Coal "whipping boy" for greens

Last week, Brett Harvey, CEO of coal mining giant Consol Energy, whimpered in a media statement that environmentalists were picking on his industry.

Consol CEO says coal "whipping boy" for greens
Steve James, Reuters, 03-Oct-2007

Harvey was reacting to the introduction by Rainforest Action Network of its No New Coal campaign. More about the campaign, here

NEW YORK (Reuters) - The coal industry has become the "whipping boy" of environmentalists who fail to come up with realistic alternatives for energy, the head of one of America's biggest coal producers said.

Brett Harvey, chief executive of Consol Energy Inc also suggested a surcharge on electricity use to help pay for development of technology that makes coal burn off less carbon dioxide and converts the fossil fuel into liquids and gas.

"If you're not going to use coal anymore what are you going to use?" he said he asks anti-coal advocates. "Well, they respond to you: new technology, solar and wind.

"My response is: 'Well, how does that work? and they say: 'I don't know but we need to study it,"' Harvey said in an interview during this week's Reuters Environment Summit.

"Well if it was really that easy, don't you think we'd have already done this? Do you think we would already have avoided the Clean Air Act and everything we've done to clean up coal over the years and gone automatically to that?" said Harvey, whose Pittsburgh-based company produces approximately 70 million tons of coal per year.

"There is a direct relationship between the use of coal and a healthy economy," he said. "When you quit using 50 percent of your electricity then we can talk. If you throttle back the use of coal and drive your base power costs up, you make all the products we make more expensive."

Asked how the industry viewed environmentalists' efforts to stop construction of new coal-fired power plants, which they blame for increasing greenhouse gas emissions, Harvey said: "Well, it's the whipping boy.

"I think the whole mantra of the environmental groups is: don't waste energy and if you make everything more expensive the theory is you use less. That's the underlying basis of their argument, but it's not the nature of the American public or probably anyone in the world," Harvey said.

Coal fuels approximately 50 percent of America's electricity generation, but environmentalists want to replace it with alternative sources, such as wind or solar, to meet future increased power demand.

Harvey said the problem lies also with the public's perception of coal as an outdated, dirty, 19th Century fuel.

"People have disconnected the use of coal from what they do in their everyday lives. They think that's what their grandparents used to do. They don't realize when they hit the light switch they hit Consol Energy."

Harvey said in the 1990's America decided it wasn't going to use coal any more. "The administration said coal would be done in 2005.

"Everybody believed it and natural gas went from a buck and a half a million (BTU) to $10 a million based on throttling back coal and, guess what, now we're on short supply of natural gas, we overbuilt gas generation and you can't replace it with limited fuel sources."

Asked about clean-coal technology, he said: "Should we do something more with coal? Yes. Can we make it cleaner? Yes. But it's going to cost us and it's going to take time.

"This is no different from landing somebody on the moon, if the focus is there and the attitude is there, we'll get it done. What we need is people to agree to solve the problem, not just throw the baby out with the bathwater and say there's an alternative that nobody can describe."

Coal-to-liquid (CTL) technology would require $2 billion to $3 billion in research per year over 10 years, he estimates.

"Probably the best thing to do is take and bill the people who use the coal for power. Tack that as a fee on the use of power for coal and put it in a research institute. It costs the average family about $5 a year and you will have funded the research," he said.

"If you take coal out of the equation and you try to eliminate coal, based on the environment, the people you hurt the most will be poor people," he added.

© Reuters2007All rights reserved

RAN’s Global Finance team finished up a press conference announcing to the world that we are formally launching a campaign against the world’s two largest banks - Citi and Bank of America. Why? Because they are the top funders of the dirty coal industry - and the crucial link supplying billions of dollars to companies and projects that are destroying communities, our environment and our climate. These two banks account for around $4 trillion in assets - and it’s time we held them accountable for their investments. They hold the necessary capital to transform our economy away from destructive fossil fuels like coal, and towards one based on sustainable, equitable, clean energy.

You can read all about the campaign at the Global Finance homepage, see our press release announcing the campaign, and read our latest report: Banks, Climate Change, and the New Coal Rush. If you missed out on the great conference this morning [02-Oct-2007] - you can listen to the recording here.

The call featured:

* Becky Tarbotton (Director of RAN’s Global Finance Campaign)
* Bill McKibben (Author and founder of Step It Up!)
* Judy Bonds (West Virginia coal-field resident, and founder of Coal River Mountain Watch)
* Leslie Lowe (energy and environment program director at the Interfaith Center on Corporate Responsibility)

Join us in an ambitious campaign targetting the two largest banks in the world to address the world’s largest problem: climate change. Get involved!