If It Moves in a Circle, It's Probably Spin: Persuasion and Power, Coal and Consent
Washington, D.C. November 19, 2001

Keynote Remarks by Jack N. Gerard President & Chief Executive Officer
National Mining Association
To The Clean Coal and Power Conference of The United States Department of Energy The Center for Energy & Economic Development The National Mining Association The Electric Power Research Institute and The Council of Industrial Boiler Owners

Thank you ladies and gentlemen.

Thank you for your welcome and for your involvement in the improved use of coal, which is 95 percent of America's known fossil fuel, the group that gives Americans 70 percent of their electric power.

John Derrick of USEA put America's energy in a global context. I'll ask you to think in the domestic context.

  • This conference has a new name, which goes to context.
  • The Clean Coal Technology Conference, of which there were eight, has become the Clean Coal and Power Conference.
The one change points to others.

It signifies the readiness of these technologies.

It signifies a rising awareness in federal policy: Coal is the one fuel America must use for electric power if Americans are to have sufficient power - abundant, reliable and low cost.

And, I suggest, it foreshadows a burgeoning trend. We'll look into this shortly.

The change also highlights a widening of purpose.

To borrow from Secretary Kripowicz's instructions to speakers:
It's time to focus on non-technical issues that must be resolved to affirm the coal option;
And to bring such questions into public discussion.

I don't pretend to have the answers. I do have some thoughts.

Most here think a lot about the engineering of improved power generation.

Before we're finished, I'll ask you to think about another kind of engineering: About what some call the engineering of consent.

I'll need your help to cover these things in a short time. Grant me the assumptions:

  • That the President's new approach to regulation goes in place;
  • That energy legislation is enacted, the version with incentives to initiate deployment of advanced generation;
  • And that climate policy turns to efficiency and technology, the President's intent.
Also assume continuation of something like last year's average fuel costs:
  • Coal - 120 cents per million Btu;
  • Oil - 429 cents;
  • And natural gas - 430 cents.
Assume this even though this year's gas averaged 920 cents in January and 640 cents through May. Gas is much lower now.

Dislocations in energy gave policy an early priority in the new administration.

The Vice President's strategy recommendations found an urgent requirement for:
  • 200,000 new megawatts of capacity through 2010;
  • And another 193,000 through 2020;
  • For a total of 393,000.
The report found - and I quote it directly:
  • "…adequate, reasonably priced natural gas…(is) a challenge….
  • "If…electricity demand is to be met…coal must play a significant role."
Let's think about the first 200,000 megawatts.

I'm going to use some numbers, but they are not predictions. Think of them as pools of potential - pools reported by others.

As much as 20 percent may be found in the existing coal-based fleet.

The National Coal Council says the equal of 40,000 megawatts can be created expeditiously with upgrades - upgrades that include clean-coal technologies.

Beyond this:
  • Energy Ventures Analysis recently reported the potential for 27,000 new coal megawatts through 2013;
  • And Resource Data International saw 48,000 through some unspecified time, these to be balanced with possible retirements.
Assume that a split-the-difference 30,000 megawatts of coal goes on line. Add the 40,000-megawatt gain.

This 70,000 megawatts is 35 percent of projected requirement through 2010.

If the late Senator Everett Dirksen could come back as a power executive, he might put it this way:
"A thousand megawatts here, a thousand there: Pretty soon…real capacity."

Coal-based generation is only 39 percent of all capacity; but it delivers 52 percent of the power.

And there may be another pool that almost no one suspected, let alone expected.

This month Midwest Generation added 1,100 megawatts to the accounting: A big conversion from gas to coal.

Midwest filed for permits to convert two units at a station near Chicago. They run only about 10 percent of the time on gas or oil.

In the change-over, Midwest gets an expeditious expansion of baseload against rising demand. And it achieves a 900 percent increase in output from a standing property.

Another gas-to-coal conversion is entering the final phase in Florida, this one in the Clean Coal Technology Program.

In a repowering demonstration at the Jacksonville Electric Authority's Northside Station, 300 megawatts of atmospheric-circulating-fluidized-bed combustion has replaced gas and oil capacity.

Due this month for first fire, it is aimed at lower fuel cost and stable power prices. The gas and oil units were used no more than 50 percent of the time. The coal will be baseload.

A twin unit is being added outside the program on its standalone merits.

The new 600 megawatts will give the authority 150 percent more power than the old units with 10 percent lower emissions.

We have at least 280,000 megawatts of gas and oil capacity, about one-third of the total. Last year it delivered less than 20 percent of power. The utilization rate was about 29 percent.

Contrast this with:
  • Coal - 71 percent utilization, 52 percent of output, 39 percent of capacity;
  • And nuclear - 88 percent utilization, 20 percent of output, 12 percent of capacity.
The efficiency of some older gas-fired generation is only 26 percent.

Contrast this with 34 percent at Jacksonville; or with the higher efficiencies of other repowering in the clean-coal program.

More of this seldom-used generation may be identified, in time, as a way to achieve expeditious, substantial expansions.

You can be sure that success with these conversions will arouse interest among others - interest and a canvass for suitable properties.

A thousand here, a thousand there: My personal judgment is that more, rather than less, of the next 200,000 megawatts will be coal.

It won't be easy; but it can be done.

In fact, it has to be done to get Americans electric power in the volumes they require on the terms required at the times required.

In the decade ending last year, coal-based generation:
  • Provided 49 percent of the growth;
  • Set ascending records in 9 of 10 years, including last year;
  • And filled the void when other forms fluctuated, faltered or fell short of promises.
Since energy became a major concern of policy in the 1970s:
  • Power output is up 99 percent;
  • Almost 60 percent of growth came from coal;
  • Coal output grew 130 percent;
  • And the coal share of output went from 44 percent to 52 percent.
Coal was the mainstay of growth, diversity and reliability in America's power supply all through this time.

Without coal, Americans would have been S…O…P - short of power.

For the future, the federal Energy Review finds:
"…(through) the next couple of decades…dwindling use of nuclear…modest expansion of renewables…reliance on the three major fossil fuels…"

Without coal strongly in the mix, America will find itself woefully short of power…and of natural gas. We're already short of petroleum.

Let's scout the territory Secretary Kripowicz staked out.

That other kind of engineering - the engineering of consent - comes from the title of an essay on the workings of democratic societies.

It's said that three conditions must be satisfied if any large-scale activity is to move forward.

First, society must need it. We're covered here.

Second, society must have the resources to engage in it.

We've got this covered too: 274 billion tons, the largest standalone reserve of energy held by one nation in the world; the Btu equivalent of either all the world's oil or all the gas. The reserve equals at least 585 trillion kilowatt-hours on standby.

Your technologies will use the resource well and wisely.

But, third, society must either demand the activity or consent to it. Society will not long tolerate an activity to which it does not consent.
For orientation, think nuclear power: Half of all nuclear power plants ever ordered had to be cancelled. Think whaling. Think long-term opinion campaigns

Consent is required for all policies of government that determine how we live. There are ongoing struggles to win it, or to keep it, or to revoke it.

The news is an elemental force in these struggles. In practice, the news is almost anything that has emotional impact. And it is emotions that most often move opinion toward tolerance or intolerance.

Let's think about a specific example.

A Washington newspaper of national influence recently found in Chicago a story that rests on these facts and assertions:
  • Two girls died in separate locations of complications of asthma;
  • There was coal-based generation in the vicinity of each;
  • There is no observed connection between plants and deaths;
  • But, parents feel threatened;
  • And so, coal generation may be causing problems nationwide.
The database Nexis reports that news stories based on the words asthma and coal-fired and emissions were published in the following numbers:
  • In the last year - 204;
  • Last two - 349;
  • And last three - 437.
Nexis also noticed that the $4.8-billion Pew Charitable Trusts have commissioned a campaign by others to require a 75 percent reduction in emissions from coal-based power.

A campaign device for generating news is the study: Death, Disease and Dirty Power: Mortality and Health Damage Due to Air Pollution.

This fall EPA reported that over the last decade:
  • Sulfur dioxide concentrations, down 37 percent;
  • Particulates, down 19 percent;
  • And nitrogen oxide, down 11 percent.
Annual emissions also are down. The decline is expected to continue.

This shows why some efforts to shape consent are called spin. Every story rests on a premise, or angle, or spin. All of these terms relate to the way the facts are arranged and presented.

To spin a story is to influence the arrangement and presentation of facts; and, thereby, to influence both the public's interpretation of the facts and its judgment of the situation.

In this case, once unspun, the allegation is that lower emissions are causing a rise in health problems.

Lower emissions, rising problems from emissions: Some spin goes in circles.

Somewhere in most of the Nexis stories a business spokesman probably gave a business-like response. It's also a good bet that most who found it could not decide whether to believe it.

We have to challenge every misrepresentation. We also have to recognize that more may be necessary than a good quote or a solid letter to the editor.

Campaigns have two purposes:
  • First, they elevate immediate concerns;
  • But, no less important, they implant by repackaging and repetition a conditioned reaction of unease - in this case, coal equals danger.
With news or advertising, it is repetition that sets public attitude and outlook over the long term. Details fade. Uneasiness remains.

An expert in the art calls this the 24-hour drumbeat of impression that makes it difficult to see things any other way.

Here's a summary of attitudes and outlook:
  • 60 percent believe the environment is worse than ever before;
  • 70 percent believe the air and water are worse;
  • 80 percent believe industry is the main reason for pollution;
  • And there is deep, abiding distrust of business.
My grouping is unscientific and collected at random.

Yet I think it goes to some of the other issues.

We can't expect people involved in personal matters and hearing many drumbeats of dread:
  • To keep track of EPA's annual reports;
  • Or to school themselves in some very complicated issues;
  • Or, even, to be aware that what television often shows as pollution is only steam.
We should not even expect them to take our answers at face value.

The director of the National Institutes of Mental Health explained a similar dilemma this way:
"It is very easy to engage in fear based on stories…very hard to calm people based on…dry statistical records."

As long as 7 of 10 think air pollution is getting worse, as long as 8 of 10 blame industry, we can expect continual alarms of danger and waves of political pressure.

The continual alarms reinforce the beliefs. The beliefs raise the pressure.

Call it the circle of spin. This is why and how perception and politics outrun science, a too-frequent lament of industry.

We are renewing consent now because the danger is clear and present. The new administration saw the realities of energy and is acting on the capabilities of technology.

Can we keep it? Can we keep it beyond the next four or eight or 10 years?

The concept of consent could use ongoing discussion.

Alarms work best when there is no counterbalance to the drumbeat - no body of understanding. It does not matter if an alarm is shown false
after long study. What matters is the distrust, the repetition, and the conditioned reaction.

Lately some generators and some equipment makers have begun to seek standing in public awareness. I've seen advertising aimed at policy-makers and those who participate in public policy.

I've even seen coal mentioned here and there.

Perhaps in time a coordinated approach to maintaining consent can grow from these beginnings - can rise up as all involved with coal prosper in a national market for power.

Power will have to be marketed like other goods. A good maxim for energy producers might be:
  • Show them what you do and why you do it;
  • Show them how well you do it;
  • And show them how it helps them.
Don't tell them. Show them. Stick to the truth and a body of public understanding will grow up.
I am certain America will turn to coal for electric power in this decade: For coal today is security's fuel and freedom's mainstay.
Beyond this, the consent of the future is ours to win or to lose.

And it's not too early to start thinking about it.


Thank you for your attention.