Friday, June 05, 2009
What happens after coal?
From the RoundTable blog
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Al Weed
Weed is the Chairman of Public Policy Virginia, a Charlottesville-based think tank working on climate change issues.
A new poll commissioned by the American Windpower Energy Association indicates that fully 75 percent of Americans support a mandatory renewable electricity standard. There is strong bipartisan backing for a goal of 25 percent of America's electricity to come from renewable sources by 2025.
The debate over a mandatory RES is in full throat today in Congress, and Rep. Rick Boucher, DAbingdon, is in a position to play a very constructive role. Yet he, like many of his Southern colleagues, is resisting the 25 percent goal. There are many reasons for this, but without doubt one reason is that renewable electricity will supplant the use of coal. Coal, as we know, is important in Boucher's district.
Coal, however, has been fading fast -- even without carbon pricing that will make coal pay for the CO2 it emits as a greenhouse gas. Direct employment in coal mining in Virginia in 2007 was down to about 4,800. (This is down 40 percent in the last 10 years.)
Even in the Virginia coalfields, there is no longer a consensus to defend coal. What should be defended, however, is the right of these folks to have jobs and clean communities -- and to have leaders who will spend more energy helping to build a future than they do defending the past.
We can learn from the experience in Virginia's tobacco country. Even with the Tobacco Commission's hundreds of millions for rebuilding farm communities, it is tough to reinvent an economy that is already down and out. Former tobacco farmers at least still have their land and will benefit from the coming biomass economy.
Done right, coal country too will thrive in the production of biomass energy and as the locus for Virginia's efforts to create green jobs.
We hear a lot about "alternative energy" and, very often, the focus is on wind and solar. In fact, the Southern congressional opponents of renewable electricity always point out that the South doesn't have much wind and solar and would have to buy energy from other states. Of course, these same folks represent states that spend billions each year to import coal. Even Virginia pays roughly $500 million for out-of-state coal each year.
Virginia today has an opportunity to jump-start its green economy, make a serious dent in our contribution to global warming gases and build new jobs, all with proven technology that can be brought on line quickly. A recent study by the World Resource Institute and the Southern Alliance for Clean Energy stated that biomass could be a major component of the renewable one-third of electricity possible by 2025.
Biomass-fueled electricity could become a major industry in Southwest Virginia. Each of the 22 counties that make up the 9th Congressional District has enough woody biomass alone to support a 50-megawatt plant. A recent University of Florida study estimates that each such plant would generate 400 jobs and roughly $40 million to the local economy.
To avoid the hollowing out of this region, we should begin now to direct our renewable efforts to areas where coal will over time become less of a player. That means concentrating our green training efforts in regional institutions. We should be exploring new financing mechanisms for renewable energy projects, including finding ways to get the Rural Electrification Administration involved.
In every part of the country where states have backed renewable energy, green jobs have followed. Virginia could get in the game by having a mandatory state-level RES. A focus on biomass could also give regional communities the opportunity to sell the thermal energy that results from combined heat and power generation.
For industry, a source of affordable clean energy could make this region very attractive.
Coal will not go away in the foreseeable future, but our leaders should use the fragility of the existing coal-based economy to push for a generous share of tomorrow's alternative energy development. If they don't, because of a myopic focus on today's coal industry, the opportunity may be lost forever.
