To Clean Up Coal, Obama Pushes More Oil Production

Before joining the Energy Department, Greenwald headed the National Enhanced Oil Recovery Initiative, a consortium of coal producers, power companies and state and environmental officials promoting the process.

But the environmental benefits of this so-called enhanced oil recovery aren't as certain as the administration advertises.

"Enhanced oil recovery just undermines the entire logic of it," said Kyle Ash of Greenpeace, one of the few environmental groups critical of the process. "They can't have it both ways, but they want to really, really bad."

That has become a theme in some of Obama's green-energy policies. To promote new, cleaner technologies, the administration has allowed companies to do things it otherwise would oppose as harmful to the environment.

For wind power, the government has shielded companies from prosecution for killing protected birds with giant turbines.

For corn-based ethanol, the administration underestimated the environmental effects of millions of new acres of corn farming. The government even failed to conduct required air and water quality studies to document its toll on the environment.

The administration wants to make similar concessions to make carbon-capture technology a success.


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