Top coal executive admits CCS is a waste of time.

Contrail Chook

IEEFA Update: Elections Have Consequences, but Perhaps Few That Can Save Coal

We didn’t make it this year to the Coaltrans USA conference last week in Miami, but we heard tell of some smart talk at the event by two of the industry’s CEOs, Bob Murray of Murray Energy and Kevin Crutchfield of Contura Energy, né Alpha Natural Resources...   

ONE POINT OF CONTENTION ACROSS THE INDUSTRY revolves around the viability of carbon capture and sequestration, the largely experimental notion that “clean coal” will save the day.

Crutchfield said no utility executive in his or her right mind would build a coal plant in the U.S. today, but argued for an era of innovation to pave the way for CCS. Murray says CCS is a waste of time, fully aware that the industry has a weak track record on innovation and probably lacks the DNA to change.

Both men were around during the second Bush administration when it canceled federal funding for a major CCS project because it was simply too expensive. And both know that the same administration canceled a 70-year-old federally subsidized coal plant program through the Department of Agriculture. They know, too, that the industry itself has spent precious few dollars on CCS, leaving the risks to ratepayers and shareholders of large utilities like Duke Energy and Southern Company.

Sou

Watching Barnaby Joyce (Federal Minister for Agriculture) and Scott Morrison (Federal Treasurer) behaving like delinquent giggling school boys, waving around a lump of coal in Parliament, in the middle of one of the worst heat waves, was quite sickening.

Is it possible for an entire civilisation to be engulfed in madness? Certainly seems the case.

http://www.huffingtonpost.com.au/2017/02/08/scott-morrison-brought-a-lump-of-coal-and-waved-it-around-in-par/

https://www.theguardian.com/australia-news/2017/feb/09/scott-morrison-brings-coal-to-question-time-what-fresh-idiocy-is-this

https://www.desmogblog.com/2017/02/09/australia-treasurer-takes-lump-coal-parliament-country-braces-more-crippling-heatwaves

Contrail Chook

That really was utterly disgusting behaviour. It demonstrates beyond a shadow of a doubt that these clowns are not fit to run a country in the 21st century. I thought this article summed it up best:

Morrison and co are kneecapping my generation's future. And laughing about it

It is enormously galling that my life, and the lives of the people I care about, are held and crushed in the hands of people as proudly mediocre and ignorant as Morrison and Joyce. They, and the rest of the sneering brats on the government front bench, will most likely not have to live with the consequences of their own laziness and brute stupidity. I will.

I am sick of waiting for these soggy, self-satisfied old men to squirrel enough taxpayer money away to retire in luxury on. I’m tired of our growing rage and despair being fuel for their smug attempts at comedy.

This stopped being a joke a long time ago. At some point, young Australians are going to have to really start fighting the war the government has started.

I'm a lot older than the young fella who wrote that, but I'm just as annoyed as he is.