by Robert Bryce
Even if some locations were found that could swallow that much material, the cost of handling it would be enormous. Smil emphasized the tremendous difficulty of “putting in place an industry that would have to force underground every year the volume of compressed gas larger than or (with higher compression) equal to the volume of crude oil extracted globally by [the] petroleum industry whose infrastructures and capacities have been put in place over a century of development.” “Such a technical feat,” he said, “could not be accomplished within a single generation.” 57 Even if we could somehow accomplish that technical feat, CCS presents another technical challenge that is equally daunting: How do you capture all those carbon dioxide molecules in the first place in a way that is cost-effective? Most CCS projects envision a system where the carbon dioxide gets captured from the flue gas of an electric power plant. But capturing that carbon dioxide is an energy-intensive process. Analysts estimate that capturing that gas adds “parasitic load” of up to 28 percent to the power plant.58 Parasitic load is additional power that must be generated at the site but never gets sold to consumers. Meeting such additional loads would be a Herculean effort, regardless of whether the fuel in question is natural gas or coal. Given that the global energy sector is already straining to meet growing demand, the idea of increasing electricity production—or reducing electricity output—by more than one-fourth, for the sole purpose of attempting CCS, is dubious at best.
FIGURE 27 Carbon Capture and Sequestration: The Forty-One-Supertanker-Per-Day Challenge
Sources: Vaclav Smil, “Energy at the Crossroads: Background Notes for a Presentation at the Global Science Forum Conference on Scientific Challenges for Energy Research, Paris,” May 17–18, 2006, http://home.cc.umanitoba.ca/~vsmil/pdf_pubs/oecd.pdf, 21; author calculations.
Even if the technology were available and cost-effective, it faces significant public opposition. In Germany and Denmark, opposition to CCS projects has helped stop plans by two major electricity producers to bury captured carbon dioxide in saline aquifers deep below the surface of the Earth.59
Despite the problems, the coal industry continues to perpetuate the myth that CCS is viable. In September 2009, Vic Svec, a senior vice president at St. Louis–based Peabody Energy, the world’s largest private-sector coal company, told the New York Times that “coal with carbon capture and storage is the low cost, low carbon solution and has fantastic implications for the nation’s energy security.”60
The myth that the United States can (or will) substantially cut its carbon dioxide emissions is closely related to the belief that placing a tax on carbon will ignite a revolution in alternative-energy technologies. And that belief leads to the next myth-busting opportunity: Any scheme to tax carbon is doomed to failure. The better strategy: taxing neurotoxins.
CHAPTER 16
Taxing Carbon Dioxide Will Work
FORGET IT. No matter how many times world leaders meet in places such as Rio, Kyoto, Copenhagen, Mexico City, or Tulsa, the countries of the world will never agree on a global scheme to tax carbon dioxide. The disparity between the wealthy countries and the developing countries—particularly when it comes to the availability of electricity—is simply too great to expect that the developing countries, such as China, India, and Indonesia, will agree to policies that will effectively restrain their economic growth.
Policymakers should forget about attempting to tax carbon dioxide or limit emissions of that gas. Instead, they should aggressively pursue taxes or caps on the emissions of neurotoxins, particularly those that come from burning coal. The rationale here is simple: Many scientists and policymakers can, and will, argue about the relative dangers of carbon dioxide emissions, but no one in their right mind is willing to stand up and say, “We need more mercury and lead in our ecosystems.”
Mercury and lead—which are released in significant quantities during coal combustion—are among the most dangerous neurotoxins.1 U.S. emissions from coal-fired power plants total some 48 tons of mercury and 88 tons of lead per year. Global emissions of those metals from coal-fired plants are several multiples of those quantities. And those global emissions of neurotoxins—from coal-fired power plants, cement kilns, and other industrial facilities—are leading to global contamination of the environment with heavy metals. No one knows just how damaging that contamination will be over the long term. But there are plenty of reasons to be concerned.
In August 2009, the U.S. Geological Survey released a report that analyzed hundreds of fish, from 34 species, caught in 291 streams around the United States. Every one of the fish sampled by the Geological Survey’s scientists contained mercury.2 The agency also found that concentrations of mercury in “about a quarter of the fish sampled exceeded the criterion for the protection of humans who consume average amounts of fish.”3 The seven-year-long study placed most of the blame for the elevated mercury levels on “atmospheric deposition”—that is, airborne mercury particles produced by industrial plants that have been deposited on the Earth’s surface.4 After the airborne mercury hits the surface, microorganisms turn it into its organic form, methylmercury, which then builds up in fish, shellfish, and animals that consume the fish. The highest levels of mercury were found in fish caught in remote coastal-plain streams in the eastern and southern United States.
Of course, coal-fired power plants are not the only sources of airborne mercury contamination. Gold mining and mercury mining also are contributors. 5 That said, coal-fired power generation has been repeatedly identified as perhaps the single most dangerous spreader of heavy metals. The Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) estimates that coal-fired power plants account “for over 40% of all domestic human-caused mercury emissions.” Furthermore, the EPA says, “about one quarter of US emissions from coal-burning power plants are deposited within the contiguous US and the remainder enters the global cycle.”6 In addition, the ash that comes out of coal-fired power plants is usually contaminated with heavy metals.
It’s the global nature of neurotoxins such as mercury and lead that make them so worrisome and so difficult to control. Scientists have estimated that about 30 percent of the mercury that settles onto the ground in the United States comes from other countries. And of those other countries, China is the most problematic. Every year, China spews some 600 tons of mercury into the air—and the majority of that volume comes from the country’s 2,000 coal-fired power plants.7 Scientists in Oregon have estimated that about 20 percent of the mercury that enters the Willamette River comes from overseas, and some of that, no doubt, is from China.8
Mercury, lead, and other heavy metals are accumulating in the bones and tissues of humans, and we do not have a full understanding of how those accumulations may be affecting our long-term health. Slow poisoning from neurotoxins has a long, unfortunate history. The Romans used lead cooking vessels that contaminated their food. We make jokes about the “mad hatter,” but few people understand that the hatters of yesteryear were often driven into madness by acute mercury poisoning, a condition caused by using mercury in the finishing of their hats.9 Or consider the case of cadmium, another neurotoxin.10 Cadmium concentrations in the bones of modern-day Americans are about fifty times as high as those found in bones of American Indians who roamed the deserts of the American Southwest some six hundred years ago. These increasing concentrations of heavy metals in the human body could help explain why certain populations of people are more violent than others.11
The electric utility industry has technologies that can reduce their emissions of neurotoxins. Of course, deploying those technologies on a global basis would undoubtedly cost tens of billions of dollars. And that deployment would raise the cost of electricity for all of the consumers who rely on coal-fired electric power. That said, the benefits to the environment—for both people and wildlife—would be measurable and almost certainly positive.
The need to reduce mercury exposure is becoming ever more obvious. In mid-2009, a study by Dan Laks, a neuroscience researcher at the University of
California, Los Angeles, found that one-third of all U.S. women now have inorganic mercury in their blood and that those mercury levels have been rising over the past few years. After the study was released, Laks said that the “results suggest that chronic mercury exposure has reached a critical level where inorganic mercury deposition within the human body is accumulating over time.... It is logical to assume that the risks of associated neurodevelopmental and neurodegenerative diseases will rise as well.”12
A truly motivated “green” movement would push for a global effort to cut the emissions of neurotoxins. Achieving those cuts will take enormous political will, and it will take time. But arguing against heavy metal contaminants with known neurotoxicity will be far easier than arguing against carbon dioxide emissions. Cutting the output of mercury and the other heavy metals may, in the long run, turn out to have far greater benefits for the environment and human health.
And that brings us to a critical point: Most, if not all, of energy policy should be aimed at improving human health, and, generally speaking, that means working toward improvements in the environment. Thus, rules that have forced heavy industry to clean up the emissions they send out of their smokestacks have resulted in cleaner air, a move that has benefited the entire population. Back in the 1970s, the U.S. government ordered refiners to remove lead from their gasoline. The result: dramatic reductions in the amount of lead that was released into the environment.
Obviously, cutting air pollution and reducing the volume of neurotoxins makes sense. But what other moves would result in dramatic improvements to both human health and the environment? Though it may be counterintuitive, one of the best moves would be to promote the increased use of oil and liquified petroleum gas, particularly among the rural poor.
CHAPTER 17
Oil Is Dirty
YOU’VE HEARD IT dozens of times: Oil is a dirty fuel. Oil is polluting the air and the water, and it is despoiling the planet.
Here’s the reality: The world isn’t using too much oil. It’s not using enough.
Whether the issue is gorillas in the Democratic Republic of the Congo, tropical rainforests in Sumatra, or the health and welfare of women and young children in the developing world, the solution is abundantly clear: The world needs more oil consumption, not less. While that may sound like a statement designed to cheer the hearts of Houston-based energy tycoons, the easily provable truth is that hundreds of millions of people desperately need better fuels and stoves to help them cook their food. Simply put, they need more power in their kitchens.
Oil should be seen as an essential ingredient in the effort to save the world’s most endangered animals as well as huge swaths of tropical forests. More oil consumption among the world’s energy poor would help save the lives of hundreds of thousands of impoverished people every year who die premature deaths because of indoor air pollution caused by burning biomass.1
The issue, once again, is one of density. The world’s most impoverished people have no choice but to cook their food and heat their homes with fuels that have low energy density, such as straw, dung, twigs, wood, and leaves. They are denuding the landscape of biomass in their struggle to survive. But in doing so, they are also contributing to deforestation and to the problem of airborne soot, which is a major contributor to global climate change. Furthermore, those same low-density fuels, which are used in low-power cooking stoves, are sickening—and killing—thousands of people per day.
Clean-burning, high-energy-density liquid petroleum gas, such as propane and butane, as well as kerosene and gasoline, are the best solution to these problems. I do not make this heretical claim—that we should be using more oil—lightly. Nor am I denying oil’s many deleterious effects on the environment. Over the past century, the oil industry has had countless spills, both offshore and onshore, that have caused serious damage. Burning refined oil products pollutes the air. Oil refining is a gritty, dangerous, capital-intensive business. Accidents at refineries, pipelines, and drilling rigs have left many people hurt, and many others dead. Sabotage and carelessness have led to messy land contamination problems, such as the ones related to Texaco’s shoddy production practices in Ecuador when it operated in that country from the 1960s to the early 1990s.2 I’ve personally seen—and written about—dozens of examples of lousy environmental practices in the oil fields of Texas and Oklahoma.3
Nor am I denying the corruption that comes with oil. Petroleum has spawned kleptocracies all over the world. Most of the Middle Eastern petrostates are run by corrupt royal families who have effectively been stealing the mineral wealth of their countrymen for decades. Or consider the corruption in Equatorial Guinea, a tiny, oil-rich country in West Africa that has been ruthlessly ruled by Teodoro Obiang since the 1970s. In 2009, Transparency International named Obiang’s country the twelfth most corrupt locale in the world, ranking it 168th in the Corruption Perceptions Index, a rank that puts it in a tie with another petrostate, Iran. Two other petrostates, Chad (175th) and Iraq (176th), also made the list of the most corrupt places.4
The current poster boy among the petro-kleptocrats: Teodoro Nguema Obiang, the son of Equatorial Guinea’s president. In November 2009, the New York Times reported that the younger Obiang, who serves as the forest and agriculture minister in his native country, owns a $35 million estate in Malibu as well as a fleet of luxury cars and a private jet. A U.S. Justice Department memorandum says that much of Obiang’s wealth has come “from extortion, theft of public funds, or other corrupt conduct.” The Times reported that during one twelve-month period ending in April 2006, Obiang “funneled at least $73 million into the United States, using shell corporations and offshore bank accounts to launder the money and ultimately buy his Malibu estate and a luxury jet.”5 Obviously, the environmental and societal ills caused by petroleum cannot be denied. Oil is not a perfect fuel. There is no such thing. But oil is—in nearly every case—greener than any of the alternative energy forms that might replace it. No matter whether the replacement is ethanol from corn, biomass—such as wood, straw, or dung—or biofuels made from palm oil or other feedstocks, the conclusion is apparent: Oil (and if you can get it, natural gas) simply has no peers. Oil provides consumers with both high energy density and high power density. It burns cleanly. It’s easily handled at atmospheric temperature and pressure, and the number of uses for it are essentially limitless.
My conversion to the idea that oil is green occurred in late 2007 when I was watching a 60 Minutes report on the death of ten mountain gorillas in Virunga National Park in Congo. The mountain gorillas are among the most threatened species on the planet. After providing a few details about the deaths of the apes, reporter Anderson Cooper got to the motive. The gorillas hadn’t been killed by poachers eager for a trophy, or even for food. They were killed because of a shortage of energy. Looking at the camera, Cooper held up a handful of black flakes and explained that the gorillas were killed “for this: charcoal.”6
The problem, he said, was that “more than a million people in this area, practically everyone, use charcoal to cook their food. It’s made by burning the trees in the gorillas’ forest.” And the gorillas in Virunga were in the way of the charcoal makers who were supplying fuel to the local population. Robert Muir of the Frankfurt Zoological Society told Cooper that solving the problem in Virunga was simple: “Provide alternative fuel, butane, for example.” With a few thousand butane stoves and enough fuel to keep them running, Muir explained, the charcoal makers could be put out of business almost immediately.7
In short, the easiest and fastest way to preserve one of the world’s most endangered species was not to forge more treaties banning trade in their skins, to create new regulations, or to fund more police to patrol the park. Instead, the simplest solution was to increase the use of oil products.
Only about seven hundred mountain gorillas remain on the planet—about half live in Virunga, one of the most important parks in Africa. The United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization
(UNESCO) has designated Virunga as a World Heritage Site, saying that it has “the highest biological diversity of any national park in Africa.” The park straddles the backbone of the Albertine Rift, a region renowned for its biological diversity and richness. Extending through parts of Uganda, Rwanda, Congo, Burundi, and Tanzania, the Albertine Rift contains habitats ranging from active volcanoes to ice fields and from lowland forests to alpine vegetation.8
In April 2009, I corresponded via e-mail with Emmanuel de Merode, the chief warden for Virunga National Park.9 “From a biodiversity perspective there is nothing more important in Africa than Virunga,” de Merode told me. “The destruction of Virunga would be a loss to the whole of humanity, not just Africa, hence its status as a World Heritage Site and our efforts to globalize the effort to protect it.”10
Hundreds of thousands of people live in the areas surrounding the park, but only a few of them have electricity. With few other sources of energy, the locals have little choice but to buy charcoal produced from wood that is cut illegally from the park. De Merode and his fellow park managers have declared that the charcoal trade “stands as the single biggest threat to the mountain gorillas and other flora and fauna in the park.”11
Although the solution to the charcoal trade is obvious, the butane stoves, and the fuel they need, are simply too expensive for most of the people who live near the park. De Merode said supplying the stoves and the fuel would cost millions of dollars. But that cost must be compared with the value of keeping the mountain gorillas safe in the wild. Saving the gorillas and other wildlife and fauna in Virunga, de Merode told me, “is a test case, and a measure of our determination in addressing environmental issues of global proportions.”12 And what will happen if more energy services are not made available to the people who live in and around the park? De Merode replied that the deforestation will continue as the locals produce more charcoal. And that will mean destruction of the gorillas’ habitat, “which would be the end for Congo’s gorillas,” he said. “It could take the overall population below the minimum threshold and threaten them with extinction.”