The Questions, My Friend?

On June 23, 2008, I posted an article called, “The Answer, My Friend?”  Its focus was wind energy as an alternative to mountain top removal mining.  Obviously, the title winks and tips its hat to Dylan; but it also paved the way for today’s post, “The Questions, My Friend?” 

Ken Ward writes in the Gazette today about the coal forum event engaging wind energy advocates and the coal industry:  “Dueling campaigns like the Coal Forum and the Coal River Wind Project offer competing views not just of the answers to the nation's energy problems, but conflicting ideas of what the questions themselves should be.”

Ward is right on the money.  Continued wrangling about the same old questions is intellectually and practically bankrupt.  New frameworks and fresh questions are necessary to propel West Virginians and the nation into the kind of innovation and problem solving necessary in the face of the 21^st century crucible of energy, environment, and economy.

Is it time to get serious about reforming the coal industry, or is it time to get serious about abandoning it for alternatives?  Or neither?  What are the short and long term consequences of the many different directions available to us?  Create West Virginia is committed to bringing open, honest dialogue to bear on these questions.  That is the dynamic we want to strike at the annual conference in October (see www.createwv.com for registration).  There will be a special breakout session on these questions and more, featuring top representatives of both the coal industry and of alternative energy.

It is going to take all of us to establish the right questions, and then to answer them with integrity and vision.  We hope you will come to conference ready to help rebuild the conversation about West Virginia’s future in these areas.  Please also post your thoughts here!

Posted by: Elizabeth Damewood Gaucher

http://www.wvgazette.com/News/200808181550

Comments

[Rory McIlmoil]

Elizabeth, thanks for the post. I was actually focusing on the very same quote by Ken Ward today. There are definitely conflicting ideas of what the questions should be. To me, that sentence had a bit of a different meaning, primarily because of the wind campaign that I'm working on. The question that comes to my mind is, "What are we willing to sacrifice in order to produce coal?" There are numerous negative social and environmental impacts stemming from Mountaintop Removal coal mining. While most of those impacts are unfortunately left out of the cost-benefit accounting, the fact remains that they are (though they REALLY should be included). The Coal River Wind campaign offers a new look. And a new question. Should West Virginia allow economically viable energy and economic alternatives that would produce energy, jobs and tax revenues, forever, be eliminated due to a Mountaintop Removal operation that will only produce coal, create energy (80% of which is exported out of state), and create jobs for 14 years?

Is the state really willing to allow such a valuable source of jobs and revenue and energy be lost to MTR? What will be left for these areas after those 14 years? It wont be the wind power. The loss of hundreds of feet of altitude seriously degrades the wind resource, to the point where the wind no longer blows strong enough to be attractive to wind developers. So, the question really boils down to, "Fourteen years? Or, Forever?" THAT is the question we should be asking.

[jeff]

Here are a few other questions:

- Have any coal companies evaluated the business opportunity around becoming multi-dimensional "energy" companies vs. just coal companies (similar to what BP and other oil companies are becoming)? If that was an option for them, they could embrace wind and other alternative energy opportunities for their leased land and make business decisions in a broader, more flexible context.

- Has anyone done an analysis on how jobs and skills in the coal industry translate into new alternative energy industries? How much re-training would be involved? How many net new jobs would be created vs. the current 15,000 or so coal miner jobs in WV. After all, one of the biggest arguments made for coal is how WV will suffer if coal suffers...But if a transition could be made, the impact may not be so drastic...in fact, may be net positive.

- If MTR were eliminated and carbon sequestering became a proven option, would environmentalists be more open to coal-to-liquid as part of a multi-dimensional energy policy?

[Rory McIlmoil]

Hey Jeff,

1) I doubt any coal companies are looking to add wind, solar and/or hydro to their mix, at least for now. But you'd have to ask them. My guess is that it takes alot of energy and resources to mine coal, and to get into another arena would be a difficult start-up. Coal companies only net around $100 Million a year, whereas oil companies - who as you know are getting into renewables (BP and Shell at least), make billions in profit every year, so they can get into renewables, AND doing so doesnt cut into their oil profits (at least not yet). However, coal companies, by getting into developing renewable sources of electricity, are creating competition for their own resource, and they dont want to do that. They make much more money of the selling of coal than they would off the selling of wind or solar. THEY sell coal to plants in bulk, while power companies sell distributed power, at as cheap a cost as possible so that they can stay competitive with wind and solar.

2) There is a great opportunity for those working on strip-mines to be transitioned into renewable energy production/manufacturing/installation etc. They work with machines, so the only training they would need is to learn how to create, install, maintain and use a different machine. As for the rest of your question, it has been estimated that renewables create more jobs per MW than coal does, though I have to re-check my research to tell you by how much. I guarantee the validity of that statement though. And you have to remember, there are only 7,000 surface miners in WV, and 13,000 underground miners (according to the WV Coal Assn, the EIA says 6,800 surface miners and around 12,000 underground miners). Studies say that for every 10MW of wind power installed, you create one permanent, on-site job. WV has a minimum of 12,000 MW of wind potential according to AWS TrueWinds, so by developing that you automatically create 1,200 new direct jobs for the operation and maintenance of turbines. That would cover about 15% of the strip-mine, on site jobs, while generating about 13% of the state's electricity. Add in solar: Developing just 10% of the currently strip-mined land in WV with concentrated solar power would lead to the generation of 30% of the state's electricity (my own research). Thats another 12,000MW of electrical production, and at least another 1,200 jobs.

So already we're talking about 30% of the strip-mine jobs. And new manufacturing jobs. And with wind development, the preservation of the mountains in the coal-mining region, which would give those areas a chance to have sustainable forms of economic development, such as tourism, craft-making, etc. This will create more jobs, and bring in more visitors, and all of a sudden you have a whole new, diversified economy. and you get your net positive shift in jobs. A wasteland creates no jobs other than cleaning up contamination. A land of plenty at least gives the opportunity for an economy of vitality.

3)Coal to liquids is the dumbest idea I've every heard. Not only is the energy efficiency of the whole process - extraction, transportation, conversion - energy efficient (at best, one part in, one part out), it creates more CO2 than petro-diesel, sequestration isnt proven to be safe, and the extra coal demand would lead to pressure for more MTR. Not to mention that for every gallon of coal fuel produced, CTL plants require ten gallons of water. Its a bad deal all around, and I think I did an analysis for the CreateWV blog about the approved Marshall CTL plant recently.

Good questions,

Rory McIlmoil
Coal River Mountain Wind Project

[Rory McIlmoil]

Jeff - here is the link to the CTL blog and my post: http://createwv.typepad.com/createwv/2008/07/coal-to-liquid.html

Also, about the net positive jobs shift, 7,000 strip-miners currently produce 45% of WV coal (so about half). 13,000 underground miners produce the other 55%. Its been estimated that at least half of the coal to be strip-mined could be deep mined, especially at current prices. So, say WV cuts its total coal production by 25% - all MTR (not a big hit to WV's economy, I'll do a post some day about that) - immediately putting 3,500 strip-miners out of work. So we're at a negative 3,500. The other 25% of strip-mined coal gets produced underground. At about a 2:1 underground-miner-per-ton to surface-miner-per-ton ration, you take the other 3,500 strip-jobs and double it, thus creating 7,000 new underground mining jobs through the shift in production from surface to underground. Right there you have a net-zero employment change, and you've rid yourself of MTR altogether. AND, you've save hundreds of mountains for producing wind (like Coal River Mountain, www.coalriverwind.org), and from those new jobs alone, you're at a net positive.

Rory