Are Environmentalists and the Fossil Fuel Industry Calling a Truce?

There is a deal on the table in Washington with the potential to create a truce between two sides that have been at war for many decades. The deal takes the form of the Waxman-Markey bill – the framework for federal climate law now moving through Congress.

While it is still uncertain whether climate legislation will pass this year, the draft bill contains a formula for compromise that could create an unprecedented handshake between the fossil fuel industry and environmentalists and unite them for the first time in the battle to control greenhouse gases.

Testimony on the Waxman-Markey bill kicks off today, Earth Day. This one should be recognized for the perplexing and difficult day that it has become: a bittersweet moment in which the contours of political compromise have become stark for all concerned; and a defining moment in which both sides in the historic war are weighing painful agreements.

For the fossil fuel industry, it's a mandated cap on carbon that will squeeze roughly 80% of current emissions from the economy by 2050; and for environmentalists, it's accepting the necessity of a still speculative technology called carbon capture and storage (CCS). Many greens have come around to the opinion that CCS is fundamental to solving global climate change, and the fossil fuel industry realizes it needs federal help developing the technology in order to stay in business.

So at this legislative crossroads, the nation is on the verge of deciding to store vast quantities of CO2 – not in the atmosphere any longer – but in the Earth instead. It is something worth remarking on this Earth Day. 

President Obama campaigned promising to support "clean coal" – the industry messaging term for CCS – and he has been true to his word, though many had hoped his position would change once he won the election. Steven Chu, the new energy secretary, sees no alternative to developing CCS as soon as possible, and Reps. Henry Waxman and Ed Markey have given a prominent place to the technology in the Clean Energy title of the bill they drafted with help from the business-NGO collaboration USCAP.

Most telling of the tectonic shift taking place, however, is that the Reality Coalition – formed by leading environmental organizations under the leadership of Al Gore's Alliance for Climate Protection – has called a partial cease-fire. It's pulling the TV spots that have been informing the public "there is no such thing as clean coal" from the airwaves, in an effort to get four-square behind securing passage of the climate bill known formally as the American Clean Energy and Security Act.

The acceptance of CCS is more than a political accommodation designed to buy off the coal states and secure the votes of Blue Dog Democrats; it is a sudden and sobering admission that the environmental problem called global warming is in need of a modern industrial solution. There appears to be no politically palatable way to ratchet down the insatiable global appetite for energy far enough to substantially reduce our dependence on fossil fuels in the foreseeable future, renewables and energy efficiency notwithstanding

What this also means is that the oil and gas industries are going to be partners in the effort to save the planet, for without them geologic storage of CO2 will not be possible. They are the only ones capable of managing the task at a scale big enough to make a difference.

In order for CCS to reduce emissions by one "wedge" (1 Gt/a C) – the world will have to be storing 190 billion cubic feet of CO2 a day (Bcf/D). This is not a statistic culled from a naysaying green report, but from an illuminating article that appeared in the Journal of Petroleum Technology called "Geologic CO2 Storage – Can the Oil and Gas Industry Help Save the Planet."