The Waterways Journal
Waterways Journal Editorial
5 January 2009
Coal is the fuel of the future — at least in Europe.
In April, the New York Times reported that 50 new coal-fired plants are planned all over Europe over the next five years.
Britain will build its first new coal plant in more than a decade, in Kent.
Italy plans to increase its reliance on coal, from today's 14 percent of energy output to 33 percent. Even with the cost of Europe's carbon emission permits thrown in, the major Italian electric utility, Enel, figures coal is cheaper than oil.
German coal companies don't have to worry about the cost of the cap-and-trade regime (under which businesses have to buy permits to emit pollutants over a certain predetermined level). Back in June of 2006, Germany exempted its coal companies from its cap-and-trade carbon emissions permit system, to much environmental angst.
On September 20, the German state of Hamburg granted regulatory approval for one of the biggest new coal-fired plants ever. The 2 billion euro project, to be completed in 2012, causing further strains between the German government and environmental groups.
(France, which shut its last coal mine in 2004 and gets 80 percent of its energy from nuclear power, is not part of this game.)
Relatively cheap American coal will make up a big part of these plants' fuel stocks. At a recent waterways convention, a coal industry representative explained that eastern and Appalachian coal is increasingly moving to Europe, where it fetches higher prices. U.S. population centers are getting more of our own coal from the Powder River Basin out west. That's good news for our barge industry, which moves much of this coal internally.
Some of us may wonder: Is this the same continent whose chattering classes traditionally love to scold America for its lack of greenness (among other sins)? What happened?
A fear of reliance on cleaner Russian natural gas, especially in Germany and eastern countries, explains a great deal of coal's newfound popularity there. Unlike Russia, the U.S. doesn't use energy exports to bully other countries. Coal is cheap and opposed to 50 years for natural gas. If a European country is unwilling to go nuclear like France, and doesn't want to rely on is in plentiful, reliable supply — 200 years of known reserves, as the Middle East or Russia for its energy future, what choice does it have?
While Europe was busy rediscovering coal, 59 proposed coal plants were denied licenses by state governments in the coal-fired plants are 77 percent cleaner than previously, in regulated emissions per unit of energy produced, according to coal industry figures.
All of which brings us to President-elect Obama. Mr. Obama's signals on coal have been mixed so far. But Obama's party has Unites States in 2007, or abandoned — even though America's traditionally been much more ready than the other to apply lessons from Europe to America on all kinds of matters, from national security to a world court.
Are they listening to this one?