Landmark Report Calculates Societal Benefits of Fossil Energy to be at Least 50 Times Greater than Perceived Costs of Carbon
Benefits outweigh supposed costs by range of 50-1 to 500-1
Washington, D.C. – The benefits of fossil fuel energy to society far outweigh the social costs of carbon (SCC) by a magnitude of 50 to 500 times, according to a landmark study released by the American Coalition for Clean Coal Electricity (ACCCE) today.
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“It is without question or debate that our national and global societies have benefited from fossil fuels. And those benefits will continue to be realized from coast to coast and around the globe for generations to come,” ACCCE President and CEO Mike Duncan said. “If this Administration attempts to calculate the future costs of carbon, it’s imperative that policymakers also consider the actual and potential benefits of our carbon-based economy. Fossil-based energy has powered three industrial revolutions, including today’s technology revolution. It has increased life expectancy, improved the quality of life, supported the cause of liberty, and brought hope to every civilization that has used it. I would hope that legislators and regulators understand this and enact and support policies that continue the responsible use of fossil fuels – especially clean coal.”
According to the study, The Social Costs Of Carbon? No, The Social Benefits Of Carbon, over the past 250 years global life expectancy has more than doubled and incomes have increased 11-fold in large part due to increased energy production and delivery, most of which has been fossil-based. And although a Federal Interagency Working Group (IWG) estimated the social cost of carbon (SCC) to be $36/ton; the actual societal benefits of carbon – as a by-product of energy production – is 50 to 500 times greater than the perceived cost.
“Even the most conservative estimates peg the social benefit of carbon-based fuels as 50 times greater than its supposed social cost,” Dr. Roger Bezdek, the lead author of the report said. “And the benefits are actual fact; founded on more than two centuries of empirical data, not theoretical summaries based on questionable assumptions, dubious forecasts, and flawed models.”
The report goes on to say that coal is the world’s fastest growing energy source and has increased nearly as much as all other sources of fuel combined. Much of this growth is in emerging economies like China and India, which are just beginning to realize the social and economic benefits that reliable, affordable electricity can bring. It is expected that coal will continue to be the leading feedstock for electricity generation around the globe for at least the next three decades. Additionally, according to the statistical arm of the U.S. Department of Energy, the Energy Information Administration, fossil fuels will provide 75 to 80 percent of the world’s energy for the foreseeable future.
Here in the United States, coal remains the largest feedstock for baseload electricity generation supplying nearly 40 percent of the nation’s electricity. But the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) is making it increasingly difficult for clean coal energy to survive in the United States. The agency’s proposed rule for new coal-fired power plants, the New Source Performance Standard (NSPS), has been widely criticized for its unachievable requirements. NSPS requires the use of carbon capture and storage (CCS) for all new coal-fueled power plants, a technology that is not yet commercially viable. Therefore, the EPA proposal effectively bans new coal plants.
These regulations seem to ignore the $130 billion the industry has invested in clean coal technologies that have already reduced emissions by nearly 90 percent over the past forty years.
“Fossil fuels have provided the energy to improve farming yields, grow manufacturing and business, and are now powering data servers and even the Cloud,” Mr. Duncan said. “And while we have all benefited from reliable, clean coal electricity, there are still those who seek to end this American form of power. More and more, this Administration has abdicated its energy policy to the EPA whose regulations will shutter existing coal power plants and thwart the construction of new ones. We would hope that evidence in support of the benefit of fossil fuels, including clean coal, will help bring common sense to the regulatory process.”
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Sort of related: My 50 to 1 project interview is now online, along with the main video
h/t to reader Roger Bezdek
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Heh.
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Throw in that the Thorium and Uranium in coal contain 13 times more extractable energy than burning it, the benefits of the Kerrick process of extracting smokeless semichar coke, oil, plastic feedstock, pharma and fertilizer, plus water gas and electric cogenereation, and it has yet to see it’s full potential.
“Our continued growth requires continued and increasing use of fossil fuels.”
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That’s the problem right there. The most vocal of the alarmists don’t want continued growth. Their real goal is to stop the growth of human civilization, and preventing the use of fossil fuels is a means to that end. If Global warming ceases to alarm the world, they will invent another scare story as they have done many times in the past.
You got a choice.
Energy from coal/oil/natural gas
Energy from nuclear power
Energy from animals and slaves. (Green energy goes with slave and animal power)
Anyone who tells you different is telling porkies.
Thanks A.
Very interesting. This article adds much needed perspective.
“it’s imperative that policymakers also consider the actual and potential benefits of our carbon-based economy”. Well, yes!
It is a good article but it’s sponsors will ensure that the power establishment won’t be allowed to consider it seriously.
[While] we have a ready supply of fossil fuels then we should be ensuring that scientific funding and research is devoted to improving viable alternatives such as Nuclear (fission and fusion) rather than the false god of the current [religion] of AGW.
Irrespective of the quality of the arguments and data presented in this report, attacks on it will be based on the identity of its sponsors.
Sat in departure lounge at LA waiting for a flight to Honolulu. This is the first time we have visited the Western side of the USA and we love it, the people are friendly, the scenery beautiful and the standard of accommodation has been excellent (stayed in Las Vegas, San Francisco and LA).
We could not have done this trip without fossil fuel (flights from Newcatle to Heathrow to Las Vegas, hire cars to drive between the cities and then a flight from LA to Honolulu).
On the drive to both LA and San Francisco we passed hills with 100’s of wind turbines on them, we never saw any of them rotating. Had we had to rely on them for heat and light, we would have used candles, starved and shivered. Our impression of our holiday so far, would have been totally different.
Rhoda R says:
January 24, 2014 at 4:07 pm
“It is a good article but it’s sponsors will ensure that the power establishment won’t be allowed to consider it seriously.”
Which would be irrational. And which is what will happen.
If benefits did NOT outweigh the costs civilisations using coal would have perished; and the Dutch wind-driven sawmills would have stayed the pinnacle of industrialisation.
GregS says:
January 24, 2014 at 4:08 pm
[While] we have a ready supply of fossil fuels then we should be ensuring that scientific funding and research is devoted to improving viable alternatives such as Nuclear (fission and fusion) rather than the false god of the current [religion] of AGW.
_________________________
We know enough to supply the world with all manner of affordable energy, for now. I suspect that before it all runs out, that mankind will be making full use of some technology for which we haven’t developed the consciousness, yet.
I’ve read some of the leading literature in the field of environmental economics. Sometimes you can characterise work as junk science or pseudo science. A lot of this work is probably best characterised as crankism. What’s curious are the numbers of individuals out there who have no interest in following the ‘arguments’ but have no hesitancy in citing the conclusions.
Eh. I don’t trust these sorts of giant calculations any more than the super duper climate models on the other side.
It is probably a good, factual report, well referenced, and complete. Doesn’t matter. It will simply be ignored. When did facts ever matter to climate alarmists?
It was worth the effort, however. Nothing to be gained by throwing in the towel without a fight. If it was submitted for peer review and published in an economics journal, it would carry some authority.
Alan,
“I suspect that before it all runs out, that mankind will be making full use of some technology for which we haven’t developed the consciousness, yet.”
That’s it! The future will run on psychic energy!
Can we rub Dave Appell’s nose in this? And about 150 nations around the planet?
The ratio of carbon benefits to costs is the same as the benefits of living in a world of industrial technology versus living in the stone ages. Ask anyone living in one of the industrialized countries if they would voluntarily move to a stone age culture.
Western agriculture is 100 percent industrialized. Try to produce food without fossil fuel, I’d guess that food production would drop by 99 percent. Farmers without fuel or electricity would also starve.
The only exceptions are a few survival types and some religious groups such as Amish.
Of course der Fuehrer and his satraps will ignore this. Their ideology says that fossil fuels are bad, that civilization must be wound down back to pre-industrial conditions, and that they, the elite, know better than we plebeians – and the first tenet of their belief is that nothing else exists but what is said in their ideology.
@Andrew Harding –
Wind turbines are an environmental as well as economic disaster. They kill birds (including protected eagle and whooping cranes – they’ve reduced the surviving whooping crane population by almost half from about 220 to about 120 (and have brought a species of swift in the UK to the brink of extinction), they destroy habitats for ground-dwelling creatures by their noise and vibration, they emit a whole new array of pollutants – only to produce electricity at an actual, fully loaded cost of at least $2 per kilowatt-hour (counting land, down time, maintenance and the continued operation of backup fossil fuel generation as spinning reserve, to maintain grid integrity when the wind stops or varies sharply – actually causing more fossil fuel to be burned than if there were no wind power installations).
Wind turbines are a scheme to redistribute wealth from middle- and low-income electric ratepayers and taxpayers to wealthy investors in uneconomic projects. Poor people struggle to pay inflated electric rates (at least twice what they would be if there were no “renewable” energy) while leftist billionaires get richer. Some of that $2/kWh cost shows up in electric rates 2 to 3 times higher that they would otherwise be (and a larger multiple in the UK and Europe), and the rest is concealed in various taxes secretly intended to subsidize wind and let the billionaires make their money.
Absolutely correct. The contribution of cheap energy to progress AND the environment is simply crucial to understanding modern civilization. No single community on earth has seen its quality of life increase even by a fraction outside of the energy paradigm as we understand it.
This is one of those topics that I wish were discussed more often.
My congressman responds:
“Thanks for your interest in this important issue. Consider the source. No way we can even consider this. Just another denier funded by the fossil fuel industry. I hope you can see through this fraud of a study. As you must know it is worse than we thought; much worse. The time to act is now.”
The Australian experience of “green” power:
http://www.heraldsun.com.au/business/when-you-need-more-power-to-keep-the-lights-on-the-answer-is-most-certainly-not-blowing-in-the-wind/story-fni0d8gi-1226809058934
Interestingly it seems human slavery is rising with the increase in energy costs.
Causation? Probably not but that is a benefit of affordable energy our psycho-greens can not seem to comprehend.
Strange that piracy and slavery are returning.
Is this also down to global warming?
Or the failure of civic institutions in times of public hysteria?
During the latter half of the last century, in my lifetime, I have seen, benefited and been an active supporter of a revolution in the quality of life for all in the ‘enlightened countries’ unknown in mankind’s prior history.
Not only are my assertions based upon observations and experience but I swear they are 100% true.
In my first decade, I saw an Australia that was strewn with rubbish, and shocking water and air pollution.
In the last 5-6 decades i have watched at first hand, a country that has returned its streets, parks, public places, waterways and air to astonishingly good quality in my city of Sydney as it grew from 1.5 m to nearly 5 m inhabitants.
I find the negative, merchants of “green” to not only be out of touch with the reality of a cleaner environment bought about by a willing community that does support its environment rather then cry doom and gloom at every opportunity.
And IMHO, these sanctimonious busybodies do so without contributing one iota to the overall advancement.
Whilst they carp and criticise on fat government subsidies, Carbon power generating engineers fix their plant and guys like ian Kiernan simply DO.
Would much rather have the “social cost” of carbon than:
the social cost of socialism
the social cost of “green energy”
the social cost of climate alarmism
the social cost of communism/obamunism
Reblogged this on This Got My Attention and commented:
Amazing.