PRO-COAL DEMS URGE PRESIDENT TO ADOPT FRIENDLY POLICIES

Tamar Hallerman
GHG Monitor
10/11/13

A group of more than 400 current and former coal-state Democrats is urging the White House to adopt policies that accelerate the development and deployment of what they are calling “sustainable coal” under the framework of President Barack Obama’s climate action plan. Under the umbrella of the recently-created advocacy group the Coal Blue Project, the current and former policymakers from mining states like Wyoming, West Virginia and Kentucky said this week that they have “serious concerns” about the carbon emissions standards for new coal plants recently proposed by the Environmental Protection Agency. Instead, they said in an Oct. 9 letter to the President that they would like to work with the Obama Administration to move forward an energy agenda “that reflects a realistic assessment of coal’s inevitable place in our nation’s energy future.” “Through the use of technology, coal has met every environmental challenge it has ever faced. There is no reason to view the carbon challenge as any different,” the policymakers wrote. 

The letter states that current energy policies are “inadequate and unbalanced” against coal and other fossil fuels. “Critical carbon-mitigating coal technologies will not reach the marketplace in a timely manner without strong leadership from you and your Administration, nor without significant public investment—similar in scale to that which other energy technologies have received in recent years,” they wrote. “We should not expect that advanced coal technologies will be developed and deployed without the same.” The Democrats said the president’s climate action plan—which sets aside $8 billion in loan guarantee authority for advanced fossil technologies and paves the way for carbon emissions standards for new and existing power plants—does not do enough to incentivize CCS and other ‘clean coal’ technologies. “While projects such as FutureGen 2.0, in your home state of Illinois, are an important step in the right direction, they are far from enough,” they wrote to the President.

The letter also argues that EPA’s recently proposed new source performance standards—which essentially mandate CCS technology for future power plants—require technology that is “not yet ready for the marketplace” and could drive away investment in clean coal R&D. “To not allow for step-wise improvements in advanced coal technologies is counter-productive from an environmental point of view, as well as needlessly costly and painful from an economic one,” the letter states.

Launched earlier this summer with the mission of promoting coal within the Democratic party, the Coal Blue Project includes former members of Congress like Rep. Rick Boucher (D-Va.), who helped formulate 2009’s Waxman-Markey cap-and-trade bill, as well as Reps. Jerry Costello, Jim Kerr and John Tanner. Former Wyoming Governors Mike Sullivan and Dave Freudenthal and Virginia gubernatorial candidate Terry McAuliffe are also involved with the group.