BIG PICTURE: Eluding the Balance

Wednesday, October 17, 2007

By Jeanne Klobnak - Ball

Jackson Hole, Wyo.-Despite the ambitious title and well-credentialed, engaging speakers, last week’s three-day conference at Teton Village, “Finding the Balance: Energy and Climate,” failed to deliver comprehensive and equitable solutions. In bringing energy and climate change to the table, however, Wyoming stakeholders began the dialogue of piecing together a new energy future.

Marion Loomis of the Wyoming Mining Association provided a sobering reminder of just how important coal is to Wyoming’s fiscal well-being and the nation’s overall energy security by mentioning the fact that Wyoming’s coal is a $900 billion per-year business.
Ten percent of the nation’s total energy usage, including residential, commercial, industrial, and transportation comes from Wyoming coal. This is roughly equivalent to the sum of the lighting and heating in every other house in the country, according to Rob Hurless, Governor Freudenthal’s Energy and Telecommunications Advisor.
In Wyoming, coal is still King.

Confronting the climate conundrum, state policy makers vow to position Wyoming as an aggressive, global leader in both the “greening of coal” (gasification) and greenhouse gas removal (carbon capture and carbon sequestration). Coal advocates recognize the attractive role new technologies may play in transitioning beyond the age of oil.

Loomis also highlighted Wyoming’s significant uranium contribution to the nuclear industry. “In the last two years, 10 uranium companies have been formed, looking to start developing again. First in Powder River Basin, then Green River,” he said.
Today, 16 percent of the world’s energy comes from nuclear power, with 31 countries producing it. Loomis said the waste issue still must be solved, but all the waste could fit into a football field 15 feet deep. “New industry is coming to Wyoming,” he concluded.

Energy efficiency, conservation and renewable energy sources are prerequisite to an immediate, balanced energy and climate approach. This was largely ignored.
Teton County Commissioner Ben Ellis and Stephanie Kessler, Wyoming Program Manager for The Wilderness Society, offered notable exceptions to the conference’s fossil-dominant solutions.

Ellis, who spoke from the audience, challenged the state to “step up” and promote renewable energy. “Sequestration versus wind and renewables – we have the ability to make a difference today,” he said.

Kessler, a panelist, said, “Our state doesn’t appreciate and really understand what renewable energy could do for us.  Capital construction could pioneer energy efficiency and conservation in design criteria.”

Hurless responded that such changes would require a legislative fix, but agreed that Wyoming had potential to be a leader.  Wyoming State Representative Colin Simpson said he would look into the capital construction rules.

As the Nobel Committee hands Al Gore the Nobel Peace Prize for galvanizing public awareness about the dire consequences of global warming, Wyoming politicians are beginning to get the picture.

“The energy debate of our generation is carbon. Period,” said Senator John Barrasso, who assumed departed Senator Craig Thomas’ responsibility on the Senate Energy and Natural Resources, and Environment and Public Works Committees a little more than 100 days ago.

Barrasso and Wyoming’s Governor Dave Freudenthal intend Wyoming to lead the nation “if not by example, then by success,” and then the world, as Barrasso envisions, when it comes to dealing with carbon.

To achieve such leadership in today’s political climate, however, Wyoming would do well to craft and deploy a far more creative and diversified energy portfolio than simply, “carbon capture, carbon sequestration, [coal] gasification, liquefaction and allocation,” the priorities Barrasso highlighted in his presentation Wednesday morning.
Burying an estimated 20 billion tons of pressurized CO2 in the Rock Springs Uplift, reasonably proximate to fault zones and Earth’s largest volcano, raises its own array of geologic questions. Even assuming the planet can handle it, 27 billion tons of CO2 are released into the atmosphere worldwide each year, and the figure is rising.

Lindsey Grant, the former deputy assistant secretary of state for population and environment, estimates that to bring annual CO2 releases down to a level that would stop driving climate warming, we would need to sequester about 18 billion tons annually; an amount larger than the annual world production of coal, crude oil, cement, grains and iron ore combined. And, he pointed out, as a gas it occupies a much greater volume.

While Grant noted that the United Nations Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change produced a preliminary survey indicating adequate subterranean space “technically” exists to accommodate all that gas, because it is under pressure the Panel concedes the survey is laced with uncertainties.

A major question concerns slow leakage, which would not only undo the considerable effort to store it, but also risks suffocating all living beings in low-lying areas near the leaks.

Global warming and carbon sequestration aside, the other “inconvenient truth,” the one that’s even tougher to digest and tackle, concerns the precipitous decline of ALL the Earth’s non-renewable resources, from metals to fuels, against the backdrop of an escalating and ever more consumptive human population.  Mother Earth’s cupboard is near bare, as everyone everywhere scratches and claws for the crumbs that remain.
As Grant clarifies in his excellent primer “Valedictory: The Age of Overshoot,” population and consumption underpin the energy and climate crisis. Conference moderator Bill Blackmore, who spearheaded ABC’s global warming news coverage, pointed out that such acknowledgement is often considered taboo.

No one at the conference seemed particularly interested in framing solutions in the context of population and consumption’s larger reality.  P/C is apparently not PC. Yet if Wyoming desires to lead the nation as the energy and climate crisis gain steam, it must acknowledge and find solutions to fit within this larger framework.

U.S. population growth could be reversed simply by reducing immigration, according to Grant, thereby spinning out our demand for coal, as a declining population uses fossil fuels more slowly, mitigating their damage.

Grant advocates taxing pollution, fossil energy consumption and greenhouse gas production, which would encourage gasification of plants rather then conventional coal- burning power plants and would help slow consumption and emissions overall.

Given no comprehensive portfolio of recommendations on energy efficiency, conservation and renewables, it is not surprising that neither immigration nor tax policy considerations were discussed in Wyoming’s most recent effort to find a balanced solution to climate and energy. 

Perhaps the sobering nature of the climate presentations will spur Wyoming to venture beyond King Coal’s realm soon.
PERMALINK:
BIG PICTURE: Eluding the Balance | Planet JH News Article: General Environment

Leave a Comment