Search Results for ‘coal power’
In an interview the other day, Ed Fallon stated “if coal interests want to research clean coal technology and carbon sequestration they, not the tax-payers, should fund the research.” This is a noble statement based on a belief in renewable energy and a green future. Unfortunately it’s not based on reality. The most ambitious goal for renewable energy involves Americans getting 20% from our energy from renewable sources in the next 20 years. So where do we get the remaining 80% of our energy? While natural gas is relatively clean, it is a commodity that cannot be transported across oceans. The U.S. currently gets about 25% of its energy from natural gas. This leaves 55% of our energy to be accounted for and three possibilities, coal, oil and nuclear energy. Fallon has expressed his opposition to coal and also is vehemently against nuclear energy, stating that “When all costs are factored in, nuclear power is the most expensive source of energy. More nuclear power plants mean more plutonium, and reactor-grade plutonium can be used to make a nuclear weapon. And there is no real solution to the problem of storing nuclear wastes.” So that leaves one source of energy acceptable to Ed Fallon to supply over half of America’s energy needs, imported foreign oil.
Relying on foreign oil is bad for the environment, bad for consumers already paying high gas prices and bad for the United States as a whole, as it forces our economy to continue to rely on oil imported from the Middle East. Fallon’s opposition to coal seems to be demagoguery, designed to play on the fears of environmentalists opposed to the Marshalltown coal plant, rather than real environmental policy. While no one can argue that coal is the best source of energy for the United States, unfortunately, compared to oil or nuclear, it is probably the least bad of the three. But with increased funding and emphasis on clean coal research, coal will become much more environmentally friendly. In fact, clean coal is a central part of Barack Obama’s energy plan.
Unlike oil, coal doesn’t have to be imported from Middle Eastern nations and unlike nuclear power, it doesn’t produce radioactive waste that will last for tens of thousands of years. In contrast, the United States has a plentiful supply of coal. In fact, Iowa’s third district is sitting on significant coal deposits and towns like Melcher-Dallas and Lucas used to be coal mining centers.
A lot of work and research still needs to be done to make clean coal a reality. Ed Fallon seems to think that this work should be left to private businesses, not the government. While this free market attitude is nice in theory, it is not based in reality. Without government funding over the past few decades, the United States has lagged far behind in research in solar energy and wind energy. Stripping government funding for clean coal research would be just as disastrous. In the meantime, Fallon would rather have us import oil instead. With an energy policy based on reliance on free markets and importing foreign oil, Fallon seems to want to continue the George Bush-Dick Cheney energy plan. Such a misguided attitude would be disastrous for our country and disastrous for our planet.
May 27th, 2008
Noneed4thneed liveblogged John Edwards’s Marshalltown campaign stop today, and he relays a particularly interesting tidbit (emphasis added):
The first question asks if he would require oil companies to invest their large profits in building refineries.
Edwards says one long term solution is to cap carbon emissions (receives applause). He would auction off these caps, which would raise billions of dollars and then invest in renewables and build the infrastructure. He says Americans will need to conserve and uses the line Americans need to be patriotic about something other than war. He says we need to use coal sequestration technology and not build anymore coal plants until this technology is available. This was surprising to hear since there is a $1 billion coal-fired powered plant proposed to be built in Marshalltown.
It sounds like Edwards knew of the proposed plant before he said what he said. So why did he say it?
I don’t know, but one possibility is that he is trying to draw more attention to Barack Obama’s apparent quasi-flip-flop on coal power. Watch Common Iowan for more.
June 15th, 2007
Cross posted at Iowa Independent
Jerry Falwell died two days ago. Will the Christian Right soon follow? That is certainly one of the questions being debated amidst the 2008 presidential contest. The front-runner for the GOP nomination, Rudy Giuliani, is pro-choice. But he has come under fire; recently for these views and his lead is shrinking nationwide and in Iowa.
Will the Christian Right try to stop Giuliani from winning the nomination? Could they if they tried? In this sense, perhaps the real legacy of Jerry Falwell won’t be known until the GOP has its nominee.
The cover story of the New Republic’s current issue is a lengthy (and intriguing) tribute to the idea that Giuliani can win the GOP nomination. Nestled within, however, is this paragraph:
Then, of course, there is the religious right. Though their power is on the wane, Christian conservatives are not going to allow Giuliani to have the nomination without a bitter fight… Richard Land, president of the Southern Baptist Convention’s Ethics & Religious Liberty Commission, put it this way: “If he wins, he’ll do so without social conservatives.” Then he added that a Republican presidential candidate can “no more win without conservative voters than a Democrat can without overwhelming support from blacks.”
Earlier today, James Dobson, chairman of Focus on the Family, and one of the leaders of today’s Christian conservative movement announced he would not support Giuliani if he were the Republican nominee:
Speaking as a private citizen and not on behalf of any organization or party, I cannot, and will not, vote for Rudy Giuliani in 2008. It is an irrevocable decision. If given a Hobson’s – Dobson’s? – choice between him and Sens. Hillary Clinton or Barack Obama, I will either cast my ballot for an also-ran – or if worse comes to worst – not vote in a presidential election for the first time in my adult life.
On the other hand, Ralph Reed, former head of the Christian Coalition, urged social conservatives to give Giuliani a chance. According to the Hotline, Reed told viewers of the Christian Broadcasting Network that Giuliani “can still potentially win over pro-family voters” if he focuses on issues where they agree. Giuliani had campaigned for Reed last May when Reed was running in Georgia’s lieutenant governor primary; Reed went on to lose the election, but has maintained an affinity for Giuliani, apparently talking him up in January at the National Review Institute.
Here in Iowa, Giuliani has the support of former Congressman and failed gubernatorial candidate Jim Nussle, who was conservative on social issues while in Congress. However, Nussle’s running mate, the more conservative Bob Vanderplaats, in addition to the very conservative Danny Carroll, has endorsed former Arkansas governor and pastor Mike Huckabee. Iowa Republicans–especially the grassroots–are well known conservatives. Two polls taken in 2000 showed that about 60 percent of likely GOP caucusers thought abortion should be illegal, according to the Des Moines Register. The Register reported in the same article that Giuliani hasn’t decided yet whether to participate in the Ames Straw Poll, a crucial test of Republican support in Iowa.
Whether Giuliani will win the Iowa caucuses or the nomination remains to be seen. But what is clear is that a Giuliani victory would be a crushing blow, perhaps a fitting epitaph, for the movement that Jerry Falwell helped create.
May 17th, 2007
I guess this is what happens in a political world where a few consulting firms call almost all of the shots: Kentucky gubernatorial candidate Steve Beshear just got caught lifting part of Chet Culver’s energy policy text. As the Lexington Herald-Leader documents,
For example, Culver’s plan says: “As Governor, I will challenge the private sector and encourage the development of new power sources, fuels and clean coal technologies by developing new laws and regulations that encourage innovation and the production and sale of home grown fuels.”
The Beshear plan states: “As Governor, I will challenge the private sector and encourage the development of new renewable power sources, alternative fuels and clean coal technologies by developing new laws and regulations that spur innovation and the production and sale of home grown fuels.”
Obviously, neither candidate had any idea that the text was going to be used in multiple places, but it’s a pretty inexcusable mistake on the consultants’ parts. In a world with the Internet, someone in Kentucky might be able to find out what a candidate in Iowa is saying, and vice versa.
Quoting, again, “Beshear’s campaign manager, Jim Cauley, said the campaign saw Culver’s plan for energy online ‘and we liked it.’” Go Chet!
(Beshear is running for the Democratic nomination for Kentucky Governor against several other candidates. The primary is next month.)
April 22nd, 2007
The New York Times had an article yesterday on the economic growth that ethanol is spurring across rural America, even in places like Grinnell. However, the article only grazed on the hidden costs and unintended consequences of this boom.
The rise in the use of ethanol has raised corn prices considerably. As this article from Bloomberg News mentions, corn “surpassed $4.20 a bushel Jan. 17, almost double its September price.” This has big consequences for American consumers. Hogs, chickens and cows rely on corn for their feed. This has led to higher prices for pork and beef but also for soybeans, which serve as an alternate feed for livestock, not to mention all sorts of other foods ranging from bread to pop.
However, the consequences have been far graver internationally. In Mexico, the rise of corn prices has led to a giant surge in the price of tortillas, which is the basic staple for most poor and working class Mexicans. The result has led to most poor Mexicans being forced choose between spending “up to a third of their income on tortillas — or eating less or switching to cheaper [and much less healthy] alternatives.” It is beginning to ripple into a political crisis with over 75,000 Mexicans holding a protest against the rising prices 10 days ago.
Ethanol isn’t even that good for the environment either. The Bloomberg article points to a June 2006 study by researchers at the University of Minnesota in Minneapolis that found that there may be a net increase in greenhouse gas emissions as a result of growing more corn for ethanol. The article goes on to explain that this happens because “crops have to be irrigated, plowed with tractors, doused with nitrogen fertilizers and transported to ethanol distilleries, which power their machinery with natural gas or coal. Croplands are less effective than forests or grasslands in absorbing carbon dioxide, the heat-trapping gas blamed for global warming.”
The final issue is that the ethanol boom creates an unsustainable boom in corn prices. If a Democratic Congress raises CAFE standards as expected, Americans will be consuming less gasoline, not to mention gasoline alternatives such as ethanol. However, this is only small potatoes compared to the long term issue. The President announced an initiative several years ago to make hydrogen fuel cells a viable option by 2020. Even if that estimate is off by ten years, that will create a real long term issue. If, by then, growth in alternative fuels has continued at the current pace, much of our nation’s agricultural sector will be geared towards producing ethanol, biodiesel and other substitutes for gasoline. However, there is no need for a substitute for gasoline when you’ve found a substitute for the internal combustion engine. This creates the inherent potential for a farm crisis that would dwarf the one in the 1980s.
As the use of alternative fuels increases, these issues will become more pressing. The question is how to deal with the difficult balance between spurring economic growth in rural America and decreasing our dependence on Middle Eastern oil on one hand and keeping food prices low for consumers and protecting our economy and environment in the long term on the other. There is no easy answer but it is a question that should be and needs to be asked.
February 12th, 2007
With gas prices soaring to above $3/gal in parts of the country it is no wonder that people are talking about alternative energy. Here in Iowa, of course, we like to talk a lot about ethanol, because we grow a lot of corn, one of the materials that can be turned into ethanol.
The Department of Agriculture announced this week that increased demand for ethanol is driving corn prices up, so at least Iowa farmers can receive some benefit from the high gas prices.
Meanwhile, lawmakers in Washington are considering legislation that would mandate an increase in the amount of ethanol used for fuel. Both Democrats and Republicans from the Midwest are proposing legislation, and while they think that it is useful to both be working on similar proposals, it seems unlikely that any bills would actually pass as midterms approach. There is concern that mandating the use of ethanol might not be the wisest move right now:
“To say that we have to incorporate these huge volumes of ethanol into gas regardless of what they cost is not very good policy if you’re trying to moderate gasoline prices,” said Bob Slaughter, president of the National Petrochemical and Refiners Association.
Furthermore, there is speculation that the dramatic increase in corn-derived ethanol costs may actually be contributing to high gas prices. So as a recap, so far we’ve got people saying high gas prices are driving up corn prices and other people saying that high corn prices are driving up gas prices. This economist though says that the only thing determining gas prices is good ol’ supply and demand.
So lets complicate things a little further: according to the same Register article there are also proposals in Congress to end the 54 cent per gallon tariff on imported ethanol. Places like Brazil are big ethanol producers, but they make it from sugar cane, not corn. However, it is uncertain if this would really reduce gas prices. Not to mention,
Latham, a close ally of House Majority Leader John Boehner, said the tariff cut would be unlikely to pass the House.
Another question that is being debated is how useful ethanol really is. While the debate over gas prices is one thing, the larger issue here is renewable energy. Is ethanol really a viable energy resource? Recent studies coming out of Cornell University have found that ethanol actually takes more energy to make than it produces. Basically that is bad. So even if ethanol could replace a sizable chunk of our foreign oil imports we might be better off looking for ways to power our vehicles with natural gas or coal (the biggest electricity producers in the U.S.).
What a lot of people are depending on in the future of ethanol is that there will be some technology advances. However, those advances are expected to come from finding new sources for ethanol, like plant wastes and wood chips. So what does this all mean? I don’t really know either, but it seems like the benefits Iowa derives from the ethanol industry might not be there in the future. (Maybe we should be focusing on that other renewable energy resource that we have a lot of…wind!)
May 12th, 2006
