Wonder about those "clean coal" ads?

Don't you love TV ads that lobby for a cause without saying so or the reasons why? Archer Daniels Midland ™ has been masterful at doing this for decades -- claiming to be all things to all people while hiding behind the scenes very serious issues. Consider it soft-sell lobbying. The same with Cargill ™ and Monsanto ™.

It's not just agri-food. Several years back, rival accounting bodies bombarded the airwaves in Ontario with advertisements without ever explaining what the real issue was: The Chartered Accountants wanted to keep their near monopoly in certifying annual reports, while the General Accountants and Management Accountants wanted to break open the market to competition as it has been in most of the rest of the country (the latter group eventually won; but the CAs have fought back with a new series of ads suggesting they're the only ones with the credentials to do real business plans, for example).

So it is with the current energy crisis.

We see the ads non stop on US network and cable television: Clean coal, the "balanced" energy choice, the new saviour of the masses. Take the dirty stuff that normally comes out and trap it in carbon capture and sequestration (CCS) for eons, safely. Save for the facts that they haven't told us. You can count the number of demonstration projects around the world -- the world -- on one hand. Only one shows plausibility if not promise, and it only deals with extracting gas from coal and not turning coal to power. (A solution South Africa had to rely on to get gasoline for cars to get around the trade embargo during the apartheid era, and CCS was the last thing on their minds.)

Plus the costs for demonstration projects have spiralled out of control. The NYT reports today that back in January, the US federal government pulled out of a project when the costs hit $1.8 billion, more than double what was expected. It's now focusing, belatedly, on offering subsidies to existing companies who are willing to dedicate portions of a new plant to CCS provided the company and not the taxpayer take over the cost overruns.

So that's what the ads are all about, after all. The taxpayer should bear the brunt, and should continue to fund the pilot projects no matter what the cost. Current demonstration projects should be taken to their logical conclusion even if it means cancelling school lunch programs.

If CCS can be made to work -- really made to work -- then hey, even I would give them back their full investment in tax credits. Even resell those credits on the open market so the company gets double or more back. But throwing good money after bad isn't the way to solve the challenge of reducing emissions of pollutants.

Until then, we need to be relying more on the resources provided by nature and harnessing its potential. Wind, solar, geothermal. In addition to being more energy efficient. As for clean coal ... prove that it works. But don't bully us with ads that don't tell the whole story or disguise your real motives.

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