My chat with President Obama: Face off on clean coal, nuclear energy, and oil drilling

Last night, I went to hear what President Obama had to say at a Gen44 event organized by the Democratic National Committee (note that I took time off from 1Sky to attend the event because 1Sky is a 501(c)(3) organization and we can’t -- and don’t -- do any electoral work).

Anyway, I happened to catch President Obama on a rope line and decided on the fly to challenge him on the mythology of clean coal since our base has been so concerned about his repeated calls for clean coal (and nuclear and oil drilling) alongside real renewable energy solutions. My partner Louis captured the exchange on his iPhone.

Here is what happened and a transcript as best as I can put it together since the audio isn’t great, especially on my voice -- although Obama comes through loud and clear and we have our work cut out for us!

We shake hands, I grab President Obama’s hands with both of mine and look him straight in the eye:

Me: It’s got to be renewable energy. No more clean coal. [Inaudible: It’s a unicorn. It doesn’t exist.]

Obama: I disagree with you. I disagree with you. We are not going to get all our energy from wind and solar in the next 20 years…

Me: Let the market do it. Let the market do it. Can't the market make the investment? [Inaudible: It’s hundreds of billions of dollars (we’d be investing in "clean coal" in the House version of the bill)]

Obama: They can’t do it. The technology’s not there. I’ve got a nuclear physicist in my Department of Energy who cares more about climate change than anyone and he will tell you you can’t get it done just with that -- so you’ve got to have a transition period to do all this other stuff. Don’t be stubborn about it!

Me: It’s about getting the votes [inaudible: in Congress isn’t it?]

Obama: This is not a votes matter, This is a technological matter. It really is. I have looked into it.

Me: We’re running a national campaign and people are really upset about this –

Obama: I know everybody’s….listen, if I could do it all with wind and solar I would! We can ramp it up. That's what we're working on.

So what was really going on here in this brief exchange between me and President Obama with the noisy bugles in the background?

We were talking past each other, for one thing.

President Obama was making two points:

• We can't kick our dirty coal habit right away. It's going to take some time -- he has said at least 20 years.


• Because we aren't going to get rid of coal immediately, it's worth it for the federal government to invest in carbon capture and sequestration (CCS) technology , to make coal cleaner for now.

Generally speaking, we agree with his first point. Some persuasive arguments have been made that we can get rid of coal in the next 10-20 years but right now almost half of our electricity comes from coal, and retiring those old dirty plants won't happen overnight. That's why we agree with the President that our clean energy transition must start immediately. As President Obama has said, "it means passing a comprehensive energy and climate bill with incentives that will finally make clean energy the profitable kind of energy in America."

However, we disagree strongly with the President's assertion that the federal government needs to help bail out America's aging coal industry by footing the bill for carbon capture and sequestration technology as they limp into the 21st century.

Here are a few reasons we think the federal government should hold off on CCS investments:

• Thanks to recent energy efficiency investments under the Recovery Act -- and the potential for further investment in the near term -- new generating capacity for power may not even be necessary until we're ready to start retiring dirty old coal plants.


• We should try to get the biggest "bang for our buck" out of new capacity we add to our electricity mix. Renewable sources of electricity, like wind energy, are currently sold at one third the price of even the rosiest CCS projections. Not to mention, investments in renewable energy create four times more jobs than comparable investments in fossil fuel infrastructure.

If we want to win the clean energy race, we need to lead the way in the most promising renewable energy solutions, like wind and solar, not a band aid for the aging coal industry that hasn't been pulling its weight. In 2009, China made record investments in renewable energy, dramatically increasing its renewable energy manufacturing capacity, and practically doubling their wind power capacity. Despite the inflated claims about China needing CCS technology, they are investing their public funds in wind, not CCS. As the East Coast Greenway Alliance's Executive Director Dennis Markatos-Soriano tells us, the global wind power market grew 37.5% in 2009 -- which was supposed to be a down year for renewables! If wind can keep up this growth rate another couple years and solar can get back to 2005-2008 rates, they will easily provide all new electricity demand needs globally by 2015.

Finally, unlike new clean energy technology, which is an emerging industry with little political power, the coal industry has been manipulating American politics for years. Like the banks, the coal industry has been in the business of reaping short term profits at the expense of the American people's health and economic viability in the emerging clean energy economy. The coal industry has not been doing their part to modernize their operations, and are instead asking the American people to foot the bill, to keep their operations economically viable. Over the past several years, the coal industry has reaped $17 in in profits for every $1 invested in CCS research. In the meantime, they've managed to lobby congress to secure over $1.9 billion over several years on CCS projects - none of which are fully operational. What's more, American Coalition for Clean Coal Electricity (ACCCE) members have annual advertising budget of over $45 million. ACCCE members combined have annual profits on order of $50-$60 billion, but have collectively invested only $3.5 billion (.pdf) over the last several years

Simply put, CCS isn’t an investment the federal government should be making – because it’s risky and we shouldn’t take big risks with taxpayer dollars. We especially can’t afford to be making risky investments in the context of the biggest recession since the depression. According to Joe Romm at the Center for American Progress, even the most optimistic modeling for CCS costs place it at 3 times the cost of wind power. On average, it will take longer to build CCS capacity as well. It takes about a decade to get CCS projects from the drawing board to operation. Google, which has a strong technology team working on the route to a clean energy future, says we don't need CCS .

The President has been talking a lot lately – and rightly so – about the fact that the United States is falling behind in the race for a clean energy future. But we should be investing in renewables, like wind, solar, and geothermal.

If you are interested in some straight up myths and facts on the oxymoron that is "clean coal," see this analysis by Greenpeace.

So President Obama: Don’t be stubborn about it, or we will be! Don’t waste billions of dollars in federal funding propping up the dinosaur energy infrastructure of coal, nuclear and oil. Focus on investing in the renewable energy of the future and let the private market take the risks if CCS is such a great investment.

Let’s keep up the pressure: Call your Senators now and tell them we need a real renewable energy package to tackle climate change.

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1Sky's goal is to build a diverse, society-wide mobilization that will convince our federal government to take bold action by 2010. To identify the steps that our leaders need to take in order to shift our nation away from climate change and toward the prosperity of a green economy, we've engaged a network of leading scientists and economists to create the 1Sky Solutions. Click on any of the solutions below to learn more.