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Smoke and Mirrors

Coal Research & Development

$850 million

"The appropriateness of federal government funding for such research and development is questionable…. Much of the federal spending has been irrelevant to solving the nation's energy problems." 1999 Congressional Budget Office Report.

Historically, coal has received substantial public funding through the U.S. Department of Energy's (DOE) Research and Development (R&D) programs. The DOE supports research into technology programs for producing, refining, and burning coal products.

Green Scissors Proposal
Eliminate funding for the DOE's Coal R&D program, saving $158 million this year, and at least $794 million over five years.

Current Status
In April 2003, the House of Representatives passed H.R. 6, the Energy Policy Act of 2003. The bill authorized $1.3 billion over the next four years for coal research and development. The Senate energy bill provides more than $600 million for fossil fuel research and development including coal research programs.

Project Hurts Taxpayers

Coal R&D projects are another form of corporate welfare. These projects should be funded by private industry, not taxpayers. In some areas, both the utility industry and the coal industry already spend a great deal of money to develop new technologies, so taxpayer funding is unnecessary and duplicative. Many aspects of the federally funded Coal R&D program are also redundant with work done under the separate Clean Coal Technology Program.

Project Hurts the Environment

Coal is an extremely polluting and carbon-intensive energy source. Burning coal for energy significantly contributes to acid rain and greenhouse gas build-up in the atmosphere. Because of the basic chemical and physical characteristics of coal, once coal is burned, the reduction of CO2 emissions becomes economically impossible. Coal R&D will artificially delay and stunt development of cleaner fuels and technologies.

Increased coal production and burning presents serious health threats. Burning coal is responsible for about 60% of soot-creating sulfur dioxide emissions in the United States and is also a major source of smog-forming nitrogen oxide pollution and mercury contamination. Sulfur dioxide and nitrogen oxide pollution also creates fine particle pollution, which leads to 30,000 deaths and hundreds of thousands of cases of respiratory and cardiac illness in the United States every year. According to the American Lung Association, at least 137 million people live in areas where it us unsafe to breathe the air. Asthma rates have increased 75% since 1980 and 40,000 people die each year because of soot. Moreover, health officials have issued warnings not to eat fish in 50,000 lakes and streams in 39 states because eating mercury-tainted fish can cause severe neurological damage.

Contacts

• Navin Nayak, U.S. Public Interest Research Group, (202) 546-9707;
• Aileen Roder, Taxpayers for Common Sense, (202) 546-8500 x130;
• Erich Pica, Friends of the Earth, (202) 783-7400 x229