War on Coal? Or Just a Different Playing Field?

Efforts to reduce carbon dioxide emissions from power plants outlined in President Obama’s Climate Action Plan have been widely denounced by opponents as tantamount to a War on Coal. Curbing power plant emissions will have an outsized impact on coal-fired plants for the simple reason that coal emits more carbon dioxide when burned than other power generation fuels, especially natural gas and renewables.

But Energy Secretary Ernest Moniz struck back at critics of the plan during a speech at Columbia University on August 26. He said charges of a War on Coal “demonstrate misunderstanding, or misstatement, of what is being called the All of the Above approach to US energy policy”.

Moniz argued that the Climate Action Plan’s emissions-reductions guidelines are a recognition of the threat of climate change and the urgency with which it must be addressed, rather than a campaign targeting a specific fuel.

“The science is certainly clear for the level that one needs for policy making in terms of the real and emergent threat of climate change,” Moniz said. “The overwhelming conclusion, certainly for the policy world, is that prudence demands strong, common-sense near-term policy actions to minimize the risks.

Setting limits on carbon emissions, in effect, assigns a cost to them, to the disadvantage of coal as well as other fuels, such as diesel. Analysts have stressed for years that putting a price on carbon would have a dramatic effect on which sources of energy are most competitive.

“The way we are approaching this is, we must reduce CO2 emissions,” Moniz said. “The idea is that All of the Above means we will invest in the technology – research, development and demonstration – so that all of our energy sources can be enabled as marketplace competitors in a low-carbon energy world.”

“That’s what we mean by All of the Above. It doesn’t start by taking CO2 emissions off the table, it starts with CO2 reductions on the table, a boundary condition, if you like, for going forward,” Moniz said.