Fallacious Reasoning on Clean Coal

Over at the Atlantic, Jordan Weissmann argues that the Obama administration’s claim to be pursuing an “all of the above” energy strategy is unrealistic because the EPA’s new CO2 emission rules will make traditional coal plants untenable while “clean coal” technology is uneconomical relative to natural gas. Fine.

But Weissmann goes on to argue that the reason why clean coal R&D is a big waste of money is because of the lack of a cap-and-trade policy that would put a price on CO2 emissions. That’s dead wrong. With a price for carbon dioxide, just as with the EPA’s technology or emissions standards, power producers would look for the cheapest alternative to coal. That would be natural gas (given the same forecasts Weissmann relies on). So the clean-coal subsidies are unlikely to pay off regardless of what kind of policy we pursue, be it a CO2 tax, cap and trade, or emissions or technology standards for power plants. Cheaper is cheaper. It’s amazing how often people fail to grasp principles of competitive advantage.

(We could, of course, come up with a convoluted policy to keep coal miners employed, similar to how the 1977 amendments to the Clean Air Act were set up to penalize low-sulphur Western coal so as to keep Eastern mines open, but I’m hopeful that we can avoid that kind of perversity this time. If you see laws or regulations that punish natural gas use in electric power, though, you’ll know my hopes have gone unfulfilled.)

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