By Peter Montague of Rachel’s Democracy & Health News

When burned, coal produces three times its own weight in carbon dioxide (CO2) -- making it far dirtier than any other energy source, per unit of usable energy. Carbon dioxide is the main human contributor to global warming, so as more people worry about the future of human civilization in a hothouse world, new coal plants are being canceled across the country.

To protect its enormous investment in land, equipment, politicians and environmental groups, the coal industry has bet its future on an untried technology called "carbon capture and storage," or CCS for short. The idea is to capture the carbon dioxide emitted by burning coal, compress it into a liquid, and bury it a mile below ground,
hoping it will stay there forever. The coal industry's fanciful name for this is "clean coal" and even though clean coal does not actually exist anywhere on Earth, the industry has sold the idea so effectively that more than 60% of Americans say they favor it.

To gain permission to build new coal plants, the coal and electric
power industries are now promising the moon: "This new coal plant will
be 'capture-ready.' Just let us build this plant now and we'll add a
CCS unit onto the back end as soon as CCS technology has matured and
is affordable." In other words, the industry is saying, "Let us build
'capture-ready' coal plants now and someday eventually maybe we'll be
able to capture the CO2 and bury it in the ground, where we hope it
will remain forever."

This is precisely the situation at Duke Energy's 'capture-ready' plant
being built now at Edwardsport, Indiana.

The 630-megawatt Edwardsport plant will emit an estimated 4300 tons of
CO2 per year (unless and until CCS is tacked onto the plant).
Therefore, during its 40-year lifetime, the plant will produce 4300 x
40 = 172,000 tons, or 344 million pounds, of CO2.

Duke Energy executives insist that the deep earth beneath Edwardsport
is ideal for storing hazardous liquid CO2. At least one major
environmental group -- the Clean Air Task Force, headquartered in
Boston -- agrees with them. A recent news report in the Bloomington,
Indiana, Herald Times says, "Clean Air Task Force representative John
W. Thompson describes the Duke carbon sequestration initiative as a
pioneering effort that could provide a template for other companies
and countries to ameliorate global warming by safely storing carbon
dioxide...." When Duke Energy officials met with the editorial board
of the Herald Times recently, the Clean Air task Force tagged along to
provide Duke Energy a patina of green.

Indiana Earthquakes So Powerful They Shake the Ground in New Hampshire

Edwardsport lies in Knox County in southwestern Indiana, about 70
miles below Evansville. Southwestern Indiana lies atop a geologic
feature known as the "Wabash Seismic Zone." Because it was only
discovered in recent decades, the Wabash Seismic zone is not nearly so
well known as the nearby "New Madrid Seismic Zone" which is famous
because in 1811-1812 it spawned earth-shattering quakes that
registered as high a 8 on the Richter scale, which were felt in New
Hampshire a thousand miles away and rang church bells in Washington,
D.C., according to the Indiana Geological Survey.

Here's what the Central United States Earthquake Consortium has to
say about the Wabash Seismic Zone:

"Recent studies have indicated that the New Madrid Seismic Zone is not
the only 'hot spot' for earthquakes in the Central United States. On
June 18, 2002, a 5.0 magnitude earthquake struck Evansville, Indiana
with an epicenter between Mt. Vernon and West Franklin in Posey
County, in an area that is part of the Wabash Valley Seismic Zone....

"The Wabash Valley Seismic Zone is located in Southeastern Illinois
and Southwestern Indiana and it is capable of producing 'New Madrid'
size earthquake events...."

Here is a map showing Evansville, Indiana, in relation to earthquakes
that have occurred in the region; Edwardsport is 70 miles southwest of
Evansville -- down toward the New Madrid seismic zone.



Just two months ago, on April 18, a magnitude 5.2 earthquake struck in
the Wabash zone, with its epicenter 34 miles from Edwardsport. Since
then nearly 3 dozen earthquakes have occurred in the Wabash zone, 29
of them strong enough for local people to feel. In other words, the
Wabash zone is very active: "A magnitude 1.0 earthquake is probably
happening once a week somewhere in the Wabash seismic zone," says
Michael Hamburger, an Indiana University professor of geological
sciences.

Lubricating the Geology

In the 1960s, the Rocky Mountain Arsenal outside Denver, Colorado
began pumping liquid wastes into the ground and inadvertently set off
a series of earthquakes by lubricating the underground geology.
Scientists studying the feasibility of pumping liquid CO2 into the
ground near the Wabash seismic zone in Edwardsport, Indiana will need
to show why CO2 could not promote more and bigger earthquakes in
southern Indiana and Illinois -- and why powerful earthquakes in the
Wabash or New Madrid zones will never release Duke's CO2 into the
atmosphere. "Never" is a long time.

So far, government scientists have not set any criteria for deciding
what makes a "good" site for burying CO2 in the ground. Without such
criteria, claiming that any power plant is "capture ready" is a scam.
To be "capture ready," a plant has to be capable of capturing its CO2
but also the ground beneath the plant has to be suitable for storing
it in perpetuity.

So... is Edwardsport, Indiana the place where the nation's best
independent geologists would recommend burial of 344 million pounds of
pressurized liquid CO2? Or are Duke Energy and the Clean Air Task
Force just using the fake promise of "carbon storage someday" to
overcome public opposition to a coal plant so they can make a buck?
Not so, insists John Thompson of the Clean Air Task Force. "We're into
this plant not because we love coal.... We're just interested in clean
air and clean water," he says.

But wait. Recently the Doris Duke Foundation announced a grant
of $845,000 to the Clean Air Task Force to promote carbon capture and
storage. Hmmm... Duke Power (now Duke Energy) was started in 1905 by
Doris Duke's father, James B. "Buck" Duke.

Furthermore, in the past couple of years, the Joyce Foundation has
awarded three grants to the Clean Air Task Force to promote "clean
coal" -- $55,000, $60,000 and $787,500. So between them Duke and Joyce
have given the Clean Air Task Force $1.7 million to promote carbon
capture and storage, even, apparently, in active earthquake zones.
Maybe for that kind of money, skating to the dark side on such thin
ice begins to resemble a scam of such proportions that it can only be
labeled "an American success story" -- right up there with junk bond
king Michael Milken, Iran-Contra mastermind Oliver North, and
Enron's Kenneth "Kenny Boy" Lay.