacArthur Fellowship, the 1987 UN Environment Prize, the 1989 World Wide Fund for Nature Gold Medal, and the 1994 Blue Planet Prize, the Presidential Medal of Italy, the Borgström Prize by the Royal Swedish Academy of Agriculture and Forestry. “U.S. Moving Toward Ban on New Coal-Fired Power Plants,” Earth Policy Institute 2/14/08 http://www.earthpolicy.org/Updates/2008/Update70.htm Coal’s future is also suffering as Wall Street turns its back on the industry. In July 2007, Citigroup downgraded coal company stocks across the board and recommended that its clients switch to other energy stocks. In January 2008, Merrill Lynch also downgraded coal stocks. In early February 2008, investment banks Morgan Stanley, Citi, and J.P. Morgan Chase announced that any future lending for coal-fired power would be contingent on the utilities demonstrating that the plants would be economically viable with the higher costs associated with future federal restrictions on carbon emissions. On February 13, Bank of America announced it would follow suit.

No new coal plants – Congressional opposition Lester R. Brown, founder of the Earth Policy Institute, dubbed “one of the world's most influential thinkers” by the Washington Post and the recipient of 23 honorary degrees, a MacArthur Fellowship, the 1987 UN Environment Prize, the 1989 World Wide Fund for Nature Gold Medal, and the 1994 Blue Planet Prize, the Presidential Medal of Italy, the Borgström Prize by the Royal Swedish Academy of Agriculture and Forestry. “U.S. Moving Toward Ban on New Coal-Fired Power Plants,” Earth Policy Institute 2/14/08 http://www.earthpolicy.org/Updates/2008/Update70.htm In August 2007, coal took a heavy political hit when U.S. Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid of Nevada, who had been opposing three coal-fired power plants in his own state, announced that he was now against building coalfired power plants anywhere in the world. Investment banks and political leaders are beginning to see what has been obvious for some time to climate scientists, such as NASA’s James Hansen who says that it makes no sense to build coal-fired power plants when we will have to bulldoze them in a few years. In early November 2007, Representative Henry Waxman of California announced

his intention to “introduce legislation that establishes a moratorium on the approval of new coal-fired power plants under the Clean Air Act until EPA finalizes regulations to address the greenhouse gas emissions from these sources.” If a national moratorium is passed by Congress, it will mark the beginning of the end for coal-fired power in the United States.

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UMKC SDI 2008 LouGie Lab

Reactors Negative Peak Coal

A2: Warming adv – peak coal takes it out Their peak coal argument takes out the warming advantage – if the world really runs out of fossile fuels, it won’t be able to burn enough carbon to trigger warming Richard Heinberg, Senior Fellow at the Post Carbon Institute, former Core Faculty member of New College of California. “Richard Heinberg's Museletter #179: Burning the Furniture,” 3/33/2007 http://globalpublicmedia.com/richard_heinbergs_museletter_179_burning_the_furniture For the most part, climate policy experts have relied upon robust estimates of future global coal supplies. For example, the following charts from NASA’s James Hansen, one of the world’s foremost climate scientists, show CO2 levels that will result from the burning of remaining fossil fuels given widely accepted reserves levels for oil, gas, and coal, under two scenarios: “business-as-usual,” and “coal phaseout.”

QuickTimeª and a TIFF (Uncompressed) decompressor are needed to see this picture.

QuickTimeª and a TIFF (Uncompressed) decompressor are needed to see this picture.

In both charts oil production is not projected to peak until 2020-2030, with a very slow decline thereafter; in the first chart, emissions from coal production do not peak until 2100. In addition, in the “business-as-usual” scenario absolute levels of production at the time of peaking are much higher than those forecast by ASPO and EWG; the ASPO/EWG peaking levels correspond to about 420–440 ppm of CO2 versus 575 ppm in Hanson’s first chart. For the sake of comparison, the current atmospheric CO2 level is 390 ppm. According to the International Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), a 420–440 ppm peak in CO2 levels may be consistent with a global average surface temperature increase of 2 degrees C above preindustrial levels, the critical threshold target for maximum allowable increase cited by many climate scientists. If ASPO/EWG is correct, this means that oil, coal, and gas resource-andproduction limitations may result in declines in CO2 emissions that are more or less in line with what is considered politically feasible for voluntary emissions reductions (the IEA “alternative policy” scenario).

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