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As US Cleans Its Energy Mix, It Ships Coal Problems Overseas
Hugh Pickens writes writes "Thomas K. Grose reports that the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) estimates that greenhouse gas emissions in the US have fallen 8 percent from their 2007 peak to 6,703 million metric tons of CO2 equivalent, due largely to the drop in coal-fired electricity which in 2012 generated 37.4 percent of US electricity, down from 50 percent in 2005. But don't celebrate just yet. A major side effect of that cleaner air in the US has been the further darkening of skies over Europe and Asia as US coal producers have been shipping the most carbon-intensive fuel to energy-hungry markets overseas. US coal exports to China were on track to double last year and demand for US metallurgical coal, the high-heat content coking coal that is used for steelmaking, is so great in Asia that shipments make a round-the-world journey from Appalachia as they are sent by train to the port of Baltimore, where they steam to sea through the Chesapeake Bay, then south across the Atlantic Ocean and around Africa's Cape of Good Hope to reach Asian ports. The Tyndall Center study estimates that the burning of all that exported coal could erase fully half the gains the United States has made in reducing carbon emissions and if the trend continues, the dramatic changes in energy use in the United States — in particular, the switch from coal to newly abundant natural gas for generating electricity — will have only a modest impact on global warming, observers warn. 'Without a meaningful cap on global carbon emissions, the exploitation of shale gas reserves is likely to increase total emissions,' write Dr John Broderick and Prof Kevin Anderson. 'For this not to be the case, consumption of displaced fuels must be reduced globally and remain suppressed indefinitely; in effect displaced coal must stay in the ground (PDF).'"
O-8.
Happiness in intelligent people is the rarest thing I know.
Ernest Hemingway
Seems people always manage to find a way to make something the fault of the U.S.
It's like having a bitch of a wife that makes everything your fault.
When Fascism comes to America, it will call itself Anti-Fascism, and tell you to give up your guns.
It seems like they're trying really hard in this article to make it seem like the reduction of coal in the US will have no effect, while not being able to escape the fact that it does. For example, they use phrases like:
... could erase fully half the gains the United States has made ...
"fully half...," why not just say half? because fully half sounds worse.
will have only a modest impact on global warming
"only a modest impact...," but still an impact. I don't want to downplay the issue, but I really do think they're overplaying it. Rather than having a article that is based in fact, we get this apparently biased piece of journalism that brings to question the integrity of the article.
China is using more coal. Let's blame America, not the annual movement of tens of millions of people from poverty to the middle class.
Sheesh.
3rd world countries get a pass on pollution thanks to the Kyoto Treaty, the pollution isn't really happening.
Meanwhile my electric bill keeps going up.
Thanks US Gov't!
So rise up, all ye lost ones, as one, we'll claw the clouds.
US: Can I get some sweet sweet rare earth metals over here?
China: No you cant have our natural resources.
China: Give us your sweet sweet COAL!!!!!!!
US: Here ya go!
Open markets are amusing. They'll deal with anyone including the ones who won't share their toys.
And "all that exported coal could erase fully half the gains" Sex panther, 60% of the time it works EVERY time.
last I checked... over all, coal was a fairly inexpensive (in upfront money, you can argue long term health costs seperately) form of getting energy, particularly electricity. It stands to reason that economies just starting to take root, such as those in Africa, which cannot afford the more technologically advanced and cleaner technologies available as its just too expensive to set up and get running. We've got a resource that we no longer prefer to use and they want to use it, and so are purchasing it from us... it's not so much 'shipping the problem overseas'... or am I missing something?
Obama, Defender of Union Jobs (except miners, arguably the only job that still requires a union).
US coal exports to China were on track to double last year and demand for US metallurgical coal, the high-heat content coking coal that is used for steelmaking, is so great in Asia that shipments make a round-the-world journey from Appalachia as they are sent by train to the port of Baltimore, where they steam to sea through the Chesapeake Bay, then south across the Atlantic Ocean and around Africa's Cape of Good Hope to reach Asian ports.
All I can say is WOW! Does anybody remember the times when the industrial west was importing cheap raw materials from third world countries to support its manufacturing?
It's not being used for electricity. We hardly make any steel here anymore. Most of it is made in Asia anymore. We have the infrastructure to mine it and ship it out. If it wasn't done here it would be done elsewhere at a slightly higher cost. It has nothing to do with electrical production, it's not used for that. In fact, it's almost twice the cost of other coal per ton so no one would WANT to use it.
"The Tyndall Center study estimates that the burning of all that exported coal could erase fully half the gains the United States has made in reducing carbon emissions"
This is a *problem*?! It's still a gain! Sheesh.
until we do find another energy source that is as dense and easy to transport as coil and oil are, they will remain the main source of energy for the body of humanity and the emission of carbon dioxide reflects the activity of that body. the only way to drop the greenhouse gas emissions of that body would be to stop that body's activities. so the solution, until the better energy source is found or implemented ( see thorium for one possibility ) will be to drastically reduce the size of that body ( kill people ) or reduce that body's activities ( put everyone back into mud huts and low tech.)
The US drop is because of the drop in Nat Gas prices, not wind turbines or Solar, etc.
Both Germany and Denmark have installed many times the $ investment per capita in 'green' energy that the US has done, to no effect. In fact Germany is increasing coal consumption and moving to coal based electricity. In short the green energy revolution has failed, where a simple price change on gas has worked.
Pollution is caused by the burners, not the diggers. You can bet that US coal is extracted in a safer, cleaner way than almost all other coal on the planet. If coal is to be burned, then US coal is the best way to do it.
I thought the entire point of the treaty was for the U.S. to reduce its carbon emissions, while the rest of the planet flagrantly violates their agreements.
Hmm, I guess I'll have to go back and re-read it.
dont burn natural gas because someone else will burn coal ....wtf.... stupid summary hope article was bettter
We need to use only 0 emissions energy in the US, We need to implement only new generation IV nuclear reactors, Wind, Solar, we must convert ALL Coal fire plants from to safe LFTR reactors (1.6 Trillion in capital cost), we must recycle all plastic wastes (for the environment sake) and make money at it and produce the fuel for our cars at the same time and increase dramatically the fuel efficiency of the vehicles coming off the assembly line( not impossible we can improve it, we have done it with test vehicles), and we must Institute a System of Air Carbon Capture. We can do this with the money made from recycling. We waste 37 million tons of plastic each year in the US ALONE. Worldwide the numbers are huge. That doesn't even get into the fact that sorting out the plastic pays a large portion of the sorting costs of the rest of the trash which can also be recycled. The world produces 500,000,000 tons of waste each year. A large portion of which is plastics. Recycling Waste Can Pay for Air Carbon Capture and for LFTR Capital Conversion Costs! This money would help with the research and development associated with other energy solutions. It would Cost 1.6 Trillion to convert all Coal fire plants to LFTR reactors. I have crunched the numbers. India Will Have its' First 500 MW Thorium Reactor Next Year. With a Manhattan style project we would be able to solve the problems with Thorium reactors in probably less time than it took to do the Manhattan project (4 years) for less than the 23 billion it would take in today's dollars for that project to be completed. The remaining problem with Thorium reactors is the material for the inner containers, and several solutions have been proposed including replacement modules like car oil filters. After that we should FREELY export our technology to the world which benefits us as well as other nations or as trade for debt to other countries.
Kyoto and CAGW are scams that fueled riches for Soros, fat Al Gore and their private jets. In 2020 we're going to be hitting some really cold weather. Didn't you get the memo?
The U.S. never ratified the treaty...
USA is exporting energy sources now, so it's exporting oil (refined, gasoline even), coal. While overall production of energy resources in USA is up and the demand is probably lowest in at least a decade because of the dying economy, the prices are also up and while this may seem as a paradox, it's not. It's inflation. Here is what is going to happen if China lets its currency float: renminbi will rise in USD terms and for the Chinese producers and consumers the prices for raw materials, energy and food will drop in their currency and in dollar terms they will rise. So for Americans (and Europeans) it will be increasingly more expensive to buy energy and food and but these resources will be cheaper and cheaper for the Chinese to acquire in the global market.
By the way that's the reason that I was always saying that the Japanese should not devalue their currency, but especially after the tsunami hit and their nuclear power plants were shut down - this only hurts the Japanese as they have to pay higher prices for energy and materials in real terms.
But don't become too excited about the USA having 'shifted its pollution elsewhere', here is the eventuality that is not understood in this by the majority: there is no difference between a pre-industrial economy and a post-industrial one. This concerns everything, from education levels to types of energy used. USA will be exporting high value energy sources and will be using much more polluting energy sources eventually if it doesn't turn around and let the markets work rather than thinking that the government will fix the economic problems that the government has created with all the taxes, regulations, money printing.
Basically this is a temporary effect that the pollution has gone somewhere else, because the production has gone there as well. But as the production goes, so does energy use but also so does value of the money (especially if you keep printing it).
The pollution will return in huge volumes to USA as it will have to re-industrialise, but now it will have to start from nothing again, there is no manufacturing. So there are no modern efficient factories, so much cheaper, less efficient means will be used for everything, from manufacturing to heating your houses and food.
The pollution will come back once the inflation comes out and kills the bonds and the dollar. For now the Americans should be happy that the current European problems are on the front pages of all the news stories. Those problems are immediate, but they are nowhere as big as the American story.
You can't handle the truth.
When Chinese industries burn coal without all of the scrubbers on the smoke stacks, huge amounts of solid particulates, are released into the atmosphere. This will in turn block more sunlight from reaching the surface, thus contributing a cooling effect.
You would be getting less radiation in the pool than where you are now. Oblig: Spent Fuel Pool
Hang on there, Bishop Wiberforce.
You goddam hippiies want to turn this country into frickin' North Korea in order to pump up your China bubble so all the NPR/NatGeo foundation grantees and trust-fund yuppies can have a bigger teat to suck off, and you want ME to get all hand-wringy about the costs of shipping MILLIONS OF TONS of coal halfway round the world?
Get a damned life, please. And get offa my lawn. You want to feel useful, go fund advanced fission and/or fusion. Abolish the Fed. Something.
Grumpy not-so-old man.
And be doing f all with it if you can
a) fit in a nuclear power station
b) it be far enough away from neighbours that may not want one
c) not have the use of this land changed over to their use.
I suggest your better move is to move to where there is a nuclear plant, rather than decide for your neighbourhood that they will have one.
Kill the US economy and emissions go down. Shocking.
Organization? You must be joking..
CO2 is a greenhouse gas.
Hell, even Roy Spencer insists it is.
See thyroid cancer.
See yellow line on graph depicting Chernobyl children as adults.
Start at page 16.
Plus we won't bother discussing that hundreds of square miles around the area remain off limits due to the continued threat of radiation poisoning.
Despite routinely traveling and working within 2km of a 40 year old reactor, I have no phobias regarding nuclear power. But, to suggest that there have been no deaths, let alone injuries and cancers, is a bald faced troll.
Nuclear power has numerous inherent and extreme dangers. Whether or not we can mitigate them effectively does not mean that the dangers do not exist.
Two years on, the Fukushima exclusion zone still exceeds a 20km radius. It will be 20 years before we see some of the effects form that accident and there will be detractors saying that the illnesses are unrelated despite a clear correlation and highly likely causation.
The point was to drag the US economy down as punishment for being decadent capitalists. The fact that we are rapidly replacing coal with natural gas and reducing CO2 emissions while keeping our economy healthy has the greenies' panties in a bunch.
Give them a few years. Global warming will be forgotten about and some other Evil will be identified which must be pursued at the expense of our economic health.
Have gnu, will travel.
Or is he going to demand that the government help them out? Because it for damn sure isn't going to be the nuclear power station owners who will pay for relocation and healthcare.
The reason that coal is 'being shipped overseas' is that it IS CHEAP energy! China can't produce enough energy and if you have 1/2 a brain then you've already heard about the great shortage of coal in China. With no infrastructure China has to mine and ship coal 24/7 and still can't keep their electric plants open. They have to ship the coal via truck. And there aren't enough trucks to ship the coal thousands of miles to the power plants.
This is just propaganda to make you believe 1. The US is evil. 2. China is a poor victim on of the USA and that they should be pitied.
Rubbish! Only slashdot readers can be such dumb fucks to believe this.
This article, like many before it, fails to grasp the "whole system" view necessary to properly account carbon flows.
As several people have mentioned, what matters is overall coal burning in a given year, not source. If China burns x amount of Chinese coal vs. x amount of American coal, it's still x amount. So I is wrong to say the exporte coal is offsetting green energy.
What can happen is that lessened US demand could deflate coal prices elsewhere. Basic econ: demand goes down with same supply, price drops. If American coal get too cheap though, it may just make China use more energy (cheaper energy = more energy use). That's where you get a problem.
If USA did not sell the coal to China, then China will get it elsewhere. Simple as that. It is almost silly that this is being brought up. The ones to knock on this is NOT USA, but China. They are the ones that are demanding it. The advantage of getting it from USA, is that the coal is cleaner than it would be elsewhere.
I prefer the "u" in honour as it seems to be missing these days.
What you are describing is the Khrushchyovka communal housing built in the USSR in the 1960's. Face it. Americans prefer single family homes, not public housing. Putting a big fake happy face on it because its sustainable doesn't change the fact that the government will effectively be forcing people to live in the projects.
Let's not forget the coal we ship to China displaces the mud coal they had to burn with way more pollutant than just CO2. Shipping coal to China doesn't help global warming, but let Chinese have a little bit cleaner lungs.
This is where I learn how dumb I am if anyone cares enough to respond
But, in the US, we never think or plan that far ahead.
Actually, I'm kinda surprised that China which does plan for the long term, is letting this happen to themselves?
Light travels faster than sound. This is why some people appear bright until you hear them speak.........
If you're going to engage in woo-woo spacenuttery, you should really commit fully to your psychosis and claim building megatons of carbon nanotubes is an ideal CO2 sequestration scheme.
And for your next trick, you can use SPSS to jump straight to an antimatter economy and fly to Alpha Centauri.
geeze, this generation is fundamentally incapable of thinking big.
the preceding comment is my own and in no way reflects the opinion of the Joint Chiefs of Staff
Having strict environmental and labor regulations pushes the problems they try to solve out to other countries unless there are matching import restrictions. If you outlaw child labor then buy things from someone who uses child labor it nearly defeats the purpose of outlawing child labor. Same goes for environmental concerns. Sure, it helps your children and your backyard (which may be all you need/want) but it doesn't really help any global problems.
There is a reason Keystone XL ends at Houston. Once the Canadian tar is refined in a state with no real environmental law enforcement, most of it will be loaded into tankers for export to other markets (most of them probably the same as the coal buyers). The price of gas in the US will not be lowered at all by Keystone XL, but when it leaks or explodes, that will be used to justify yet another price hike at the pump.
This stupidity by the US government and most of its populace will just be yet another data point in an historians autopsy of the former United States of America.
Design areas to better serve pedestrians: Agree
Loosen Zoning restrictions: Agree, somewhat, but question whether the activity could be done economically, much less whether chickens grown in such conditions can really be considered 'organic' or even 'healthy' until we get a better handle on urban pollution.
Open air markets: In the end, not particularly efficient
Under-utilized commercial buildings: Certainly. Of course, if it's under-utilized the rents should be dropping, eventually somebody will be able to afford to have their business there.
Elevators: Actually, they're about the most energy efficient movement in existence. They're counter weighted such that you only really need to spend energy to move the contents of the elevator, not the elevator itself.
2-4 story buildings: Not dense enough to really support pedestrians. I'd prefer to see more stories, but half of every building dedicated to housing.
Architecture: Over a certain size you're not going to be able to get away from HVAC, but I agree that you could really cut the need for HVAC with proper design. Another idea is liquid metal thorium reactors providing enough heat energy to run absorption chillers in a trigeneration setup(electricity, heating, and cooling).
Permitting, local sourcing: Good ideas.
Sustainable building: I agree. We currently have an excess of labor that could be working to help 'green up' the USA. More insulation, better materials, solar water heaters, etc...
I don't read AC A human right
That is a low-impurity source of carbon that is going to end up getting incorporated into the steel itself - it is a raw material, not a fuel.
The coal they are shipping there will be converted into coke in China and that is a rather dirty process that hasn't changed much since 1920s. Or in fact, 1800s.
And as they don't have to care about various environmental regulations over there, they can turn all that coking coal into coke a lot cheaper than what it would cost them to do that in the USA.
Also, if a couple of dozen guys "expire" way before their due date cause they've been inhaling arsenic vapors during quenching of the coke... Whose gonna notice that when there are 1.3 billion more of them?
During the coking process, you are basically releasing in the air all those wonderful impurities (like arsenic, mercury, nitrogen, sulfur etc.) from the cooking coal, without burning up the carbon.
What are you using to heat up the coking coal? More coal.
Naturally, any of those byproducts that can be used do get used - like the coal gas, which is usually used either to produce ammonia or is burned to produce electricity for the coking plant, or both.
Both also release carbon into the air.
THEN, you take the coke you made, and use it to fire up the smelting furnaces (i.e. you burn more coal) during which it is also used as a reducing agent.
That's when you release most of the carbon in the coke into the air as CO and CO2. The rest gets burned out of pig iron when you heat it up with oxygen to produce steel.
Anything more than 2% of carbon in steel classifies that steel as cast iron. Pig iron is 4-5% carbon.
So basically... All coal is very dirty and it is primarily a fuel, not a raw material.
Mit der Dummheit kämpfen Götter selbst vergebens
The only way we will truly be able to handle our waste problems of every type is when we invent a device capable to reorganizing molecules. And that would probably be one of the greatest inventions to benefit not only mankind, but our planet as we would finally be able to effectively not only deal with waste, but backtrack and clean up the pollution we've made in the last 100 yrs (for example, the great pacific garbage patch..)
I am an investor in coal companies. You socialists can bugger off. You are interfering with my profits. Screw the earth.
The US only imports about 2.7% of its gross spending in terms of goods from China.
http://www.frbsf.org/publications/economics/letter/2011/el2011-25.html.
Not only that but these are not energy intensive goods. Cheap trinkets don't take a lot of energy to make.
This article is unmitigated hooey.
what the CO2 output of the US would have been if they had not of exported their manufacturing over to China.
...the folks who are so anti-coal they can't even acknowledge the positive aspects of this article are really being blind here.
The US is reducing its CO2 emissions! Whether you believe that is part of global warming or just want to see a generally cleaner air above the states, this is good news! We are moving towards cleaner and (in some cases) more renewable energy sources, and diversifying out our energy infrastructure can only be a good thing.
Other nations will get there--for now many of them don't have the $$$ to be able to afford the luxury of solar, wind, and nuclear.
Ferret
Sic gorgiamus allos subjectatos nunc
As a blacksmith, I just wanted to comment that, yes, metallurgical grade coal mined in the US is much nicer than most of the crap the rest of the world uses, and, yes, like most blacksmiths, I've converted 99% of my operations to propane/natural gas.
Remind me again how America is responsible for other people burning coal? Whatever.
Breeder reactors.
Social Credit would solve everything...
If energy consumers in other countries want our coal and are willing to pay for it, that's great!