FROM RENEWABLE TO ALTERNATIVE: WASTE COAL AND THE PENNSYLVANIA ALTERNATIVE ENERGY PORTFOLIO STANDARD
Open Access
- Author:
- Thomas, Robert Roy
- Graduate Program:
- Rural Sociology
- Degree:
- Master of Science
- Document Type:
- Master Thesis
- Date of Defense:
- June 16, 2008
- Committee Members:
- Leland Luther Glenna, Thesis Advisor/Co-Advisor
- Keywords:
- classifications
categories
naming
rhetoric
renewable portfolio standard
metaphor
ecological modernization
clean energy
waste coal
coal
alternative energy
renewable energy
discourse analysis
boundaries - Abstract:
- In recent years, state legislatures have begun to apply green classifications to energy sources in efforts to promote renewable energy. As such, they must conduct environmental boundary work in order to draw lines (or establish borders) between those sources to promote and those sources to exclude. The conceptual opposition between fossil and renewable fuels has typically driven these sorting activities. Pennsylvania’s Renewable Portfolio Standard is unusual in this regard. Called the Alternative Energy Portfolio Standard (AEPS), this policy promotes at least three energy sources that are typically thought of as non-renewable: waste coal, coal mine methane, and coal gasification. Since the public readily identifies these energy sources as ‘fossil fuels’, we can reasonably ask how policy makers overcame this categorical opposition. This thesis answers this question by examining how Pennsylvania lawmakers inserted waste coal into this renewable energy policy. Analysis first assembles testifiers into discourse coalitions based on their asserted assumptions (or ‘first principles’) regarding the economy and the environment. Next it demonstrates how stakeholders characterized the concrete situation at hand, namely the production of energy in Pennsylvania, and how they selectively problematized different domains of Pennsylvania’s economy and the environment. Third, it shows how stakeholders portrayed waste coal energy production and argued for its inclusion or exclusion in the policy. Finally, the study examines how preexisting linguistic structures offered opportunities to stakeholders as they worked to ascribe meaning and significance to their representations of waste coal. In doing so, this study shows how waste coal supporters successfully sidestepped the opposition between renewable and fossil fuels by splitting the domain of ‘green’ energy into two categories, ‘clean’ and ‘renewable’. It also discusses the rhetorical border work that advocates enacted to justify this splitting. Namely, they drew upon the ambiguous terms ‘alternative’ and ‘clean’ to argue that waste coal plants ‘clean up’ abandoned gob piles and produce ‘cleaner’ energy ‘than’ traditional coal plants. The results of this thesis are relevant beyond Pennsylvania’s borders. The study discusses how arguments used to justify the promotion of waste coal may be used to justify the promotion of other energy sources, and how the label ‘clean energy’ can be applied to fossil fuels. Further, the study shows how metaphors are effective rhetorical devices to justify the redefinition of categories and the reshaping of boundaries. Also, analysis demonstrates how publicly salient notions like ‘clean’ and ‘renewable’ can place limits on lawmakers as they work to associate themselves with environmental initiatives. Lastly this research demonstrates how the rhetoric of ecological modernization can be adopted to justify the promotion of fossil fuels with the context of green energy policies.