Here's a post I had in February: Coal Takes Some Lumps. I looked then at the demise of the federal government's flagship project on coal capture and storage (CCS) and at the concerted, and sometimes vicious, counterattack launched by a utility in Kansas against the denial of its permits for two new plants.
Today's lead story in the "NY Times," part of their excellent series "The Energy Challenge," was Mounting Costs Slow the Push for Clean Coal. The great Matt Wald, who I've lauded and cited here many times, reports, in a nutshell: "Coal is abundant and cheap, assuring that it will continue to be used. But the failure to start building, testing, tweaking and perfecting carbon capture and storage means that developing the technology may come too late to make coal compatible with limiting global warming." 50% of US electricity comes from coal. 80% in China. (Gulp.) See the blog item from Andrew Revkin, also from February, Dot Earth: Is Capturing CO2 a Pipe Dream?
I attended a conference today on carbon investment and finance and heard one speaker who runs a technology firm offering clean coal technology say that the utilities are, for all intents and purposes, in panic mode. (More tomorrow about that, and some other interesting perspectives from the conference.)
A prominent item in the Business section today was on food production competing , and losing , to biofuels. (I've written any number of times about that here: see Biofuels and Agriculture.) Food Report Criticizes Biofuel Policies reports on new findings from the OECD and FAO that agricultural commodity prices are staying high and getting more volatile. This release from the OECD says: "Growing demand for biofuel is another factor contributing to higher prices. World fuel ethanol production tripled between 2000 and 2007 and is expected to double again between now and 2017 to reach 127 billion litres a year. Biodiesel production is seen to expand from 11 billion litres a year in 2007 to around 24 billion litres by 2017. The growth in biofuel production adds to demand for grains, oilseeds and sugar, so contributing to higher crop prices."
Many food policy experts have called for a reversal of the US and EU mandates and subsidies for biofuels. I reported here in March that one of the world's leading development economists, Jeffrey Sachs, had characterized these policies as "misguided."
Finally, Andy Revkin, the "NYT" lead reporter on climate change, tells us here that "The Bush administration, bowing to a court order, has released a fresh summary of federal and independent research pointing to large, and mainly harmful, impacts of human-caused global warming in the United States." You can find the report at the website of the US Climate Change Science Program. John Kerry is quoted in the Times article: "The three-year delay of this report is sadly fitting for an administration that has wasted seven years denying the real threat of global climate change." Don't hold back, John. Tell us how you really feel.
