Burning the Future: Coal in America

GLOBAL WARMING

Subsidies for Sequestration and Coal Plants

Global Warming:

The coal industry has long benefited from many Government subsidies and tax breaks. So-called “Clean Coal” has received billions of taxpayer dollars for research and development, but in spite of these hefty subsidies, very little progress has been made. In his article Chris Edwards says, “Every president from Ronald Reagan in the 1980s to Barack Obama in 2009 has supported clean coal subsidies. Unfortunately, clean coal has been a costly and unproductive exercise from the taxpayers’ point of view.”

CCS (Carbon Capture & Storage) remains an unproven technology fix that no one expects to be broadly deployable for at least a decade, and based on best current projections it's a bad economic choice.

The comparatively meager support for renewables and efficiency measures shows that the federal government is intervening in the market, choosing to support Coal Companies and Utilities. If the U.S. government is going to choose our energy future, then they should be able to explain why their choice is best for the public and not just for a few large corporations. We have not found that evidence yet.

Thanks largely to President Obama’s Recovery Act, renewable energy subsidies have increased dramatically since 2009. For example, Solar subsidies increased from $179 million in 2007 to $1.134 billion in 2010. However, in the same three year period, coal industry subsidies also increased from $943 million to $1.358 billion, so $200 million more still goes to coal over solar. It’s important to bear in mind that coal is also a mature industry, whereas the solar industry is comparatively newer and therefore has more justification for government subsidies.

Tax breaks are another form of government subsidies that have also increased since 2009, and the fossil fuel industries continue to enjoy enormous tax breaks, as shown in the following graph:

The last, and perhaps most disturbing form of subsidies the coal industry currently benefits from are what the Harvard Study calls “externalities.” Calculable externalities like the cancer and respiratory diseases caused by coal pollution, and the lost wages of people killed in mining and coal transportation accidents all add up to an additional $345 Billion in actual annual costs currently paid for by taxpayers.

Here is the entire scientific study. Essentially the Harvard Study finds that people and the environment pay the price while corporations rake in exorbitant profits.

For more on coal and other fossil fuel subsidies please see the following articles:

The following chart may suggest why the coal companies and utilities are fairing so well in Washington.

(Click image for larger version)