The Sketchy Emissions Argument for Pumping US Coal Across the Pacific

Coal-fired power plants in South Korea are a bit cleaner-burning than those in the United States. They're not "clean coal" because clean coal is not a real thing, but they are less dirty. They're even less dirty enough to cancel out some of the emissions incurred as the result of shipping coal very large distances. If US coal producers were to start sending all of the country's coal across the Pacific, and replace it with natural gas stateside, we would likely see a 21 percent reduction in greenhouse gases, compared to if we burned that coal here.

This is according to a new Duke University study published in the journal  Environmental Science and Technology. For the scheme to hold up, South Korea would need to replace only its current coal stockpiles, rather than its current natural gas or nuclear power generation capabilities. It's unclear what would happen to all of the relatively domestic coal South Korea plants currently burn.

The proposed scheme hinges on the controversial Morrow Pacific Project, a plan that would see 8.8 million tons of Wyoming coal exported via a new terminal in eastern Oregon. Trains would bring the coal to the new facility in Boardman, Ore., where it would be loaded onto Columbia River barges. From there it would make its way toward the Pacific, where the coal would once again be transferred, this time to ocean-going ships.

In an interesting coincidence, the state of Oregon just this week denied the project a crucial permit, saying that it was not, "consistent with the protection, conservation and best use of the water resources." Which, while reassuring, doesn't mean the export scheme is dead; options now include sending the coal via train all the way west, bypassing the barge step, or possibly moving the train-barge transfer terminal to another state with river access, like Washington or Idaho.

The export scheme suggested in the Duke study might then seem a bit, well, PR-y for the Morrow Pacific Project, a way of saying, hey, this thing that is very outwardly not in the interests of greenhouse gas reductions could, if we twist around our current energy reality in this one weird way, result in actual reductions.

While the paper's lead author, Dalia Patiño-Echeverri, cautions, "It's too early to give the export scenario an unequivocal green light" in a Duke statement, she goes on to boast, "Our analysis shows that the export scenario would generate more than $25 billion in direct and indirect economic activity in the United States. It would also directly or indirectly create nearly $6 billion in total employee compensation, $742 million in new tax revenues, and roughly $4.7 billion in profits for all sectors involved."

Patiño-Echeverri notes that a lot of the Morrow Pacific Project remains pretty vague (even before this week's permit denial), and deeper probes into all the other stuff, like fracking wastewater issues, habitat destruction, water and land use issues, might negate some more of that 21 percent. "It's important to note that this is just one scenario. The export of coal to different markets, under different conditions, might yield very different results," she said. There is nothing in the global energy market, after all, to guarantee that Morrow Pacific coal goes to cleaner coal facilities rather than any number of myriad alternatives in Asia. Like anything else, it will likely follow money, not emissions.

"Our work does not provide a carte blanche for all energy export projects," she said, "but it does give us a framework for comparing their impacts and making smarter economic and environmental policy decisions."

Finally, we might take a step back. The 21 percent reduction is based on the development of a fairly extreme new coal export scheme allowing the far-cheaper, far-faster pipelining of really the dirtiest power source from mid-America across the Pacific. In a sense, that's not just facilitating coal-centric energy development, but sanctioning it. The difference is somewhat blurry, but real. It suggests that 21 percent is good enough, or the best that we can do, when we all know it's not.

"Clean coal" should be part of a transition beyond coal, and not a further entrenchment of the very thing that brought us to global warming crisis itself.