美国国家公共电台 NPR Environmentalists, Coal Companies Rally Around Technology To Clean Up Coal

DAVID GREENE, HOST:

And, you know, the debate over coal can really seem like a battle between bitter enemies. You have environmentalists who want to replace coal with cleaner fuels and coal boosters who want to revive the industry. But there really is a middle ground, as NPR's Christopher Joyce reports.

CHRISTOPHER JOYCE, BYLINE: Coal has a grip on American politics; it has for a long time, and that's why American politicians worry about its fate. Lately, it's been about how to clean up coal's image.

(SOUNDBITE OF ARCHIVED RECORDING)

GEORGE W. BUSH: Let us find new technologies that can generate coal power while capturing carbon emissions.

(APPLAUSE)

JOYCE: That was President George W. Bush in 2008. That same year, candidate Barack Obama visited coal country in Virginia and said this.

(SOUNDBITE OF ARCHIVED RECORDING)

BARACK OBAMA: We figured out how to put a man on the moon in 10 years. You can't tell me we can't figure out how to burn coal that we mine right here in the United States of America and make it work. We can do that.

JOYCE: And now President Trump is onboard the coal train.

(SOUNDBITE OF ARCHIVED RECORDING)

PRESIDENT DONALD TRUMP: My administration is putting an end to the war on coal - going to have clean coal, really clean coal.

JOYCE: Right now, burning coal contributes more carbon dioxide to the atmosphere than any other industrial process. There is technology to strip the CO2 from coal and either bury it or use it elsewhere. The federal government spent 20 years and billions of dollars to make it work. The result is the Petra Nova plant in Texas and one other facility in Mississippi. Both are heavily subsidized.

But two groups usually at odds, environmentalists and coal companies, want carbon capture to succeed. David Hawkins is with the Natural Resources Defense Council. He says it's just common sense. There are thousands of coal plants around the world. Many were recently built and over a thousand more are planned.

DAVID HAWKINS: How likely is it that governments are going to shut down a power plant that's only 10 years old that might have cost a billion and a half dollars or more to build?

JOYCE: Hawkins says it's likely that most of them will be running for decades.

HAWKINS: And if they put all that carbon pollution into the atmosphere, it's inevitably going to bust the budget for a safe climate.

JOYCE: Several other environmental groups agree. And in February this year, some of them sent a letter to Congress pushing for tax breaks to help coal plants to capture carbon. Their cosigners included heavyweights in the coal industry, too - Peabody Energy, Cloud Peak Energy and Arch Coal. From the industry's perspective, pollution controls, natural gas and renewables are killing coal. Richard Reavey is with Cloud Peak Energy. He says climate-friendly is the future, like it or not.

RICHARD REAVEY: You know, here's the deal. The time for discussing, debating the science of climate change is over. It is a political and social reality.

JOYCE: Reavey says it's now a matter of choosing which technology to use to cut carbon emissions from coal before more coal jobs are lost.

REAVEY: And I don't think it is reasonable, appropriate, just or politically smart to say we'll do that after we kill the coal industry.

JOYCE: There are still plenty of environmental groups that want to see coal disappear. Charles Cray at Greenpeace says carbon capture is a political tool.

CHARLES CRAY: It's been the technology that's been used to justify trying to prop the industry up for a while.

JOYCE: Cray says tax money should go for renewable energy rather than a technology to extend the life of fossil fuels. But this unlikely cooperation between environmental groups and coal companies is making progress. Republicans have introduced a bill in the Senate to give carbon capture a helpful tax break. The House of Representatives is taking up its own version. Christopher Joyce, NPR News.

(SOUNDBITE OF THE SIX PARTS SEVEN'S "COLD THINGS NEVER CATCH FIRE")