Natural gas is regarded as a relatively clean source of energy but there is mounting evidence that it has a dirty side.

My colleague Jon Hurdle has reported on Wyoming water woes that have been linked to the booming gas industry. You can see his stories here and here.

In August U.S. government scientists reported that they had for the first time found chemical contaminants in drinking water wells near natural gas drilling operations, fueling concern that a gas-extraction technique is endangering the health of people who live close to drilling rigs.

The Environmental Protection Agency found chemicals that researchers say may cause illnesses including cancer, kidney failure, anemia and fertility problems in water from 11 of 39 wells tested around the Wyoming town of Pavillion in March and May this year.

On Monday, I reported that high concentrations of harmful compounds have been found in the air in a north Texas town that is in the heart of the region’s gas industry, according to a report released by an environmental consultancy.

The study by Wolf Eagle Environmental Engineers and Consultants found high concentrations of carcinogenic and neurotoxin compounds in the atmosphere at seven locations around the rural town of DISH, which is about 50 miles northwest of Dallas.

Carcinogens are linked to cancers while neurotoxins are toxins that act on nerve cells.

The report said the levels of several of the substances exceeded those that the Texas Commission on Environmental Quality (TCEQ) uses as benchmarks or triggers that could prompt it to investigate or take action. This does not mean that these levels are an immediate hazard but the town’s mayor Calvin Tillman told me that he would like to see the several compressor stations in the area shut down until people are reassured that they are not emitting toxins.

DISH is on the Barnett Shale, a large geological formation in north Texas that contains vast amounts of natural gas.

What do you think? Is natural gas a viable option in the quest for an energy source cleaner than coal, which emits about twice as much carbon dioxide? Or must the industry first clean up its own act?

(Photo: A worker at EnCana’s Frenchie Draw gas-drilling rig in central Wyoming guides sections of steel pipe into an 11,000-foot well on September 19, 2009. REUTERS/Jon Hurdle)

   Solar power may bring us cleaner air and clearer skies. Nice, yes. But it’s money — not saving Mother Earth — that will catapult solar energy past dirty coal-fueled power plants.

That’s the theory of Ray Kurzweil, a futurist and inventor. At a technology conference on Friday, Kurzweil said billions are being invested into solar power and new advances in the technology are driving down the cost of powering by the sun. 
    “As a result, the amount of solar energy is doubling every year two years,” Kurzweil said. “But ultimately it will be very inexpensive. So what’s motivating (its adoption) is economics.
    “It has the side effect that it’s environmentally much friendlier,” Kurzweil said at the Fortune Brainstorm: TECH conference in Pasadena, California.
    The inventor is far from the first to predict the success of solar power. Some may give more weight to his words: Kurzweil has predicted the fall of the Soviet Union and the rise of wireless technology.
    He has his critics as well. Kurzweil, who wrote “The Singularity Is Near: When Humans Transcend Biology,” envisions a future where we can download memory and reverse-engineer the brain.
    (Reporting and writing by Laura Isensee)

      (Picture: Inventor Raymond Kurzweil speaks at the Fortune Brainstorm TECH conference in Pasadena, California July 24, 2009. REUTERS/Fred Prouser)

West Virginians who want to show off their pride in the state’s coal industry can now do so via some catchy, coal-promoting ringtones put together by the West Virginia Coal Association.

Beware, however, that the ringtones have already drawn the ire of environmentalists.

The ringtones are jingles the West Virginia coal group has used for some time to promote the state’s vast coal resources (and presumably to offset the bad rap coal gets for producing about 30 percent of the nation’s greenhouse gases).

Below are some of the lyrics:

Coal is WestVirginia/ Coal is me and you/ Coal is West Virginia / We’ve got a job to do/ Coal is energy (coal is energy)/ We need energy (we need energy)/ Coal is West Virginia

And:

When we go down deep through the dark today/ We come up wth a light for America

For all the ringtones’ optimism, however, they are taking heat from environmental group the Sierra Club, which put together a video called “Coal Was West Virginia” that denigrates coal as dirty and a threat to the environment while the mobile phone jingles play in the background.  You can check it out below:

Photo Credit: Reuters/Andrea Hopkins (Retired miner Chuck Nelson, 57, surveys a mountaintop removal coal mine on Kayford Mountain, West Virginia)

It was a bad week to be planning a coal-fired power plant in the United States.

The industry suffered its second blow of the week on Friday with the cancellation of a plant in Michigan. The move by power plant developer LS Power marks the ninth such plant to be dropped in the United States so far this year, according to a count by environmental group the Sierra Club.

The company blamed regulatory uncertainty and the weak economy for the cancellation, which environmentalists cheered because coal-fired power plants are responsible for more than 30 percent of the United States’ global warming emissions.

The Michigan plant cancellation wasn’t the first blow to coal this week, either. On Tuesday, the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency withdrew a permit for a massive coal-fired plant in New Mexico that would have been built on an Indian reservation.

The announcements came within two weeks after the Obama administration opened the way to regulating greenhouse gas emissions by declaring them a danger to human health.

Mandated limits on greenhouse gases, which the U.S. could adopt as early as this year, are certain to deal a further blow to new coal-fired plants. The U.S. Department of Energy’s statistical arm, however, expects coal to provide the largest share of U.S. electric generation for years to come, making up 47 percent of the nation’s power generation in 2030.

What do you think is the future of coal-fired power in the United States?

Photo credit: Reuters/Staff Photographer (Southern Company’s Plant Bowen in Cartersville, Georgia, one of the biggest coal-fired plants in the United States)

A U.S. anti-coal campaign has gone Hollywood with a new TV spot directed by Academy Award-winning filmmakers Joel and Ethan Coen of “No Country for Old Men” and “Fargo” fame.

The Reality Coalition, a project backed by environmental groups Alliance for Climate Protection, Sierra Club, National Wildlife Federation, the Natural Resources Defense Council, and the League of Conservation Voters, launched the ad this week.

Entitled “Air Freshener,” it features a product pitchman entering a family’s home with a spray can labeled “Clean Coal” that spews black, cough-inducing fumes.

“Is regular clean, clean enough for your family? Not when you can have Clean Coal
clean,” he says.

The ad, designed and produced by ad agency Crispin Porter + Bogusky, is designed as a response to a series of coal industry-backed television spots and other ads promoting “clean coal,” or technology to capture and store the global warming emissions from coal-fired power plants. Environmentalists argue that the industry’s ads are misleading because clean coal does not exist yet on a commercial scale. The industry, however, says coal is an abundant and cheap resource that the U.S. cannot do without.

Despite U.S. President Barack Obama’s green leanings, however, he has been a supporter of research into clean coal technology. Earlier this week, his budget proposal included $15 billion for technologies, including clean coal, that keep carbon out of the atmosphere.

Check it out the Coen brothers’ ad below. It is the first of a series directed by the famous duo.

Now that Bank of America is cutting back on lending to mountain top removal mining companies, citing the environmental costs, rival Citigroup is weighing its options.

“Bank of America’s announcement has just been released so Citi will study the content,” the bank said on Friday. Citi and Bank of America were prime targets of Rainforest Action Network and others for their support of mountaintop removal mining for coal in Appalachia. Cutting the top off a mountain is a cheap and efficient way to get coal — and environmental groups call it an ecological disaster.

“We are continuing to learn about this issue through engaging and listening to a variety of stakeholders, including our clients. Today we met with a number of industry, scientific, and community experts to listen and learn from their perspectives. Citi has a long history of engaging in dialogue with our stakeholders on this and other critical environmental issues,” the bank said.

Rainforest Action Network says the bank has a history of funding dirty coal and has called Citi’s steps to curb its carbon footprint small. The coal industry, on the other hand, says Bank of America is pandering to the the green movement at the expense of work in a place where jobs are few and far between.

(Photo: Reuters/Andrea Hopkins)