President-elect Donald Trump’s cabinet nominees have been sucking up most of the air out of the political room this week, particularly with the rambling nonsense from a clearly-unqualified Pete Hegseth, Trump’s pick for Secretary of Defense.
Also making the rounds in the Senate this week is North Dakota Gov. Doug Burgum, once floated as a potential Vice President but now trying to win confirmation as Interior Secretary.
As POLITICO explains, Burgum has a clear vision…though not a realistic one:
Interior Secretary nominee North Dakota Gov. Doug Burgum testified at his confirmation hearing on Thursday that the United States must invest in “clean coal” to support the growth of an artificial intelligence industry. [Pols emphasis]
Burgum said he would help develop resources like coal and natural gas from federal lands to provide more baseload power that data centers require for round-the-clock operations. He alluded to technologies like carbon capture and sequestration to reduce the climate effects of those fossil fuels while providing power for AI.
“This is part of a larger crisis our nation is facing around electricity. We have a shortage of electricity, and especially we have a shortage of baseload,” Burgum told the Senate Energy and Natural Resources Committee. “Without baseload, we’re going to lose the AI arms race to China. And if we lose the AI arms race to China, then that’s got direct impacts on our national security in the future of this country.”
Why a nominee for Interior Secretary is focused on China and AI is a question we can’t answer. But CLEAN FUCKING COAL? Are you serious?
Coal is the most carbon-intensive fuel in the power grid, but proponents of carbon capture say that technology can mitigate its planet-warming effects. But the technology is nascent and has not been applied at broad scale in the power sector with government subsidies. [Pols emphasis] Burgum has viewed the technology as promising, as he relied on it to set a goal for North Dakota to become carbon neutral by 2030.
Jennifer Rokala, Executive Director of Colorado-based Center on Western Priorities, had this to say:
“Governor Burgum clearly supports oil and gas drilling. He appears eager to use America’s public lands to exacerbate the climate crisis while invoking made-up concepts like ‘clean coal’ to justify his real aim — enriching oil and mining billionaires while raising energy prices for American consumers and businesses.”
We know that Donald Trump thinks “clean coal” is like a shiner version of regular coal, but does Burgum really believe that this is a viable energy source that outweighs the well-known climate dangers posed by burning coal? Because what most people are talking about when they refer to “clean coal” is a silly name for a theoretical form of carbon capture and storage (CCS). From Popular Mechanics:
CCS technology has been around since the 1980s. While the other technologies mentioned above cut down on sulfur dioxide and coal ash (which are important), CCS is meant to handle the big environmental nightmare: the heat-trapping gas largely responsible for global warming, carbon dioxide (CO2)…
…In either process, there are multiple points at which CCS technology could intervene. One such point is called pre-combustion. At this stage, an air separation unit produces a stream of almost-pure oxygen, which flows into a coal gasifier. Gasifiers are essentially tanks that produce synthetic gas mixtures known as syngas.
The oxygen in this coal gasifier reacts with fuel to create a syngas made up of hydrogen, carbon monoxide, water, and CO2. (This form of syngas is nothing new: Invented in the 1790s by William Murdoch, it was used to power gas lights in many towns in the 19th century and gained the nickname “town gas.”)
CCS technology sends the syngas to a shift reactor, where it encounters steam. That steam transforms the carbon monoxide that’s present into hydrogen and even more CO2. The CO2 is then captured from the gas stream, compressed, and dehydrated. That leaves it ready for transport and storage.
We’re not going to pretend we truly understand any of that. The bottom line is this: It ain’t happening. Back to PM:
The question is mostly one of cost and efficiency. CCS plants are expensive to build and maintain, and retrofitting the technology onto older plants requires an increase in power and costs. A 2019 report from the Global CSS Institute estimates it could cost “$100 billion annually” to develop CCS, and that the technology represents “a classic catch-22 scenario. The only way costs can decrease is by installing a large number of CCS projects worldwide. However, the high cost of CCS is challenging project development.” An estimate from the Global CSS Institute’s 2022 report suggests that a total investment sum of between $650 billion and $1.2 trillion will be necessary to meet goals by the 2050 climate deadline.
TL;DR: It would cost ridiculous amounts of money to even figure out if “clean coal” is actually a viable energy source.
It’s also ridiculous to be talking about “clean coal” when we’ve already figured out a way to do better than “regular coal.” Renewable energy sources (wind, solar, hydro, etc.) have been outproducing coal energy in the U.S. since early 2019. A few months ago, England celebrated becoming the first G-7 nation and the world’s first major economy to dump coal power altogether.
Sure, the United States could devote a lot of time and money to a glorified form of trying to suck oil from a stone. Or we could, you know, just use the stuff that already works and isn’t harming our climate.
If you get those “clean coal” things up and running and powering AI, the first thing the AI is going to ask is, “Why in the hell are you using ‘clean coal,’ you neanderthals.”
And then Skynet goes online.
…and then back offline.
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A modest clarification: I learned about clean coal 60 years ago as a kid. It's called anthracite and the main deposits were in northeast Pennsylvania. Very low emissions from burning. Not all was mined. But whatever might be left isn't commercially viable.
"Clean coal" is a political sop to the coal-mining regions of the country who are still counting on their mining jobs even as we transition away to cheaper and cleaner energy alternatives.