Texas coal debate generates high-dollar ad campaigns

[Doondoo]

A teddy-bear-clutching child kept safe from monsters by an electric night light and a coal-smudged face from a Dickensian nightmare of grime and death: These are the opposing emotional icons in the biggest environmental-business war in Texas history. Once the province of mostly insiders, the politics of Texas power and pollution have moved suddenly into the living rooms of millions of Texans, who are being pummeled by high-dollar ads for and against a fleet of proposed coal-burning power plants.

With lobbyists on both sides flooding the Capitol, and with politically charged permit hearings under way, power companies and a host of opponents are appealing both to the intellect and to basic human struggles: safety vs. fear, life vs. death, even light vs. darkness.

"There's some fear factor from both sides," Roy K. Busby, regents professor of advertising, direct response and integrated communication at the University of North Texas, said after reviewing several ads at The Dallas Morning News' request. "Each citizen can view the messages for either emotional or rational benefits."

.......

Such disputes among engineers and policy experts are rarely the stuff of TV commercials and print ads. But they are behind ads by Dallas-based TXU, which leads the coal boom with 11 proposed plants; Texans for Affordable and Reliable Power, a group of small-town mayors funded by TXU; Environmental Defense, a national organization that opposes the plants; and the Texas Clean Sky Coalition, an opponent group with hazy origins and mostly undisclosed funding.


http://www.dallasnews.com/sharedcontent/dws/dn/latestnews/stories/021507dntexcoalpr.1796c4e.html

[papau]

1. DU's Hatrack has posted the current mercury problems - coal to oil is evil

Posted at Kos:

Synthesis gas, a mixture of hydrogen and carbon monoxide, is reacted in the presence of an iron or cobalt catalyst; much heat is evolved, and such products as methane, synthetic gasoline and waxes, and alcohols are made, with water or carbon dioxide produced as a byproduct. An important source of the hydrogen-carbon monoxide gas mixture is the gasification of coal.

A unit of Canadian construction giant SNC-Lavalin Inc. (TSX:SNC) and Houston-based DKRW Advanced Fuels LLC have formed a strategic alliance to develop, design and build coal-to-liquid fuel projects each worth more than $1 billion US.

The companies announced Wednesday that DKRW Advanced Fuels and SNC-Lavalin GDS Inc. of Houston and SNC-Lavalin Constructors Inc. of Bothell, Wash. will develop the projects, beginning with the first proposed plant in Wyoming, a major U.S. coal-producing state.
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The BIG BUT on the above:

Surface mining (1) eliminates surface vegetation, (2) can permanently change topography, (3) permanently and drastically alters soil and subsurface geological structure, and (4) disrupts surface and subsurface hydrologic regimes. Secondary mining impacts range from urban development in support of mining to creation of offroad networks for exploration activities. Surface subsidence following long-wall deep mining can dewater stream reaches and divert flows into different surface stream channels that are not adjusted to such increased flows. Altered patterns and delivery rhythms can be expected as well as changes in water quality.

Off-site impacts such as stream pollution can be significant. Water quality impacts can generally be controlled during active mining, but many acid-potent coal reserves cannot be mined with current technology without "residual acid seepage" requiring "uninterrupted perpetual treatment" in order to protect large river systems. Backfilled, reclaimed surface mine sites thus constitute artificial, porous "geological recharge areas" where infiltrating water percolates through the fill and emerges as very acid seeps or springs that often flow even during drought when natural waters dry up. Many receiving streams have low alkalinities (<10 mg/L), and great volumes or distances are required to neutralize even small mine flows that may carry 1,000 to 2,000 mg/L of acid.

The Natural Resources Defense Council, a U.S.-based environmental advocacy group, estimates that the production and use of gasoline, diesel fuel, jet fuel and other fuels from crude oil release about 27.5 pounds of carbon dioxide per gallon. The production and use of a gallon of liquid fuel originating in coal emit about 49.5 pounds of carbon dioxide, they estimate. Even some boosters of the coal-to-oil plants describe them as carbon-dioxide factories that produce energy on the side.

"Before deciding whether to invest scores -- perhaps hundreds -- of billions of dollars in a new industry like coal-to-liquids, we need a much more serious assessment of whether this is an industry that should proceed at all," said David Hawkins, director of the Climate Center at the Natural Resources Defense Council, at a recent U.S. Senate hearing.

carbon sequestration - storing excess carbon dioxide below the ground. While it seems like a good idea, a study has shown that there are serious environmental problems with such a process:

Following CO2 breakthrough, samples showed sharp drops in pH (6.5-5.7), pronounced increases in alkalinity (100-3,000 mg/L as HCO3) and Fe (30-1,100 mg/L), and significant shifts in the isotopic compositions of H2O, dissolved inorganic carbon (DIC), and CH4.

Geochemical modeling indicates that brine pH would have dropped lower but for the buffering by dissolution of carbonate and iron oxyhydroxides.

This rapid dissolution of carbonate and other minerals could ultimately create pathways in the rock seals or well cements for CO2 and brine leakage. Dissolution of minerals, especially iron oxyhydroxides, could mobilize toxic trace metals and, where residual oil or suitable organics are present, the injected CO2 could also mobilize toxic organic compounds.

Environmental impacts could be major if large brine volumes with mobilized toxic metals and organics migrated into potable groundwater.

[phantom power]

2. Wow. Both sides are equally rational *and* irrational!"

Did they come up with that one all by themselves?
:eyes:

[NNadir]

3. Personally, I am relieved that the external cost is being discussed.

The more it is discussed, the more likely it is that coal will be subject to phase outs, and not just the failure of <em>new</em> coal plants to gain approval.