The coal industry front group embroiled in an Astroturf scandal is now arguing that mountaintop removal coal mining helps communities “hampered because of a lack of flat space.” Joe Lucas, vice president of communications for the American Coalition for Clean Coal Electricity (ACCCE), told the Guardian that dynamiting the tops off of mountains — far from being the “rape of Appalachia” — is actually a boon to rural communities:

I can take you to places in eastern Kentucky where community services were hampered because of a lack of flat space — to build factories, to build hospitals, even to build schools. In many places, mountain-top mining, if done responsibly, allows for land to be developed for community space.

The concept of “responsible” mountain-top mining is laughable, as Mountain Justice explains:

Traditional mining communities disappear as jobs diminish and residents are driven away by dust, blasting and increased flooding and dangers from overloaded coal trucks careening down small, windy mountain roads. Mining companies buy many of the homes and tear them down. Dynamite is cheaper than people, so mountaintop removal mining does not create many new jobs.

Mountaintop removal generates huge amounts of waste. While the solid waste becomes valley fills, liquid waste is stored in massive, dangerous coal slurry impoundments, often built in the headwaters of a watershed. The slurry is a witch’s brew of water used to wash the coal for market, carcinogenic chemicals used in the washing process and coal fines (small particles) laden with all the compounds found in coal, including toxic heavy metals such as arsenic and mercury. Frequent blackwater spills from these impoundments choke the life out of streams.

ACCCE’s Joe Lucas — who can’t even admit that coal pollution contributes to global warming — is giving new meaning to the idea of the Flat Earth Society.

Let’s set aside for the moment that the Energy Information Administration (EIA) doesn’t fully model the House climate and clean energy bill — they utterly ignore a major cost containment provision and the clean energy bank, while underestimating likely efficiency gains.

The EIA analysis, “Energy Market and Economic Impacts of H.R. 2454, the American Clean Energy and Security Act of 2009,” still finds that the average cost to households from 2012 to 2030 (discounted) is $83! A fact sheet can be found here.

As The Hill wrote in “EIA says costs of climate bill modest at first“:

The move by bill sponsors to give away pollution allowances rather than selling them appears to be a good one; the EIA credits the free distribution of credits with keeping energy costs from rising precipitously….

Electric bills would increase only 3 to 4 percent by 2020 under a carbon cap imposed by the bill.

Reuters reports that EIA finds the clean energy bill would “increase the energy costs of the average family by $142 a year in 2020 and by $583 in 2030,” adding:

The estimate from the U.S. Energy Information Administration is in line with cost impact projections made by the Congressional Budget Office and the Environmental Protection Agency, and contradict claims by energy and business trade groups that consumers would pay thousands of dollars more a year under a government plan to fight global warming.

In fact, the only reason the energy costs rise so much in 2030 compared to 2025 is that the allowance distribution to regulated utilities phases out after 2025.  While the EIA is stuck in a relatively rigid analysis and reporting methodology, in the real world, the increased auction revenues would be given back to consumers, which would again offset their increased energy costs with tax cuts.  So while energy costs might jump post-2050, net impacts on consumers would not.

The EIA projects an allowance price of $32 per metric ton of CO2 equivalent in 2020 — about double what EPA and I project and 50% higher than CBO’s projection.  Very unlikely.

The EIA has historically lowballed the prospects for energy efficiency, and here again they find a total drop in energy use under the climate bill of only about 3% in 2020 (3 quadrillion BTUs) and 6% in 2030 (6.5 quads).  According to the EPA analysis of the bill, Waxman-Markey lowers demand 7 quads in 2020 compared to business as usual, and 10.4 quads in 2030 (see “New EPA analysis of Waxman-Markey: Consumer electric bills 7% lower in 2020 thanks to efficiency “” plus 22 GW of extra coal retirements and no new dirty plants“).  That is similar to what the the American Council for an Energy-Efficient Economy (ACEEE) calculates for the savings from W-M’s efficiency provisions “” 5 quads saved in 2020 and 12.3 quads in 2030 (see “The triumph of energy efficiency: Waxman-Markey could save $3,900 per household and create 650,000 jobs by 2030“).

If EIA had a decent model of energy efficiency, and if they had calculated the tax reduction from returning auction allowances back to consumers, I am quite certain that they would have again found the net cost to American families of close to a postage stamp a day even in 2030.

Even with all its flaws, the “total discounted GDP losses over the 2012 to 2030 time period” are a whopping 0.2%, which is pretty much what every major analysis of climate action finds (“Intro to climate economics: Why even strong climate action has such a low total cost — one tenth of a penny on the dollar“).

EIA has some interesting findings of the bill’s impact on how we use energy.

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