The Messy Politics of “Clean Coal”

“Black Is the New Green”: Clean Coal Media Wars

In 2008, an industry group called the American Coalition for Clean Coal Electricity (ACCCE) ran a series of television ads touting the promise of “clean coal technologies.” Along with its predecessor, Americans for Balanced Energy Choices (ABEC), ACCCE maintained a strong presence at primary and presidential debates throughout 2007-2008 and was a major sponsor of CNN’s election coverage (Weiss, Kong, Schiller, & Kougentakis, 2008). While these ads were new, the notion of “clean coal” was not. This term appeared on the political scene in the 1980s as a response to the Clean Air Act and concerns about acid rain, and initially referred to technologies that reduced emissions of sulfur dioxide and nitrogen oxides. However, as these pollutants were regulated and various technologies implemented to address them, a new threat was looming on the horizon: global warming. Rising alarm about climate change was a public relations disaster for an industry that was associated with extremely high greenhouse gas emissions. In 2000, ABEC was formed and launched a media campaign aimed at showcasing the progress the industry had made since the passage of the Clean Air Act (Pooley, 2010). In 2001 and 2002, ABEC spent more than $8 million on television issue ads in Washington D.C., making up approximately 20% of all television issue advertising dollars in D.C. during that period (Falk, 2003). But it was in 2007, in preparation for the 2008 presidential elections, that ABEC ramped up its advertising and focused its message on the promotion of “clean coal technology.” In 2008, ABEC merged with another industry group to form the ACCCE, which spent tens of millions of dollars promoting its new message (Lavelle, 2009).

One important aspect of ACCCE’s definition of “clean coal” is that the term is so broad that it includes any technology used to reduce emissions—from scrubbers designed to reduce sulfur dioxide emissions in the 1980s to carbon capture and storage technologies aimed at addressing carbon dioxide emissions in the 2000s. The implication of their materials is that new technologies can reduce carbon emissions just as effectively as scrubbers had addressed other pollutants in the past two decades (ACCCE, 2010). However for ACCCE, the term clean coal is applied to technologies regardless of whether they reduce carbon dioxide (CO₂) emissions—and most of them do not. Thus by using this term so broadly, the coal industry is able to give the impression that it is addressing climate change even as it is lobbying to block carbon legislation and other attempts to regulate the industry (Lavelle, 2009). By promoting a “clean and green” image for coal, ACCCE and its allies are attempting to change public opinion about the industry without necessarily changing their actions with regard to CO₂ emissions.

The campaign to improve coal’s image in 2007-2008 went far beyond television commercials and websites. ABEC and ACCCE members set up “street teams,” visited county fairs, attended political rallies and conventions and debates, distributed paraphernalia with their logo on college campuses, and used social media and other “outreach” mechanisms to spread the good news about coal (Pooley, 2010). This approach mirrored that of Friends of Coal, a front group for the coal industry that began an active public relations campaign to improve coal’s image in 2003 and effectively saturated the Appalachian landscape with its message (Bell & York, 2010). ACCCE was equally effective in saturating the landscape with its “clean coal” message—and groups such as Friends of Coal were happy to help spread the gospel. Industry representatives did their part to promote this new image in public appearances as well. Gregory Bryce, CEO of Peabody Coal, exemplified this sentiment in 2008, saying, “There’s a perception out there that coal is dirty, and we have to change that. . . . Black is the new green” (Davidson, 2008). Changing this perception was ACCCE’s mission, and Hawthorn Group—the PR firm that orchestrated ACCCE’s “grassroots” campaign—bragged about their success in putting a green face on coal in a memo to their constituents later that year (Grandia, 2009). By election night in 2008, “clean coal” had become a powerful buzzword in national debates about energy alternatives and climate change in the United States.

This media blitz promoting the idea of “clean coal” may be seen as a response to the legitimation crisis brought on by climate science and other challenges to the dominance of the coal industry. Shannon Bell and Richard York make a similar argument in their analysis of Friends of Coal, arguing that this group was established to boost the image of the coal industry in the face of its declining economic significance and its negative environmental impacts in the Appalachian region. Drawing on Habermas’s theory of communicative action, they read this public relations campaign as an attempt “to lure the public into identifying with industry” in the face of declining public support for coal. They write,

Industry efforts at legitimation via ideology manipulation can be understood as part of what Habermas (1984, 1987) has identified as the colonization of the “lifeworld” (the realm of everyday, lived experience where people find meaning from culturally grounded traditions of interpretation). (Bell & York, 2010, p. 117)

Bell and York (2010) argue that the Friends of Coal campaign works to avert the industry’s legitimation crisis by constructing a community economic identity around coal in communities that have been economically dependent on coal extraction in the past. Similarly, the “clean coal” media campaign backed by ACCCE and others may be viewed as an effort to avert the legitimation crisis brought on by climate change by creating an identity for coal that can neutralize some of the criticisms leveled by environmental activists. In this respect, ACCCE’s campaign may be seen as an example of “legitimation via ideology manipulation” by the coal industry in the face of increasing pressure from environmental groups. However, as I will discuss below, “clean coal” discourse is not defined solely by the coal industry. Indeed, this discourse has been appropriated and mobilized by environmental groups as well—even as they have criticized the industry’s use of the term as propaganda.

This notion of “clean coal” has not gone unchallenged by environmental and social justice groups. By 2008, national groups such as the Sierra Club and regional groups such as Coal River Mountain Watch (CRMW) had already been speaking out against the notion of “clean coal” for years. But in the face of ACCCE’s renewed campaign, these groups presented a new and united front in an attempt to counter what they saw as dangerous industry propaganda. During the height of the election season, the Natural Resources Defense Council (NRDC) launched a website that was a parody of ACCCE’s site, taking aim at their key arguments and mocking their ad campaign. At the end of 2008, a coalition calling itself the Reality Coalition launched a multimedia ad campaign attacking the very idea of “clean coal.” The group, backed by Al Gore and his allies, took direct aim at ACCCE’s message, creating their own ads, which ended with the slogan: “In reality, there’s no such thing as clean coal.” The Reality Coalition purportedly put more than 3 million dollars toward its own campaign in the first week alone, in an attempt to successfully compete with ACCCE’s apparently limitless budget (Pooley, 2010). Like ACCCE’s campaign, this campaign extended beyond commercials; environmental and social justice groups circulated T-shirts, bumper stickers, hats, and other paraphernalia supporting their message with such slogans as “There Is No Such Thing as Clean Coal” and “Clean Coal Is a Dirty Lie.” Such paraphernalia became commonplace in activist circles and was palpably present at every meeting, rally, and conference I attended over the course of my research. In the face-off between these opposing groups, the debate about clean coal technology often appeared as a simple and familiar battle between industry and environmental groups over the use of coal as an energy source.

Of course, such debates do not exist in a media bubble. Television ads and public relations campaigns reduce complicated issues down to quick, easy slogans, glossing over important details. In the media war described above, a range of players with different interests were arguing about an idea—the idea that coal could be clean—and drawing up sides. As the following section will reveal, however, these sides are not always as easily drawn “on the ground.” While environmental and social justice groups agree that the term clean coal is misleading and dangerous, they do not always agree on particular technologies or strategies for engaging with “clean coal” discourse. These debates have been particularly heated in the Appalachian region, where pressing concerns about mountaintop removal mining and coal waste disposal complicate the conversation about how to address climate change.

A Tale of Two Coal Plants: Debating “Clean Coal” in Meigs County, Ohio

In 2009, I met with some of the key opponents of a proposed coal-fired power plant in Meigs County, Ohio. While this facility billed itself as a state-of-the-art “clean coal” facility by American Municipal Power Ohio (hereafter AMP-Ohio), several environmental and social justice groups challenged this claim and worked to stop the plant from being built. The primary organizations involved in challenging the plant included Ohio Citizen Action (OCA), Meigs Citizen Action NOW, the NRDC, the Sierra Club, and the Ohio Environmental Council (OEC). All these groups agreed that AMP-Ohio’s plant was dirty, expensive, and unnecessary and that the attempt to frame it as a “clean coal” facility was simply a public relations ploy. While visiting with staff at the OEC, I learned of another coal-fired power plant that had been proposed in Meigs County a few years before. This facility was proposed in close proximity to the AMP-Ohio plant mentioned above, and was similarly touted as a “clean coal” facility—but unlike the AMP-Ohio plant, this project received very little opposition. In fact, the OEC spoke in favor of the plant at a 2006 hearing before the Ohio Power Siting Board. Interestingly, Elisa Young—a Meigs County resident and founder of Meigs Citizen Action Now (Meigs CAN)—was the only person to speak against the Integrated Gasification Combined Cycle (IGCC) plant at the 2006 hearing. I wondered why OEC would speak in favor of a new coal-fired power plant in Meigs County just a year before actively fighting another plant in the same county.

The fundamental difference between this 2006 American Electric Power plant and the subsequent AMP-Ohio plant was that the former was to be an IGCC plant. IGCC plants have lower emissions and are more compatible with carbon capture and storage (CCS) technologies than conventional plants. In her testimony before the Ohio Power Siting Board, Staci McLennan, then Director of Clean Air Programs for the OEC, stated,

[T]he technology and the know-how to prevent irreversible damage to the planet and maintain the economic base of the industry are here through cleaner coal technology. Therefore, OEC supports the . . . technology being put in place by American Electric Power on this project. (Ohio Power Siting Board, 2006, p. 17)

McLennan’s statement provides a clear, early example of an emergent strategy among some environmental groups engaged in debates over carbon control: to participate in defining what kinds of plants should be considered “cleaner” by regulatory agencies.

The use of the term cleaner coal technologies in McLennan’s testimony is particularly interesting here. This was 2 years before ACCCE’s “clean coal” media campaign, and a time when the term may have seemed more pliable. By using the term cleaner instead of clean, OEC was both invoking and subtly challenging the clean coal discourse that was then just beginning to permeate the landscape. In this context the term cleaner coal technologies appears to have operated as a discursive “boundary object” that incorporated the interests and identities of both industry representatives and environmental advocates (Star & Griesemer, 1989). Star and Griesemer (1989) describe boundary objects as “objects which are both plastic enough to adapt to local needs and constraints of the several parties employing them, yet robust enough to maintain a common identity across sites” (p. 393). The concept of “clean coal technology” was already operating as a boundary object between scientists and engineers, government officials, industry representatives, journalists, and others who are seeking ways to reconcile rising concerns about climate change with the dominance of coal as an energy source. OEC’s use of the term cleaner coal was a discursive strategy aimed at shifting this boundary object just enough to appeal to environmental groups engaged in the issue of carbon control. As the term clean coal became increasingly contentious, environmental groups became more reserved in their use of the term. However, they continued to participate in debates over technologies such as IGCC and CCS, sometimes expressing conditional support for these technologies even as they rejected the phrase.

The IGCC facility was never built, but the contrast between the two projects demonstrated the divides among environmental and social justice groups on the issue of new coal technologies. While all these groups agreed that the emergent discourse on “clean coal” was dangerous and needed to be countered, they had different strategies for how to engage in debates that were now being reshaped by this discourse. They also had different views about whether any of these technologies were worth supporting as alternatives to even dirtier, more conventional technologies. One thing all these groups agreed on, however, was that AMP-Ohio’s proposed plant (which did not include either IGCC or CCS) was dirty and unnecessary. They also agreed that AMP-Ohio’s use of the term clean coal was misleading and hypocritical, especially given that they were not employing the best available technology. Below I outline three positions taken in relation to the AMP-Ohio plant, each slightly different in its response to the “clean coal” discourse being promoted by the plant’s supporters.

This position was taken by OCA, a statewide grassroots organization that works on environmental and social justice issues in Ohio. The organization was integral in fighting the AMP-Ohio plant in Meigs County and was especially instrumental in door-to-door canvassing and outreach to the member communities served by AMP-Ohio. OCA called on member communities to oppose the plant on the grounds that it was unnecessary, that it would contribute to poor air quality and increased health problems in the area, and that it would harm AMP-Ohio ratepayers (OCA, 2009). While AMP-Ohio argued that the plant was “a state-of-the-art clean coal facility, taking advantage of the latest is proven emission control technology” (AMP, 2009, p. 5), OCA countered this claim. In a 2009 flyer, they wrote,

They call it a “clean coal” plant, but there is nothing clean about it. This is an old-fashioned pulverized coal burning plant, like the ones that contribute to the asthma, emphysema, heart disease, and lung cancer so many Ohioans already suffer from. (OCA, 2009, p. 1)

In addition to environmental and health concerns, OCA also opposed the plant (and its designation as “clean”) on the basis that it would likely burn coal obtained through mountaintop removal mining—a practice the group opposes.

When asked if they would support the plant if it employed technologies such as IGCC or CCS, Rachael Belz, Coal Program Organizer for OCA, said that they would not. “I don’t believe there is any such thing as clean coal. And that’s our organizational stance,” said Belz. Furthermore, the organization could not justify the additional cost of these technologies. Since their role was largely that of liaison with AMP-Ohio member communities, the economic argument against the plant was central to their outreach strategy. An IGCC or any other kind of facility that would incorporate CCS technologies would be incredibly expensive, furthering the case that it would place an undue burden on ratepayers. While Belz knew that some of her allies in the fight had a different take on those technologies, OCA was not willing to support any new coal plants—regardless of what emission controls or carbon capture capabilities they might have. “Our focus is on getting rid of dirty energy sources like coal,” said Belz, “and all coal plants are dirty in our book.”

Meigs Citizen Action NOW (Meigs CAN) took a similar stance. Meigs CAN was founded by Elisa Young, a Meigs County resident whose property is virtually surrounded by coal plants. As noted above, Elisa was the sole oppositional voice in the 2006 hearing regarding the IGCC plant proposed by American Electric Power. In that hearing, she forwarded many of the same arguments put forward by OCA regarding the AMP plant: the cost would be too high for ratepayers, the plant would add significant pollution to an already polluted area and exacerbate health problems, the plant would likely burn coal obtained through mountaintop removal mining, and the addition of the plant was not necessary to meet demand. She also specifically criticized CCS technologies as unproven and a waste of money (Ohio Power Siting Board, 2006, pp. 40-50). Young’s opposition to the AMP-Ohio plant was the same as her opposition to the IGCC plant—that is, she opposed new coal plants regardless of what technologies they might employ. For Young, as for Belz, the immediate impacts of a new coal plant and the mining practices it would encourage were more significant than any carbon mitigation potential such a plant might provide.

This position was taken by the OEC and the NRDC. While the OEC believes energy efficiency and renewable energy should be aggressively pursued, they also believe new coal plants should be required to use the best technologies available for minimizing emissions. As Staci Putney McLennan stated in the 2006 hearing,

[A]s long as coal continues to be a source of electricity generation, IGCC technology must also be incorporated. All new coal based generation facilities should utilize IGCC technology as opposed to traditional pulverized coal technology. (Ohio Power Siting Board, 2006, pp. 17-18)

Indeed, a key argument the OEC made in their opposition to the AMP-Ohio plant was that it failed to implement this technology. In a 2007 press release, OEC Staff Attorney Trent Dougherty stated, “AMP-Ohio publicly promised to build a ‘clean’ power plant, then quietly asked Ohio EPA to OK weaker pollution controls. . . . The law demands today’s best available pollution control technology, not yesterday’s” (OEC, 2007, p. 30). In their view, the only technologies that should count as sufficiently “clean” would be IGCC plants that could capture and store their CO₂ emissions.

The NRDC led the legal fight against AMP-Ohio’s Meigs County plant. Along with the OEC and the Sierra Club, the NRDC filed a series of legal challenges to the permits awarded to the plant by Ohio EPA. Among other complaints, these lawsuits criticized AMP-Ohio for failing to use the best available technology for reducing emissions of sulfur dioxides, nitrogen oxides, and other pollutants. In a 2007 “fact sheet” on the proposed plant, the NRDC argued that its pollution controls were “far from the most effective available,” and pointed out that AMP-Ohio had not committed to implementing carbon capture and storage at the plant (NRDC, 2007, p. 1). They went on to argue that AMP-Ohio “failed to provide an evaluation of IGCC control technology in its permit application to the Ohio EPA” (NRDC, 2007, p. 2). If the plant was going to be billed as a state-of-the-art “clean coal” technology, these organizations were going to take them to task on whether the proposed technologies were truly “clean enough” to live up to the name.

This was more than mere strategy; both the OEC and the NRDC was already outspoken in their support for CCS before the Meigs plants were ever proposed. In 2005, certain representatives of the NRDC—David Hawkins the most vocal among them—started publicly advocating for the development and deployment of CCS. In a story titled “How to Clean Coal,” printed in NRDC’s OnEarth newsletter in fall of 2005, Hawkins was quoted as saying that “if the plants are not designed up front to capture their CO₂, they will lock us into large amounts of global-warming emissions for their entire operating lifetimes” (Canine, 2005). The OEC made a similar argument in a 2005 report called Ohio Climate Road Map (Waltzer, 2005). These arguments closely mirrored those made in the AMP-Ohio case. While these groups backed down from using the term clean coal, they remained firm in their support of CCS technologies. NRDC President Frances Beinecke addressed this issue while responding to President Obama’s announcement that the Department of Energy would be providing funding for CCS projects in 2010, stating, “We don’t think that term (clean coal) is appropriate, but the technology really will reduce global warming pollution from power plants” (Koch, 2010). NRDC navigates the tension over these technologies by speaking out against the “myth of clean coal,” and distinguishing this myth from “the reality of carbon capture and storage” (NRDC, 2010).

This position was taken by the Sierra Club (hereafter Sierra). Sierra organizers played a key role in challenging the claims that the AMP-Ohio plant would be clean and supported the OEC and NRDC in their lawsuit. When I asked Nachy Kanfer, the lead organizer for Sierra’s Ohio chapter, about those organizations’ support of CCS, however, he expressed ambivalence. “I work with them and they are allies,” said Kanfer. “But we don’t necessarily agree that CCS is the way to go . . . Sierra Club does not take that stance.” This was a common response among Sierra activists I interviewed. The Sierra Club’s “Beyond Coal” campaign has formalized this stance, stating,

If coal is to remain a part of our energy future, it must be mined responsibly, burned cleanly and guaranteed to not worsen global warming pollution. At this time, there is no existing coal technology that meets these standards, including Integrated Gasification Combined Cycle (IGCC) or carbon capture and sequestration (CCS). (Sierra Club, 2012)

Nonetheless, Sierra has carved out a middle-ground position by arguing that while these technologies are still unproven, no new coal plants should be built without them. This position is in contrast to the more enthusiastic endorsement of IGCC and CCC offered by NRDC and OEC, as well as to the outright rejection of these technologies by OCA and Meigs CAN.

All the organizations described above worked together to oppose the AMP-Ohio plant, based largely on the grounds that it did not include the best available technology. While the plant was billed as “clean coal technology,” these groups argued that cleaner technologies were available. While the plant was billed as “CCS-ready,” these groups argued that that was not good enough. Even OCA, which opposes all new coal plants, strategically challenged the AMP-Ohio plant on these grounds at times, criticizing them for “talking the talk without walking the walk,” as one activist put it. By invoking and challenging the industry’s “clean coal” discourse, in various ways, all these groups participated in redefining the term. The groups involved were aware of their differences and navigated them in various ways. One factor that worked in their favor was that even though they collaborated on specific actions, the groups operated largely independently of one another. Materials prepared by one group were sometimes distributed by another, such that the range of messages of these different groups was able to reach their various audiences—yet each group stayed focused on their own mission and organizational strategies. This allowed them to benefit from each other’s strengths without forcing them to adopt stances or strategies that did not fit with their particular goals. The plant was ultimately cancelled, and while AMP-Ohio argued that this decision was purely economic, those involved felt it as a victory for their collective work. In spite of this strategic alliance, these groups continue to differ in their views on technologies such as IGCC and CCS and their role in moving toward a cleaner energy future.

Standards of Evidence: Citizens, Experts, and CCS

The Meigs County debate described above provides just one example of how differently situated organizations evaluate new coal technologies differently “on the ground.” In speaking with environmental and social justice groups opposing various proposed coal plants, I found very little support for carbon capture and storage among grassroots groups working in the Appalachian region. This has sometimes led to tension between organizations that are otherwise allies. An early example of this tension can be found in an exchange between NRDC and CRMW—a regional environmental and social justice organization based in West Virginia. In 2005, after the NRDC posted its article in support of CCS in its OnEarth newsletter, CRMW circulated an open letter opposing this technology and casting it as part of the “clean coal lie.” The letter expressed frustration with NRDC’s position, stating, “All of us who care about the health of our children and our planet must identify, challenge, and eliminate the oxymoron ‘clean coal’ when we see or hear it” (CRMW, 2005). According to a press release from the Ohio Valley Environmental Coalition, as of December 2005, more than 70 organizations “from throughout the United States and 12 countries” had endorsed CRMW’s letter (Ohio Valley Environmental Coalition, 2005).

Part of the disjuncture between NRDC and CRMW on this point is that regional groups have more immediate concerns than the reduction of greenhouse gas emissions. While activists I spoke with viewed climate change as an important issue, they also said issues such as mountaintop removal mining, health impacts of mining, and coal slurry impoundment safety were more pressing in their communities. A common critique of CCS from regional groups is the fact that it only looks at one stage in a larger process. Lorelei Scarbro of CRMW was especially outspoken on this point in an interview in 2009:

Before you can ever begin to have an intelligent, rational conversation about clean coal, you have to consider all five stages of coal . . . from extraction to disposal of waste, transportation, processing, all of it. And that’s when you can begin to understand the true impacts of whether or not it could ever, ever, ever be clean, which I believe it can’t. Living where I live, I certainly believe it cannot.

While groups like NRDC focus on climate change as a central organizing issue, groups such as CRMW are more likely to prioritize issues such as mountaintop removal and pollution control. They are also more likely to be wary of any technologies relating to the disposal of coal waste.

This issue is a major point of contention—and sometimes frustration—between professionalized groups such as NRDC and grassroots groups such as CRMW. George Peridas, a scientist working on climate change issues at NRDC, is outspoken on what he perceives as a lack of public understanding of the science of CCS:

CCS technology, its risks and its benefits are still not well understood by the public, and opinions are often formed based on other dimensions of industrial development history in the vicinity of a proposed project, or from news articles of varied accuracy and quality. (Peridas, 2011)

The OEC has also expressed frustration at these perceived misunderstandings. In a fact sheet on carbon capture and storage, the OEC lays out a series of myths and facts about CCS. Consider:

MYTH: Even if CCS is able to store carbon today, it is bound to leak out of the geologic formations that hold it.

FACT: Several reports, including by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, have stated that proper CCS can sequester carbon without appreciable leakage for 1,000 years or more. (OEC, 2009)

The OEC here is attempting to counter what they perceive as a lack of public understanding of the technology in question.

In contrast to these experts and to groups such as the NRDC, regional activists are most likely to find CCS projects being proposed in their communities; hence, they are understandably wary of supporting a technology that would dispose of yet another coal waste product in their backyards. This concern was raised by a number of community activists I spoke with. Lorelei Scarbro stated, for example,

We certainly disagree with carbon sequestration. David Hawkins from NRDC was sitting in here at our conference table, and the discussion that we were having was, that’s one of the things that they believe has to be in any climate bill. . . . And I looked at Mr. Hawkins, and I told him that living where we live, living in the coalfields, and living with the history of underground injection of toxic sludge, living with contaminated water, living with the blasting that goes on, we are well aware of the fact that . . . it’s not going to stay where you put it.

Similarly, when asked whether she believed sequestered carbon dioxide would stay put and away from the water table, Hannah Morgan of Southern Appalachian Mountain Stewards (SAMS) replied: “That’s what they said about Martin County before the slurry spill . . . it doesn’t take a scientist to know that this stuff is not going to stay in one place.” Elisa Young, who lives across the river from the Mountaineer plant—the only plant in the region that has captured and sequestered CO₂—expressed similar skepticism in a 2009 CNN article, stating, “Let’s face it, this is an experiment. The nature of an experiment is that you do not know what will happen” (Quijano & Marrapodi, 2009). As to whether the CO₂ would stay put, she stated, “I’m sorry, but no scientist in the world can convince me [of that]” (Quijano & Marrapodi, 2009). Regardless of what experts claim, many regional activists believe CCS poses a significant danger to water quality.

The two views of CCS described above can be explained in part by differences in risk perception between citizens and experts. The dominant model of risk assessment and communication is a one-way model in which scientific or technical experts provide neutral information to an uninformed public regarding a new technology, with the assumption that the public’s resistance stems primarily from a lack of accurate knowledge about the technology in question and the risks it poses. This model (or some variation thereof) remains prevalent among risk communicators, in spite of decades of social science research demonstrating its limitations (Douglas & Wildavsky, 1982; Funtowicz & Ravetz, 1985; Slovic, 2000; Wynne, 2006). This posture is common in public outreach and risk communication for CCS pilot projects (Bradbury, Greenberg, & Wade, 2011) and was echoed by geologists I interviewed who work on carbon sequestration issues in Kentucky and Ohio. While some may understand why citizens are concerned about water issues in the region, the vast majority of technical experts I have encountered over the course of this project view the fear of water contamination from CCS as overblown, and based on faulty information. As one geologist put it, “I don’t blame them, given the water issues they have dealt with . . . but CCS is safer than people think.” Even when recognizing citizens’ concerns, the dominant model for risk communication is to correct the misperceptions of the public regarding the risks and impacts of the technology in question by providing more accurate information. In contrast, citizen groups tend to view risk in a broader way, focusing not only on technical factors but also social, economic, ethical, and other factors that are not addressed in the dominant risk assessment/risk communication paradigm. The views expressed by members of environmental and social justice groups do not necessarily reflect those of the general public—opinions about CCS vary widely among residents of Appalachia, as do opinions about coal more generally. However, recent assessments of pilot CCS projects suggest that the broader view of risk described above is common among the general public and not specific to activist groups (Bradbury et al., 2011).

A key difference between these views of CCS is the different standards of evidence used by each “side.” The statements by Peridas and OEC’s fact sheet rely on a scientific argument regarding how CO₂ is expected to behave once it is sequestered. The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) report mentioned in OEC’s fact sheet is probably the most cited report dealing with this aspect of CCS. The statement alluded to in OEC’s fact sheet reads:

Observations from engineered and natural analogues as well as models suggest that the fraction retained in appropriately selected and managed geological reservoirs is very likely to exceed 99% over 100 years and is likely to exceed 99% over 1,000 years. (IPCC, 2005, p. 14)

At first glance, this statement appears to suggest a high level of scientific certainty that CCS poses minimal risk of leakage—but this appearance is somewhat misleading. There have indeed been several facilities that have been successful in sequestering CO₂ without known leaks, most notably the Sleipner facility in Norway. However, some have criticized the use of such a concrete number to indicate the likelihood of leakage—including one participant in the group that worked on that section of IPCC’s report—noting that the long-term impacts of CCS are not yet known and cannot be assessed with that high level of certainty (Narita, 2010).

Perhaps even more significant than the quantification of the safety of CCS, though, is the inclusion of the phrase “appropriately selected and managed” in the statement. This phrase reminds us that even if geologic sequestration is fundamentally safe when properly managed and under ideal conditions, different people have very different histories and levels of trust in the regulatory process. While I have encountered some misunderstandings about CCS in interviews with regional activists, most of the critiques I heard had little to do with the scientific or technical aspects of the process. In this sense, Peridas was correct in his assessment that citizen groups often base their assumptions on “other dimensions of industrial development history in the vicinity of a proposed project.” In contrast to the scientific standard of evidence described above, statements by local activists are informed by collective experience with the coal industry and government regulators. For them, the question is not how CO₂ will behave once it is sequestered, but how industry and regulatory representatives will behave before, during, and after the sequestration takes place. In my conversations with activists on this point, I found that many invoked disasters such as the Martin County slurry spill as “evidence” against CCS projects. One activist even referred to CCS as “slurry ponds on steroids.” While they understood that slurry impoundments were not the same as CCS injection sites, their distrust in the coal industry and regulatory agencies led them to equate the two. For citizen activists I spoke with, these concerns were more important and relevant than any scientific assessment of the feasibility or safety of CCS.

The reluctance of local and regional groups to support technologies such as CCS appears to stem in part from their proximity to pollution and waste generated by the coal industry and their distrust of the industry and regulatory agencies to protect them from the environmental and health impacts of that waste. These groups draw on experiential knowledge of these local impacts as well as past interactions with industry and regulatory bodies in weighing their support for new technologies. State and national organizations are more likely to draw on scientific knowledge and professionalized modes of environmental advocacy. This is particularly true for organizations such as the NRDC, which was founded in part on the desire to “bring the full weight of scientific and legal expertise to bear on environmental policy” (Nordhaus & Shellenberger, 2007). Differences in strategy also appear to stem from the centrality of climate change as an organizing issue for state and national organizations, as opposed to the more immediate environmental and health concerns that receive priority among regional groups. Given these differences, while these groups maintain strong alliances on issues such as mountaintop removal and pollution control, they may never agree on technologies such as CCS. However, when and if large CCS facilities are proposed in the Appalachian region, they will share a common interest in ensuring proper regulation and management of these sites. Indeed, establishing this kind of common ground may be a better use of energy for groups such as NRDC than trying to convince their more skeptical allies of the feasibility or safety of CCS.

A recent letter circulated by the Environmental Defense Fund in response to proposals that would relax liability requirements for geologic sequestration operators illustrates this point. The letter exemplifies the overlap between environmental groups who support CCS and those who oppose it when it comes to regulatory concerns. Consider:

Proponents of CCS, including some of the signatories of this letter, believe that properly selected and appropriately managed geological sites can provide a safe and secure method of storing carbon dioxide for many millennia. But . . . CCS, like any industrial activity is serious business, and requires careful attention to detail in design, development, operation, and closure. Asserting that industry needs liability relief at any point in this process . . . is to suggest that perhaps industry is less than certain that it can, in fact, deliver at this high but necessary standard. And, if that is the case, then citizens have the right to wonder whether this is a good idea at all. (Environmental Defense Fund, 2011)

This letter, signed by dozens of environmental and social justice organizations, underscores the importance of evaluating the technical and sociopolitical aspects of CCS together rather than separately. It also offers an acknowledgement of the validity of citizen activists’ concerns about CCS from a regulatory standpoint. This kind of recognition will be vital in future conversations about CCS, particularly in areas where sequestration sites are proposed.

Conclusion

Clean coal is a highly contested term in energy debates in the United States, and in the Appalachian region in particular. While the recent discourse of “clean coal” originated in industry and government circles, it has been debated, shaped, and contested by a wide range of players, including environmental and social justice groups. There are considerable differences among national, state, and regional groups over how this term should be employed, and whether particular technologies such as CCS should be supported or even considered. There are many ways to interpret these differences. Some scholars suggest that professionalized environmental groups have been co-opted by beltway politics, causing them to dilute their agendas and lose touch with more radical grassroots factions in the process (Bosso, 2005; Brulle & Jenkins, 2008; Montrie, 2003). Some of the findings from this study could support such an interpretation. However, in my view, strategic alliances between these groups are as salient as their differences. The interactions between local, state, regional, and national groups described here highlight some of the tensions as well as areas of overlap between professionalized and populist forms of organizing around energy issues—both of which play important roles in the larger debate over clean energy alternatives (Meyer, 2008). They also serve as a reminder of the complexity of energy-related issues and their implications for differently positioned players, both inside and outside of the Appalachian region.

Environmental and social justice groups have been actively engaged in contesting and redefining clean coal discourse in a number of ways. By rejecting the term clean coal and creating a popular counterdiscourse, they have cast doubt on industry claims that coal can maintain its dominance without negatively impacting the environment and contributing to climate change. By strategically employing the term cleaner coal and lending conditional support for certain technologies (such as IGCC and CCS) while rejecting others (such as plants described as “carbon capture ready”), they have participated in defining what kinds of facilities should count as “clean enough” for the permitting process in a carbon constrained world. By refusing to separate the issues caused by the burning of coal from those caused by controversial extraction methods such as mountaintop removal mining, they have served as a reminder that even the cleanest coal-burning technologies rely on coal extraction processes that damage the land and pollute the air and water. By refusing to separate technical and sociopolitical aspects of these technologies, they have challenged narrow technical representations of CCS as safe and reliable. In all these ways, environmental and social justice groups have shaped the discourse about “clean coal” and helped redefine the terms of the debate about clean energy.

As I write this, the battle over “clean coal” technologies in general—and CCS in particular—continues. In 2012, the EPA proposed a new limit on carbon dioxide emissions for coal-fired power plants. This limit is set at 1,000 pounds of carbon dioxide per megawatt of electricity produced—a limit that can be met by natural gas plants but could only be met by coal-fired plants if they included carbon capture and storage technologies. These technologies, once heralded by the industry and its advocates as quintessential “clean coal,” are now being attacked by industry representatives for not being “commercially viable.” If implemented, this rule will drive up the cost of new coal-fired plants and reduce the competitive advantage of the coal industry. Whether this strategy will succeed remains to be seen. How national, state, and regional groups will ultimately navigate the issue of CCS is unclear as well. What is clear is that in spite of their deep ambivalence about CCS and related technologies, environmental and social justice groups will be integral in shaping and defining the discourse and policies surrounding these technologies for years to come.