It was inevitable that the increasingly dire threat of catastrophic climate change would hit coal companies — especially since neither the Bush administration nor the coal industry have taken climate change seriously, and therefore they failed to pursue clean coal (i.e. carbon capture and storage) aggresively.

In fact, they pursued CCS incompetently (see “Can the coal industry be saved in spite of itself? Should it be?” and “In seeming flipflop, Bush drops mismanaged ‘NeverGen’ clean coal project“).

The 2007 Supreme Court ruling that CO2 is a pollutant began a chain of events that led to the landmark ruling yesterday by the EPA Environmental Appeals Board yesterday, which in turn hits coal stocks hard today (see below).

The AP reported today that, as I suggested yesterday, “The fate of scores of new coal-burning power plants is now in limbo”:

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Roll Call reports that senior Congressional Black Caucus members John Lewis (D-GA) and John Conyers (D-MI) have announced their support for John Dingell’s (D-MI) continued chairmanship of the House Committee on Energy and Commerce. Rep. Henry Waxman (D-CA) announced he was seeking the chair after the elections, spurring Dingell to wage a highly visible campaign to keep his seat. Dingell’s announced supporters now include seven members of the Congressional Black Caucus, twelve Blue Dogs, two Michigan freshmen, and eight others.

In October, Dingell and Rep. Rick Boucher (D-VA) released “draft climate legislation after nearly two years of hearings and discussions. In the accompanying letter, they indicated significantly different priorities and emissions goals than those of Sen. Barack Obama or the majority of the Democratic caucus, who signed on to a letter of progressive principles circulated by Waxman, Rep. Ed Markey (D-MA), and Jay Inslee (D-WA).

Today, following news coverage of recent criticism of the draft plan by Center for American Progress senior fellow Robert Sussman, Dingell has released a defense to his fellow members, arguing that his plan “aligns with the principles and goals” of the Waxman-Markey-Inslee letter. Dingell further pledged his cooperation to ensuring any final legislation would embody the letter’s principles.

The text of this letter and accompanying press release follows: Read more

I recently listed a bunch of Best Available Control Technologies for limiting CO2 emissions from new coal plants, following the landmark ruling by the EPA Environmental Appeals Board.

But a leading expert on solar thermal baseload power points out that I left out one potential control technology. Under the auspices of the Electric Power Research Institute (EPRI), two utilities have just announced they will test the use of solar thermal to add steam into the steam cycle of natural gas plants. And EPRI plans to “add solar thermal technology to coal-powered plants as well.” Why?

In addition to reducing costs and greenhouse gas emissions, EPRI believes that solar thermal technology could also boost coal and natural gas power enough in existing plants to eliminate the need for new infrastructure.

Clearly this is not quite at the commercial stage that BACT requires, as, say, cofiring coal with biomass is. So a high priority for the Obama EPA and Energy Department should be demonstrating solar plus coal.

In fact, we should have coal with solar baseload and biomass cofiring. And we should then pursue demonstrating solar plus coal/biomass gasification with carbon capture and storage. This wouldn’t be the cheapest power, but it would be carbon-negative electricity. And if we are ever going to get back to 350 ppm, as some leading scientists say we must, then we need to aggressively pursue all potential forms of energy that actually reduce atmospheric carbon dioxide.

Turns out the villain in the new James Bond movie Quantum of Solace is a greenwasher. As Grist explains, the bad guy is

… “eco-entrepreneur” Dominic Greene … the owner of an eco-hotel in the Chilean desert — an oasis aimed at luring rich and powerful folk with fancy environmental technology. But … the hotel and “Save the Earth” shtick is just a front for Greene’s plan to seize part of South America’s water supply.

Aha! A brilliant plot twist: Mr. Greene is Greenewashing!

I’ll post a review when I see it because I am a ridiculously devoted James Bond fans. Here’s the trailer:

And here’s a bonus quiz. What Bond movie had a clean-tech plot-device?

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A: No.

The Dingell-Boucher climate bill has been criticized by many for having weak targets over the next two decades (see “Dingell and Boucher draft climate bill: Likely no CO2 cut until near 2030“). And even moderate Senators have doubts about using offsets as a major cost-containment strategy:

“The emissions don’t have to be actually reduced,” [Bingaman] said. “Instead, everyone can buy offsets that turn out not to have resulted in additional emission reductions.

That leads to a simple equation:

Weak targets + too many rip-offsets = meaningless auctions.

But E&E News (subs. req’d) reports today:

“It’s just false to say that we wouldn’t auction allowances before 2026, when every single option would auction allowances before 2026,” the Dingell aide said….

The Dingell-Boucher bill has created confusion in some quarters by taking an open-ended stance on the distribution of emission credits, one of the most politically charged areas surrounding climate legislation.

“Created confusion in some quarters” is putting it mildly. Suppose, like the vast majority of people and Members, you don’t read the 461-page bill, but, say just read the Memo to Committee Members, here’s what you’d come away with:

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Looks like there will be no auto bail out with this Congress and this president. The NYT reports today:

The prospects of a government rescue for the foundering American automakers dwindled Thursday as Democratic Congressional leaders conceded that they would face potentially insurmountable Republican opposition during a lame-duck session next week.

Nor does it appear that Bush supports any action. What does this mean? “Some industry experts fear that one of the Big Three automakers will collapse before then.” This is GOP tough love.

Again, I don’t know that anybody should shed too many tears for the Big Three/Medium Two, but I would at the very least accelerate the $25 billion retooling loan to them — only with major strings attached (see “Why bail out the car companies when they bailed out on us?“). It looks like Obama agrees, according to today’s Washington Post piece, “Obama Ties Automaker Rescue to Regulation“:

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