The story appears on

Page A11

July 29, 2014

GET this page in PDF

Free for subscribers

View shopping cart

Related News

Home » Business » Energy

Coal exports undermining US climate policy

AS the Obama administration weans the United States off the dirty fuels blamed for global warming, energy companies are sending more of America’s unwanted energy leftovers to other parts of the world where they could create even more pollution.

The trade threatens to undermine US President Barack Obama’s strategy for reducing the gases blamed for climate change and reveals a little-discussed side effect of countries acting alone on a global problem.

“This is the single biggest flaw in US climate policy,” said Roger Martella, the former general counsel at the Environmental Protection Agency under President George W. Bush.

“Though the administration is moving forward with climate change regulations at home, we don’t consider how decisions in the US affect emissions in other parts of the world.”

Over the past six years, US energy companies have sent more coal than ever before to other parts of the world, in some cases to places with looser environmental standards.

The consequence: It makes the US appear to be making more progress than it is on global warming. That’s because it shifts some pollution — and the burden for cleaning it up — onto other countries.

“Energy exports bit by bit are chipping away at gains we are making on carbon dioxide domestically,” said Shakeb Afsah, an economist who runs an energy consulting firm.

As firms look to double coal exports, with three new terminals along the West Coast, the US could be fueling demand for coal when experts say most fossil fuels should remain buried to avert the most disastrous effects of climate change.

But the Obama administration has resisted calls to evaluate and disclose such global fallout, saying that if the US didn’t supply the coal, another country would.

White House officials say US coal has a negligible global footprint and reducing coal’s use worldwide is the best way to ease global warming. The US in 2012 accounted for 9 percent of worldwide coal exports, according to the latest data.

“There might be a very marginal increase in coal exports caused by our climate policies,” said Rick Duke, Obama’s deputy climate adviser.

“Given that coal supply is widely available, our time is better spent working on leading toward a global commitment to cut carbon pollution on the demand side.”

Political risks

Guidance drafted by White House officials in 2010 outlined how broadly agencies should look at carbon emissions from US projects. Four years later, the guidance is still under review.

“They’ve sat on their hands,” said George Kimbrell, a senior attorney for the Center for Food Safety, which has sued the administration over this delay.

Changing the global system to account for production would carry political risks, especially for the US, which is trying to boost production of energy and exports even as it addresses global warming.

“The US needs to be pragmatic,” said Jason Bordoff, director of Columbia University’s Center on Global Energy Policy.

“If our coal exports are very small and have little impact on global greenhouse gas emissions ... the government has to take into account the economic and foreign policy costs of restricting exports.”

In the past six years, as the US cut coal use by 195 million tons, about 20 percent of that coal was exported, according to Energy Department data.

Less coal being burned here has helped the power sector reduce carbon emissions by 12 percent and left more US coal in the ground. But a growing share is finding its way abroad.

The nexus of the challenge can be found in Norfolk, Virginia, which exports more coal than any other place in the US.

When the Prime Lilly, a cargo ship, set sail from Norfolk recently, its 80,000 tons of coal were destined for power plants and factories in South America. The 228,800 tons of carbon dioxide in the coal disappeared from America’s pollution ledger. But it still pollutes the planet.

It’s a planet hungry for American coal. US exports to Germany have more than doubled since 2008. Last year, Germany’s carbon dioxide emissions grew by 1.2 percent, in large because the country burned more coal.

German environmental officials say the boom in coal-fired power is making it harder for the country to meet its climate-protection goals. Activists partly blame the US.

“This is a case of political greenwashing,” said Dirk Jansen, a spokesman for environmental group BUND.

“Obama pretties up his own climate balance, but it doesn’t help the global climate if the carbon dioxide is coming out of chimneys in Germany.”

 




 

Copyright © 1999- Shanghai Daily. All rights reserved.Preferably viewed with Internet Explorer 8 or newer browsers.

沪公网安备 31010602000204号

Email this to your friend